Knock yourself Out

Enter the year of the Dragon!!

2012-01-24T11:12:00.000-08:00

I hear it's the Chinese New Year. Happy new year to you!!! I just wanted an excuse to draw a dragon wearing a Bruce Lee outfit.

Deadwood sketch

2012-01-13T12:12:00.000-08:00

So I've been watching the HBO series "Deadwood". It took me 2 seasons to realize how these actors are so rich in appearance I finally picked up my pencil to draw.

Happy New Year!

2012-01-03T14:55:00.000-08:00

villager character designs

thumbnails

I got to work on my personal stuff over the Christmas break. I decided to 'branch out' and use color pencils. Oooohhh...

LA Zoo/ Sketching Animals is FUN

2011-12-27T12:06:00.000-08:00

We went to the zoo the day after Christmas and it was PACKED! The cool thing was that all the animals were out and entertaining the crowd, including the tiger cubs. They were SO CUTE.

cafe/airport/japanese subway train sketches

2011-12-07T18:43:00.001-08:00

These are the most recent sketches I've done. I look at all the other amazing artists and remind myself that I need to practice more.

Kung Fu Guy

2011-12-05T00:49:00.001-08:00

This guy is so much fun to draw. Maybe I should animate him... to be continued.

Boys and Baseball

2010-04-14T15:43:00.000-07:00

They used to play baseball wearing ties... huh...

Boxer chick

2010-04-08T18:54:00.001-07:00

Japan Sketches

2010-01-28T23:31:00.001-08:00

I went to visit my family in Japan around Thanksgiving for 10 days. It's fun drawing Japanese people because they dress up differently. And they don't like making eye contact so they are usually looking down or closing their eyes, which makes it easy for me to draw them.

Exploring Nora

2010-01-24T16:01:00.000-08:00

Hollywood Girl

2010-01-10T16:52:00.000-08:00

When you live in Hollywood, you see plenty of little girls dressed up like adults... and it's not cute, it's freaky. If you put that much emphasis on looks at that age, I wonder what kind of adults they'll become.

Happy 2010!

2010-01-03T20:07:00.001-08:00

Headless Beta

2009-12-09T00:49:00.000-08:00

Cafe Sketches

2009-11-22T19:33:00.001-08:00

I've been going to Starbucks, Coffee Bean and the Burbank mall to sketch people. I'm sure they are looking at me and thinking, "Oh, it's that guy with a sketch book again."

Where the wild things are

2009-10-15T14:05:00.000-07:00

The film comes out tomorrow and it looks like my kind of film. I hope it's as good as the trailer.

4 Gun part 2

2009-07-10T18:53:00.000-07:00

Another pin up I did of 4 Gun Conclusion. This one was just for my own satisfaction. I struggle with his left foot for about an hour and gave up. I came back to it and figured it out in 5 minutes and I think it works now.

4 Gun Conclusion

2009-07-01T10:32:00.000-07:00

My friend, Bobby Rubio, is a comic book machine and he came out with another one. It's called "4 Gun Conclusion". He asked me to do a pin up for it so here it is.

Nora the loner...

2009-02-16T12:15:00.000-08:00

Nora sat by the pond and waited and waited... but no one showed up.

Color Pages

2008-12-28T19:42:00.001-08:00

I've finally started doing some final water color paintings for Nora & Beta. Man, traditional medium is hard! We are so used to doing drawings and paintings in digital medium which enable us to undo/redo and manipulate colors but there's nothing more lively than a traditional painting. It takes more time, discipline, commitment, trial and error, and a mess on your desk but hopefully you'll end up with a nice original art work and not a 'print'.

Speed Racer

2008-11-08T13:00:00.000-08:00

Every few months, we have an art show on Family Guy. This time the theme was 'TV Show' so I chose speed racer which was my favorite show when I was 4 or 5. I chose acrylic but I hadn't used it since college(10 years ago). It was such a struggle and took a lot longer than I wanted but I am pretty happy with the outcome. The sad thing was it only went up to $250 in auction. Next time, I am going to do 1 character in photoshop and spend no more than 1 hour. Take that, Family Guy Art Show Auction!! And bye bye speed racer painting.

Suki the Kyoshi Warrior

2008-10-05T21:47:00.001-07:00

Water color and pen.

Megumi and Oggwin

2008-09-21T22:01:00.000-07:00

My daughter would not chase Oggwin in real life. She loves animals but needs at least 20 feet of personal space.

cross walk button

2008-09-06T22:16:00.000-07:00

Have you ever seen kids or dumb adults pushing the crosswalk buttons multiple times thinking that's going to change the traffic lights turn green faster? Well, that's where I got this idea for my short film "ice cream bound". It's about a girl and a creature trying to cross the street to get to an ice cream truck. There's a Studio Ghibli Layout Exhibition in Tokyo right now and I got inspired to do a layout in Miyazaki style. Yeah, the light is supposed to be red, I know...

Merry Çhristmas!

2008-07-20T21:54:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I know, it's only July but at least you are not receiving cards like this everyday. Do you prefer waves and bikinis instead? Maybe next week...

This blog is starting to look dull, mainly because there are no colored pieces. I would love to do a new one with color... I would love it if I could... but the answer is no. So I am pulling out an old one from my bag... again. My bag is starting to get empty.

Ninja Bros.

2008-07-03T19:42:00.000-07:00

It's ONLY been 6 weeks since I last posted but you are in luck! Here's a new one! I made up this story about 2 Ninja brothers racing and competing to obtain a treasure box from their enemy's castle. I assembled the key panels and here they are!

Island Boy

2008-03-27T19:41:00.001-07:00

My buddy, Dean Kelly, has been doing some beautiful image boards for his story. You guys should check out his blog. This is my rendition of your character, Dean. I hope you like it.

Walking the dog

2008-03-20T21:55:00.001-07:00

A typical scene in L.A.

Carter Goodrich/H.B.Lewis

2008-03-16T20:04:00.000-07:00

Here's my attempt to imitate amazing artists Carter Goodrich/ H.B. Lewis. Obviously, I need more practice. Did you know they both went to RISD?

Cool Toy Store

2008-03-14T12:55:00.000-07:00

Check out this cool toy store in Japan! Yeah!

Dream Worlds

2008-02-25T08:06:00.000-08:00

I recently received this book as a gift and it's awesome. Surprisingly, not many people know about it around my studio. It's by a famous Disney production designer, Hans Bacher, and he's brilliant. He talks about everything from artsy paintings/designs to practical compositions to his life experience. All of things he wrote inside are fascinating and if you don't like to read, just look at the pictures. It definitely gives me that jolt of "inspiration" every time I open it. This book should be in every artist's bookshelf.

First Blog Ever!

2008-02-24T22:24:00.001-08:00

Hey, You.

Thanks for visiting. This is my first weblog ever and I am VERY excited. For the last few years I have seen many blogs; some of them are educational and some are inspiring! Because of this wonderful world of internet, we are able to share info so fast and so efficiently and I guess I wanted to be a part of it. I'll try to post anything fun, cool, exciting, useful, etc so we can all waste more time online. At the same time, I'll try to post every week at least 1 drawing/painting/sketch for you guys to comment, bash, compliment, criticize, complain, or ignore.

Knock yourself out...

Kenji