Getting my feet wet.

Or at least believing I am...

Recently, I got in touch with an online job posting (Craigslist, really...) of a team of writers looking for a comic book artist. While I'd prefer the treatment, "Graphic Illustrator" I guess we should call it what it really is, hahaha.

Anyway I got in touch with them, there was a waiting period where they went through a slew of applicants and finally got around to telling me that I was one of three strong considerable applicants. This was my fighting chance as out of these three, only ONE will be chosen to be this particular team's illustrator.

Now I'm not hoping I win, whatever happens, happen, but how nice would the chance be, yeah?

It's the first time my work will be looked at in a professional (at least I think so) manner for the consideration of breaking into the biz, or at least taking that one chance that might make all the difference or better yet, prove to myself that I got this far and have practically 'gotten my foot into the door'. I imagine it won't be THAT big of a deal but a man can still dream big...

In any case, the three applicants, myself included, were suggested to draw up a 3-panel sequential segment of a 'test' page, for what I imagine, the team to analyze and decide which of the three illustrators they really want as to who will depict their idea the best and connect with the most.

No dialogue either, just all sequential stuff depicting mood, character development and just an overall sense of story telling, with no words except the insisted 'Meanwhile...' insert for the last panel as was detailed in the outline for this inaugurating project.

They also mentioned that this thing didn't have to be colored, but rather, it could have just been a series of sketches, or at least that's how it seemed to me... but I thought to myself, "What if that just hurts me and makes the people who are willing to take me seriously think I'm not serious if I don't show them what I'm really worth and able to truly perform?"

So with that... I went the extra measure for the sake of saving my own ass, just in case, hahaha! And in this sense, I really hope it pays off... otherwise it'll make it seem like I was just kissing ass and... well... I'd rather not think farther into it than that.

Still, this was really alot of fun to get back into the mix of things after a partial hiatus of crazy events which I'll get into, in a future post... it just wouldn't be right or keen to mention it here. As for this, this is all on the premise of hoping this will be a new chapter, an exciting chapter, in the progress of events yet to come.

(Psssst! I REALLY do hope I get the job!)

Summer Fascinations

Know what I like about summer?

Going to the beach...

Definitely gotta be the beach.

Three Egos -Triego

Seems like the more I dig around, the more work I find based on concepts of executions I thought were good ideas that I could have run with, stuck out and done something with... but never really came through for, for some reason.

One of these concepts was the idea of presenting particular individuals, in this case, a couple of my characters in the lines of what I called a "Triego."

The concept was simple really: Use a sequential method of illustrating one character three times in a dynamic, compositionally diverse fashion. Like a snippet from a comic book page in panels, ya dig?

Well I was on a roll with four characters in particular... but the fourth one never really got done. I mean I sketched him out but...

Once again, I came short and it pretty much just stopped there...

Don't get me wrong, it's not that I didn't want to pursue it anymore, I could I just... it's like I felt no drive to continue. I mean I could technically pick it back up if I wanted, among so many OTHER ideas I keep meshing into this vicious cycle but... well... ya know...

Spaceships and Concepts

Was about a year ago now me thinks? Had to be... well there was this contest a while back on this particular MMO I got myself lost in. I don't play that many... in fact this game, EVE Online, is the only one I play exclusively.

Well during a certain time, I was well into it and found out about this EVE Online art contest hosted through DeviantArt... the whole thing ended up being a sham and a controversy throughout the EVE Online community. CCP, the developers, had their hands full for a while but ended up redeeming themselves in the end.

From my end? I went through a painstakingly, however pleasing, experience of dealing my hand into this contest... was hoping it'd get an honorable mention but not even that. Not to sound like an asshole or anything but I, among others, should have had made it to at least that. Like I said, the whole DeviantArt hosted EVE Online contest was a sham...

I really learned alot from the attempt though.

And it was ALOT of fun, truly.

The first order of business was creating preliminary silhouettes of the ships intended. My most favorite of the four depicted was 'Testament'. Something bout the vertical hull design spoke out to me in volumes.

So I ran with the idea, flushed it out, put in A WHOLE lot of technical detailing into it the old fashioned way. Lines and drafting. I feel like I was at a disadvantage with this too... because a whole lot, if not more than 90% of the submissions entered were all done through computer-aided drafting tools or 3D modeling programs; so I really felt like a fish in a sea of sharks... granted there were some pretty good designs don't get me wrong but there were equally some pretty terrible ones that I honestly believed mine could have stuck out best among the rest... ... didn't really pan out that way though.

In the end, it was still alot of fun but I still think about how it could have (and should have) gone alot further... but what's done is done and I seriously did learn alot from this experience.

I'd thought about wanting to pursue this type of thing again as a pet project because I'd always wanted to do this sort of thing and have always doodled around with the mindset... but this was the first time I'd EVER really flushed out the concept of such a deal to this degree.

Almost forgot...

Ah man, hahaha! I almost forgot I'd done this... was an idea I had running around in a tangent consisting of Neko Neko Juju Jumbo. According to the time stamp it says I'd saved this at August 8th, 2008, ah MAN.

"Death by Jamikaze!"

Neko Neko Juju Jumbo

A long, long time ago in a time that, when I think about, doesn't feel that long ago, I remember I was attempting to look for some way to gain some exposure of my talents, skills, what have you and I found this opening for that particular kind of thing when there was something that seemed available for the University of Arizona's newspaper as a comic artist for the paper's comic section...

This was about when I first started out at the U of A in 2005... my FIRST year attending there.

I mean I showed up, got an interview from when I turned in a couple things but... things didn't work out. The guy flaked out on me, never really got back to me, made it very difficult to get a hold of; it almost seemed like he was avoiding me, that or just VERY bad luck but... ... things never panned out.

I wish it had... maybe things could have been different had things took off but I dunno... and that's the problem isn't it?

I never will :(

But in the mean stead, I still had alot of fun doing what was to be my first (and sadly, last) time ever attempting classic, 4-panel short comics.

The result was an outlandishly cartoonified aspect of my character Juju in an alternate tangent of reality which I titled:

NEKO.NEKO.JUJU.JUMBO

Sometimes... SOMETIMES, I think about picking this back up but... sometimes I also feel like that ship has sailed but that it can be pulled back into harbor, somehow.

I dunno... maybe one day it'll come back.

I will say I miss the feeling I had when I thought this would have made it into the U of A's paper; the excitement, the intense hope of success it could have brought... I also miss that level of optimism. Something I should seriously reconnect with.

Still more Oldies but Goodies...

Ah man this is old. I mean REALLY old.

Good lord, man these gotta be like... 2006?

Again this was during the time I was taking those Comic Art and Illustration classes during the summer and this was the result of one of the final projects for the class... there's actually a second one from the second time I took the class but comparing that with this one, this one hands down looks better despite the fact it's actually a couple of jumps back from what I'm able to do now.

I mean I'm proud of it but... looking back at it, I kind of have to laugh at myself pretty hard for this.

Really, hard, oh my God, hahahahaha!

Oldies but Goodies...

My wife was looking through a collection of work I hadn't laid eyes on in... gosh... FOREVER and looking at it, it sort of reminded me a bit of something I had alot of fun working with.

These aren't collaborated in any way accumulative, at least for the first two:

I was still in college at the time taking a summer class at the University of Arizona, that summer class being a Comic Arts and Illustration class.

I took the class twice over the course of two years, once for each year before I graduated and was pretty proud of the results at the time... still do in fact, actually.