Race Car

Here's a piece of "pro bono" development freelance I did a year ago which was not accepted. I had a lot of fun designing and painting my first race car.

Red Sweater

Just another fun exercise in color styling and digital sponge-brushing.

The Duke

The Karate Kid

Listening to Bill Conti's score to The Karate Kid (1984) inspired me to do a quick sketch of Mr. Miyagi and Daniel LaRusso doing his famous "crane technique". I did it in one pass, without overlays, in about three minutes. The impromptu drawing surprised me and I thought the likenesses of the caricatures were pretty good, so I spent an hour coloring it. It might have been a good idea to have Mr. Miyagi holding a small Bonsai tree, but 'oh well.' This one was a lot of fun to do!

1950s Stewardess #2

Stewardess #2 is less painterly and graphic than #1; I took more of an ink-and-paint-by-number approach...more like a character design for 2D, TV animation.

1950s Stewardess #1

Just for the fun of it, I'm designing and coloring a brief series of three 1950s airline stewardesses. This one will be a little more painterly than the next two, which I will post shortly. I really like removing the line art, focusing on shape design and color styling, and painting with these chalk and sponge brushes in Photoshop. Stay tuned for more...

T.U.F.F. Puppy "Santa Claus"

On occasion, I am assigned to design a particular character (usually, one that is prominent in the script) before the storyboard artist works on the board so that he/she can use the character as reference. We call it "preliminary design", or "pre-design". I really enjoy these assignments because I get to design a new character from scratch and it's an opportunity to draw a bunch of fun variations. These are just a few variations I drew of the polar bear "Santa Claus" from the T.U.F.F. episode "Mission: Really Big Mission Part 2".

Walkin' the Dog

Inspired by a funny moment my wife and I witnessed a few days ago.

Lampooned Lyrics

My wife and I were driving in the minivan on Saturday when we heard on the radio that cheesy '80s love song by Paul Young: "Every Time You Go Away..." Then, I remembered my older brother, Thomas, many years ago making fun of the lyrics, changing the next line to: "...you take a piece of meat with you." My wife thought it was a funny mental image, so here's the cartoon image.

White Dragon Martial Arts "Christmas Poster"

My brother-in-law, Sifu Ming Lau,commissioned this piece as a Christmas advertisement for White Dragon Martial Arts, a chain of Kung Fu/Tai Chi studios in San Diego County. He requested the company logo, a Chinese white dragon, chasing after the "Pearl of Wisdom", tugging Santa in his sleigh. You can view my thumbnail sketch and color comp below. I had a lot of fun painting the finished poster in Photoshop.