King of the Field

Recently I attended a lecture at BYU by the amazing Cory Loftis. He was the Lead character designer on the hit Disney animated film Zootopia! If you haven't seen this film yet you need to drop whatever you'er doing and go see it right now! Everything about this movie is amazing! The design, the color pallet is a pure visual buffet! The story is cute, super funny and teaches a great moral. I loved this movie!

Cory's  lecture was incredible. He was able to show never before seen art and talked a lot about the process of developing compelling stories with believable characters and environments. It really helped me to recharge my batteries and reset me motivation. 

Also, I'm coaching my son's soccer team this season and Thought it would be fun to do a quick Zootopia inspired soccer painting to bring on the season! 

Darkwing Duck: I am the terror that flaps in the night!!!

Yesterday the prompt for Sketch Dailies was none other than Darkwing Duck! I loved that show growing up and had to take a break from my normal Illustration work to paint up a little tribute to my favorite feathered crime fighter! Painted in Adobe Photoshop CS6 using a Wacom Cintiq.

I also included a gouache painting/ study I did last summer of Darkwing Duck as well. Forgive the sloppiness and the tangents this was one of my first attempts using gouache. It's a fun medium for sure I really enjoy painting with it. I'll have to make blog post that features some of my traditional paintings.  

Disney Screen Grab Paint overs!

Saturday evening the family and I were watching Disney's The Sword in the Stone, one of my personal favorite animated films. After the movie ended and the kids were all in bed I went in to my studio and thought it would be fun to do a quick paint over of a screen shot from the film. Originally I saw this technique done by the incredibly talented Tyson Murphy. I limited myself to about an hour or so for the over painting.

This exercise was actually a lot of fun and I learned a ton from doing it. I even painted one this morning over a Jungle book screen grab. Honestly the things you can learn from studying other people work is amazing! I think a big part of being a professional artist is the fact that you'er never really done learning. You will spend a lifetime practicing and growing in your respective disciplines. I look forward to doing this again sometime.

I've included the original screen grabs for comparison. Have a great week everyone!

Bing Bong Commission

One of the best parts of being an illustrator is creating fun artwork for a living! I get the opportunity to work for amazing clients all the time. Recently, I had the chance to work for one of my best clients ever, my brother Brad. If you don't know him he is an extremely gifted film maker and animator. He can do things on screen that I only dream of. I'm always inspired by his creativity and thirst for awesomeness! A few weeks ago he commissioned me to paint this painting of Bing Bong from Pixar's Inside Out for his Daughter, Kaylin's 12th birthday!

As usual I had a blast working on this image. For me my digital art never really seems finished until it's printed and ready for display. For this piece I had it printed on a high quality canvas and I'll tell you it turned out amazing! I couldn't be happier with the final version! I took a few photos of my niece with her birthday present with my iPhone but the quality was so so. Happy birthday Kaylin!

Sleeping Beauty Coloring Book Fun!

A few years ago when I was studying Illustration at UVU we were given a really fun in class assignment by one of my favorite professors Ryan Wood. The assignment was to take a coloring page from a coloring book or online somewhere and create a digital painting from it. 

I needed a little break from client work to recharge my batteries so I thought it would be fun to revisit Ryan's old assignment. My subject for this exercise is none other than Sleeping beauty. I found the image on a generic Disney coloring page google search. 

The great part about this process is that I can skip right to the painting because the line work and composition are essentially done. As with most of my digital work I start off with a value underpainting and "glaze" color over the top. All in all this painting took just a few hours. It's great practice when you are looking for something to paint or draw. Alright now back to work! 

-Adam

Marc Davis Tribute

Rough sketch

Background block-in 

Background Color

Main Character Painting

Final Painting 

How's it going everyone?! I'm doing great as usual! For this weeks painting I'm once again pulling inspiration from Illustration Friday's Weekly topic. This week's IF theme was "Novelty". While trying to figure out what to paint I did a lot of research and watched a bunch of old Ed Sullivan Show episodes. They all had these great acts with some kind of gimmick. This got me thinking... One of my all time favorite novelty acts was the Country Bear Jamboree at Disneyland. The characters were designed by Disney veteran animator Marc Davis. So I decided to paint a tribute piece to Mr. Davis and create my own Country Bear novelty act. So here we have Lynyrd "Rascal" Bearenthall the 4th and his amazing unicycle cat juggling routine!

He's no good to me dead!

As most of you know I've been super busy painting and getting prints ready for the Salt Lake Comic Con. Here is my latest piece... Mr. Boba or "Bobble" Fett!

Having been a huge Star Wars nerd all my life, Mr. Fett was an easy choice while trying to come up with subjects to paint. I could have easily painted Vader or any number of Jedi but, I thought it would be more fun to tackle ole' bucket head. He is arguably one of the coolest villains ever created! To bad he went out like a buster!

If you are in the Salt Lake area September 5-7 drop on by the Salt Lake Comic Con and stop at my table (A-5) in the artist alley!

Till next time!

I am Iron Man!

Hey everyone out there in cyber space! I'm really excited to share another painting with all of you! For my latest project I'm continuing with the superhero caricature theme for my table at the Salt Lake Comic Con. This week's subject is...The Invincible Iron Man!

I've been a big Iron Man fan for a long time now. I love the movies and the comics, especially Adi Granov's work on the graphic novel Iron Man: Extremis.

Like last week's Thor painting, I had  a lot fun working on ole' Shell Head's armor. In particular the scratches and the arc reactor on his chest. It takes forever but, I really enjoy zooming in and painting some of these little details!

Also, for your viewing pleasure, I've included step by step process shots for each stage of this painting. Hope you enjoy it!

Now it's time to get back to work!

Mickey's biggest fan!?

Drew this sketch (bottom) of Darth Maul a few months ago. Ever since then I've been wanting to paint it. With the recent news of George Lucas selling his company to Disney, I thought this would be the perfect time to finish it. (ball point pen ink and marker with a little white colored pencil and of course photoshop)