Merry Xmas!

 Merry Christmas from Zad Zak and Angree Dandee! It's okay to smile at least once a year!

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A Comique!

Comic I did for Nocivo Comix. 

Jim Smith

Some Jim Smith art that I love...

 

Look how gorgeous this drawing (above) looks. The solidity and perspective in this are outstanding. This drawing has pure skill and pure talent written all over. You feel as if this character is right in front of you and not as a two-dimensional drawing, but what's cool is that he's NOT drawn as a realistic three-dimensional person. How awesome is that?

Man, I love this Dirty Dog and Cigarretes drawing! I'd love to study Cigarettes' head in this one!

Super appealing!!

This one above is great.

 *EDIT* Someone notified me that these ape drawings on the left (above) were done by film director John Ford. The small image on the right though is Jim's take on those apes. Still, the John Ford ones are amazing and fun to look at!

What I love about Jim Smith is that he doesn't bullshit his way through his drawings. By looking at these you can tell that he actually takes the time to think about what he's drawing. They're not half-assed at all. I love the solidity in his drawings and his skills on perspective are amazing! Skills I wish I had. You can really feel the roundness and surfaces of the shapes. I can tell he accentuates the solidity of the shapes in order for you to really feel them. He definitely puts the cartoon and drawing principles to good use in these. Super professional work.

Visit his blog HERE and see more of Jim's amazing art!

Barf Illustrations

I hope Mr. Craig Yoe doesn't mind I put these up here.

Doin' Some Fixin's!

I've lately been looking a lot at the CD designs I made for my sister's wedding to see what kind of improvements I could make and thought I'd make the composition of the back cover make more sense. There were small things I wanted to fix so I deciced to change 'em real quick and thought I'd share what I've done.

*ORIGINAL*

In the original picture I found that the larger text (the list of songs) were really small and all cramped together. The CD covers were trimmed into their 4.75" x 4.75" size, which is pretty small so I don't think the text would have read too well. I never tested it out, but I've seen a CD cover in that size and thought I made the text too small and too cramped together for that particular size.

*IMPROVEMENTS MADE*

So what I did was strectch down the text more to make it seem bigger and less cramped. I moved the black area of the background down a bit and nudged the text around for it to fit nicely in that area. I then shrunk down a bit the caricatures with the word bubbles to give more focus to the text. I noticed I could've made the area with the caricatures and word bubbles smaller to put more emphasis on the text, but then I would've made the text inside the word bubbles too small, considering the size of paper it is going to be printed on, and it might also make the whole composition feel a little out of balance.

You can flip them back and forth with the arrow keys to see the before and after. You can do so with the new image viewer thing from Blogger.

Doing this really helps me remind myself that the elements in a composition should make sense with not only what they are subjectively, but how they are placed and work together in the composition in a way that they can make sense together and read well as well as look visually interesting, appealing and balanced as a whole for the viewer.

This excercise also helps me see how I myself work and start on something, particularly with figuring out the composition first and spacing of where and why things will be placed in the picture in a way where sense can be made instead of going into it without actually thinking too much about the whole thing, which I hope to never do again. This I think can help me apply what I've learned here into another new illustration.

There's other things in the back cover I'd like to fix, like the dude's head seeming a bit wonky for example, but I wanted to focus more on composition for this one.

The purpose of doing this was to not make the picture be all perfect, but to understand exactly what I'm doing as I'm working on a picture so that the entire thing can make sense for me as well as the viewer.

The Wedding From Outer Space!

Today was my sister's wedding, so this post goes out to her, her husband and their new life together!

I did a CD cover and back cover for some music albums that she and her husband gave out at the wedding reception. Sort of a "thank you for coming" gift to the guests. My sister and her husband came up with the name "The Wedding from Outer Space" for the wedding and we came up with the idea of two aliens getting hitched at a church, with a skinhead, a punk and a mod thrown in the back. My sister and husband love all kinds of music like ska, punk, rockabilly, psychobilly and they themselves picked out all of the songs for the album. They even DJed at the reception.

The title is written in Catalan because the wedding took place in Spain. Me and my family couldn't go to Spain, but we saw the whole wedding and talked and met some people through Skype. You'd think watching a wedding through Skype would be a little weird, but it actually worked out really great! We saw a little bit of the reception where they gave the toast and a friend of my sister's and me showed me the CD album through Skype with my designs and told me she really liked it, which I though was neat-o!

Here's the back cover:

She wanted it to have carcicatures of her and her husband with their cat all saying "Thank You you for coming!" in Catalan.

My sister was originally going to do the designs herself, but she was so busy preparing other stuff for the wedding that I decided it was best I do it all. They were sort of done in the last minute so you might see some mistakes here and there, but I plan to fix them later on for a future portfolio.

It was really cool to see my sissy-poo get married and I know that she'll live an awesome and happy life with her man!

*NOW OTHER STUFF*

Sorry I haven't been putting up anything of the music vid or anything else, but I have have been working on the music vid like a sonuvabitch and will show you you some stuff soon. I also plan to get back to work on other stuff (like my film for instance) as I work on the music vid. I'm usually not very good when it comes to working like that, but I'll try my best to work on different stuff at the same time.

So come back again if'n you wanna see some new stuff!

A Beavis & Butt-Head Halloween!

Just some fan art. It's kind of a work in progress. I'll eventually add more to it. Those symbols next to them stand for "buttcheeks".

...Just kidding. It's just their names written in Ukrainian :P


Here's a cool image I found:

And here's some cool Halloween/scary B & B-H comic book covers:

I found this on Google. I thought it was pretty neat:

Sorry I wasn't able to put up anything of the music video this Saturday, but I will some time this week including next Saturday. I've been doing some Halloween hangin' out and been busy doing other stuff.


Hope you have a happy and safe Halloween!!!

Stuff I've Done

Here's a walk cylce for another animation I'm doing that I did a while back in the beginning of the summer:




And here's some secret stuff!

I had to crop the images from their original size. I won't tell you what these are for yet (at least I don't think I can tell), not until what these are for comes out!

All I can say is that I did 16 of these kinds of illustrations for the super awesome CRAIG YOE! It's for one of his awesome upcoming books. Go here to see all the books he's selling!--->YOE! Books They're all really fucking cool!

Craig is known for his really amazing books among other awesome stuff, including animation! He loves all things cool, like cartoons and comics. He is definitely the bee's knees.

He even has his own blog of cool things!--->I.T.C.H.

Definitely check his stuff out.

Here's a photo that someone took of me standing next to Craig:

I look up to this guy and really is an amazing dude.


Here's a cover I did for an underground comic book in Puerto Rico called "Nocivo", which is Spanish for "Noxious":

It's run by a group of artists named Pernicious Press. Anyone can contribute to their comic every month no matter where you're from!

These guys are really fucking cool too. They create some really awesome events and art shows in Puerto Rico. Here's their Facebook page if you want to see more info--->CLICK!

And here's their Nocivo Comics page--->CLICK!

LOOK, LIKE and SHARE! These guy's are the best and are doing so much for the Puerto Rico art scene!


I've also been putting up some Zad Zak & Angree Dandee art at their blog!

Click on the image below to go there NOW!

Well, that's it for now! Come back soon to see some mo' shit!

2011 is Animation Celebration!

I've been noticing a lot of my online cartoonist/animator friends have recently worked on their own animations and it's been getting me really pumped! I love watching other people's creations and ideas come to life! Knowing that the internet can give people the opportunity to make something they believe in and then show it to the general public without any restrictions is so comforting. I love the internet for that.

So here are some of my recent favorites from this year, from friends and other really cool people:

Wings Of Death by Chris Allison:




Out of the Cintiq by Kali Fontecchio:




Fester Fish: Fester Goes Fishing by Aaron Long:




Girl Wallet by Skyler Page:




Here's a really cool feature-length film that indie animator Nick Cross is working on right now called Black Sunrise. He put up a fundraiser at IndieGogGo to support the film. Click on the link to read more about it and help Nick's vision come to life!

Here's the trailer:

Black Sunrise - Trailer from Nick Cross on Vimeo.

Here's a still from friend Zach Bellissimo's film Blenderstein!


This is his Senior thesis that he painstakingly worked on for a while. I congratulate Zach on his efforts for creating something as cool as this! I haven't seen his film yet, but I really want to and I know it's gonna be amazing! His film isn't online, since he wants to showcase it around different festivals and such, but you can read more and see more stills of Zach's film up on his BLOG!


My friend Amir Avni is close to finishing his own cartoon, The Barley Way.

Here's sort of the rough version of his film:

"The Barley Way" work reel from Amir Avni on Vimeo.

And here's a final inked and colored animation from his film:

Seq3 s2 color from Amir Avni on Vimeo.

It's looking really great too! I can't wait to see it finished.


Click on the names of all the artists mentioned above to check out more of their work. They're very talented folk and deserve to be SEEN!

Their films have been inspiring me a lot lately, especially to keep working on a film I'm animating right now.

Here are some stills of the rough animation I've been working on lately:






You'll see what they'll add up to once the roughs are fully done.

Half of the film is already animated, inked and colored with painted backgrounds. Right now I'm working on the other half, with just the animation alone. So stay tuned for some of that.

Oh, and speaking of 2011 animation, has any one caught today's banner for Google? It's really awesome work done by animator Ryan Woodward commemorating dancer and choreographer Martha Graham’s 117th Birthday. Pretty neat, right?

Here it is in YouTube form in case anyone missed it:




Sorry I haven't posted much here lately, but I guess you can understand being that I'm working on my animation and I'm also working on a HUGE Disney poster for Fulle Circle's Jason Anders. So yeah, lots of stuff goin' on.

But be sure to come back for more! I gots more stuff I wanna show ya!

Freaked!

*RICKY COOGAN*

This guy's from one of my all time favorite movies: Freaked! It stars Alex Winter (of Bill and Ted fame) as Ricky Coogan. He also co-directed and co-wrote the movie.

I'm never gonna stop loving this movie. It's so fun, weird and original! My kind of movie. Sometimes I can't believe a movie like this even exists. I've watched it a million times and never gets old. Not that many people know about it though, and that's because not that many people liked it, but I've known it to be sort of a love it or hate it kind of movie. It's like one of those underrated, campy cult films.

It's got tons of eye candy and has lots of really cool and funny gags (the majority of them being corny and bizarre, but I still find them enjoyable). And I'm not just talking about written gags, it's got tons of visual gags too. That's the kind of balance I like in comedy. Nowadays, I feel like there's more written stuff now, which is totally fine, but I feel like a lot of it doesn't give any room to put in some visual humor. Most of the humor in the movie is kinda slapstick-y/impossible humor, which is the kind I love. It has its own brand of humor that I've never seen before.

The settings, costumes and makeup are pretty cool too. It's got some really weird characters, like a guy with a sock for a head, a sexy pinhead and two giant Rastafarian eyeballs wearing cartoon gloves with machine guns.

I mean, c'mon, how cool is that, right? I dunno about you, but it's cool to me!

Really worth checking out if you're into really crazy movies like this. It's not really for everyone just so you know. I've known people who've gotten irritated from watching this, with its corny gags and extreme crack-induced subject matter, but if you've got a good sense of humor and are pretty open-minded about stuff like this, then definitely check it out. It really isn't that bad!

Here are the opening credits to the movie:

Isn't this one of the most fun and creative openings for a movie?! It was done by David Daniels with a technique he invented called "stratacut". You can read an interview about stratacut and how he made these titles HERE if you're interested.

A New Face...

For a new year!


*EDIT:

I wanted to mention that I've got a lot of really cool things that I wanted to do that I'll be showing and mentioning here for this year!

First off, I don't think I'll be able to finish all those Halloween drawings like I wanted. I could still finish them, but it wouldn't make sense to finish something that was made intentionally for Halloween of last year, especially when this year has just started, and I don't think anyone cares if I finish them off or not. I just wanted to show something fun while having fun making those drawings, which I think I pulled off just fine :)

For this year, I basically want to get back into animating again and finally finish my film! I've been meaning to get into it last year, which I kind of did for a tiny bit over the summer, but I'm seriously gonna get more involved with it this year. I really want to get it done and also plan to do more new things with the characters from the film. Probably not animation-wise, but I was thinking more along the lines of doing a small comic book with them, but I'll see how that goes. First, I gotta finish that film!

Speaking of comics, I'm definitely gonna get back on track with some more Zad Zak & Angree Dandee comics. I had planned to do them weekly for every Saturday, but I think I'm just gonna do as much comics as I can from now on and do them one at a time whenever I can, but that's all gonna happen after I finish my film of course. I'd like to actually make a ZZ and AD comic book by this year and hopefully sell some, but I'll see how that goes as well.

I also want to get a portfolio website done for myself to hopefully land some jobs by this year. It'll be something simple and will showcase some of my best work I've been putting here for the past 6 years! Wow, 6 years! How time flies!!!

Man, I'm so excited! I think I got a lot of really cool things I wanna do heading my way. It sounds like a lot, but all I gotta do is stay dedicated and actually DO the things I mentioned above. There's gonna be some things that will probably get in the way from what I want to do, but I'll do my best to get the things I want done for this year. There are also other million things I'd like to do for this year, but basically the stuff I mentioned above are the main things I'll be focusing on.

Anyway, wish me luck and thanks for watching!!