Art Blog

Character Portrait in Progress

2011-04-08T14:15:00.002+09:00

Using Pixarra Twisted Brush.

Squeaky Scribbles (from yester year)

2010-07-22T15:13:00.007+09:00

Back in 2004 when I taught as an art teacher at a private Christian school for one year, I used many marker board illustrations to inspire the young aspiring minds into drawing creative, wacky and far-out funny things for their assignments. I captured some with a fairly crappy, miniature pocket spy camera from the early digital camera era of the early new millennium...so I had to clean these up a bit to bring out the details.

The white board in the art classroom.

Whatever I could draw spontaneously to make the students laugh and have a good time, I would do, because I knew the principle of laughter and freedom relaxes the mind and encourages creativity. I also know that the "joy of the Lord is our strength." So together, we had funny but studious class times.

Funny faces were always popular and I loved to draw something exaggerated.

Also, I liked to draw simplistically to show the students that simple contour lines can be very easy and powerful.

Caricatures in my style helped me to bring out the styles laying dormant in my young artists. In the other various academics the students participated in before entering my classroom, the seriousness and drudgery would likely follow them and I wanted to shake all those burdens off their minds so they could enter a new world of expressing and experimenting in imagination through art.

A rocket-ship seemed comfortable and commonplace in the playground.

I also had the challenge of helping the students perceive and interpret the empirical world around them. Their young brain development was rapidly changing and certain concepts were difficult to grasp. I attempted illustrations that would easily demonstrate concepts like depth with foreground and background and showing how things appear large or small depending on location on the 2-dimensional page. The light bulbs went off with a satisfying sound of 'Ahh!'

Making up funny creatures and silly monsters was my favorite thing to do. I had to teach a wide over view of curriculum with different sorts of mediums like paints - but painting with real paint is not really my talent or interest, I just liked getting out something to draw and design characters with.

I even went crazy one week and started drawing and drawing and kept drawing parts of a crazy scene of a urban area under siege of rampaging monsters and aliens with people running around screaming. Every class session would reveal new parts of the evolving mosaic, compelling students who had already attended my class back again throughout the day to see what new mayhem was drawn.

Of course, adults might thing that would scare kids, but kids usually saw themselves as the rampaging BIG funny monster having fun and playing.

I think it gave them a sense of empowerment that their little bodies and personalities couldn't have in real life.

And then there were the familiar characters, especially seasonal/holiday well-known celebs like Santa Clause. It was a picture to say goodbye and Merry Christmas to everyone who was about to enjoy 3 weeks of holiday vacation time with their family and loved ones.

...and boy, does Santa look tired.

The kids really got a kick out of Santa. (this also reminds me of my recent idea of the Santa Clones and some crazy tangent of a wild idea that will never go any where but I got a good chuckle to myself...as most of my wayward wacky thoughts end up achieving - a chuckle and a sigh.)

Here Santa on his Santamobile.
Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na San-ta!

And then there's the Snorp-B'looga who lives on an alien planet with his alien friends in their Dr. Suessian-like space surroundings. Who knows what I was thinking that day.

And with that, I'll zap on out of here with an Olympian THunder Cloud wearing a Greek Parthenon for a cap. Zapoooowwww!!!!

She's So High Above Me

2010-06-18T01:29:00.001+09:00

This is a logo design I touched-up in 2009 that an aviator friend of mine designed for his airplane transport services company in my hometown. He knew I did some art stuff and thought to check out my portfolio, and then thought I could help him out. He said he liked it, so I hope he was able to use it as he hoped. (Of course, if he's reading this and would like any adjustments like the ones I've put up on this blog, then just let me know.)

Logo against green matte to bring out the contrasting details. Minus the matte background, this is the logo delivered.

This is the original design concept submitted to me. For no graphic design experience, its a pretty decent concept. I wanted to maintain the original vision but just give everything those tweaks and adjustments to empower it. Especially the "A" in Aerial. It needed that The Jetsons/Airlines feel to it. Typeface fonts were not used, everything was traced and created with Pen tool.

I thought an easy, clean and sharp illustration would serve best for printing purposes on various materials. Also, the image can be scaled up indefinitely without any loss of information, keeping its sleek edges.

The submitted photo to work from. I over-traced with pen tool in Photoshop until I needed to make manual adjustments and decisions.

Love your art.

2010-04-25T21:32:00.003+09:00

Know it. Love it. Do it. Love your art. Just a reminder I drew up quickly last week on the white marker board in my Basic Design class after having graded +80 projects and seeing poor, poor efforts on behalf of my students. (Less than 10% had well done works) The skills of design and art, I am certain, lie dormant within them ready to be awoken and exercised - but what also lay dormant are the skills of following instructions and presenting a clean, well-prepared piece of work.

As you can see in the upper right hand corner, I had translated 'clean' and 'messy' into Korean to discuss with my students my expectations for their work. I remember my first year classes when I went through school, I felt compelled to present the best that I could offer in the variables of time and talent I had available. Most of my students had procrastinated and gave me disappointing pieces. It is my job not only to lead them in instruction, but coach them to give their heart in what they do. If they can put their love and care into what their minds and hands do, they will have done well. As their professor in this Basic Design class, these core basic values of best effort and personal care is what Basic Design is really about. In my eyes, these are more important than the basic design theories themselves.

Students had been working on demonstrating creative designs utilizing basic geometry in the form of a point, line or plane, while simultaneously composing constructions of balance in symmetry and asymmetry. The white board scribbles above show my explanations of point, line, plane, with introductions into texture, and positive versus negative colored fields, as well as, object/shape cropping. The pizza slice on the right side was to encourage laughter in class as I suggested combining points and lines and planes as 'combo' because they are familiar with this English word being linked to ordering pizza.

I love my students, and I love to teach them something about art. I hope they will learn to love this for themselves, too, and be the ones who develop something useful, or pass it on to the next generation.

An Intimate Portrait

2010-04-02T00:25:00.009+09:00

Easter 2010 is at the door. Today is Good Friday - the day to remember that God's only Son took up His cross and died to purchase men for God. When remembering about this Easter holiday and what it means for me and for the entire existing populace of man from the beginning, I remembered that I had done this inspired portrait while still a high school student in 1996. That would have put my age at about 17.

To be honest, this is only one of several random portraits of Jesus Christ I did at that time. This one in particular stared at me from the blank page. It is hard to explain, but I could see this in the sketch book page and I filled it in as I saw it. I have had this experience on occasion and this one was quite compelling for me to finish in spite of my artistic nature to never finish anything I start. Much is left undone.
This is the original scan and not my final finish which included digital enhancements. I was fortunate to find this one: evidently, with the change of data storage technologies art files become obsolete as programs become outmoded and storage devices are continually updated and replaced. I may have lost the final finish forever, but I will 'immortalize' the original scan of this pencil portrait here on this blog.

I remember a fellow friend and classmate mentioned that my Jesus was too much of a body builder. I agreed, but I over exaggerated his muscular form in an attempt to express the agony and pain of death by crucifixion. Obviously, that is secondary to his contorted expression.
To be honest, I surprise myself now, even after years more of practice and having gone through formal training after this portrait, that I had done this. In some aspects I think it is better than I do things nowadays. Perhaps my patience was greater, my eye sight sharper, and body could better endure slaving bent over a pad of paper.What I love about Jesus and the Cross, is that He was in control the entire time: "No man takes it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father," (John 10:18). He did not die as a sinner but for other sinners. And rose again.
People throughout history and now want to ignore Jesus or debunk him. All other religious divinities can be incorporated, absorbed, exchanged and interchanged, but at the face of Jesus the Christ a soul is sifted to the left or the right. He claims the highest position above all gods and authorities. Either he will be betrayed or beloved. There is no in between.

God bless you with His grace and gospel this Easter. Thanks for letting me share this portrait with you.

Slinger

2009-09-05T01:11:00.018+09:00

Pulled this golden nugget out of my treasure chest of oldies but goodies. This 2:10 black and white short was a video class project from college back in 2001 (The Illinois Institute of Art - Schaumburg).

My friends, Edgar and Jonathan graciously volunteered as actors one Saturday morning. Beyond our friendship and availability, I chose them for their unique contrasting styles that yet would fit into this genre of the Western Gunsling'n Shoot'em up.

Inspired by the independent film, Dead Man, starring Johnny Depp and directed by Jim Jarmusch, I unabashedly intended to imitate Dead Man's style. I chose a monochromatic palette with characters that have great light/dark contrast in that format. Edgar had stylish, black Mexicana hair and Jonathan had light hair, wore a black vest that he had among his other costumes (as he was an avid period costumer and member of a renaissance reinactment group). In the picture below, you can see they fit together like the squares on a chess/checker board.

Also, I wanted to capture the pace. Dead Man is a film that moves slowly...or rather, it kind of drifts, like a stick floating down a stream. With this in mind, I wanted to capture the pacing of two dueling gunmen taking their steps - step by step to finality...only one moves on, and his stride is unbroken. Jonathan did well to keep in step with my idea. In the editing process, I cut the pieces to match the music track, which is from the Dead Man film, created by the famous Neil Young.

I prepared with storyboards before filming. They still exist somewhere hidden within ancient and dusty sketchbooks stashed away somewhere. Too bad I can't show them here. I like how the terrain at the location (which was very near to my apartment at the time where the students lived) aided this film. There was enough foliage and two trees were well placed to frame the wide camera shot of the 'shoot'.

A successional just for Edgar to get some spotlight.

In the final 'scene' as Jonathan walks away, the camera is canted giving a nice diagonal division of the screen - the tree anchors the scene with immobility as Jonathan shrinks toward the horizon.

It was a fun project, and definitely a memorable piece of my past.

Swash Buckling Galore

2009-08-12T18:18:00.007+09:00

With Don Quixote, it's more galley s'washin buckets than true heroism at the tip of a lance or foil.

I recently remembered that I had done a couple Don Quixote and mighty steed character designs from a few years ago lost somewhere in the various sketch books I have lying around.

Here, Donny is naked and so is his faithful animal companion. I was confused, because, I thought Don was the one riding a donkey in Cervantes' story. So I drew a donkey for him. However, I learned later that his friend, Sancho, rode this and Don, a horse. This sketch was made in the summer of 2006 (or 07?) when I was still ambitious enough to make some new 3D projects whilst working a split shift job as an English conversationalist for adults in Suwon. I remember going to a wooded park near my home for some peace and quiet, sitting on a park bench under the canopy of tall trees where interesting shapes of light littered the ground round about me on the sunny, breezy day. Some older Korean ladies approached me with some religious tracks while I was indeed in a trance-like state of focus bent over my sketch pad with portable cd player headphone buds in my ears. They were from a local church. However, one of the many heretical and cultic churches that exist in Korea. I politely accepted the literature but declined any conversations.

To be true, I have never read the novel (even though I do have it available to read as a digital book) or seen much media about Don Quixote, but through cultural impressions I developed my own conceptions of how an old dreamer might appear as he followed his follied calling of Revivalist of the old Spanish chivalric ethics and heart of romance.

Having recalled my old sketches from 2006 and 07, I recently decided to watch a film or two about it rather than indulging a truly rich experience of reading the original. I don't give much time for the luxury of reading these days. Actually, I only got round to watching Orson Welles' Don Quixote. Orson said of his work, "My Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are exactly and traditonally drawn from Cervantes, but are nonetheless contemporary."

However, never before being visually exposed directly to this character before, I am surprised how similar my concept and Orson's concept [visually] are.

This sketch was started prior to the other while in my first year in Korea. In my first private academy job, I had a small sketch book that I would pull out now and then. He was unfinished, so while viewing Orson's interpretation, I cleaned this one up ready for posting.

Anyway, just like Orson's film project which was never really completed, so is this random project and so many others that start and stop with one or two pages of idea sketches. The busy-ness of life just takes over and I forget to go anywhere with what I start, and begin again with some new fascination, leaving the old ones for a visit much later on. Just as I am doing now.

I have Eleven fingers.

2009-07-17T14:21:00.019+09:00

"Hallo, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my fater, prepare to die."

"You wouldn't happen to have six fingers on your right hand? ...My fater was killed by a six fingered man."

That's right, Count Rugen had eleven fingers, too, and he had to have all his right-hand gloves special tailored to hide that grotesque mutant pinky. 'The Princess Bride' film is a family favorite for mine, minus my mother, who never seemed to appreciate the unique ensemble of cast and the hilarity that ensued from the perfect combination of elements to make a truly classic film.

I don't particularly like the fantasy film genre, or the romance genre, but if those elements are combined creatively enough, I will enjoy it immensely as I have this film for two decades. However! That's not what this post is about. It's about my extra freak finger.

I was sketching out a character in my miniature sketch diary with an 0.4 Dong-A Fine-tech ink pen when this phrase, 'The eleventh finger bleeds ink' just popped into my head. Actually, thoughts like these don't really feel like they entered in, they more or less feel like they've kinda plopped out of my brain machine and then I just read them and get more ideas stirring up from there.

I don't like to do morbid or gorey, violent graphic material. So I had second thoughts about actually making this one up. But, I was inspired, and, well I went with it into the wee hours of the morning (one of the perks of living a single life...)

What you are seeing here is a reverse-progression. I've listed in order from finish to start. Actually the final picture at the bottom down there is where I decided to stop the development of the idea the first time. And then a week or so later I went back again feeling it was unfinished and something else could be done to it. (My poor students at Chungkang don't have this luxury of going back and doing more to something. They have to get it done and handed in regardless of it truly being 'finished'.)

At this stage, I added the idea of bringing in the blood as though it had been haphazardly dripped to the floor from above. The blood is dark and slivers of reflection give it a liquid realism. The subtle shadows raise it from the floor as small pools. Above I played back and forth with blood versus ink. I like both concepts, but in the end (at the start, above) I chose blood over ink because the red pushed the viewer's eye toward the stark black text and looming number 11.

*edit: I was feeling so-so about the white bkgrd/ink droplets until I saw it in a web brower. Wow, it looks really good there versus the other ones. I think framing, placement, atmosphere has much to do with the reception and perception of any piece. If you don't like something in one context, try moving it to a different visual presentation context. As they say, presentation is everything. Perhaps greater than the piece itself.

**edit: The original title of this entry was 'The Eleventh Finger'. After thinking that an eleventh finger definitely stood apart from the original 10 (8 for those who'll be picky here) it seemed to stand apart too similarly as 'giving someone the finger'. Since I didn't want any of you birds to flip out, I thought I better change the title.

We now have wings.

2009-07-17T13:21:00.012+09:00

The EMT Praise Team (or English Ministry Team) now has wings. As the artistic member of the group, I was asked to make a logo design for our team t-shirts. One member made a special request for cute wings to be incorporated into the design. So after about five previous design attempts, what you see here is what was selected.The EMT logo is bold and sturdy. The 'T' for team is designed to symbolize Christ's cross. The wings obviously symbolize that we are lifting up our praise and hearts of worship to God. But yet I grounded the design by adding a shadow element, which also added to a feeling of depth.

Sadly, due to financial restraints, only one color could be printed, so white was selected to be printed on orange and blue shirts. The shadow, details, and outlines were disposed of and the bare bones of the design remained only.

After receiving the shirts from the printer, it seemed satisfactory enough. I'm sure I'll see some pictures in the near future of our team wearing them. I'll post them up here in a future edit when I get them.

Every graphic (including the colored mini t-shirts) was created in Photoshop with the vector-based Pen Tool. Illustrator is more famous for it's vector tools, but I'm more familiar with PS and wanted to kick this project out quickly.

The text was converted to shapes so that I could jump from the various PC computers to work on and communicate this project while keeping the correct typeface intact. 'EMT' however I traced over again with the Pen Tool in order to make the shadow work correctly with edit/transform tool.

Hey buddy, got a light?

2009-04-07T12:36:00.011+09:00

This past winter, I got a new big monitor - a big square 19" black one by LG - so I could paint, draw, model, animate without the physical travails from the constant squinting and neck aches I would recieve from using my smaller notebook I use now that replaced my slightly older but bigger (and now dead) notebook.

So, whaddya do with a new monitor? Get to work! I had previously purchased a new PC drawing tablet (Slim Tablet - cheaper than the Wacom product) and wanted to get to work on some digital painting pieces.

This was one of the first to come out. I wanted to make something expressive and not refined, and this was the image that came to mind: a green gremlin of a man whose head has become the butt of a smoldering cigarette. I think the concept is a caricature of the many Korean men who smoke non-stop with little regard to their health or the health of near breathers. Because of this attitude to smoke at the cost of others, I think that 'butt-head' is an obvious visual theme. He not only endangers his life, but those in his proximity.

The picture is not particularly beautiful, I wanted it to be 거칠다 [guh-chil-da], which means 'rough'. He looks rough, and the style of strokes are rough, thick, and sickly.

I also decided to experiment with a new signature. 다니엘 [da-ni-el]. I never could make a satisfactory sign in English. This one's rougher than my original concept. I may make a nice version in the future.

Why Korean? Even though I don't have a cultural heritage by blood, I have a sort of Korean heritage by asorbtion. At the age 13, I began to absorb the Korean language and custom and thinking. I could never fully merge, but having started so young, coupled with the fact of repeated and intimate exposure throughout my life, and taking into consideration that Koreans say my name in a special and peculiar way - this signature seems to represent me for the time being.

Out here anyway, it seems normal. My friends here consider me an honorary Korean. Yellow inside but white on the out. But back home, I would definitely feel like somebody trying to do that would be a 'wannabe'.

This piece was painted in Photoshop using a drawing tablet. I used some effects to make the smoke and give some texture to the character's clothing.

Jonah Story 요나이야기 영화

2009-03-17T17:58:00.011+09:00

Back-to-back non-stop action!

Another film project made this past winter from my foreign cell group at church (기쁨의교회 외국인 그룹).

Again, Ashley is the star! She plays Joanna in a story about a girl who avoids God who has told her to make amends and forgive a friend. The story parallels the Jonah story from the Book of Jonah. So, the animation (that I cannot credit its origin) was placed at the start of the film to show the quick analogy to the story we made.

My own credits are for editing the intro before the story starts. I decided the film should mimic the journey of Jonah in the belly of a whale. I used a somber musical piece from the movie, Amelie, one of my favorites, and the other musical interludes are selected from this movie as well.

I didn't have much creative control in this film project, and as always, the film was created in a very short span of time, with very little planning, and even less photographic direction experience behind the digital camera. The editors, myself and two others, just have to piece together whatever material the director/filmer puts on to tape. We don't sleep for a few nights and hope that the movie seems funny and coherent by the time it is presented on Sunday morning!

The scene with the rain was created by using some sort of static noise filter, stretching the image vertically, then lowering the transparency and animating it continually in a vertical direction. Adding in the sound of rain that I had from my sound effects CD left over from my college days, it created a convincing effect (though not realistic). We (editors) rotated the film image back and forth during the 'boat' scene, so this with the addition of the 'rain', it made for a good storm effect.

These projects are really fun, really challenging, and really rewarding. I think the greatest reward is the training to work together with the other members in your team, as well as members recruited to help from other teams and getting to these people deeper. Especially in an 'under fire' scenario of a tight deadline.

Eternal Coffee: The Movie

2008-11-21T18:43:00.037+09:00

Last year, my cell group at Joyful Church made a movie for a church festival in the summer time.

Our pastor had recently been preaching about Jesus meeting the Samaritan woman at the well, so we decided to do our own version of the Samaritan woman.

Ashley tries many husbands trying to fill her heart with love but all of them fail her, but after being disappointed repeatedly, she finds that Lord Jesus can fill her heart and fix her life.

Well, this is a modern adaptation of that story from John 4:7-42. So here's Ashley as our Samaritan woman doing a great job as a passionate actress. There is a lot of Konglish mixed in with the English. So the target audience really was aimed at the inside audience of Koreans and foreigners living here - but I think the message gets across.

Here's the cast list:

Samaritan, Woman Ashley
Missionary, Grace
Rich Husband, William
Player Husband, Jeff
Player Girlfriend, Eunice
Prince Husband, Daniel
Alcoholic Husband, Jody
Gameholic Husband, Moses
Worldly Friend, Christy
No teeth girl, Eunice

Script, Eunice
Vid Photographer, Christy
Video Editor, Daniel & Christy
Location Scouts, Eunice & Ashley
Animation, Daniel
Subtitles, All Korean workers!

So much work to do in such a little space of time. It was created in about a week's time. Fortunately, we had good weather, willing volunteers, and some time off work! It was a task that took us to the very last minute with so many technical difficulties. But it was a great chance to work as a team and do something together for others. We hope to do it again someday.

Sit back with some buttered popcorn and enjoy the show!

Softwares used: Adobe Premiere, Photoshop, After Effects.
Equipment used: Sony DV camera.
Catering: Lots of late night coffee.

*edit: Storyboards

Recently going through my sketch books I found the storyboards for the animation sequences for the film. They're a bit rough, as storyboards should be, and I didn't end up using all the ideas, but they did serve as a basis for doing the 5 animations for the husband intros. Unlike most of the movie which was done very loosely and upon sporatic ingenuity with available resources, I needed to do some sketches to quickly guide my way through the animation process.

This is the original storyboard sketch.

Ashley 'the bride' and the first husband drops in with 'boing' sound and a Looney Tunes style vibration.

The next man slides in from right of screen looking like a cool cat.

The third type, which was not used, pops up slightly from the bottom, slides his nose along the edge, turns and slides nose along the vertical edge until the correct height and slings over, head leading, and suddenly stops with a pivot swing from the top-down and then a sudden halt.

The fourth type is a man swiftly assembled from his various dismembered image parts flying in from the four corners off screen.

Finally, a fifth type, also not used, a man standing in a white, frosted wedding cake, falls slightly diagonally from the right and plummets with a 'plop'. The image of the cake is then eaten away with approximately 4-5 bites cut out from the image and revealing the husband.

Due to time constraints, some of these ideas were not used but were instrumental in leading to other quicker-to-produce methods. Animation was accomplished in Adobe After Effects.

Working for Peanuts

2008-11-14T17:03:00.018+09:00

Surprising even me, today I made this surprise B-day card for my friend Lucy, who also is our department secretary for the Computer Graphic Design dept. Tomorrow is her birthday and low and behold, I hadn't gone to E-mart to pick anything up for a cute gift. I simply had too much going on during this week to get that done. So at the last minute (my mother passed on to me this gift of whipping out a project the last minute) I whipped this one out in my office this afternoon.This is me and Lucy. Lucy's on the left. No, I mean my left in the photo. She declined to take a photo with the card so I cheated and put this old photo of us together at our CK student retreat. I was introduced to her as Miss Kang, but she always insisted I call her informally as Lucy. Last night while sleeping - yes, I seem to get some ideas or messages during that lucid time - it occurred to me that I ought to bring in to work with me my new marker set that I bought just over three weeks ago and haven't tried out. This afternoon after my morning Character Design class, I got the idea to do a Peanut's Charlie Brown and Lucy reference to parallel me and Lucy. Sometimes I think of her as Lucy from the "I Love Lucy" show and have called after her like Ricky Ricardo ('Luuuucy!') for fun. But today I was inspired differently. I came across this photo on the net and it so much reminded me of the dynamic between her and me because she sits behind a long desk, hidden behind a desktop cover of sorts making a bar or shelf that I can put my elbows up on and lean upon. However, I decided to reverse the image to better suit the situation of her office.

The psychiatric help 5cents was so perfect as she is a great help to me to do my job and it is our inside joke that I'm crazy (because the students make me crazy sometimes). Also, you may notice that I converted the money into Korean won. 500 won is approximately 50 cents.Not much to see here except that I wanted show my haphazardly sloppy insertion of a leg or stand held together by masking tape and powerful clear OPP(?) tape. I sketched my initial image on A4 printing paper and markered it up with my new markers -SO happy to say I got new markers! Not that I did a particularly great job marker rendering but for Peanuts style, loose and quick pen strokes always give great effect. I also didn't have 'skin' color so I had to use a color pencil.

I used a spray adhesive to glue the paper onto a white foam core board, which I cut out the drawn image with a small knife. Then I markered a blue color on another white foam core piece that I had left over from making Benny and the Monkey cut-outs that had the adhesive paper still attached and colored on there. It held the color well so I sprayed the back of the charlie brown cut-out and attached the two pieces. After that, everything was pretty much done. I just attached a random triangular piece as a leg in the back so the card could be erected anywhere Lucy liked.

Cheap, but effective. Cards made by hand seem to have a greater effect than the store bought ones...I think nearly impossible to throw away. Hmm, see that cake up there? I can assure you that didn't get thrown away. ^^

The Path

2008-11-13T11:21:00.006+09:00

In the same vein as the previous post, I thought to post up this photo of a path in Korea. I captured it with a Sony cyber-shot camera I purchased in 2005 while living in Jukjun where this path existed. The image was cleaned up and color treated in Adobe Photoshop.

The curving of the path as it diminishes ahead really pleases me, and the way the path is distoredly bent by the camera lens' curve near the bottom of the photo also adds to the photo's value. The wood or tree stump blocks tracing the path give a necessary aesthetic that otherwise would imprison this picture forever in slight boredom. Seeing the dimensions of the blocks alter by perspective as they trace the dirt path gives this photo it's power. The stumps themselves are there to serve the visitors on a muddy day.

This path was one possible way I took each morning to my work back in 2005-6 when I worked for Nobel Junior English Academy. It was a 15 minute or so walk and good for health ~ well except for the air pollution. But that is why I used paths such as these away from the main roads to get to work. It allowed for a picturesque view everyday.

'The Path' symbolizes the path that I or we walk. For me, I walk this destiny in Korea to finish some purpose, and parallel to this, I walk with Christ, my Lord, together everyday down a small and seemingly insignificant path that leads to a glorious life with the maker of all beautiful things. The path is narrow and few walk it to enter the gate at it's winding end. I want to be one of the few.

Landscape Sketch Korea-inspired

2008-11-04T22:50:00.005+09:00

As I post up this ink sketch, by chance a Japanese traditional song, Sakura, plays with asian wind pipe and harp from my computer. Its lornful and longing lonesome silent sound might well describe the feeling in this piece.

The house is based on the Korean cho-ga-jib, or traditional style house, and a patriotic Korean might dislike the mentioning of a Japanese national song while referencing Hangul culture, but the 'asian-ness' of this picture is what I hoped to convey.

Korea is full of such supplely rounded mountains richly wooded with evergreen and deciduous trees, which now autumn has lately arrived this November, are now dotted with reds, yellows and greens.

Here is the Sakura song for atmospheric enjoyment. ^-^

Get your own playlist at snapdrive.net!

What a Card!

2008-11-04T16:42:00.010+09:00

1. card

an amusingly eccentric person
You're such a card!

They're just a couple o' cut-ups, or rather, cut-outs. Benny and the Monkey got a chance to stand off the page and into real life for my small corner exhibit at the student exhibition last semester.

I printed these two 3D characters using a plotter printer from church. The monkey came out great, but Benny got an error near the jaw. The paper was slick on one side and self-adhering sticky side which I applied to a white foam board and later cut out a stylized boarder around the character print. They stand by themselves with a double-layered foam core support spine.

There in the gallery, they stood beside a computer terminal open to my portfolio website.

I decided they both needed name tags to look as though they were also visiting members to the gallery. They are posed to show it off. The way they were lit in 3D really gives the illusion that they are more than merely 2-dimensional.
Now Benny and the Monkey reside as my office companions. And they really add flavor to the room and quite a center of attention for my students when they enter.

An original Benny character model sheet from my college days. He is in his original stage environment from the animation class.

Here Benny's angel get's the point. I would say that Benny comes from a subconscience attempt to mix Don Knotts with Mr. Bean. So after realizing this, I don't hide any blatant parallels to his influencing predecessors.
Monkey was created as a mascot for a now non-existent website. By Wikipedia definition, coding monkey is defined "the term... generally refers to a computer programmer or other person who writes computer code for a living." So yes, this project was conscripted by a programmer.

Enjoy these and others at http://www.danielwathen.com/. Little by little, I will finish my half-done, half-baked projects and post them up here or there. Bye for now.

All Good Villains start with ‘S’

2008-10-20T15:00:00.009+09:00

This entry isn’t about a particular piece of art I’ve created, but about a few of my all-time favorite villains.

Essentially, this is a monologue on an aspect in the art of storytelling and character design. Beyond art, I do have a gift for storytelling which is primarily oral (versus written narratives) and it is something I do daily as a teacher - to tell or act out a story. It helps greatly to bring across my message to students who do not speak English well, so often I literally act out my expressions. My interests in art and my choices of creating go hand in hand with storytelling – I love drama, as do we all.

Not only from stories, but even from actual life, one thing can be known for sure, that to make the hero of your story great, you must make the odds against the hero greater. One such device is the Villain. I truly believe, the villain makes the hero.

No one needs lectured on this concept, it is the basic of basics in which all early story-listeners are attuned. I heard Aesop’s fables and nursery stories since my earliest days and became acquainted with wolves, lions, hares and crocodiles that antagonized sheep, mice, turtles and fair maidens.

The Skull
I was only 4 years old when I was introduced to a new villain outside of classic literature from the comparatively new genre of celluloid animation for television. His name was Skeletor.
Created as an animated cartoon spin-off of Conan: The Barbarian, Skeletor was the arch-nemesis to He-man and the Masters of the Universe. A basic good guys vs. bad guys cartoon revolving around thinly devised story plots and absurd heroic feats by He-man.He-man himself was unique in that he had two identities: one as the bare-chested, over-masculined blonde champion of justice, who could wield the strength of 1000 men (no joke) and the other, as the prince of Eternia, the only direct heir to the throne who played his alter-ego as clumsy and insecure as Superman’s Clark Kent. But without Skeletor and his band of evil doers, Prince Adam would have no reason to transform into He-man by the power of the magic sword (which happened at each tragedy even if it meant that the breaker flipped off and the lights in the room went out) had Skeletor never existed.

That’s a no brainer, my point however is that the reason I am fond of this show, is not for the sake of the hero but for the villain. Or to be more accurate, the symbiance held between the two of them. And furthermore, that holds true for the remaining two villains yet to come.

But let’s back up and look at Skeletor again. Why do I like this guy? For starters, if you could hear this guy laugh (hee hee hee hee – quite nasally and diabolical) you might begin to understand the charm this character possesses. Skeletor decorates and surrounds himself with diluted occultic symbols and boney dead things. His head for one is such an object! He has no face! I just love that about Skeletor. His face, or lack of, alone gives him a unique power of …well, the power to evoke the feeling that he has great evil power. So it makes him appear intimidating without having to prove whether he is a worthy foe or not. In fact, Skeletor, with rare occasion, never bested He-man and his friends. Always his tail was tucked as he turned and cursed, “I’ll get you next time, He-man!” But his menacing facelessness, his scary Snake Mountain castle, the fact that he is a sorcerer with electro-zapping bolts, his blue skin and his strange, exotic henchmen allowed him to re-audition every episode to be the returning villain of choice. To his credit, actually Skeletor was cunning and had some good ideas, but unfortunately, he had some really dopey helpers who always screwed up his plans. I’d love to see a picture of Snake Mountain with a ‘HELP WANTED - Apply Inside’ sign on the front gate.

The Mask‘Masters of the Universe’ was so ‘80’s. Movin’ along to the 90’s, dude. But flash back for a sec to the 1970’s, Asian martial arts exploded into America like a Chinese firecracker with the introduction of Kungfu legend Bruce Lee, Bruce Li, Bruce Lei, and other Bruce knock-offs. Ninja and Karate movies were made a dime a dozen with a few becoming classic. These paved the way for phenomenon known as The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. First created as a graphically violent yet intriguing comic book, it was translated into a children’s animated TV show. So who better than a man armored with 30 razor-sharp spikes to chase after four green giant karate kids on your child’s afternoon TV programming? Does it get any better than that? First a faceless semi-occultic sorcerer, now a turtle-obsessed-walking-ninja-can-opener. Kids have all the fun.

The Shredder, a.k.a. Oroku Saki, the leader of the gangster ninja Foot Clan from Japan. What’s up with me and the Shredmeister? For starters, the character is openly hilarious. The voice actor (who played the father of Will Smith’s character in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air) played Shredder very serious and straight in the initial pitch episodes. But soon after, developed a rhythm of comedy playing off the secondary villain characters in Shredder’s gang (who happen to be a mutated rhino, wart hog, and a bodyless brain who has a mouth, eyes and an attitude problem). None of them like each other as Shredder and the brain, Krang, struggle for who will be in charge for the day (as they are both power mad world conquerors) and the two bulky, dim-witted animal mutants attempt to carry out Krang and Shredder’s orders with slapstick comedy routines ultimately and utterly failing every effort…yet all returning the very next episode to execute a whole new plan to miserably fail again in humiliation.

I love the ultra-unique origin story of TMNT. Four baby turtles in a bowl, just leaving the pet shop in the arms of a young boy crossing the street. A truck racing out of control nearly hit the boy causing the turtles to be thrown to the gutter and down the sewer while simultaneously a canister of strange green stuff also fell out the truck broke on top of them. A sewer rat nearby also became contaminated. Shortly afterward, they grew into semi-human, semi-animal creatures. The ninja stuff is another story. I love how anipromorphism can make for great character design.

Shredder is much like his Skeletor counterpart. Dark colors, obscured face, signature voice, dopey henchmen, but replacing powers of sorcery with menacing ninja weapons, robot armies, and huge computer-operated machines. He never wins because the Turtles are on the case. But without him, they’d just be sewer surfin’ teenagers with nothing to do.

The Make-up

Scorpius. Straight up Sci-fi. From the show, Farscape, in which, much like Alice in Wonderland, a scientist/astronaut gets sucked into a wormhole while testing his mini space shuttle around earth. He (John) blunders into a new universe and immediately gets into trouble. The biggest of troubles is that at some point in the story his brain subconsciously holds information on creating wormholes artificially. Scorpius recognizes the value of possessing this power and wants to dissect John’s brain for this information and it becomes a big cat and mouse chase all over the galaxy.

Have you ever seen anything that looked more scary in your life? What adds to the image is the character’s personality. This villain plays the role of hunter with a steady, unwavering patience to catch his prey. He rarely raises his voice to shout and speaks in an unsettling, quiet, and purposefully polite tone. He possesses an eerie power of self-control. To quote, “My patience is formidable, but not eternal,” suggests his cold-blooded reptilian ability to remain still for the trap to release. He is a disturbing contradiction between image and action. His face and suit appear monstrous and morbid, but as the viewer finds out, both have a practical meaning and back story, and the reasons happen to be connected.

When I first saw Scorpius, he was menacing by his straightforward one-dimensionality which was to capture John Crichton and dissect his brain for wormhole knowledge. Run away, John! But as the character’s mystery was unveiled piece by piece, Scorpius took on new dimensions and layers and became more complicated than a one-dimensional antagonist as Shredder and Skeletor would always be. Eventually, Scorpius would become a reluctant ally. And even later, the playing field of power would become equal between Scorpius and John. And finally, John would trump the power of all of his nemesis’, including Scorpy. Watching this story arch of power shifting unfold is quite riveting and fun.

The End
Character design is great fun and it is one of the classes I am teaching this semester at Chung Kang College. Needless to say, I immensely enjoy that class but it is hard work lead the students in one path of character creation.
To conclude, I acknowledge that any story that compels me usually has a hero chiseled into such a compelling form by his opposite rival. What is a hero without anything to do? Just a bum. The villain essentially keeps the hero employed so that we can have a story to read, a show to watch or a game to play. Let’s hear it for the Bad Guy!

Chris Redfield based Portrait Sketch

2008-09-24T18:17:00.006+09:00

With the advent of settling into a new job this year, and taking on 3 trips to Japan, Turkey and Thailand, among other things, I haven't really been drawing anything for any reason lately. Lately as in the past year or so.

So you can imagine that I have been feeling pretty rusty in my drawing skill department.

So I have taken it upon myself to just get the sketch pad and sit down in front of something and emulate it on the page.

In this case, I chose to take a snap shot from a cinematic cut scene from Resident Evil Gamecube release I had made. The character 3D models are quite life-like and I thought that a snapshot would make for a good model reference.

This is a clip from the ending cinematic with Jill and Chris after surviving a night of horror in the mansion. Frankly, I chose this shot among the others I snapped because I felt like practicing portrait skills and it wasn't a full side profile shot.

When I started I thought it was not going to turn out show-worthy as I worked the face out with basic geometric shapes. But as I kept playing with it, some nice contours began to define the face and the drawing power seemed to come back through my fingers again.

I like to start most drawings with a technical drafts pencil about 0.5 width lead, HB or softer. I use it for tracing the contour and for some light stroke shading and texture. Later, I go in with a soft 6B drawing pencil and lay down some darker lines especially for hair, or under the eyes, nose or chin. I gently overlay some previous sketching with the 6B and work in my shading level by level. I like to kneaded erasers for cleaning up stray lines. They're clean and safe - they don't disturb or damage the paper fibers noticeably.

I'd like to get more practice in and do some figure studies and draped figure studies as well. It's all about time management and emotional motivation.

So long.

Moosul Club

2008-09-22T18:48:00.007+09:00

Koreans use the word "moosul" for martial art training.

During my first semester at Chung Kang College, I realized how many students were in desperate need of rigorous exercise training. I became inspired to create a new club within the CK computer graphic design students to start a martial art club where students could burn off some chub, kick off bad drinking and smoking habits trading them in for healthy choices and develop some new skills through my experience in the martial arts.

I decided the best way to start was to make a banner or poster to advertise among the student body and see if any interest would rise up. I made this design from some gathered images from the net. However, after creating it, and re-examining my 2nd semester schedule, I decided that heading up a moosul club was much too ambitious for me to take on. I already had too many things on my plate in my life to do.

So, here it is, posted not in the college corridors, but in a blog that nobody reads.

Softwares used: Just another image manipulation design in Adobe Photoshop.

CK Fish

2008-09-22T18:31:00.008+09:00

Toward the end of my first semester as a professor at Chung Kang College, I was asked to take on the project of editing together senior student Title Graphics Animation projects for a mid-year student exhibition. This video presentation was only one aspect to student work on display.

The editing work I took a standard approach and edited each student's animation piece one after the other. I wanted to display the title animation I created for the presentation here.

The logo is called the "CK Fish" because that's what it looks like. However, I saw it more like a rocket. And I wanted to suggest that CK was 'taking off' with much gusto and energy and that graduating students could expect to succeed. Anyway, I hope I succeeded in portraying that idea.

Softwares used: Adobe Premiere and Illustrator, Macromedia Flash.

2008-05-30T14:37:00.008+09:00

Fresh out of Photoshop an invitational design for friends to join the 12th anniversary of Joyful Church. That is, of course, where I go to church weekly here in Korea.

My friend, Eunice, asked me suddenly yesterday if I could whip one up to be sent out by email to our friends and acquaintances in the Foreign Cell Group ASAP.

I will be doing a Kumdo martial art choreographed scene in the musical drama and Eunice thought it be a good idea to include that information. The story is about Joshua leading the Israel tribe across the Jordan River and confronting the Canaan tribes. My scene is a representation of the spiritual battle facing Joshua's side and I swing my sword around and face off against 3 other guys in battle. It's fun but I'm a bit nervous about performing.

Because I was busy at the drama rehearsal I wasn't able to start working on this until late night. You can see from an earlier version my original idea which was only a sky scenerio. In my mind's eye it was a good idea, but the title text would not jump out well enough. I had to stop at this stage because the night watchmen at the church had to close the computer room where I was working.

I continued the next morning and Eunice sent me some great photos. I composited three images together of balloons, hearts and sky with some additional alterations to the text design.

It really came out with a new feeling and worked out greater than I imagined just by playing around with some image compositing.

Later, I may add to this post if I am able to upload some of the video from my rehearsals and performance of the kumdo demo.

http://www.joyful-c.or.kr/

...that update:

Pulled this one out of a [mad] hat

2008-05-19T17:57:00.004+09:00

Alice thought she had never seen such a curious croquet-ground in her life; it was all ridges and furrows. The croquet balls were live hedgehogs, and the mallets live flamingos and the soldiers had to double themselves up and stand on their hands and feet, to make the arches.

- ALICE IN WONDERLAND, Lewis Carroll

Year 2000, I was a second year student at The Illinois Institute of Art and had to incorporate an art project into my liberal arts English Literature course. I scribbled down this contour line illustration from this particular scene that was embellished thusly in my imagination.

Last night, I was leisurely cleaning up some scans of some old works that I brought back with me from USA that could possibly go on my main website and I came across the incomplete picture. I decided that it was time to finally do something with this eight years after starting. Most of my art work is like that unfortunately - half done!

I went with a old-fashioned bubble gum wrapper comic illustration coloring style that is reminiscent of the old Archie comics that I remember from my childhood.

The text design in the background is a tipped-hat to the Cheshire Cat from this very story. I enjoyed putting the curved text path inside the "C", inside the flamingo's neck, giving a twisted and circular motion, appropriate to Carroll's writings.

It was a spur-of-the-moment project but I'd like to more on that theme if the opportunity and energy comes about.

I'll let you decide the outcome.

"No, no!" said the Queen. "Sentence first--verdict afterwards."

Double Dragon 2: The Revenge

2008-02-08T11:36:00.001+09:00

Bimmy and Jimmy. *cough* I mean, Billy and Jimmy, the brothers Double Dragon. Two tough martial art dudes taking on the Shadow Warriors in NYC to avenge the death of Billy's girl, Marion. It's not just knives, chains, and whips this time - they must face the darker arts to win this battle. Double Dragon, GO!

This desktop was made back in 2004 when I was using a 1024x768 resolution monitor. Moving top to bottom, left to right, it tells the adventure story of Double Dragon 2 for the classic NES system. So much creativity came from the limited 8-bit programming. As an artist and teacher, I feel that limiting your tools of creation can be a method to pull out great creativity as you solve problems ever uniquely. Problem solving itself can be an artistic tool.

Double Dragon 2 is special to me because of a father-son connection significance. This was a game my father and I loved to play together and enjoy each other's company. In DD2, in contrast to the first NES release, two players could team up simultaneously to defeat the Shadow Warriors. Tag team play! Booyah!

In fact, I have a memory of one winter weekend, when my dad and I conquered this game while mom was out of the house (a special time to get the NES out) and it began to snow on that blue-grey, chilly day. My younger sister joined us from the connected room to semi-watch and read a book or something. We played and enjoyed while waiting for dad's chili, boiling on the stove, to be ready.

I felt so comfortable being in a warm house sitting next to my dad playing this awesome two-player game while it snowed outside and my nose was filled with my dad's super delicious chili recipe. This is one of my many favorite memories with dad at home. We both always wished we had more times like this, but over the years, we were blessed to have many.

Actually, it was Double Dragon (the first) and The Legend of Zelda that were my initiation pieces into the world of 8-bit imagination. My cousin, Trevor, was a little older than me and his family could afford a home entertainment video game system. When I went to visit him at the age of 5 or 6, it was so amazing to me to see a game that could be manipulated on your TV from a controller. I was too young to be coordinated with my hands and eyes very quickly, but I was thrilled just to be next to my older cousin and watch him play. I made no complaints or crying, I was such an easy kid. He could play, I could watch, sometimes he'd let me take over and have a shot at it.

Double Dragon, and it's sequels, could have a strong violent theme and exhibit gratuitous gore and violence like many game titles do today. But it didn't. And I like that. It still provided the fun atmosphere of Nintendo playing while maintaining the serious attitude of martial art survival without lowering the standard to depravity.

Back to the Background

All of the art is from the game, even the background pattern. There are three columns to be read downwardly. Mostly the pictures are from the cut scenes inbetween the playing levels.

The End.

The Guardian Legend

2008-02-08T10:05:00.001+09:00

As I mentioned in my previous post, I swap desktop images frequently. I often have a desire in mind when I feel like swapping. Often, there isn't an appropriate image for what I imagine, so I go and create my own. It has become like a hobby I enjoy from time to time.

The theme for this desktop creation is THE GUARDIAN LEGEND. It is a 1987 8-bit Nintendo classic. This adventure captured my imagination when I was 13 years old, and it still provides a gateway for nostalgia and the generation of new ideas on similar themes.

What's it about?
"Long ago, an alien race sent a huge world hurtling toward the Earth, loaded with a cargo of mysterious lifeforms. You must battle your way deep within the alien world to destroy its viscious inhabitants. You are the guardian of the Earth and your saga will become The Guardian Legend."

There are two sides of this coin. Either you play the Guardian as a woman warrior within the planet's surface, or you physically transform into a fighter space ship that guns down creatures from the sky. This image here is the box cover art for the European release. The style is reminiscent of the classic sci-fi/space fantasy illustration of the 80's. Lots o' chrome.

The game experience is clever, and uniquely designed visually and aurally. I am especially fond of the creature designs. This creature seems to be humongous with lots of pink tissue. At the end of the level sequence, you meet the most sensitive but deadly part of it's long body. Fascinating. I love this game for it's higher than average Gross Factor.

The game also contains the Cute Factor as well. Meet Blue Lander! He is a blue, round, helpful guy who sells or offers special items to your benefit.

He's not offering a wedding ring here, that weapon is a ball of energy that encircles as defense.

Can we talk about the image you did yet?

Now that the two of you are introduced, let me briefly talk about what I did. Essentially, I wanted to create an operation screen and a viewport screen. Huh? That is, the lower part has the character's bio - weapon select - map - key information conveniently catagorized, while the remainder of the screen is reserved for flight and combat view. Notice all the operation screen items have a glow as if on an old monitor screen.

In the combat view screen, the character is on attack vector toward the final boss over NAJU, the planet. Typically, the action scrolls vertically. I rotated the ship for sake of composition.

To follow this action, I made Mr. One Eye up there move his eyeball to engage his opponent.

Also not that the girl's bio picture has been altered. I gave her a skin tone to stand out against the white of her suit and she is now wearing her "headphones". The in-game picture of her comes at the final scene after defeating the final boss. So her headphones are off. I wanted my image to show her ready for action.

This writing is pretty boring I'm sure. However I am pleased with the outcome of this layout design. All work done in Photoshop.

Mission Complete.

Le Cinquieme Element

2008-01-26T00:45:00.001+09:00

"Korben enters the residence of Father Cornelius with space damsel Leeloo draped in his arms."

Sometimes, I just like to make a nice desktop image for notebook computer. I made this maybe over a year ago, and I recently saw it sitting in a folder while looking for a new desktop image. Ah, you know me, I'm in the habit of changing my desktop atleast once every week. Just like when I was a kid I had to re-arrange my bedroom once a month, if not, atleast every six months. I think it has something to do with my artistic brain needing "fresh air" to breathe.

What is it? The images in this design come from one of my favorite flicks, THE FIFTH ELEMENT. (All caps make it seem bigger than life) These images tell the interaction between characters Korby Dallas and Leeloo in one of the best scenes in the film. Korbin had just delivered and unconscious Leeloo to Priest Cornelius' home and laid her on the sofa. When the occupants had walked to the other room, Korben leaned in close to steal a smooch from the sleeping space girl. The next thing you hear is the sound of his pulse pistol charging as she holds it to his temple. Whoops!

I remember graduating high school in 1997. I went to my aunt's house in Omaha, Nebraska for two weeks with my sister. I saw this movie atleast three times and bought the CD soundtrack. Man, I really had a good time with this movie. I have seen it many times since - too many times - and I still like to watch it now and then. Just today in fact, I watched the French version. Why? Because that was all I could download from the internet. The director and writer, Luc Besson, is French so it is fitting that I watch it once in his native language.

It is a good experience to watch a movie in a language you don't know, but you know what's going on. In that way, you pick up on cues and other visual information that you miss while looking for verbal cues from actors while they say their lines. So sometime, change your DVD to a different language setting and see the same movie differently for once.

This image is 1024x768 pixels. If you are a fan of THE FIFTH ELEMENT like me, feel free to take a copy for yourself.

For the Birds

2007-10-02T16:16:00.000+09:00

Unusual for me, some bird characters perched into my mind last summer('06). I sketched them down in my small black travel pad. I wanted to take some characteristics from people I've actually known to influence the drawings.

They are quite stern in their demeanor. My imagination envisioned human-like body crossed with bird features, dressed in a slightly more embellished Puritan-style costume.

The first birdie is intended as an antagonist character, pitch black with scarlet red round the eyes and a symboled patch on the forehead. Definitely a hunter bird with the eyes of killer.

The second, an ostrich-like clerical character, very picky, judgmental and unforgiving - a perfectionist with sharp eyes that never miss a single movement.

The third could possibly be character of lesser authority, perhaps a neutral character to a protagonist.

Such ideas flutter through my head so often, but I regret that I don't take the time to capture them on paper and develop them further before they migrate from my mind altogether. I would like to go out on a limb further with this seed of a concept...someday.

Jina

2007-08-26T20:25:00.000+09:00

This is Jina. This is a sketch done back in the spring '07 while working at Hanshin University. The photo is two years old. Jina was one of my kindergarten students from my first private teaching position in Korea. I had many loveable students from that school, she was one of favorites.

Jina was almost always smiling. So I was surprised to see this photo not showing her bright white baby teeth. I didn't focus on shading, so this is a contour portrait.

It is a pencil portrait, I used a mechnical draft pencil mostly (0.5, HB), some touch up with traditional art pencil at 2B. While on my two-hour respite during my teaching day at Hanshin, I pulled out my laptop computer, chose Jina, and sketched. My goal was for a 15 minute sketch. I laid all the important lines in that time, but slowed down and played with it until I went back to English teaching.

I got in the mood to draw portraits after having mine done at a park in Dong Baek with my friends back in April. This guy was pretty good. It took him 15 minutes to do mine.

Watch this:

And this:

If you listen, you can hear Eunice and Jeff chatting in the background. Eunice filmed with my Sony camera. Ashley, Grace, William and Christy were elsewhere waiting for the picture to finish.

I really liked it. Like all portraits, it's based on the artist's eye. It's a good rendition of me, a little thinner in the face than my own, but it captures a youthfulness I imagine myself to carry.

Here's some other pictures from that evening:

Grace, Christy, Eunice, Jeff, Ashley.

It was a memorable night.

Evolutionary Flow in the Web...Design

2007-03-06T23:49:00.000+09:00

Every artist must leave his signature of sorts on whatever he does. So as I develop my online showcase portfolio, I went through several design concepts to discover what was most suitable for my taste and style, yet also I had to keep it within the realm of my (limited)limits in my HTML capabilities and also still navigable. Here is a chronological selection of that flow of ideas...atleast the ones showable!

This is a "home page" design that looks cool, but is far, far away from obvious and direct. What is going on?! Where do I click? What am I looking at?!!
Anyway, I wanted to represent the RGB concept as a digital artist, also, I wanted to give a feeling of glowing light and a 3D presence. It was an exploration to break the grid-like mold of a typical web design. That's why it doesn't work.

Progression. The sphere is still used, the circle glow element is dropped but added as bars. The name logo has gone 3-dimensional to add to the transparent, shiny sphere. Also, I added a 3D feel to the platform. The menu is in the sphere for 2D, 3D, and Other section, activated when the mouse rolls over. Check out: http://www.danielwathen.com/LogoNavi.htm.

Color scheme change. In fact, it is almost nullified. After staring at the color version so long, this monochromatic version pleased my eye. I couldn't decide how to incorporate it to the site. I thought it looked more business-like and it didn't speak to my colorful, playful, creative side.

Ah, here we go. Now this is what you will see when the site's finished. This is the About the Artist page. A whole new design that came after several more revisions and sketches to new ideas between this and the last. One night, and after praying, a design came out. It's clean, fresh, bold yet gentle, and still captures a feel for creative 3D and 2D digital art. The blue scheme is designated for anything regarding the artist.

Here's an example of a art splash page as you enter into the 3D area. The color scheme has turned yellow-gold for the art sections. The 3D character model shown is my work. The model shows the applied UV map with the wireframe at low visibility.

The website has far to go yet until a fair amount of completion. Soon you can check it out and browse the gallery of my work at www.danielwathen.com.

Eunice

2007-01-17T09:29:00.000+09:00

I Hye Jin (ee hyay jin), or Eunice as she is also known, a special friend to me, had a birthday this past weekend. So in anticipation for this day, I started this pencil portrait last November originally as a study of her facial features with intent to do a final rendering from perhaps a different photo and expression - one with a greater smile showing white teeth. However, once I had begun to work on the hair, I was so satisfied with my progress that I continued to finish this drawing. The drawing is shaded with a smudge technique using a tertullian for first layer shading. Secondly, on top of the smudging a cross-hatching technique was used with an HB .3 and .5 technical pencil. I used a combination of technical pencils and traditional art pencils - darkest 6B.
Here is the original photo. I had to lighten the photo very delicately as the environment that I took the photo was in a restaurant's very dim lighting. It is a very unique expression that she is wearing at this moment. I thought it would be a good study.

Here is another image with normal lighting with a more common expression. The eyes are hard to distinguish and she doesn't like to be seen with her glasses and thus it was a close choice but I did not choose it for a portait piece. That is our friend Violet on the right (Skinny and Sweet anyone?). Look at that baby on the left, that's Elias. He is from an American daddy and Korean mommy. Aren't his eyes gorgeous?

The drawing was prepared and presented mounted on an off-grey board with a deep wood stained frame that matched the furniture and interior of her brand-new apartment. It was a wonderful gift for her birthday and her new home.

Originally, I wanted matte-board between the drawing and the frame. I found out that finding matte-board in Korea was near impossible unless I ventured into Seoul. In Suwon, I went to eleven different shops searching for matte-board with broken Korean language skills. Included in that quest was internet searching followed by phone calls to local art shops only to be hung-up on many times for my poor speaking!

After a week of searching and the deadline of the birthday drawing near, I gave up on the matte and went to mount board. My friend William (Kyoung Ho) helped me on the weekend to find a good Art supply shop in Bundang. We found a place called Paper Moon Gu.

There was a table space there to cut, etc., but none of the tools and supplies were really there - everything was half-used or empty! So I had to buy the materials to put it all together. With a giant migraine growing in my head from my three-week-old cold, I tried to think clearly to choose the right color for the picture, frame and apartment. In a tight corner space of the store, I cut the board with a very sharp knife while oblivious Korean women stood behind me butt-to-butt while they tried to pull out long sheets of paper for who knows what, I hoped they wouldn't bump my arm as I firmly sliced through the mounting board.

Then things got stickier. I had to spray-mount (glue by spray glue? never done it before) the picture to the mount...and it was a one shot. That glue was strong stuff and I knew that if I didn't align it properly, the whole project was ruined. To add to the pressure, the store owners wanted me off that table and my head felt like it was going to have a baby. My temper began to rise and I knew that there was no way they were going to get me off that table until I FINISHED! And those women still were bumping bottoms with me!

I finished successfully, despite a plethora of difficulties that are just too boring to tell you about. I was able to give Eunice her surprise on Sunday in her home while our church group met together for a birthday party. She was delighted to receive it. I hope it will be hung on her new walls. Happy Birthday, Hye Jin.

I Will Enter His Gates with Thanksgiving

2007-01-02T22:39:00.001+09:00

For my dear friend Kelly Livingstone from Cameroon. Brother Kelly has been in Korea for 3 years and has earned his Masters of Divinity and Pastoral Ordination from AMI Seminary(Antioch Missions International). He has a vision for an international ministry here in Korea. He made a brochure in Microsoft Publisher for the basics of his message. I re-molded it a bit and added a definitive logo for the name our Lord gave him for this mission.

I am really pleased with the logo design. It has an older style of Illustration that I haven't seen since the 1980's and 90's in magazines and other publications. However, I used the newer 3D Studio Max, Photoshop, and Illustrator to achieve this older look. It looks clean. It looks solid. It looks heavenly. It looks like vision and victory.

Why 3D Max? I built the archway in 3d first and used it to create a 2d image for a template. Max has a good vector system calculated in a 3-dimensional space. Photoshop was my main color tool, Illustrator was more my graphic design tool.

Concepts. Gates of Zion. Ofcourse, Korea is nowhere near "Zion", but true Zion, can be opened in the heart of faith. My inspirations for this piece is from Prophets Ezekial, Daniel and John, and from the Trinity of God Himself. Notice that you see three gates and they are in levels of submission to each other. I chose beautiful, bright colors to signify divine royalty of Heaven. The three red almost triangular pieces hanging upon the first gate symbolize the blood of Christ upon the mantle of the doorway in crucifixion position. Probably (and I hope) all that is obvious.

Inner. Outer. This is the tri-fold. Logo on outside, and Kelly's image and testimony on the inside.

Come, walk through the narrow gate.

Conquest of Paradise

2007-01-01T23:28:00.001+09:00

One mustache deserves another. To submit this post early is appropriate, as it is my first rendering in Korea. I drew this one on the long flight here in July 2005.

Conquistador. Medium: pencil. I was working on a game concept at the time (which since has laid dead in the water) that this character was inspired from. Most of my game concepts or characters get "borrowed" by the Pros, but I'm still gonna keep this idea under my hat...I haven't seen any company try to do this one yet so I won't share it with you.

I wanted to capture a peculiarness to this man. One of his eyes doesn't seem to look at you and he has quite a heavy mole on his brow. He has a slight snarl behind his hairy growth and he's just smidgeon shaggy; rough round the edges.

Well, I don't think it's that easy to draw on plane, but it's easier than catching any meaningful sleep on an overseas flight.

Auto-manic.

2007-01-01T22:43:00.001+09:00

As I teach English as a Second Language, I am accostumed to illustrating on the fly in pictures. This has been a wonderful gift to share to students of every age. Since class time is precious and the focus is on language more than concepts, I must whip these drawings out quickly. Often, I get a brush-like effect using dry-erase marker as in this picture.

The conversation at one point for this particular class was Xena:Warrior Princess and Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, both favorite television shows of mine for their abundance of variety and preposterousness.

Autolycus, King of Thieves, at your service (takes a courteous bow). Actually, now that I recall, the conversation was originally about Bruce Campbell, proud B-movie cult star of the Evil Dead series, and his cohorts of youth, Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert. As I discussed the three gentlemen and their connections to Film, I sketched this homage to Bruce's Autolycus. I really think I captured his character in this cartoon.

Smile was on the Crocodile

2007-01-01T20:30:00.001+09:00

Merry Christmas! This is a pen/ink piece done before Christmas 2006, one of about 10 various home-made Christmas cards I did for the season. I decided to give it to a newly-wed Korean couple from my church who both happen to have an artistic flare.

What's Going On? It's a Christmas card? But it looks like sand dunes, not snow hills in the backdrop! That's right! The inspiration for this card was that Joseph, Mary and Jesus had to rush away to Egypt on Jesus' third year as a baby.

Why the Giant Croc? I just saw that image in the paper, as I often do as I wonder how to fill it. Crocodiles are known to be in the Nile River and I thought that an encounter with a monster would be interesting as the "untold" story. Plus, take a look at Revelations, Apostle John has the vision of the great dragon trying to swallow the mother and the child. (That's really just an after thought I'm having now as I write this.)

The EYE of the Croc. Take a look, that eye ain't drawn. That was one of them bubble eyes that jump around like crazy when you shake it. I glued it on and it added quite a bit mo' fun to this image. As the card was held in different positions, the Crocodile changed his expression, so it was an interactive addition.

Sphynx. Look close, it's not Ra, but Ray Charles!

No time for color. Color, even a light watercolor wash would enhance this quite a bit.