Little Brother Preview

This is a small section from a page of a book I'm illustrating for work. Still needs tweaking but here is a glimpse. 

Odd Discovery

Big Guy

Just playin' around.

Hurray. You did it...

A Civilized Congratulations from Jeff Call on Vimeo.

Jellyfish!

Mmmmm... no.

A Duck

Fuzzy Dude

I've been looking at the work of Julian Bizat of "Headless Productions" fame and letting it influence my work lately. He's not REALLY finished but it's a start.

Slug-Bird

I'm sure your just taking a break but this seemed funny at the time.

Untitled

Happy Easter!

A Taste of Things to Come

SPAAAAAAAAAAACE FROOOOOOOOOOOOOG!

Fuzzy Planet

Fuzzy Planet from Jeff Call on Vimeo.

Spaceman and Space Rocks

More Strangeness

Can't Sleep?

Here's a deep cut for all you night owls out there. You know who you are.

Frustration Building

Spent nearly all day working on my experimental animation and feel like I just developed one more problem after another. It felt a lot like this...

Strange Doodles

While I should have been doing so many other things... I did this instead. I find it easier to draw when I'm not supposed to, or when I'm supposed to be drawing something else.

Sketches from Stake Conference

Blue to Green and a WIP

This blue guy wishes he were a green guy with a handlebar mustache. I felt quite influenced after looking through Ward Jenkins blog earlier today.

And this is a WIP pic from my experimental final. Can you guess what I am doing?

Finals Week Self Portrait

Actually I had planned on posting something else tonight, but it's not done yet. So you get another primate.

Toby the Fish Out of Water

I was going to paint this in photoshop but didn't have time today. Maybe tomorrow?

Gorilla

Originally there was more story to this image. The gorilla was holding a tiny guy by the shirt... but I needed to hurry and didn't have time to solve that completely (or this really). How about that ugly hand! Blobby, right?

Ape: Flamethrower

Ever since you posted the cowmonkey, Scott, I have NOT been able to stop thinking about monkeys with flamethrowers. This is not a monkey though. This is an ape. Notice the lack of a tail.

This Robot is Upside-Down

The question is: why is he hanging upside-down? And why does he seem happy about it?

Drunken Chimpanzee

He started out in a jump suit holding a flame thrower. I have no idea how he ended up here. I'd like to take a few more passes at this to get it right, but I don't know if I will. 

Emulation Step One: Copying

Yes. I have shamelessly copied a master. I want to do some original stuff in Mignola's style but first I have to learn it... which will consist of me copying him and thinking, "Now why does he do that?" Or, "what does that shape describe exactly?" I'll probably post some boring stuff about breaking down his shape language and light and shadow rules etc... 

There are a few things wrong with this copy that I didn't notice until it was too late. Anyway, this is the first step.

Birthday card

I wanted to try something with halftone, but just don't have the time for it tonight. Instead you get to see this birthday card I made my brother. Meh.

A Coloring Page

Yeah, my wife and I have a primary class. We teach the three year olds. This morning I made a handful of visual aids and a couple pages for them to color. We told them that toucans are very colorful birds. To our surprise every kid in our class decided to make their bird black. I have know idea why.  

And here's one of the visual aids. I love how awkward the red bird's legs are. What is he doing? Anyway three year olds really don't care. They also didn't care that the eagle's left leg looks stupid.  

Beware Molemen

Photo doesn't do the colors justice, but better than my scanner. This started off with the 3 colorful buildings in the middle, then I decided to add the brown building as contrast. That, combined with the fence and the sky and street turned this into something much drearier and darker than I had anticipated. Which meant that Molemen must be to blame.

Pelican

I wish I were quicker at making good design decisions.

The Spaceclops

Drew this really fun, really graphic spaceclops in flash and then moved it into photoshop to paint. I only posted the painted one b/c that's the purpose of this blog. But to be honest, I just prefer the initial guy... Part of what kills the painting is losing some of that awesome orange going on.

Lil' Space Boy

Straight from the camera to this blog...

An Observer

A Polite Cannibal Gives Directions

Here's Some Videos

This. This is the reason I haven't been posting everyday lately. To my shame...


Thumb War from Jeff Call on Vimeo.


The Adventures of Steve and Ringo from Jeff Call on Vimeo.

These aren't pulled off to the degree that I would like them to be. But I have been learning a TON about movie making, and that translates in many ways back to making Estefan. Which is helpful.

Shaky Monster

More Jack Stuffs

There's some weird plant life in the giant's forest. The strangest one still isn't finished.

Puppetry Anyone? WIP

Spent my day watching conference and getting ready for my next experimental animation class assignment: puppetry. I'll be using finger puppets. This will either be really awesome. Or terrible. Either way, I gotta get some of those plastic googly eyes. Those make anything funny.

Death to the Winter Dragon WIP

Where to start on explaining this one... I woke up at 4:30 in the morning yesterday with something like this image in my head. I've been working on it for days, and it's starting to feel muddled... I'm happy with the general staging and many of the color choices I used to block it in. I want to retain a certain over-arching geometric sense to it. But I'm losing some of it in weak decision making. I darkened up the fore-ground elements to really get that sun-rising in the bgd feel, and I'm going back in to lighten-up some of the values in the fore so they pop better. I was looking at several different artists for reference including Eyvind Earle (that's why the tree is so much more textured than anything else). I really have been trying to pay attention to value contrast. Any criticisms? Suggestions? Definitely going to be continuing to work on this one, so anything is welcome.

Jack progress

Here's little Jack in a generic pose. Something's definitely got to change... A walking stick? I mean come on, right? At one point I had painted in a femur bone instead of the stick, just to show how oblivious this kid really is. But, that didn't seem quite right either. There's got to be some kind of more interesting solution... Yeah, I'm fishing for suggestions.