It's that season again!

It's basketball season! Michigan St. is going to play UNC for the NCAA championship tonight and the NBA playoff is just a couple of weeks away. Here are some preliminary studies and sketches for a storyboard that I'm working on and might possibly turn into a short animation. It's a scene of basketball actions juxtaposed to classical ballet music to point out the beauty and elegance of basketball players and the discipline they apply to themselves to be good at what they do, as well as to stretch the definition of dance that many people might possess.

Here's an image I found interesting. This is a page of choreographical notes for Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. It's got a very nice energy to it because there are drawings made in order to figure something out, but what I found especially intriguing is that the arrows and circles look so much like the x's and o's drawn by a basketball coach, matching exactly with the central idea of this project.

This is a great project to work on on the side because it's about every fundamental aspect of an illustrator's practice - drawing people, drawing hands and feet, drawing body language, movement / motion, dimension, graphics (styles), research, and communication. I'm beginning to look into William Kentridge and his animation. Also, I want to push the graphics a little more in the next round of sketches and thumbnails.

The Black Album

Had a good day in the studio yesterday as I was able to work on my comics and took some time to work on a couple of side projects during the breaks. Here are a couple of selected drawings I made for Metallica's The Black Album while I listened to it.

What I love so much about Metallica and heavy metal music from that time period is that these artists are so musically savvy and have extremely solid fundamentals and backgrounds in classical music, their techniques are impeccable, and all the while sounding so heavy and with so much attitude. What they do with rhythm, structure, and dynamics remind me a lot of Jackson Pollock's paintings, so you'll find it evident in the first drawing.

Lots of room to explore further with this project, so sleep with one eye open and watch out for more to come.

album artwork

Spent most of the day listening to Norah Jones and working on this album cover art for my friend. Not so satisfied with the way the face turned out 'cause I know I can make a prettier girl out of her, and probably could've used better execution especially with the headphone, but oh well I don't feel like redrawing it. Even though I didn't get paid, this turned out to be a fun thing to have worked on. It got me thinking about drawing figuratively vs. abstractly, about translating music into graphics, and about branding - representing somebody else's personality. For this particular project I only needed to do the front and back cover, but making artwork for a musician could involve a whole campaign - websites, posters, the artwork in the booklet that comes with the CD, and even the artist's appearance. After working on these two pieces it occurred to me that it would be a great idea to re-design campaigns for some of my favorite albums in my own way and with my own interpretation of the music. I'd get a chance to improve and show off my understanding and appreciation for music, too.