New stuff

What's that noise?

A drawing for a children book I'm illustrating. The actual drawing hasn't been okay-ed yet, but here's what I did. Next step is to add color to it and clean it up a bit. The color that's on it right now isn't the final color... it's a quick ten minute coloring I did specifically for this post so that I'm not uploading a boring black and white image. The final color product won't look anything like this one. Enjoy!

Misc. Drawings

Yesterday while substitute teaching for a high school math class I decided to take some computer paper and sketch. The students were working on their math worksheets and studying for their test, so I was able to do some drawing (I wouldn’t want you to think I’m neglecting a class). So I created these four images while at the high school. I actually drew a ton of other images, but several students saw me drawing and were admiring the pictures and asked me to draw something for them to keep. About 3 or 4 more drawings that I did yesterday actually went out to some students who requested a drawing. Anyway, here is what I have from yesterdays drawing fun. All of the drawings done were very quick and rough drawing done with a ball point pen. No color or cleaning up of the images have been done yet.

Enjoy!

Karate Kip & Ninja Ned in a "Flash"

Adobe Flash CS3 to be exact. If you've been to my art blog before, you may notice this drawing a little further down into my portfolio as having been a sketch that I did a while back. I had never taken this drawing and finished it with color because for some reason I didn't think that Photoshop would really do to the image what I had imagined for it. It, in my mind, had more of a solid feel to it that I'm I know you can get with Photoshop; but my problem is that when I work with Photoshop I tend to want to get into shading and minor details that I didn't want to get with this image. I wanted to give this image a Cartoon Network, Saturday morning cartoon feel to it. Hopefully it has that feeling. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the drawing. There's no real story to these two characters. Enjoy!

Save the Cheerleader, Save the world

I drew this picture when I first started watching the shoe Heroes and was a HUGE fan. I'm still trying to learn the Flash software and figured that this picture would be a great image to use for me to practice. I found the picture and used it in my own self training of Flash CS3. I'm still learning flash, but for a novice I think I'm not lookin' to shabby. Any feedback, criticism, comments, etc are always encouraged and definitely welcome. Any flash tips would also be greatly appreciated. Thank's for stopping by.

Enjoy,

Sharks

Today I decided to teach myself Flash. I'm using Adobe Flash CS3. I'm trying to give myself a few weeks to learn the software and I'm starting today with the basics. Today I spent the day trying to understand the software and the menu options using an old drawing that I did this summer. I took the shark drawing and decided to digitize it using Flash. I'm sure it's a very amateur job and I'm sure that a lot of professional Flash artists will look at this and not think much of it... but it's my first attempt at flash and I'm proud... haha. So I'll leave it at that and hopefully as I teach myself more things through the days my work will get better and look more professional. Enjoy,

And Old CG character that I modeled

This is an old CG character that I modeled but never finished. I found it while browsing through my art work folders and I figured that I would post it up onto my blog. Enjoy!

Figure Drawings

I realized that I don't have any figure drawing images that I've done. I went into my computer and found a few images to add to my portfolio.

Enjoy!

Happy Birthday Greg!

On Friday, December 18th, my friend Greg turned 40 years old. A group of my friends and I ended up celebrating his birthday over a nice dinner at a friend’s sister’s house in Temecula, and then a trip to San Diego for a night of partying and drinking. This drawing is an image that my friend (the party organizer) had asked me to create for Greg's birthday card. The drawing itself was finished in about 30 minutes and the coloring was done really quick in about an hour using Photoshop CS 3 and my computer’s mouse. Happy Birthday Greg! Enjoy! - Sergio

Random drawing and coloring

This is a random drawing of a friend that is on my Facebook. I wanted to sketch something quick, and my friend had been asking me to turn him into a cartoon, so I decided to quickly grant his request. They're jut random designs, so I didn't stick to any particular model for any of the drawings. The coloring was done using Photoshop CS2. Enjoy!

Sergio

Character Sketches 01 - Flower Guy

For the last two days I have been working hours on end on either sketching or coloring elaborate scenes. On both of those days, I went to bed on, or after, 2 a.m. Today I thought I would get a good night sleep and keep it simple. I still wanted to produce a new drawing, but I didn't want to have to spend hours working on it until it was finished. I thought I would keep things simple today and do a few REALLY fast and simple and rough character sketches of my flower guy in different situations which wouldn't really be characteristic of him (or her). The drawings didn't take me more than a few minutes to do, and the coloring was even faster. I just slapped on some really fast color on Photoshop and that was it. Anyway, I thought the drawings were pretty fun and thought I would share them with you today. I think I'm enjoying drawing this flower character; although his petals can get pretty complicated when drawing certain actions or perspectives. But part of the challenge of art is getting it just right. Well, Enjoy! - Sergio

I'll give you the sun...

Here is another drawing from the series that I am creating using my sweet dream flower character and nightmare character. In this drawing, the flower character is creating the sun in his peaceful universe out of the magical pollen coming from his flowery head. Once I finish the digital color version of this drawing, I will upload it onto Blogspot. I should hopefully have it done either later today, or some time tomorrow. Comments, suggestions, and critiques are always appreciated. Enjoy. - Sergio

Below is the colored version of my sketch from above. All of the coloring was done on Photoshop. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, but then I've also been staring at this drawing for hours, so some fresh eyes would be a good thing. I would love and appreciate feedback from anyone who is looking at the drawing (both the sketch and the colored drawing). If you have any color suggestions or just think that I have no coloring skills on Photoshop and can give me feedback... then so be it... haha. I want your advice. Enjoy!

Sweet Dreams and Nightmares

It has been a while since I uploaded a brand new drawing onto my portfolio. With that in mind I decided to take some time last night to do something new. This drawing is a visual representation of my Sweet Dreams vs. Nightmare film that I wanted to do at Cal Arts as my senior project. Instead, I decided to turn the story into a children’s book first. In this scene, the nightmare character is trying to demonstrate to the sweet dream character how things whither and dye. In this scene, the nightmare character is explaining to the sweet dream character that when the dream is over, the entire world will wither and die just like that flower. I don’t want to get into too much detail with this story. For now, enjoy the image. If you have any interest in learning about this story feel free to e mail me about it. Below, I have included the original pencil drawing as one image, and the final colored drawing as another image. Click on the image that you want to see to enlarge it. Enjoy!

Eternal Re-Birth (add-on)

It's been a while since I had posted any new drawing. Last week I received an e mail from the girl who wanted me to draw the "Eternal Re-Birth" tattoo for her. She had asked me if I would add an additional portion to the tattoo just below the main drawing so that the tattoo would hit her elbow. I agreed to help her out with it, and this is what I came up with. Any comments or suggestions are greatly appreciated. Obviously I'm not done coloring the entire thing. But you'll get the gist of what the whole thing will look like. Enjoy! Sergio Rios

Eternal Re-Birth (Another One)

A few months ago someone who had stumbled on my blog contacted me asking me about my first "Eternal Re-Birth: Earth, Air, Fire, Water" drawing. She was interested in that drawing as a tattoo and had written to me asking me if, 1) She could use that image as a template for what she would like to have tattooed on herself, 2) If I would be willing to help her out with the design of the tattoo and add/modify things. I was very flattered that someone was even interested in that drawing and I gladly agreed to help her out. I know that it has been a very long time since my last drawing. I have been buried in my school work. For those of you who don't know, I am back at school yet again for, this time, my teaching credential. I have decided to slow down my pursuit of a career in Animation/Arts and try to become an Elementary School teacher and do freelance art and illustration on the side. It was a tough decision but I think ultimately it may be the right one. Time will tell. Anyway, here is the second version of my Eternal Re-Birth:Earth, Wind, Fire, Water drawing. I think this one looks a lot more cleaned up and I feel like it has a better flow to it. But it is not my job to critique my own art. That job is yours; So feel free to be as harsh as you want, or as kind as you want. Any feedback is greatly appreciated and welcome. Enjoy, Sincerely, Sergio Rios

P.S. since I really haven't posted anything in a really long time I suppose I can post another drawing that I did a few weeks ago but didn't feel inclined to post it on my blog. I'm not really a huge fan of this drawing that you see below. But I figure that I'll just post it now since I haven't put anything new up on my blog in about five or four months. So I'll include it with work I have done during this time of my absence. Enjoy,

Karate Kip and Ninja Ned

Today I was sitting at Barnes and Nobel Book store and drawing. This is a fun one that I came up with. His name is Karate Kip and Ninja Ned. They are bad-ass high school students who double as crime fighters. Not a very original concept, but the drawing was fun. Enjoy!

Character Sketch of my friend Sarah - For "The Adventures of Sarah and Sergio" comic

Below is a quick character sketch that I did of my friend Sarah. Sarah and I have an ongoing comic where we battle each other out in the form of a comic. Since she currently lives in Los Angeles, and I'm in Temecula trying to get to L.A. she and I have to do our comic battles online for the world to see. If you scroll down to my links section on this blog you can catch our comic. The title is "The Adventures of Sarah and Sergio". I had to stop working on the comic for a little bit since I'm currently trying to focus my attention and energy into finding a job. But I decided last night to start working on a drawing for my new comic. This is the drawing that I will use for the comic. If you want to see how this drawing will fit into the comic, you'll have to check into the site some time this week and find out. It should hopefully be funny.

This drawing was sketched with a Col Erase pencil on animation paper, scanned into the computer, and painted on Adobe Photoshop with several layers. The drawing and painting is still not complete but you can still get a pretty nice gist of the whole picture. I hope you enjoy it. And as always, your criticism is always welcome. Enjoy.

Click on the Thumbnail Image above to expand it and see it clearly.

Random Charicature

Today I was sitting at the Town Center Mall in Valencia, CA waiting for to go check in on the portfolio day at Cal Arts. While I was sitting at the mall I saw an older man and I really liked his exaggerated face. So I drew him into a caricature. Here he is for you to see. Enjoy.

Curly Fry's Trick and Treat

Here is another drawing I did for "Diary of a Couch Potato". Dressing up on Halloween, for the Fry family, can be a difficult thing. Most years Curly Fry is either an Avocado, a pickle, the McDonalds McNugget, etc. But this year Curly decided to attempt a Mummy disguise. Well when you're a potato wrapped in toilet paper, it's easy to confuse the outcome. Enjoy,

Ursula Grew Hair

This is my first time ever attempting to create any CG hair using Maya. I figured that since I spent so much time modeling Ursula, that perhaps I should spend the time to figure out how to add hair to her. So these are my results. The hair, when rendered, is extremely lit with no shadow maps. I'm still trying to tinker around with the settings to figure out why the hair seems to glow, but it's still a mystery to me. I think it has something to do with the lighting system I had created to illuminate my character. The rendering is done using Maya's rendering software which isn't good at all. I am trying to get either Mentalray or Renderman to create a much better and much more defined render of the hair dynamics created. For now you will have to just accept what I have here since it's beyond my control. But keep in mind that I am working like a mad man to figure out a way to create nicer and more believable hair. It's all a work in progress. Enjoy.

Front and Profile screen capture of Ursula with her hair.

A profile render of her hair. I'm still trying to figure out Maya hair and and still trying to figure out, also, why this hair is rendering super bring and almost glowing.

A render of Ursula with her hair. I'm still learning a lot about Maya.

Little Boy CG character

During my senior year at Cal Arts I took my first CG modeling class and this was my final character that I created for the semester. It was through that class where I began understanding the level of difficulty in CG modeling and the tedious process. But through that class I developed a fascination with MAYA and its seemingly endless capabilities that I want to learn. Today I decided to re-visit that character and fix things on him and add hair to his model. I fixed the lips and actually bridged the open gap between the upper and lower lip so that the character can actually shut his mouth without showing his teeth. I fixed his occipital portion of his head and rounded it a bit more. The original character took me about 3 days to finish. He was modeled with Polygons and his hair was created with Maya's hair dynamics. His teeth and tongue are also fully models which I will show on a later post. For now, enjoy what I have.

Made using Maya 6.0 and Maya 8.0. Polygon modeling with Dynamic hair.

Four Panel view. (The hair is different in this one. I'm keeping the orange)

The Diary of a Couch Potato : Meet the Fry Family

Here is another drawing that was inspired by a student in middle school that I was subbing for. He had asked for me to draw him a drawing of a couch potato, and from that drawing of a simple potato watching TV I came up with the idea of creating an entire couch potato family. That's where the Fry family comes in. There is Spud Fry (The Father), Frenchie Fry (The mother), Smally Fry or better known as Small Fry (the Baby brother), and Curly Fry (the older brother). They get around town either hopping since they don't have legs, or they ride on a couch-like wheelchair for paraplegics using a switch that they can control with their mouth and tongue. Well, enjoy the Fry family.

Meet the Fry Family : Spud Fry, Frenchie Fry, Small Fry, Curly Fry.

An image of their Couch-like wheelchair that the fry family uses to get around in.

Cowboy Kitt and Giddy-up Cow Dog

Today I was substitute teaching for a sixth grade class at Margarita Middle School and the kids in my class caught wind that I draw and that I use to work for Disney designing characters for their games. To make a long story short, the kids all started asking me to draw things for them. One little boy asked me if I could draw him a "Cowboy Kitty Cat" and I told him I would do it, but he would have to pick it up during lunch. This is the quick drawing that I came up with. I gave the little boy the original drawing; But not before I asked him to run it up to the office and Xerox me a copy of it. Here is the digital outcome of the drawing I did. The coloring was done with Photoshop CS3. I figured I would give 3D a little rest and show you that I can still draw the old school way. Hopefully tomorrow I can upload another cute drawing idea that a student wanted me to draw for him. Enjoy.

Above Image: Cowboy Kitty AND Giddy-up Cowdog