Fantasmagorias

Fantasmagoria is Ramses Melendez's animated film soon to be released in short film festivals in EUA, Spain, Argentina, Mexico and Canada in 2010. There will be an a special edition dvd which will include an art book featuring some awesome artists including the amazing Kekai (have a look through his blog if you're in need of some inspiration!

thnx for stoppin' by!
joe

Fantasmagoria ©Ramses Melendez

Animal Planet cont'd Vampire!

As promised here's the vampire portraits for Animal Planet's Creaturefy site! These had some texture overlays applied that weren't actually used in the final design but I thought they looked better for posting.

I did the rough greyscale image first, colour after the greys were approved and the line version after that. This may seem backwards to most but I feel more comfortable painting form rather then drawing it. I like to cover more ground with a large brush and see some type of silhouette I guess. The tones allow me to see where to place the lines which makes this process work for me.

I'll post the owlman bigfoot and lizard man soon!

cheers!
joe

Happy Halloween with Animal Planet!

To celebrate Halloween Animal Planet has set up some creepy web-fun on their site called Creaturefy!
You can upload your photos and swap your parts for monster parts :)
you have the option of saving your creaturefication and sharing on fbook etc also.
The site design was done the amazing BakerandHill peeps while the monster heads and parts were done by yours truly.

Send me your creaturific creations!!! or a link to them and I'll share them here on my blog!

I've included some of the werewolf designs I did and will update more in a bit
The top one was the final coloured one used
2nd is the final line art version used
3rd and 4th were some of the developmental works I did that didn't make final cut :)
enjoy!

some bish from Darkstalkers

was warming up with my sketchbook the other day and decided to explore one of my favourite Capcom characters. Bishamon is an undead samurai possessed by his demon armour...how kick ass is that? if that wasn't cook enough he's got a demon face as a torso!!! haha well I think it's kick ass anyways...

for these I switched between Col erase 'light blue', 'blue', and 'carmine red'. I also sketched and shaded with a black fine point pen(just a ball point pen...brand name Zebra for those interested) Also used a brush pen for the thicker lines. The sketchbook is an old one I had laying around from my college days. (11x17 65lb paper)

I had a tonne of fun using the limited colour palette which happened to fit nicely with Bishamon's colour scheme.

joverine outs!
snakt snakt!

Bishamon & Darkstalkers ©CAPCOM

my Frankenstein for the Mike Mignola Chiustream

as the lengthy title explains, this was my entry for the Mike Mignola contest that was on Bobby Chiu's Chiustream!

For those that don't know:
Bobby has a daily show on Ustream (and his schoolism site) where he draws live and chats with anyone that's logged in. Occasionally he interviews professional artists working in the industry. A topic is selected before the interview and the viewers are instructed to illustrate and submit their work to the schoolism site. Bobby then Twitters a time frame in which everyone can vote on all the submissions. The top 3 get sent to the guest artist who then chooses the winner. The prize is an original drawing created by the guest artist which is mailed to the winner! Be sure to check in with Twitter/Facebook to find out when to submit or you'll miss the voting deadline like I did with this one!!! AAAGH!!
sigh...ok ok..I'm back...

Bobby gets some big names on there. The list so far is character designer Stephen Silver(Kim Possible, Danny Phantom), comic book super star Alvin Lee(Streetfighter comics,Agent X, Darkstalkers etc), character designer Peter de Seve (Mulan,Tarzan,Ice Age etc) and Justin "Coro" Kaufman of Massive Black & Conceptart.org and most recently Mike Mignola of Hellboy fame!!!
For anyone that is interested in seeing the faces behind their artwork and to hear their thoughts I definitely recommend checkin out the Chiustream blog for more info :)

Chiustream with Stephen Silver!

Bobby Chiu (of Imaginism studios) does a live and interactive Ustream show daily with awesome live drawing and question sessions sharing his insights and stories for everyone that will listen! I've watched almost every show(missed one I think?) I like to have it on while I'm working since it feels like I'm not alone here in my studio lol...

Today Bobby did something a little different-he had a video interview with Stephen Silver!! for those of you that love his work or have yet to check it out visit his site here!! at the beginning of the interview Bobby asked Stephen to choose a topic for all the viewers to draw with a one hour time limit. Mr.Silver chose 'crazy cowboys' lol. Everyone was instructed to post a link on the imaginism blog for Stephen to see and choose a fav-winner gets an original Stephen Silver sketch mailed to them!! woot X) so this is my 1hour cowboy submission-wootx2 :P

anyways you peeps should all check out the Chiustream!! he announces the times on his twitter and facebook pgs

cheers!
joverine outs X)

How to make your own intro videos!

I found this awesome site called Animoto which allows you to make some pretty slick videos with very little effort! You can make your own videos in 3 simple steps. Upload your images, choose some music then finalize some settings...done...

The best part is you can remix the video with one simple click! I guess it's all done via some fancy pance program engine that anaylzes and mixes your media automatically!
here's another version I made doing just that :P



I'm still playing around with it and might actually consider using it for my actual dvd tutorials. Although I would definitely choose one of the upgraded versions for high resolution. I will do a full review if I go this route.

If you wanna check it out for yourself follow this link!


If you make your own videos let me know! and send me a link as well! Animoto is so much fun :P