Color Pages

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

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

Water color and pen.

Megumi and Oggwin

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

cross walk button

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!

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.

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

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

A typical scene in L.A.

Carter Goodrich/H.B.Lewis

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

Check out this cool toy store in Japan! Yeah!

Dream Worlds

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!

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