Mickey Mouse Backgrounds and link to the short.

I did the layout and painting for this one. The style that the art director came up with called for the short to look like pen ink and paint. It was a blast and I learned a lot in the process.

These are some of the backgrounds I did for the recent Disney Mickey Mouse shorts that just released. I had the privilege to work with the incredible illustrator and art director Joseph Holt, . If you haven't seen the short yet take a look. It's absolutely hilarious beautiful and adorable! Link located below.

Croissant-de-triomphe

Cloudy 2 Trailer!

Been a long time since my last post but I've been busy working on this film! I'm so proud to be part of the team responsible for making this movie. It's such a funny film! I look forward to sharing some of the artwork I did for the film once the movie is released. Cheers!

Pasadena City Hall Painting

Here is my painting of Pasadena City Hall.

 Been doing a lot of work for Cloudy 2 (which I love BTW), but it is refreshing to take a personal work to completion. Lately its been tough to call a work done, due to the fact that by the end of each working day I learn so much from being around such amazing artists, I find myself endlessly tweaking my work. 

It's been wonderful working with Justin Thompson, Production Designer for both Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs and Cloudy 2 . He is in no small part responsible for broadening my perspective on how I look at composing pictures for film and illustration as a whole. 

This print will be available at my Etsy store soon. 

Sketches of Pasadena City Hall

So I really like this building and I wanted to sketch it in detail. Then I found a rare copy of Sasek's: This is New York, and got inspired to do a composition. Painting coming soon.

Drawing at CalTech

Some drawings I did at California Institute of Technology with the goal of capturing interesting light. The Thumbs on the bottom are not from Cal Tech. I did these thumbs for fun.  

Drawing Trains

I design a lot in Photoshop at work, so drawing with primitive pencil tool thingy is therapeutic. Staying loose and seeing what I could come up with has been my goal as of late.

Doodle Doings

Long time no post. These are some photoshop doodles that I did to generate ideas. Sometimes I'll place these ideas in larger compositions. Not really connected to anything that really exist but I enjoyed exploring the possibilities of lighting and shape. 

Some thumbnails and a new gig

For those who haven't heard, I've been blessed with the privilege of a position as visual development artist at Sony Pictures Animation. I am so very humbled to work next to such incredible artists and designers. Some that I've never heard of before, but are so incredibly talented that I feel I've been living under a rock. Others that I've looked up to for years, and I just have to pinch myself. 

These are some thumbs I did for Jason and the Argonauts. This part of the story would be the gathering of heroes. I drew my inspiration from the great illustration force known as Alice and Martin Provensen. One day I'll have the time to actually finish the illustrations I started for this story. 

Lighting Study

I revisited one of my old paintings and redesigned it more 3 dimensionally. When I originally worked on this piece it had characters with inspiration from the great Henri Rousseau. This 3d stuff pushes me out of my comfort zone as I have tendencies to paint and design in a flat fashion. Maybe later I might add some characters and a story to this.

Fun with the pencil

Fair Oaks and Colorado southeast corner Circa 1910

Rural Mouse sketch

Some of my favorite pieces in the animation world are from artist that can produce jaw dropping pieces with just the good old pencil. Just straight up incredible positive and negative spacing. Here are the sites of some of my favorites:

Colin Stimpson

Paul Felix (of course)

Alex Nino (this is hans bacher's site)
Luke Desmarchelier

My new years resolution is to do lots and lots of drawing, both studies and thumbs.  I've found that drawing in Photoshop only makes me miss the good old graphite. I've been practicing a lot of figure drawing, especially head and hands but I'm not going to post that just yet. I don't want to bore anyone who might be following my blog :) 

Thanks for stopping by!

Latest work

Sorry for the long pause in posts. I've been super duper busy! Which is very welcomed. These pieces were done for a canceled television animation project. 

Art Deco Los Angeles in Color

My homage to the great city of Los Angeles during the Film Noir era. Before the city's skyline was forever changed by the 1960's Downtown L.A. building boom. Although there are many different types of architecture in Los Angeles, in my opinion its Art Deco architecture is the most impressive. Not every jewel of Deco architecture here is represented. I left out some just because the level of detail on some of the buildings would've doubled the size of this illustration. 

 Click here to order a print of Art Deco Los Angeles.

L.A. Studies

Some of my latest studies of old Los Angeles in Gouache and pencil.

Art Deco Los Angeles Value Study

Here is the Value study for Art Deco Los Angeles. I left a couple of Art Deco giants out such as the Bullocks Wilshire building because the composition got a little complicated. I might have to ad the Wiltern theater, though I'm not exactly sure where I'm going to put it.  Los Angeles is such a large city, it'll take me a little while to quench my thirst to illustrate it. I'll be posting a picture of the color file as it becomes available. 

KINOFEST!

This week I am happy to announce that I've been published on Kinofest, International Digital Film Festival's artist exhibition website. Such an honor! Click here to take a look. 

United States Court of Appeals, Pasadena Ca

In 1931 The New Vista del Arroyo Hotel opened up sporting a grand six-story addition and a beautiful bell tower. In 1943 the building was purchased by the U.S. War Department and it became the McCormack Army Hospital until it was deactivated in 1949. Circa 1981 the Vista del Arroyo was placed in the National Register of Historic Places, and became the southern seat of the United States Court of Appeals Ninth Circuit. In 1995 it was renamed in honor of Judge Richard H. Chambers whose concept it was to bring a Federal courthouse to Pasadena. - wikipedia 


This piece was done using a photoshop technique where I scan in a traditionally painted gouache texture and graphically painted under the texture layer in photoshop. 

Tea for Two # 3

Been painting a lot with gouache lately. Here is the third painting in my Tea for Two series. Its quite refreshing to do something different from Photoshop for a change. 

Pretty Truck in Front of Coffee Shop

A couple of weeks ago I was commissioned to do an illustration of a truck for the father of a good friend of mine. This is the public version with an orange truck instead of his original one of a kind blue 1954 Ford F100. This will be vailable as a limited edition print at the Rose Bowl Arts and Crafts Show in June.

Tea for Two Print

One of my favorite things to do on a lazy day is Tea for Two. Printed on archival Canson aquarelle paper. 

Beautiful Woman under Trellis

This illustration was inspired by my wife Lydia. She's Half Puerto Rican and Half Thai.