Here is the first cut of an animation I made using Cheetah 3D and Photoshop. Most of the work was done in Cheetah 3d with finishing touches and additional animations done in Photoshop. There are some trouble areas that I would like to fix up at a later date. Great re-learning experience. Some of the things you would think would be so easy were the most time consuming and difficult. I'm sure with time and additional tools it will become easier.
This was done in order to provide promotional content for our companies new line, Big Sport Gifts. Additionally some of the product renderings used throughout the website were also done with Cheetah 3d. For the price it is a pretty robust and useful program.
I found this digging around for some printed samples of my earlier illustration work. This was another quick baseball illustration I knocked out for the 1996 Richmond Braves through Taylor Weirup Marketing. They had worked up the concept and I finalized it. It was another small size piece in order to make make sure that I didn't spend too much time getting caught up in the details. Acrylic, Colored Pencil, and Airbrush.
This was
another vignette from the AMF poster piece I had worked on. It went
along with the archer that I previously showed. I show this piece,
because it is one of those things that I learned from. It serves as a
constant reminder to flesh out ideas before tackling them in final form.
Also that small rough thumbnails do not necessarily translate to large
final formats. The red triangle in the corner is what was supposed to be
a part of the AMF symbol. While in my head and on a small thumbnail
form, the idea seemed great, it really did not translate well at larger
size. Not to mention the amount of work I inadvertently carved out for
myself by creating all these vignettes. I don't think it ever made it to print and frankly I am glad.
Another Bowling Ball Illustration around 1997 I think. The majority of this illustration wasn't seen in most cases. Just a square part for a face of the box. The other parts just wrapped around and were background. It was a fun piece and I had make sure he stayed purple, I kept wanting to go to blue like Babe the Blue Ox. Mainly an airbrush piece, with colored pencil. I felt like I illustrated so many bowling pins during my freelance years. It would be so easy to do them current day with the 3D tool in Illustrator or any 3D program for that matter. This was done for AMF through Wilson West Livesay. Great company, they were instrumental in helping me start my freelance career.
Kevin Grijack Trading Card Illustration. The actual size of this one was about 5 x 6.5. It was a quicky. I noticed that looking back through my artwork of this time I had a fascination with the color Teal. Unfortunately that color is one of the harder ones to reproduce in printing. Loved doing these baseball trading cards. Maybe the Flying Squirrels are open to doing some?
This was one in several illustrations that we (Pencil Pushers) did for Colonial Downs. We split up and tackled several of them. This is one of the ones that I did. The Green border and background were just added today to dress it off. The actual illustration was blown up and displayed in one of the areas of Colonial Downs. It was neat to go and see them all in their different spots when done. This was years ago when they first opened and I have not been in awhile, they may not even be up anymore. Used Acrylic, Airbrush and Colored Pencil.
This was my first big illustration. The piece was a monster, literally. In all I didn't sleep a whole week to finish the deadline. Some people will say an all-nighter, but still get an hour of sleep or something. This was NO sleep for 7 days. I tell you my head felt fuzzy and I was on total auto pilot. It was extremely weird by the 3rd night seeing people go to sleep and then waking. It felt almost sort of "out of body" like. The piece turned out as good as I could do and was a great success for the bowling company. People took to stealing the posters out of bowling alleys. After I turned in the piece, I collapsed in my bed and was sick for about 2 weeks. The body needs sleep.
Another Richmond Braves Piece. Mike Birkbeck. I did this one in about 4 hours I think. Maybe less. All the cards were due that morning and Pep and I had been up all night finishing players. As soon as you finished one, you grabbed the next available player. As time went on the pieces got smaller and faster. This piece was about 5 x 7. Acrylic and colored pencil. Airbrushed in the fade at the top of the sky at the end.
This was my second large poster for Champion's Bowling Company. This was a fun piece to do. Initially I wanted to have it swooping down and only one foot touching the ball. Also wanted to have some scratches on the ball from the talons, but the creative direction wanted more of a traditional "Studio Shot" I looked at some old poster of bowling balls and they would use photos of stuffed animals from a taxidermist. Looked very odd to me. These illustrated posters were a great success for them, but I think the company is no longer around. My memory of this is that even with a face mask on, I was blowing my nose and having blue come out a day later. There was a cloud of blue of over the whole studio while I was airbrushing in the sky. The armor on the hawk was inspired by Hajime Sorayama's Robot/Cyborg ladies. I was huge admirer of his technique when first starting to use the airbrush.
Funny thing about Freelance Illustration we found out. Sometimes if an Art Director did not see a sample of a specific item in your portfolio, they figured you could not hack it. On the other hand, they probably called you for a specific item they saw and figured that was all you did. Once you developed a working relationship it got easier to bridge the gap to other motifs. I luckily snagged my real first big assignment for a bowling company named Champion's Bowling. For awhile there I was doing bowling illustrations for numerous clients. This illustration was for AMF and was for the King Cobra ball. Certain clients were uncomfortable with the fact that I was working for both competitors, but ultimately it seemed, had me do the work, since they did not see anyone else doing it locally. I remember getting a bowling pin in order to figure out the shape and reflections.
Found this one actually buried in my work misc junk drawer. The actual size of this picture is 4.5 x 9.5 inches. It was part of a poster I was working on for AMF sports. The concept seemed glorious in my head and in thumbnail rough form. Client loved the idea too. The idea was to have the AMF logo, a red triangle, over the whole background of the poster. The logo would be divided up in quadrants, that showcased the different sports AMF was involved with. It was apparent to me halfway through that I had a problem. It was turning out just horrible, so I went over to discuss with the Art Directors. My recollection of what happened after that is foggy. I think it was completed and used, but not entirely a success. On my end, I ended up cutting out pieces of the picture that I liked and throwing away the rest. I should have kept all of it as a reminder that sometimes what looks good in b&w at 5 x7 does not translate well to 30 x 60 in full color.
Mike Mordecai, Richmond Braves Trading card. This is the trading card I spent the most time on. This was about 11 x 14. Lots of pencil work, airbrushing and finishing painting with acrylics.
This one again was for the Richmond Braves. Eddie Perez, the catcher. Oddly enough, this was one of the fastest pieces as it was only about 5.75 x 7.75 inches. It ended up winning an award in the Beckett Sports Art Gallery and was printed in their Beckett Baseball Monthly May 1995 issue. The spread from magazine is shown above. I was lucky enough to get the picture in the issue signed by Eddie Perez before he was called up to the Braves. One of my favorite pieces. I used some of the finest brushes I had ever used on this one. Along with being sent a couple issues, they sent an Award of Excellence. Friend and Pencil Pushers colleague, Pep Freeman took the artwork and the award to his father, Richard Freeman. He is a Founder and Lead Framer at Freeman-Victorius located in Charlottesville. They have been professionally framing pictures and selling prints since 1938. Incredible work. The Framed picture and award are shown above.
This is a piece we did to pitch the Richmond Renegades on doing some trading cards of their own. Unfortunately they could not justify it, as their fan support was not there. Some years later when showing this piece, a friend of mine recognized this player as a friend of his. He wanted to buy the piece, but I have a hard time parting with my sports pictures.
Another 1995 Richmond Braves Trading Card. Darren Reed - Catcher. The actual card from the set is seen below the image. This image was pretty much straight airbrush and colored pencil. Some brush work for detailing.
Posting some older work. This was one of my last really super detailed paintings. Barry Sanders. Did this one right before he retired. Exciting to watch his skillful running. Sometimes I look back at it and wonder why I spent so much time in details. Updated this post 1/14/12 to post a closer up shot of the detail and texture of the board.
This is the color version of the black and white one posted previously. Not sure what I will do next to this one, but I may take out the computer and do some traditional painting.
Been a lazy Sunday. Decided to work on a picture for a guy I used to shoot pool against in league. I did a black and white and then a color version. Not sure how I feel about them yet. I may take the color one and push it further.
Here is another of my baseball products. I used a 3D program to render this one up and finished it in photoshop. The BAT CLACKER!!! Didn't have wings, so it resides on my storage drive now.
Every now and again I mess with my 3D program. Three of us at work pitched some baseball ideas awhile back. Unfortunately it wasn't an area our company felt comfortable with. Regardless, we had some pretty good ideas. This was a start for a "Bat Stein". It was either going to be porcelain collectible mug with team insignia on the bat, or a rotocast plastic cup "giveaway" at the ball park.
