U Can't Stop The Rubber Rocket!

It’s been a long road, but the music video for U Can’t Stop The Rubber Rocket! by Rubber Johnson is finally out in the world, courtesy of Respect Music Records. I served as the director, animator, story artist, and character designer on this project, while also kicking in a few backgrounds here and there. Shouts to my production crew, Robert Pendleton (compositing lead), Jonilyn Ly (environment designer and background painter), and Naomi Meyers (environment designer and background painter). Thanks for putting up with my endless notes. I think the video is looking pretty decent, guys. 

I also worked on a comic adaptation of the music video, which is available as a free download. Writing credit goes to Rubber Johnson's Chief Creative Officer, James Canning. It dives into the world of Rubber Johnson in greater detail and allows the reader to see what the characters are actually saying to each other underneath all that music. Click on the cover image below to download. 

Finally, here’s a bit of production art from the project. I'll probably post a few more in the future. 

Tilt BG from the video's opening shot. 

Another tilt BG, this time from the scene taking place in
the abandoned arcade.

'Colored' version of the arcade background, once the band bursts
 out the machine into the present day.

Initial design for the 'mindless masses', who were later
dubbed "The Enslaved"

The band insisted that I make a cameo in the video, so here's
 my avatar who ends up getting STOMPED by The MAN. 

Basketball! Again!

Wow, it's been a while since I last posted.

Here are some NBA-themed drawings I've done recently / semi-recently.

Rudy Gay - Sacramento Kings

The unstoppable Russell Westbrook

Northern California's own Dame Lillard

Ben McLemore - Sacramento Kings

'U Can't Stop the Rubber Rocket' trailer

Here's a preview for a recent project I worked on. It's a music video for the track, "U Can't Stop the Rubber Rocket" by Rubber Johnson (Respect Music Records)

Release of the full video is tentatively scheduled for 3rd quarter of this year. But if you've just gots to have that funky groove now, the song can be purchased on iTunes, Amazon and, I imagine, other fine marketplaces for digital music on the web. 

Kick like a kangaroo

A mascot design I did for a failed freelance bid. I figured that I don't have enough mascot-type characters in the portfolio so I threw it into Illustrator and cleaned it up a bit. I think I might finally be starting to get the hang of Illustrator.

"Kick like water, my friend"

I think I got that quote right. Anyway, I spent all yesterday drawing martial arts stuff so why not end the night with Bruce?

SPL

I've been thinking for a while (years) that my FB profile needs a cover image but never got around to making one until now. This one is a tribute to the 2005 film 'Saat Po Lang' or 'SPL', which IMO contains one of the best fight scenes of the last 20 - 30 years - the knife vs baton fight between Donnie Yen and Wu Jing.

Unnamed fantasy creature

A character design that I submitted alongside my bid for a potential job. I ultimately ended up not getting that gig, but I liked the way the character turned out so I polished him up a little and made a turnaround for him.

Romy is short for Romeo. Or Romar. Or Romulo ...

Ever since reading Rafe Bartholomew's Pacific Rims, I've been tossing around the idea of doing something related to Philippine basketball. I've been thinking of character types recently - this one is the cocky hotshot dude who considers himself the king of a particular court. Let's call him ... Romy (?) ... for now.

I had a difficult time nailing down this pose, for some reason. 

Boogie

More sports fan art. This one is of Sacramento Kings center DeMarcus 'Boogie' Cousins. 

Created in Manga Studio 5. It's quickly become my go-to illustration app. 

... I really should animate something.

Manny

The way Manny Pacquaio throws his flurries of punches for some reason reminds me of Kenshiro's Hokuto Hyakuretsuken from Hokuto no Ken.

Aaatatatatatatatatatatatatatata

I should probably animate something. It's been a while.

Ben McLemore

Sacramento Kings rookie Ben McLemore. 

Roughed in Sketchbook Pro and finished in Manga Studio 5. 

'Do you think your Wu-Tang sword can defeat me?"

 

Taking a break from fan art, here's a character built on a cool pose from a Jianshu video I found on youtube. 

Deadly Palm Strike!

Another dip into obscure/forgotten characters, this one is Chintai, a mid-level bad guy character from the NES version of Double Dragon. He specializes in Kung Fu and throwing you into the air when you try to ground attack him. I wanted to use this as an opportunity to play around with the watercolor tools in Manga Studio 5, as I had mainly been using the oil paint tools up to this point.

And just in case it wasn't clear from previous posts, I kind of love manga-style line-based motion blur.

蝶のように舞

Lately, I've taken to drawing obscure video game characters from the 80's and early 90s because why not? I like to call it Fan Art for Forgotten Characters. This character is Aska, a female ninja from the 1993 fighting game Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters aka TMNT: Mutant Warriors. Aska is an original character made specifically for the game because ... I guess Konami felt like the game needed a Japanese character?

As fighting games go, it's pretty good though it probably appeared a little too late in the 90s fighting game boom. One thing that always puts a smile on my face is that Shredder has a special move that sounds like he's yelling, "More Pushups!"

The Standing Desk Adventure: Day 1

I've been longingly looking at standing desks for a couple of years now, especially since reading a number of articles/blog posts over recent years reporting that sitting is the new silent killer. I don't know about all that, but working on my last project, I could feel the energy draining out of my body as I sat for hours at my desk fighting the desire to doze off. So I looked at a standing desk as a possible solution for maintaining my focus and energy level (or at least not having them drop off so precipitously).

A reservation I have going into this is that just about all desk transition anecdotes that I've found have been for people who do pretty conventional office work - writing, web research, answering phones, etc. It's been difficult to find examples of artists who've made the switch and their impressions. Animation, in particular, is incredibly time consuming and my worry is that I'll be trading off sitting's sedative effects for fatigue and constant foot/leg pain. So with that in mind, I'm not about to spend $500 on a proper standing desk. Rather, I set out to find the least expensive path to converting my current desk to a standing one, just to try it out and potentially knock it all down if it doesn't work out. And y'know what? Cinder blocks are pretty cheap. For about $10, I now have a standing desk

The pants are there to keep the cinder block debris off the carpet.

cinder blocks x 6 = about $10. 

I'm average-sized for a Filipino guy, meaning that I'm short for an American guy. The cinder blocks raise the desk by 12", which raises the keyboard shelf to about 38" off the ground, which is just about perfect for me.

Standing at it for the first hour, I was like, "Man, this is nice. I dunno about all that 'leg pain' stuff  those internet wussies were complaining about'

After about two hours, I was like, "I feel like my ankles are going to collapse into my heels"

So I went out and bought this 29" bar stool from Target for about $27. The cushioning is a nice touch, but the compression actually makes the stool's height closer to 26". That matters. 

Drawing while standing feels ... different. I can't say that it's that much more uncomfortable than sitting but I haven't done much more than a few sketches. Foot pain is a real problem, though - my heels really hurt, and I expect that to be the case until my legs become accustomed to bearing my weight for extended periods of time. I hope my legs become accustomed to bearing my weight for extended periods of time. 

Lastly, here's a sketch of me drawing while standing, which was drawn while standing. 

Watch 'The Turtle and the Monkey'

I've just made my De Anza College student film, The Turtle and the Monkey available to watch on vimeo and Youtube.

I figured that it's probably time, after about a year of trying to get into all of the free festivals and a few of the paid ones. I wasn't as successful as I had hoped, but you take your lumps, learn from them, and move on. If I could do it over, I'd probably make the film considerably shorter.

That Sporting Life

I was looking through a folder of warmup sketches and found some stuff that I might not have been feeling at the time, but I think look kind of groovy now. First off, some sports themed sketches.

Continuing from yesterday's post, here are a couple more Sacramento Kings ... fan sketches, I guess, from earlier this year. I don't know why I find Isaiah Thomas to be a good subject for practice with distorted perspectives. The second drawing is of sharpshooter Predrag 'Peja' Stojakovic from the glory years of the early 2000's. I was probably humming John Tesh's 'NBA on NBC' theme as I was drawing it.

 

And this sketch is my attempt at drawing boxer Nonito 'Filipino Flash' Donaire in the style of Masanori Morita's 'Rokudenashi Blues' manga. As a teenager, I admired the hell out of Morita, especially how kinetic his fight scenes were, using lines to convey motion blur. But as far as likenesses go, this doesn't look at all like Donaire. 

 So yeah ... basketball and boxing. I'm hella Filipino.

They're playin' baaaaasket-baaaaaall

October means the NBA season is starting up again soon. Here's a drawing of Isaiah Thomas of the Sacramento Kings, minus his tattoos.

Falling In Flames

About a year ago, I worked on a music video for indie hip-hop icon, Murs, and his Yumiko, Curse of the Merch Girl graphic novel project which he co-created with Josh Blaylock. I've been a fan of Murs since picking up his album, "The End of the Beginning" back in 2003, so I was honored to get to work on this. We actually wrapped just before Comic-Con 2012, after which it seemed to vanish off the face of the earth. To my relief, it finally surfaced online a year later, in conjunction with the digital release of the Merch Girl graphic novel.

I worked on this project as the lead storyboard artist and lead animator. I happened into the lead animator position by virtue of being the only one on the crew without anything else going on his life; the rest of the animation team was mostly made up of students from Cogswell College and San Jose State. Our crew on this project was actually pretty big - apparently too big to completely fit into the youtube video description. For the lead animator position, I'm simply credited as "Leo" because that's where the cutoff point happened to be, meaning that the other animators aren't credited at all.

Who the hell is interrupting my Kong Fu?!?!?!

The more I looked at the previous Black Dynamite sprite, the more I kind of hated it. So, uh, do-overs. I studied the SF Zero sprites a little more and adjusted his proportions accordingly. I'm still not sure that it looks like it fits in that world yet, but it's an improvement.

Oh, and hey look! He's moving!

Sprite created in Photoshop and animated in Pixen.