[video] Illustrators of the Future Win

This was a nice surprise to receive in my inbox!



I entered the L. Ron Hubbard's Writers/Illustrators of the Future contest in 2008/2009 as just one of the many scholarship opportunities I'd gathered as a highschool senior. When my submission got enough kudos to move onto the next stage, that was cool enough for me. But then I found out I'd be illustrating the short story of another contest entrant and that I would, along with about 15-20 other writers and illustrators, be getting published in Vol. 26 of Writers of the Future. It's a pretty substantial science fiction/fantasy anthology. I feel extremely honored to be included with such a talented group of people!

Unfortunately, I didn't get to attend both the workshop and the awards ceremony for the vol. 26 winners. It was held in 2010 and I'd just begun entering my core classes at college--I didn't want to interrupt my schooling. (Plus, I couldn't afford to stay in LA for a week.) My parents and I didn't think too much of it until we saw this video last week and realized that no, this awards ceremony was actually a huge deal. And now I feel really bad for missing it. (I'm still broke, though.)

But here's the clip with Simon Cooper, whose amazing, enthralling short story 'Confliction' I got to illustrate, and my own segment that I was not present for. I was wowed that they actually showed my other submissions, too!

Commission: Chaos-Master on dA

Here is a commission I finished recently.

Ice Cream

I made this one day when I was craving ice cream but didn't have any in my freezer.

Looks ALMOST good enough to eat, right?

I am getting some weird shading on my bowl, which shouldn't be happening because it's completely smoothed. The bumpmap might be the reason. Or something completely different. I'm still working on it. (Same with the spoon. Spoons have such weird material!)

Life update + Here there be dragons...

Apologies for not posting in a while. I've been doing random art for people as well as personal stuff for myself, and trying to get the hang of LOTRO while polishing up a ton of animations and branding stuff for my portfolio. Less than six months until graduation!

Here's a commission I finished about a month or so ago. 

And ironically 2012 is the Year of the Dragon. I did this for my school's branch of SIGGRAPH.

Hopefully my next update won't be in two months...

Influence Map

A long time coming, this one.

[original] Nicolai Macamoile

Here is the primary antagonist of my pet story Enigma. Nico is completely charming and affable to a fault. And he truly believes that everything he does, he does with everyone's best interests. Even if he simultaneously knows that he's wrong. 

I'd drawn him up as part of the 30 Days, 30 Character Challenge I participated in this November--as I had a name for him but not a face or a design.

second cousins

My mom usually calls on me around this time of year to draw portraits as gifts for our relatives. This year, the gifts are for two of her nieces/my cousins. The first is Reyne, my first cousin's daughter, and the other is of Gage and Riley, my cousin's sister's kids.
I hope they don't see this before they're supposed to! ;) (They need to be colored, but still.)

In other news, babies are really hard to draw. Forget trying to convey "boy" or "girl", try "human" and not "alien" or "blob-thing".