Yaya Dub

I did this today to take a break from the fiverr gigs that I am catching up to. I have been trying to keep to a work schedule that ends at 6pm everyday to keep health issues at bay.  I also like to have some time in the day to be for art that I could do for myself.

Today I grabbed a photo online of the current darling of daytime Filipino television, "Yaya Dub". I'm pretty sure she is a very talented person, but much of the success of the segment in the noontime show, Eat Bulaga, that she highlights with her "loveteam" wasn't in the original plan when she was taken in as part of the program. That said, it doesn't diminish her in any way and credit must be given to the creative team behind the show for recognizing an opportunity when they caught her being distracted at the sight of the good looking also fairly new addition to the cast and reformatting the "Problem Solving" segment into the very first "kalyeserye" on television.

Although I not a big fan of local programs, and don't really follow what has now been locally labeled "aldub mania" or something to that effect, I'm glad the show's writers, directors, and cast have come up with a series that entertains as much as educates the youth on the values of proper courtship practices.

Another Nathalie Hayashi portrait

After doing some revisions on artwork on that have already been approved and cleared previously, I took some time to make another portrait piece.
Well, designing characters isn't easy and it's nice to change pace once in a while and doing portraits helps me relax and declutter my head. I don't know, there's just something about it that helps me unwind.

Like EB Babe Molly, I've tried to capture Miss Hayashi's beautiful likeness more than once before. I think the first time though was when she posted on Facebook a picture of hers that she would love for her fans to draw in anime style. There have been a lot of those types of artwork done before by japanese and non-japanese artists but most of those use the exact pose and setting of the reference so I did my interpretation in a different background and made her into an angel. I also used her likeness in a vector/vexel practice.

Captain Crossfit

One of the most challenging things I've done as a freelance artist and a comic book creator wannabe is creating characters based on a real person. It's particularly tough when you're having to do it by request or service for a complete stranger, especially when in my case, meeting the client in person has literally between very little to absolutely no chance of happening.

Since every person is unique and not a lot of his/her actual personality or distinct nuances can be derived straight from a photo, it's easy to get complaints and other negative reactions when your designs don't quite get certain traits the client is looking for. A lot of the time, though, problems like these can be solved or better yet, avoided by proper communication. You can't fault a client for sending photos of himself/herself that may look good for them but don't really help much as drawing references. Expect that they expect you to be the artist and that you know what to do with them. Asking the right questions is key and knowing the specifics that I need to get a design correctly makes it easy and sometimes it's clients who ask the right questions or have a clear, definite picture of the character design in mind.

I've been very fortunate that most of the clients I've met through fiverr have a clear enough idea of the characters they need help creating and communicate them very well and yet are very open to suggestions for improvement.
Creating Captain Crossfit for my client, Mike, was a breeze because not only have all the
details for the character like costume theme and colors been specifically laid out but a personality profile and references for background objects were all provided right away.

I'm also glad that despite a timer to get a gig done starts immediately when it is ordered, most clients aren't in a big rush to get the art done no matter how excited they are about the rough drafts that I send them for review. Thankfully, it's also these types of clients who gladly hand you a 5-star rating.

Another EB Babe Molly Portrait

I had a busy week doing 12 character design models for a fiverr client in the past week plus 4 other concept sketches for several others that I had to take a break and do a little art for myself.

So here's another digital portrait of one of my favorite subjects to draw, Miss Molly from the most popular noontime program in my country.

I've tried to capture her likeness in my art several times now. I've even drawn her as Supergirl. She may not have the stereotypical look that models, actresses, or most other celebrities but there is definitely a spark of genuine spiritual goodness, a pure inner joy that shines through when I see her face. It's easy to get the impression that she's not only gorgeous but has a kind and generous heart as well.

Maybe next time I'll try to capture her likeness in anime style.

Titanore: Another 5-Star Fiverr Rating

On May 11th of this year (2015), I got an order for a concept art sketch for "an old Titan that has been living at the earth's core for centuries". The rest of the description goes :
very powerful, has blackened fire and lightning resistant half-plate armor and sword from iron-nickel alloy from the core.

So here's my rendition of it:

I had fun with this gig and I'm really grateful for the 5-star rating.

My First Colored and Gig Extra Order on Fiverr

On May 1st of this year I got a request on my fiverr gig for a sketch of a female superhero-type character. The buyer had very clear description of what he wanted drawn "...taller than average, blonde hair, beautiful face, long legs...", which is really good and helps me a lot to imagine the look and he continued with more specifics -"should be
smiling and upbeat, dressed in casual clothing-jeans, shirt, etc...pose, something fun and
quirky, maybe shrugging shoulders...".

It really feels good to start off with an order when you see how specific a buyer is with what he wants and the fact that he also sent a reference for the expression and pose that he was describing, sets me in the right direction of what to draw. Although my sketch is only very loosely based on the photo reference I was given, it helps that I can easily make studies that I know is close to what the client wants without having to do the tedious and time consuming research.

The study I sent had only a minor revision request from the buyer ("could you make the shirt a little longer") which I was happy to oblige for the cleaned up submission and thankfully, he was so excited with the end product that I not only received another 5-star rating but another order right away. He ordered a turnaround modelsheet for the character in color and purchased the original source file gig extra (and another 5-star review: "Fantastic service and high quality art. I couldn't be happier.") What started out a 5-dollar gig got me a $60 sale and it's thanks to having a buyer who helped me help him.

Allie Haze Portrait

Here's a digital portrait practice I did last June. I found another picture online to use as model and the face is just gorgeous and the smile is captivating and looks so genuine. 

My First Five-Star Rating on Fiverr

It doesn't take much to express gratitude. Sometimes, for artists like me who have to draw for a living, it takes a very small gesture of appreciation to make the job however great or small to it make it more worthwhile.

On the first week of April this year I got my second client on fiverr.com. The job requested was another black and white, character design/modelsheet/turnaround. I don't know if he was referred to me by the first client but I was grateful to get more orders.
Since I had started to go completely digital only a few months earlier, I'm also thankful that a friend of mine had helped me get Retas Stylos (a vector app, primarily for professional 2D animation work) installed on my computer. Because I don't have much training or know-how on artist apps other than Adobe Photoshop, using Stylos helps me
get digital inking done a lot faster.

The design was of a female ninja/merc with dreadlocks which wasn't difficult to do because username "thelost" provided all the pertinent references and those helped quite a bit. Since I didn't get a review on the previous gigs, I didn't realize that option was actually available to buyers and sellers on fiverr and I was pleasantly surprised when I got a notification on my phone that I received a positive review and rating.

It was very short and simple, really. A mere "Thanks for delivering so quick. You did a great job!!", but it really felt good to read it. I may not have gotten the same kind of pay from other agents that sent work my way before for the same type of work and the art I submitted may not be in the same quality as the top notch artists that I look up to, but those words made it feel that way. It also did get me a 5-star, 100% positive rating on my profile, which I know led more people to trust in the service that I'm providing on this marketplace - a pretty big deal considering the number and competitiveness of other artists in the same category.

My First Fiverr Gig

Earlier this year I stumbled upon a website which describes itself as "the marketplace for
creative and professional services."
I browsed around and saw that services like creative writing, animation, programming, voice-overs were offered and neatly catalogued. I also saw that graphics and illustration
services were offered, although I was a little concerned that the base price for all the services on the site is $5. As a freelance artist myself who pitches my services on other
artist portfolio sites like deviantart.com who had found increasingly tough competition getting clients from younger artists who put their talents out for very low pay rates, I
thought $5 was really going so low.
I did learn though, by looking over some of the seller profiles that most services still go
beyond the basic price and can go up to around $40 per gig and some extras on top of the
basic gig can get you to up $150 per order.
I decided then to give it a try. I decided this site is mostly for buyers who didn't have the kind of resources that big companies have but have projects that they were willing to shell out what they can and figured out what type of service as an illustrator I was willing to give for 5 bucks and signed up and posted a gig.
It took about a week before I got my first order from a buyer under the username "kingsley8888". I honestly was excited to see how it goes and was happy that it was for a simple job - a two-angle modelsheet/ turnaround for use in 3D modeling. I usually get more for the kind of service the customer ordered, but as I have struggled for several months and was literally completely broke during the entire previous holiday season, this was like manna from the gods for me, and afterall, no costume design was required.

The gig required clean digital lines and I'm glad that I have Retas Stylos, an animation app installed because other than that, I only use Adobe Photoshop for my art and it would take a lot longer for me, at least to get this done. This was a 10-dollar job, 5 for each pose, so taking longer would not have been as cost efficient or productive.
It may not look like much, but I'm glad the client was happy and quickly ordered a second project which was another two-pose turnaround described as a Christiano Ronaldo body type model.

I'm really grateful for this site and I'm equally grateful for my first client who gave me a five-star review because I'm pretty sure it helped a lot in getting me my next clients and also for keeping me with a means to earn a living and also the opportunity to meet and help people out with original creations they would otherwise not be able to afford to realize.
Check out my fiverr profile and gigs from this link:
https://www.fiverr.com/iphibbz

Briga

It was a heartbreaking February when I learned her TV show was canceled. Oh, well...
Here's my rendition of Briga Heelan for fans of "Ground Floor" like me.

A Lady in Red

another digital portrait practice...

Margaux

This is my portrait of Mocha Uson, main hottie of the Filipino sexy girlband, Mocha Girls.

#mochagirls #mochauson #mochausonblog #gandangpilipina

Sassy Stephanie

My digital portrait of the beautiful Steph from Filipino girl band, Sassy Girls.
I should have more to say on a blog, right? I don't know what else to say on this post, though.
I have been a fan of Steph since before she became an EB Babe member on the Filipino noontime show, Eat Bulaga.
Man, you should hear this lady sing! 

#sassygirls #sassysteph #shiwakare

Julia Clarete

digital portrait of a favorite Filipina singer/actress of mine.
Being and actor/actress in Philippine showbiz is a complicated thing. They don't usually promote new TV shows or movies by guesting on talk shows, partly because we don't really have those the way US audiences (or maybe most other audiences in the world) have The Tonight Show in the evenings and Good Morning, America in the daytime. They guest on variety shows or game shows to either sing or dance.
Julia is in a different league of cool -she actually does sing- and is a rocker chick at that. She started out mainly as a drama actress but as one of the many hosts of a noontime variety show she has shown more character with her bubbly, vibrant, and funny persona as well.

 

Joycee

Filipina car show hottie, Joycee Castro.
Ever see a face that made you just stop and say, "wow"?
This one did it for me. Saw this girl at a car show and my mind went completely blank for a  minute. After I picked myself up off of the floor, I had to stare another minute and just go, "wow, she's really pretty."
Then I went home and drew her picture.

Laboching

This is a portrait Mocha Franz, my favorite current member of the Philippines' sexy girl band, Mocha Girls.
How could any lady be sexy and cute at the same damn time?! It's ridiculous how impossibly hot this cutey is, you could literally just stare at her the whole day with her looks melting your heart away and you'd still be shaking your head in disbelief.

Little Marian

This was done as requested by a high school batchmate of mine quite a while back. I finished just in time for her 7th birthday.

Wonder Woman digital paint practice

I found and downloaded a very interesting cosplay photo of Wonder Woman on the net and went ahead and did some photo-manipulation/digital painting on photoshop on it and here's what I got.

Sassy Girl Steph digi-doodle

still self-studying this old program called photoshop, lol,... here's a little experiment on photomanipulation

Russ5377 Collected edition Cover

Haven't done anything that I felt good enough to post here. I had fun with this quick piece I did over the last couple of days. Roughed this out on 9"x12" pad and "inked" on Retas Stylos HD then colored on Adobe Photoshop.
The original interior art in this collection were done by a couple of friends of mine as well.

Son Goku

My Dragonball Z fan art finally done...almost...
I was a fan of this anime when it hit Philippine shores in the late 1990's. It was refreshing to get to see cartoons be fun and yet have adventures and storylines again unlike most of the cartoons we've been importing from the US around this time which were mostly a series of gags per episode of poorly drawn characters.
Not long after Dragonball Z came out, I landed a job at the local satellite studio of Toei Animation - the company that produces this show- just in time to do assisstant animator work on Dragonball GT, SailorMoon S, Teacher Nube, Kindaichi, Kitaro and Hana Yori Dango.
I went on to do key animation work on One Piece, Pretty Cure, and Beet the Vandel Buster before I quit to try my luck having a studio of my own.
This piece is inspired by the Man of Steel movie. Watching the action sequences on Dragonball always used to make me think, "wow, if they ever make new Superman movies, the action has to be something like these with all the super powered beings he has to fight" and it seems that's exactly what they did.
I can't wait to see the repurcusions to Superman's career all the devastastion left behind in the wake of Kal-El fighting off the alien invaders when the sequel comes out.

Molly

more practice...
Miss Molly of EB Babes has such an endearing face it's always interesting to use her likeness as a subject when practicing doing portraits.
It's hard to get looking at her and it inspires me to work even harder to get the likeness right.
I'm sure I'd be using her pictures as models at least a few more times and I hope if she or her fans see my work, they wouldn't be disappointed.

New 52 Superman

Here's more practice on vector art stlye drawing. This one on New 52 Superman.

Autumn

grabbed some photos off the web and used them for more vector art practice

Vector portait commission

So, a friend of mine is getting married. He asked me to draw his soon-to-be bride as his gift to her and I gladly obliged. I wasn't confident though that I could get this right because they live across the world in New York, USA and I haven't met his girlfriend but I'm glad he's really happy with the way this portrait turned out.

Jahziel vexel portrait

vexel practice using the beautiful likeness of Filipina model, Jahziel Manabat.

Batman vexel

Another vector style practice. This time on Adam West Batman
My favorite superheroes growing up were Spider-Man and Batman. Actually, they still are.
And I remember seeing the Batman television series when I was a kid thinking he was so cool and then starting to read Detective Comics not realizing as how much more "grown up" the comics were than the tv show until the Michael Keaton movie came out.
With the gritty, "real world" tone of the Dark Knight Trilogy with a growling Christian Bale, it's great that we can look back to Mr. West's Batman, think back to our childhood and see that superheroes are just as good when they don't take themselves too seriously and just be fun.

Duckface

Here's another portrait practice in the vexel style.
I love how beautiful faces look just as pretty when they're in wacky or contorted poses.
This is why I chose the gorgeous Rosie Huntington-Whiteley for this session.
I chanced upon this pic over the interwebs and was smitten with her ducky pout.
It's fun to do portraits with character.

Quick vexel practice

This vexel practtice is based on the likeness of sexy model, Mia Solis.
She's actually a redhead but I wanted to keep to flat strokes for the hair on this piece and
the red just didn't quite work like I wanted.
The grainy texture that I applied also made the red overlay look a bit sparkly, I think.
Oh, well, more practice then...

Kajal vexel practice

practiced more vector/vexel style portrait using Kajal Agarwal's likeness...

Hippolyta colored

Finally found the time to color this old sketch, was hoping to make it look more like Lynda Carter but didn't quite manage it.

Nathalie Vector

simple vector-style portrait practice on photoshop, using Miss Nathalie Hayashi as model

Leah D. as Lightning

Have had a sketch of former Jpop singer Leah Dizon lying around. Decided to color it today and added in armor based on Final Fantasy XIII-2 character, Lightning.

Angel Nathalie

This is my anime-style interpretation of local vixen Nathalie Hayashi's from one of her photos. A side-by-side comparison may be viewed here: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=532881450064162&set=a.388604401158535.99540.100000269364974&type=1&theater

Saida "vector" portrait

There are a lot of very impressive artists out there and lately I've been seeing tons of talented ones making magnificent vector portraits. After countless failed attempts at making a fairly accurate portrait of this lovely girl I used to see a lot on a local noontime show (and whom I have a really big crush on),  I decided against my better judgement to try my hand at doing it vector style. I'm obviously not as adept as most vector artists, and have limited painting skills - learning mainly on self-study, but I hope I did pretty well on my first try. This was done on Photoshop which isn't really what real vector artists use, but it's the only digital software I use for most of my artwork.

The Dark Knight sketch

Was having a bit of trouble getting some drawings for work right or the way I want them to be, at least, so I decided to do a warm up sketch and came up with this little filler for my sketchpad.

Stargirl concept sketch

I haven't posted any new stuff in a while (a drawback of being a freelance artist juggling too many projects with non-disclosure clauses), so I roughed out a quick concept sketch of one of the characters from a webcomic, "The Celestial", for which I used to do art. I never actually got the chance to draw her on the comic series during my stint because she was already dead, but I really enjoyed designing what she could have looked like if had to appear in the chapters of the series that i drew.

Zombie Plague promo art

this is the promo pin up for the Kickstarter campaign of RSquared Studios' "Zombie Plague" project; I did pencils and inks, colors are by Ronda Pattison.
please head on over to the kickstarter link: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/847163926/zombie-plague-issue-1; we have only a few days left and hope you can help us out. thanks!

another Starfall concept poster

unfinished colors on an artwork by Willie Blue Bussell

StarFall concept poster

pencils by willie bussel and me, colors by me.

Bottled

pencil commission of selena bottled by doctor facilier, colored in photoshop cs

Hit-Girl commission

I posted 2 versions of this piece because I like them both. I rarely get asked to redo a commission after the final stage of color and I thought I had it right when I sent the golden blonde version. the client preferred a more copper tone to her hair though, which I think looks pretty good too...

Selena In SludgeBucket commission

this is my "realistic" take of the sludgebucket character from "the real ghostbusters" cartoon series.

Gypsy Girl commission

I enjoyed doing this piece. it was fun to do the over-sized fabric of her dress and to do a turban-wearing lady for the first time. one of the reasons I like drawing girls with long hair is that I can practice creating the illusion of motion in static poses by drawing flowing hair. in this piece I had to practice that effect with the long cloth.

Tigra commission (colored)

Hippolyta

since I enjoyed drawing the princess diana commission, decided to do another "amazon" warrior sketch - her mother, queen hippolyta. guess all the hype about a new wonder woman tv series rubbed off on me. I think I'll try to make her look more like Lynda Carter when I do a colored version of this piece.

Princess Diana commission (colored)

I couldn't decide how to color the background but wanted to suggest majesty and radiance, to give the impression that she is a goddess...