Fridge Magnet Design Suggestions

A friend of mine asked me to look at a design they were working on for a fridge magnet they were designing for their side business. To give my suggestions I made this image. I like this concept that I came up with of the band aid on the mouse. Just a quick comp but I really like how the whole thing turned out. Names and info have been changed to protect in no cent.

Men might have joy.

I've been wanting to start doing some graphic design with religious themes. I wanted this on my wall.

Figures Drawings from today

Here are some drawings from today's class. I'm really excited with how these turned out. Far from perfect but I have been making progress. These drawings took 1, 5, 20 minutes, and about an hour and a half, with the last half hour spent after the model left cleaning it up. For the last one I tried something I saw a classmate do which was tone the paper before drawing on it by putting down a layer of value (thin layer) then when you're adding shadows you can take away what you put down for highlights. Like how that worked out. And look, a good foot! :)

uFlash Logo Contest

We had a contest at uFlash, the local Adobe Users Group for the Flash platform, to design the logo for the group. These were my entries and I won with the top one.

I'm going to try to make it look a little more like "uf" instead of "if" but I like how it turned out. The "f" part of the design is the logo for the Flash Player so I thought it appropriate to use and add the "u."

The icon for the second one is the symbol for a keyframe in Flash. Also I brought in the top right corner to make it resemble Utah as well.

For winning the contest I get to choose any Adobe software package excluding the Master collection. I'm probably going to get the Creative Suite Production Premium so that I can get After Effects. I'm stoked to have it and do more stuff with it this summer.

Josh at uFlash

I never know how long I'm going to have to study someone while I'm drawing them. Since people don't sit still I just draw my drawings close together since I don't plan on taking them very far. I drew Josh Buhler in pretty quick with pen without any underdrawing, just free handing it, then since he was staying in the same position I shaded him in. I like how it turned out.

Progress in figure drawing

I've really enjoyed my figure drawing this semester. I've been learning a lot about shadows recently, which has been handy in more than just figure drawing, as you can see in the nostrils drawing in the previous post. I plan on taking figure drawing again hopefully with the anatomy for artists class.

Recent Sketches - Cheek bones and Nostrils

While riding the train back from Souzho to Nanjing in China a couple weeks ago I pulled out my sketchbook to draw. I asked Chas and Kirsten to name a facial feature that is less common. Chas said cheek bones. I did one drawing to emphasize the cheek bones, but I didn't like it. Then I drew this guy. I consider him an African. Really fun drawing him and shading him with marker.


Kirsten said nostrils. Again I drew one and i didn't like it. After I got back I still wanted to do one that emphasized the nostrils and I did this. I shaded him with pencil to see how good I could do and I'm really happy with it. I've been working with and learning a lot about shadows recently in my figure drawing class and I see the improvement here.

I need to stop drawing so close to the edge. Well the first one wasn't close to the edge when I started I just kept expanding the drawing until it got there, but the second one was too close. Oh well, they're just sketches.

Flying Through Color Space - uFlash Presentation

I recently gave a presentation at uFlash, the local Adobe Users Group for the Flash Platform. I titled the presentation Flying Through Color Space: Color Management and Flash. In the presentation I gave an overview of what color management is, how it is used in computers, how it is used in browsers, and about the new color correction feature in Flash Player 10.

I became interested in color management when I noticed weird things happening with my images' color when I put them up on the net. One image in particular that baffled me was this one that I took at Chas and Kirsten's wedding.

Image as it appeared in the browser.

I spent a long time on these images developing them to get their colors looking great then when I put them up online the color became desaturated and muddy.

Take a look at these two close ups. The left side is how the image appeared in the browser and the right is how it appeared before I uploaded the image. The roses on the right are so vibrant and the reds so delicious, but on the left it looks like their starting to dry up. Kirsten's hand on the right looks like it has blood in it, but on the left it looks as though she's sick.

The presentation was recorded on Adobe Connect and you can watch an online recording of the presentation in these two parts. The sound is occasionally very choppy but if you can get through it there is good information in there.
http://experts.na3.acrobat.com/p24419633/
http://experts.na3.acrobat.com/p77415933/

As a side note, I had fun designing the template for the slides of this presentation. I looked online for a template to use but most presentation templates are either too loud/busy or they're too plain, so I made my own in Photoshop.

Update: Here's a sum up of the color correction feature for Flash Player 10.

With color correction turned on for Flash player 10 Flash assumes that all images, and all colors on the stage, are in the sRGB color space and treats them as such on systems that have color managment (Windows and Mac have it, Linux does not, and devices may or may not have it).

The way to use this is to convert all your images and colors into the sRGB color space before you bring them into Flash and turn on color correction (stage.colorCorrection = ColorCorrection.ON;).

Doing this is the most consistent method out there for displaying your images on the web and have them viewed on different systems.

Tank Game with Video

At my work we're having a competition to make an innovative application using new technologies. One idea was to make a tank game that used the user's web cam. To make this we were thinking of making it in Flash, in Air (how to deploy Flash on the desktop), using Papervision3D for the graphics, and Adobe Flash Collaboration Service for the video and the multiplayer interaction. I thought it would be great to put the video of the web cam in the cockpit of the tank so I sketched out this picture in Photoshop real quick. We didn't end up doing this idea, but I like the image.

Make a Clamshell Box

Resources to make a Clamshell Box
I've been contacted on how to make a clamshell or portfolio box a couple times. When I took my bookbinding class I got a book with instructions which is what I use. I have found some resources online that seem to be pretty good that you can try out:
- Here's one to make a clamshell box (like my Sketchbook Swirl Clamshell Box or Sarah's Clamshell Portfolio Box. Read the page for how to use the tutorial):
http://www.indiana.edu/~libpres/manual/treatments/clam/front.html
- Corrugated Clamshell box (Read the page for how to use the tutorial):
http://www.indiana.edu/~libpres/manual/treatments/corr/front.html
- And Here is a pdf of instructions.

You can also try finding more instructions. I typed in clamshell box instructions in google and found the links above.

Purchase Portfolio Boxes
Clamshell boxes take quite a while to make, the materials for a normal box is around $25-40 (that's excluding all the tools that are either necessary or really helpful), and if you haven't done any bookbinding then it can be difficult. You can buy portfolio boxes at art stores, like these boxes:
http://www.dickblick.com/products/blick-metal-edge-archival-clamshell-box/
http://www.dickblick.com/products/blick-paper-storage-box/

These aren't as personalized, though you could do something to the outside of them. I could have some fun drawing or painting on the cover of one of those purchased ones.

Custom Made Clamshell Box or Books
Another option is to have me make the box or book for you, I'd love to. It isn't cheep but it can be customized to your project and contents, and I've done it before :). Take a look at my bookbinding tag for to see other books I have made.

I'd also love to draw or paint on one of those purchased portfolio boxes for you. Take a look at my design tag for one style that could work quite nicely or just look around the whole blog for other styles of art that I have done.

My contact info is in my profile.


Happy bookbinding.

Sarah's Clamshell Portfolio Box

I was recently contacted by someone to make for her a clamshell box that she would use to put her portfolio in. She found my Sketchbook Swirl Clamshell Box and wanted me to make her one.

Since I was making a custom box for her I told her that I could design it to compliment her portfolio. I sketched out a bunch of ideas with designs that went along with her portfolio website that she was putting together, along with some that were very different to contrast and emphasize her work.

A page of sketches for the project.

After we narrowed the design down a bit I made a mock of the box in Photoshop. She said that she wanted to go with a zen style of design so I found this zen rock garden image, painted out the large rock in the image and painted in the box. I made the file so that it would be easy to switch and explore different colors quickly.

This is my favorite design and colors for the box.

I explored many colors taken from her designs.


Red, Black, and White = Default Cool Colors. If you need something to look cool try these colors, most of the time they work really well.

Some coloring schemes were just to try something completely different. When I do that I don't usually expect to find one of the final answers to the problem but it helps me stretch out, hopefully go too far, so that I can tone it back down and find something I wouldn't have tried otherwise. This is a good idea for any aspect of what you're creating.




Always nice to pull way back and see the elegance of a simple design. Can be the best solution.

For this one I wanted to see what the box would look like without the thought bubble logo. I tried to go too far with the colors and I think I really hit that with this one. Yup, these colors are wrong for this project, which is what I was going for, but I really like that blue, and I'd be willing to try that on something else.

And an invisible box just 'cause.

Designing this box was a blast.

Here is a post on resources you can use to make your own clamshell box, or please contact me if you would like a custom clamshell box made for you. They aren't cheep, but they can be beautiful and a great compliment and protection to the contents. My e-mail address is in my profile.

Lightning Death Bryce Panthers!

We formed groups here at work for a competition and this was one of our team member's suggested names for the group. Bryce is the leader of the group. I was inspired by the title and made this image. There is our head lightning death Bryce panther!

When Speakers Attack

While at Borders shopping for a project for a class I had this idea come into my head. I think this would make a great block party poster. I think the red is too strong, I should have left it at the orange, used my brown, or just used less of the red. Colored this with PrismaColor and Coptic markers in my sketchbook.

Some figure drawings

Started my figure drawing class today. I took this once before. I'm taking it again because I use my figure drawing skills a lot and I'd like to get them a lot better. It's good to see that I'm at least as good as I left off. I'm not that great at drawing feet or hands yet, especially foreshortened feet (something that is foreshortened is pointing at or away from you and looks shorter because of it). About ten minutes into drawing I had the thought "Ah, it feels good to be figure drawing again." I'm looking forward to this.

Walker at dusk

Having some fun with Photoshop and my nephews and nieces. I was using a tablet to fix up some photos and they wanted me to draw them. This is the one I did of Walker Young. I drew him, then he (age 2) drew the rest of the black lines, and I tried to make a picture of it. Doesn't look terribly like him, but I had a great time painting it.

Body Worlds Sketchbook

Went to Body Worlds on Saturday and it was amazing! Here is my unabridged sketchbook. (Note: Links are to pictures on the Body Worlds website. These images are of real disceted bodies.)

The Archer

The Hurdler

The Kneeling Lady

This exhibit of Body Worlds is in Salt Lake City, Utah. Ten minutes away from my house I realized that I left my skecthbook at home! AH! Luckily they gave us thes really cool little books at the entrance of the show.

Body Worlds is a show of real human bodies. Most of the bodies were put through plastination, a process to replace the water and fat in the body with plastic to preserve it, a process created by Dr. Gunther von Hagens, who's name is on this show. There were full bodies, individual organs, cross sections, and arterial configurations. For the arterial configurations they ran plastic through the veins, let that set, then disolve the rest of the tissue so what is left is just the blood track. The first item of the show was a heart showing all the veins and capilaries on it. There were so many capilaries and they were so small it almost looked like it was covered in fur. The whole show was amazing. It was really interesting to see the organs discected out and preserved so well. Also it was great that they showed examples of healthy specimins next to unhealthy specimins. The fift picture of my sketches shows a spine with scoliosis. Here's a great gallery of the show (follow links on the page for the pictures), and if you look around their site there are a lot of great pictures.

So here's what came of seven hours at the show. Two of those hours were spent standing in front of The Kneeling Lady drawing her. Yeah not very efficient, but I was just trying to do a great job on the drawing getting all the muscles and such right. It was great to be able to sketch these bodies. It was really nice being able to see the muscles and that they were posed.

If you get a chance (or make a chance) go to this show! It was absolutely amazing!

Update: and just as a side note, my drawings are in black ink. The other drawings on the pages were printed in the book. They are Leonardo drawings. The show was at The Leonardo building in Salt Lake City, Utah.

The Scyth - The Slave Worker

For our final project for my animation class we had to choose a story and design characters for it. I chose The Scythe by Ray Bradbury. I made a short film version of this for my senior English project in high school with a friend and I thought it would be fun to revisit the story.

The basic premise of the story is that whoever owns this farm and works in the field is the Grim Reaper.

I came up with this character as the previous owner of the farm. He was born in the late 1840s in Africa then enslaved to work on the sugar farms. While there the owners of the farms would allow them to eat some of the sugar while working to give them energy. Though not the most effective energy food he enjoyed this and has always kept a bag of sugar with him while working ever since. He later came to America and worked for ex-slave owners on their farms in Alabama for many years. He's an honest man and very faithful to duty. He felt the need to move one year and he ended up finding this farm where previous owner had just died and left a note nailed to the front door giving it to whomever found it.

The Scythe takes place as this man passes the land on to the next man, Drew Erikson, who just lost his job due to the great depression. Drew got in his car with his family and felt compelled to drive west to find work or anything. He ran out of gas in front of this farm. The owner had just died and left a note by the bed where he lay giving the land to whomever found it.

The image of the slave here is how he appears in the story as a ghost. He haunts the new owner to get him to work in the field.

I did a line drawing on paper then I scanned it in and painted it in photoshop. The more realistic rendering of the skin on the first image is how I started to paint the image. I worked off a reference image for the lighting of the skin (also where I got the necklace). I then tried to color the drawing in blue ghost colors, the last image. Then I finished the drawing in the more cartoon rendering, as you see in the overalls. My favorite rendering is the first one, which is a combination of the first and the third.

I concider this my first real experience using a Wacom tablet, and it was fantastic! I'm so excited to use one again and do even better.

Pumpkin Carving Projection and Ghost

All photos taken with Canon Rebel XTi

Two of my best pumpkin carving ideas went into this carving. One of the ideas was to use the light that comes out of the pumpkin as part of the effect. I've had this idea for the last six years. I tried it once before half-heartedly, and it was ok, but this time I got it.

Here's the carving for the projection.

The other idea is to have a surprise, something that you can't see without it being lit.

Here is the front of the pumpkin without it being lit...

...and here it is lit. I carved the ghost on the inside of the pumpkin. I had to carve it paper thin to get it to show really well.

Here are some more pictures.



If you're inspired by this and use either of these ideas I'd love to see what you make. Go ahead and leave a comment on what you did, with a link to pictures if you have put them on the net somewhere, or e-mail me (contact info is in my bio area (link in the top right)).

Happy carving!

BYU 3rd Ward Logo

I'm just leaving the BYU 3rd Ward. The ward boundaries encompass a lot of the "tree streets" of Provo, Utah (roads with tree names). A few weeks ago the idea popped into my head for this when I realized that "tree" is nestled inside the word "streets." I realized that "three" was almost in there, and since it's the third ward I put that in too.

I tried to make the colors of the text dictate the order in which you read the words. So you would read "BYU" first. Then "three" since it was the dark letters. Next you'd read "tree" since you'd notice the color difference of the "h" from "tree", then the lighter letters of the same color would make up "streets."

And yeah, the Y is a tree with a street.

I enjoy it, I like how it turned out.

Cosby Caricature

Character Design class assignment four was to draw a celebrity in Loomis style (with proportion lines), then create a caricature of them. Here'e the Coz. Fun and challenging assignment. It was really nice practice to draw the face with proportion lines, something I haven't strictly done much of. I usually put the eyes too high (as many people do) but with this having put the lines in before the features I set the eyes at the right height on the face. It didn't look right until I was most of the way done putting in the features, but then it looked really good. Good times.

E Spores Growing Time Lapse

E Spores Time Lapse from elliselkins on Vimeo.

"E" is the most common letter in the English alphabet, and and in my name. I always have some E mold growing because I use so many of them.

Today in my character design class my teacher Ryan said that the people who don't sketchbook in the animation industry grow stagnant and fall out of it. The way to keep progressing and staying fresh is by keeping a sketchbook, to draw all the time. Since one of the things I want to do is motion design I decided that I needed to do it often. It's been way too long since I've done anything in After Effects, especially something challenging, so here's day one of my AE sketchbook. Simple, it only took an hour, but I had to relearn how to do most things. Ah, it was fun.

Snide - Character Design 2

For the second half of our first assignment we had to draw trees, rocks, and clouds, to learn how to use certain kinds of strokes and styles: intuitive lines, and straights and curves. After we drew these then we had to take a reference picture that Ryan gave us and draw him using the techniques we learned. The reference picture looked more like this bottom version, which I drew first, but I decided that I could do better, so I drew the top one. The bottom one seems like a bum who's stolen some nice cloths and is going to steal a train, and the top one seems like a rich guy that will take your wallet from your jacket at the opera. I'm still working on the smoke for the top one.

Drew these in my sketchbook and colored them with Prismacolor markers. Love how these turned out. Stoked about this class.

Don't stand too close to that top guy's hips, he could stab you with those things. Their hats remind me of the fridge and the cake from my flour sack animation.

Post-it - Character Design 1

I am so stoked about this class, Character Design, an animation class taught by Ryan Woodward. He taught my Intro to Animation class as well.

For the first half of the first assignment we had to draw shapes then draw a character to fill the shape. During class we drew shapes for each other, so one of my classmates drew the outline shape of this one for me then I drew this guy.

I did the shading in painter. This was my second time really using painter. This time I used it with a Cintique 21UX in one of BYU's computer labs, as opposed the track pad on my MacBook, and it was wonderful.

He reminds me of the main character from this Flash music video, which I love, done for the Radiohead song Creep (click here for the artist's description).

In Harmony 08 Closing Concert Poster

After doing the fliers they asked if I'd make a poster for the closing concert. Here's what I came up with.

I downloaded a trial for Corel Painter and used it almost for the first time to do this illustration. I know it's not much but I figured it was the program for the job.

Overall I love how this turned out, there are parts that I'm not satisfied with, but I love it.

Dance Masked

I've watched a few modern dance recitals recently. I was thinking that I'd love to see a dance routine where the dancers couldn't see, they'd just have to do their routine without seeing the other dancers. I came up with this idea for a helmet that could be used for the routine to blind the dancers.

In Harmony 08

I was asked if I'd like to volunteer to make some fliers for In Harmony, the 5th International Children's Music Festival. I made these two fliers, one for the Dance Space and Dance Club Showcase and the other for Heart Strings. Dance Space and The Vivaldi Orchestra are from Yamagata, Japan and The Dance Club is from Orem. I went to the Openning Concert for the festival last night and it was amazing, almost all the groups from the festival performed some. I was especially impressed with The Dance Club so I'm excited to go see their show with Dance Space on Thursday. I would have really enjoyed going to see The Vivaldi Orchestra and Dance Space perform together but I'll be at work all day so I won't be able to make it. If you can go see any of these shows for In Harmony you won't be disappointed. update: I actually mixed up two of The Vivaldi Orchestra's concerts when I made this flier for them, so this flier is wrong. Oh well, I still like it.

Coptic stitch tutorial

I get a lot of visits on this blog for coptic bookbinding. I've been thinking about doing a video tutorial on how to make a book with the coptic stitch. Think I should?

In the mean time here's a web page that seems to have good instructions for what you'll need and how to do it:

What you'll need
http://www.altered-book.com/coptic-binding.html

How to bind the coptic book
http://www.altered-book.com/coptic-stitch.html

There are other books that I can make as well. Here's a list, let me know if I should make one of these video tutorials first. The links are to books that I have made in each style:
Clamshell box - good case for holding anything, not just books. Check out Sarah's Clamshell Portfolio Box as well.
Flatback book
Papercase book
Japanese stab (I don't have an example of one of these on my blog yet)
and here's a link to one of my Coptic Books

Update:
I don't know why I didn't find it the first time I looked but there are tons of bookbinding videos on youtube. Click here for a search of "bookbinding" on youtube (seems that many of them are of the coptic stitch). Good luck! I'd love to see what you've made so e-mail me or post a link here.

Time to Color Again Contest

Why do kids get all the fun with coloring books? Adults draw coloring books for kids to color, I have the idea to turn this around.

I want to start a contest within the month, here's the low down. The first part of the contest would be for kids, around the ages of eight and younger. They submit their drawings, drawings of anything, and if we choose their drawing they will receive a prize. The second part of the contest would be for adults to color these kids drawings. They can be printed then colored with crayons, markers, colored pencils, but not just limiting it to that! I want to see people paint, do stuff in photoshop (like untooning, see this link for an untooned Mario), with ink (one of my favorite mediums), Maya, Painter, anything! I think we could get some great stuff here. Entries will come back to me then either I'll pick the winners or we'll do it by popular vote.

What do you think? Should I do it? I'm going to have prizes but is anyone willing to sponsor this with prizes or cash prizes? Are the rules good? Let me know, I would love to do this.


I get visitors on my blog from around the world so I'm going to translate some of this (with internet translators so if the translation is bad you'll have to correct it and send it to me) in hopes to get people around the world interested in this as well.



Hora de colorear otra vez - competencia
Aquí está mi idea de la competencia. La primera parte de la competencia quisiera que los cabritos dibujaran cualquier cosa. Los cabritos me enviarán el dibujo y escogeré a ganadores. La segunda parte de la competencia quisiera que los adultos colorearan el dibujos. Los adultos pueden colorear con cualquier cosa como las pinturas o Photoshop.

¿Interesado? Fijar un comentario. Espero comenzar la competencia este mes. ¿Cualquier persona quiere patrocinar esta competencia con algunos premios?

Si mi traducción es mala por favor enviarme mejor. Gracias.

Tener buen.



Zeit, - Wettbewerb wieder zu färben
Ist hier meine Wettbewerbidee. Das erste Teil des Wettbewerbs wünsche ich Kinder alles zeichnen. Die Kinder schicken mir die Zeichnung und ich wähle Sieger aus. Das zweite Teil des Wettbewerbs wünsche ich Erwachsene die Zeichnungen färben. Die Erwachsenen können mit allem wie Farben oder Photoshop färben.

Interessiert? Eine Anmerkung bekannt geben. Ich hoffe, den Wettbewerb dieser Monat zu beginnen. Möchte jemand diesen Wettbewerb mit einigen Preisen fördern?

Wenn meine Übersetzung bitte schlecht ist, mir ein besseres schicken. Danke.

Ein gutes haben.



Heure de colorer encore - le concours
Voici mon idée de concours. La première partie du concours je veux que les enfants dessinent n'importe quoi. Les enfants m'enverront le schéma et je sélectionnerai des gagnants. La deuxième partie du concours je veux que les adultes colorent les les schémas. Les adultes peuvent colorer avec n'importe quoi comme des peintures ou Photoshop.

Intéressé ? Signaler un commentaire. J'espère commencer le concours ce mois. Est-ce que n'importe qui veut commanditer ce concours avec quelques prix ?

Si ma traduction veuillez être mauvaise m'envoyer meilleur. Merci.

Avoir bon.



Hora de colorir outra vez - a competição
Está aqui minha idéia da competição. A primeira parte da competição eu quero miúdos extrair qualquer coisa. Os miúdos emitir-me-ão o desenho e eu escolherei vencedores. A segunda parte da competição eu quero adultos colorir o os desenhos. Os adultos podem colorir com qualquer coisa como pinturas ou Photoshop.

Interessado? Afixar um comentário. Eu espero começar a competição este mês. Qualquer um quer patrocinar esta competição com alguns prêmios?

Se minha tradução é má por favor emitir-me melhor. Obrigado.

Ter bom.



Tempo di colorare ancora - concorso
Qui è la mia idea di concorso. La prima parte del concorso voglio i capretti disegnare qualche cosa. I capretti trasmetteranno l'illustrazione me e selezionerò i vincitori. La seconda parte del concorso voglio gli adulti colorare le illustrazioni. Gli adulti possono colorare con qualche cosa come le vernici o Photoshop.

Interessato? Inviare un commento. Spero di iniziare il concorso questo mese. Chiunque vuole patrocinare questo concorso con alcuni premi?

Se la mia traduzione è prego difettosa trasmettermi migliore. Grazie.

Avere buon.


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Swirl Cover Pattern - part IV

Each time I add something to this drawing I love it more. I am getting a lot of my patterns for this by just enhancing patterns that I came up with for my Patterns All the Way Down spirit header drawing, so if you look closely at that drawing you'll see patterns similar to most of these on there.


I decided to add "bugs" to this drawing. You'll see them as black dots crawling on the patterns in the white swirl. I think one of the most interesting bugs is this one at the end of the arrow, just a small speck. There are at least twelve other bugs in this close up.

You can't see all the bugs that I drew. Some of them are in the shadows and blend in almost completely. Some of the bugs that I drew are on the backsides of the patterns, drawing them there with the motions of my hand and with the creative thoughts but not touching the pen to the paper. Small details like this can't always be seen but I believe they can be sensed and it adds quality to the work.

See the other steps of this drawing: Part I, Part II, Part III

Spider Sarry n.2 sketch - Mascotte 2 drawing

During the spring term here at Brigham Young University (BYU) I spent many hours in the graphic design resource room. There they have many wonderful books of design from many different disciplines. I didn't make it through many books during those visits because I would go through the books slowly and carefully study the designs and images, sketch ideas that came to my head, or copy things from the books into my sketchbook so I could learn it better and remember it.

One book that I loved going through was Mascotte 2. When I saw the cover I didn't want to look at it, seeing that it had art that I was not normally drawn to. Then I decided to look at it because of that reason so that I could become aquainted with more styles. There were things in there that I didn't like, but there were a lot of things that I loved as well, and I drew some of them in my sketchbook.

I loved the sculptures by Keisuke Kishi. One of his pieces that especially stood out to me was this statue titled Spider Sarry n.2 from his series Ministry of Mystical Machines. I drew this sketch in my sketchbook from a photograph of his statue. You can see a small version of the photo on the Mascotte 2 site by going to the gallery, clicking on Keisuke Kishi and on number 3. You can see more of the pieces from this series on his site, with larger photos (sadly he hasn't put Spider Sarry on his site yet), and many more works. There is also another image of this statue in the souveir section of his site, a little bigger than the photo on the Mascotte site.

I find his sculptures incredible, very imaginative, and well executed.

I spent a long time drawing this becuase I love the work and also I wanted to get better at sketching in ink. I recently started shading my sketches with strokes in the direction of the material, as you can see everywhere in this drawing, especially in the dress. The original photo is on a darker background, I'm still planning on adding a darker background to this sketch with the strokes making up the background implying motion. Hopefully you'll see what I mean when I post this image again completed.


And a side note, I find it humorous that this statue reminds me of Charlotte from the movie about her and her web. Why the similarity? Did he take inspiration from this character? Or is this just what a female spider looks like when anthrapamorphised? Well, Keisuke, if you ever read this you can leave a comment and let us know. :)

Culverwell Photos at the Temple

Photos taken with Canon XTi

I went to the temple wedding of one of my best friends, Chas Culverwell, over this last weekend. Chas and Kirsten were sealed in the Medford, Oregon Temple. They hired me to take their photos at the temple.

I didn't take that last photo because that's me on the right side of the picture. I handed the camera to Chas's sister, Salem, so I could get some pictures with them. I love these two.

These are some of my favorite photos. You can see more of the photos at my flickr page.

FHE 2008 06 02

For our FHE activity this week we played water balloon volley ball where two people share a towel and you catch and toss the water balloon with the towel over a rope to the other side, trying to keep it from breaking on your side. Here are some of my favorites from my photos of the event. You can see more at my flikr photostream. The photos look better at flikr too.

Photos taken with Canon XTi

Andy and Ellis at the Velour

Andy Branch, a coworker of mine, and I are going to be playing some songs together at the Velour in Provo Wednesday night. He plays guitar and sings and I'll be playing my cajon and singing harmony a little. We'll play for a half hour. I think the show starts at 8p, but I'll make sure about that. Here are some videos from my work party where you can see Andy and I playing in the video named "Andy Wants to Know." There are two songs in this video, I play on the second. There are some videos there of me playing some songs on my guitar. Delane on this site is also going to be playing some songs at the show. You can also go to Andy's site and listen to some of his songs. Hope to see you there it's going to be great!

Update: The show is at 8p at the Velour. Hope to see you there.


Clip of Don't Say from elliselkins on Vimeo.

Chas and Kirsten's Second Shoot

All images taken with Canon XTi

This was my second photo shoot with Chas and Kirsten for their engagement photos. Driving home from work I saw these trees across the street from the MTC (Missionary Training Center) and decided that I needed to take pictures of these two by some of these trees. They wore the perfect color of pink without prompting; what a convenient cooincidence (yeah right). They're such a good looking couple and they're so happy many of the picture turned out great it was hard to narrow the selection to just these. I'm so happy for them.

FHE Croquet

Photos taken with Canon XTi

This evening for my ward's FHE we played croquet for part of it. I decided to take pictures while we played and here are some of my favorites. That's Jessica Stubbs in the last picture that I took pictures of and posted them here before. You can see more of these pictures at my Flickr photostream.

First pumpkin man.

This page was near the end of one of my first sketchbooks that I had to keep for class. Around these pages is when I really started loving sketchbooking. Unfortunately when I turned in these page for the week I was reminded that my drawings needed to come from life, which none of these really did. Oh well, I enjoyed drawing all this. This first page was the first time I drew the pumpkin man. I've really enjoyed drawing him ever since.

Media bugs.

Just an idea for some bugs. Also an early sketch of my dreamcatcher book. I'm going to use these bugs on something someday somehow someway.

Shapes Faces

This the page in my sketchbook opposite my pumpkin man and bird drawing. No stories behind them really, just fun drawings. The bottom right image is of happy bubbles resting on a puddle.

Drum Solo at Sound Off

Drum Solo from elliselkins on Vimeo.

We had a work party guitar night where a few coworkers and I took turns playing some songs. Here's part of the drum solo I played. The drum that I'm playing is called a cajon (kuh-hone), and it is so much fun. It's a lot like a djembe, another more known hand percussion, except the cajon has a wooden sound. Most cajons come with a snare or no snare. This one is one of the only ones that has the option of turning the snare on and off. You can hear me slowly turn on the snare in the middle of this video with the foot pedal on it's side.

More to come from this party.

Sparklers and Photography

Last summer I had some large sparklers around the house so I took a couple friends out to the park with me to have fun with the sparklers and photography. Here I am with my roommate spelling our names. I love the car passing by in the background. I had to write my name backwards for it to show up this way. Good times.

Update on Swirl Question about Google's Strict filtering

I had a discussion recently with someone about my "Swirl Question" (see recent post titled that about why my blog is blocked on strict Google search) and we had the idea that my blog might be blocked on strict image search because I had some spam comments put on my blog a while ago. They had links to some spam websites. I took the comments off almost immediately for most of them, but I think that's what tainted my blog. So I've deleted all those comments and now I'm moderating the comments so those don't get put on anymore, how can I get my blog marked safe again? Anyone?

My blog's global!

I just added Google Analytics to my site last weeks, which tells me some info about how people get to my site and what they look at. In the last few days I've had people visit my site from fourteen countries! Most of the visits have been from America, but there have been a good number of them from Australia (mostly from Melbourne), United Kingdom, and Canada. Just wanted to say hello to all of you looking at my site, I hope you enjoy the stuff I put on here, I've loved doing it all. Go ahead and leave comments and let me know what you think. Thanks. Have a good one.

Walking swirls—exploration in pants art

Photo by Jammie Elkins

Taken with Canon XTi

I spent last weekend at my brother's in Boise, Idaho. While there my pair of pants, that have already been patched once, began to get another hole in the knee so I figured it was time to start drawing on them (that's a very logical thought, right?). Here's what it looks like so far. This is a lot of fun. I'd really love to do this for someone out there if you'd like, let me know.

Jammie Elkins, my sister-in-law, took the first picture of my pants and of me playing guitar. I've been helping her learn photography. Here's a link to her photography blog, leave a comment for her: jammiesphotography.blogspot.com

Two Swirls - Progress so far

I'm working on this swirl drawing now. Usually I draw the whole thing in pencil before I start inking, but I felt like getting started on the inking so I did. Coming along nicely. I'm really going for the same style of drawing that I had in the spirit swirl drawing. I'm taking influence from how I drew the swirl for the sketchbook swirl case. I'm adding a new element for this one, the loose vines. I love how you can almost see every stage of my drawing process in this, from the outline swirl at the bottom to the added small swirls in the middle, to the ink and the detail lines on the vines; only missing the shading in the ink. What do you think?

Apple photos - Martinelli's Label Part 1

For my packaging class I'm redesigning the label on the Martinelli's Sparkling Cider bottles. I took some pictures for one of my ideas for the mock I was making. I love how they turned out so I've decided to share them.

Swirl question

So a few people have found my blog and complimented me on my swirl drawings, especially my spirit swirl, and some of them have been asking to use this drawing in some projects of theirs. It's been fun to have them contact me, but I wondered how they were finding my blog. I figured out that when you type "swirl" into images.google.com my drawing came up on the first page. Now when you do this search my drawing is the first image! This is great.

There's a problem though, my blog is getting filtered on strict safe search. I've been trying to find out a way to get Google to not filter my blog because I don't have anything that should be filtered. I found a Google user forum in the Google help page, so I posted my question there, but no one has replied. So I'm throwing this question out there to the cloud that the internet is and asking for an answer, if anyone has one, as to how to get Google to stop filtering my blog. Any help would be great, I'm at dead ends for all the ways I can think of to get this changed. Thanks.

Sketchbook Swirl Case - Bookbinding #4

Images taken with Canon XTi

This is a clamshell box. I made it as a case for my white coptic sketchbook. I covered the sketchbook in paper because I plan to draw a swirl drawing on the outside of it like the spirit swirl. My thought for this case was "if this is going to hide my sketchbook with it's swirl drawing on it's cover this case has to look really cool." As you can see in my post on the making of this case I cut the design of the swirl out of black fabric and glued it down over shiny white fabric. The design was cut out in one piece so I used it on the inside of the case. I love how it turned out.

If someone would like a custom case like this one I would love to make it. Go ahead and contact me with your idea of what you would like a case for and how you would like the case to look, what colors and what you would like the drawing to look like, and I'll quote you a price. My e-mail address is in my profile.

If you're ever over at my place I'd love to show you this or any other book I've made.

Update:
I wrote a post with some resources for how to make your own coptic book here. The post also gives links to other books I have made, or you can see my posts that are tagged with bookbinding.

Making the Sketchbook Swirl Case

I have so many pictures that I'd like to share so I've decided to do this in two posts. I drew the design for this case cover on the back of a piece of black book fabric. I drew it at home and at my desk after work. You can see plenty of eraser shavings here. :)

All images taken with my Canon A700 except the second image which was taken with my Canon Rebel XTi.

Cut out with an exacto knife.


Because many of the pointed pieces in the design were loose I taped the front side of the book cloth so that the design would stay how I wanted it. You can see the light coming through the hole that is the design and through the tape here.


Here it is just after I glued the black fabric to the white fabric, which was already on the cover boards.


My cutting went so well that I had the design cut out in one piece. A classmate told me that I had to use it now because it was so cool, so I put it on the inside. I'm glad she gave me the idea, it looks great.


Here it is with my other books that I had completed at that time. We set up stations in class to show off the books we'd made.


The white book on the inside here is my coptic sketchbook that I made the case for.


I'm going to post more fancy pictures of the case as well. Stay tuned. :)

Update:
I wrote a post with some resources for how to make your own coptic book here. The post also gives links to other books I have made, or you can see my posts that are tagged with bookbinding.

Sketchbook Swirl Case Preview

This is a clamshell box that I made to case my white skecthbook, both of which I made in my bookbinding class. More pictures and info to come.

Update:
I wrote a post with some resources for how to make your own coptic book here. The post also gives links to other books I have made, or you can see my posts that are tagged with bookbinding.

Nicki Schoonmaker Graduation Pictures

Nicki Schoonmaker is a friend of mine in my ward (that's a word for our church's congregation area, since there are many congregations around). She's getting her bachelor's degree this semester and she needed a graduation announcement picture. She is one of the sweetest people I know.

Instruments of Beauty

One of the first drawing classes I took at BYU was from Wulf Barsch. Something that he did left a lasting effect on me. He took his silver point, a pencil of sorts, touched it to the paper and asked “By leaving this mark on the page what did I just do?” After no one could come up with the answer he was looking for he said “I just created something. You need to be careful whenever you create anything, it is a great responsibility.”

Wulf also encouraged us to not just make anything, but to make beautiful things. He encouraged us to find out what that word, beauty, means. I did a lot of looking around. My favorite quote that defines the word comes form Barbara B. Smith's article Makers of Homes in the March 1979 edition of The Ensign. "Order and cleanliness are the first steps toward beauty. Beauty is not synonymous with costly adornment or ostentatious show. It is found in the simplicity of line, in the light and shadow of our world. Above all, beauty is excellence, whether in the cultural arts or in personal character." (italics added)

For my art history class final we could choose to do a work of art mimicking any artist between 1500 to the present. I decided to mimic the work One and Three Chairs by Joseph Kosuth. This is a conceptual art piece, meaning that the idea is the most important part of the art. Another element of this piece is the chair is a ready made object, meaning that it was already constructed and was used as a piece of art.

I titled my work Instruments of Beauty. The focus of my piece is the pens, which you can see disassembled below the poster. I went through many different kinds of pens before I chose these as my favorite. (They are Pilot Extra Fine V Ball Grip pens. I love how black the ink is.) There are three empty pens and one full.

The poster is there to aid the idea of the pens. I put sketches on the poster from my sketch books, sketches that are either my best, of the different styles that I've had to draw for classes or chosen to draw, the most pivotal in my drawing progress, or one of my favorites. I included these sketches to show what I've done with these pens. I made the poster mostly white to show what I will yet do with them.

Images taken with Canon A700

Chas and Kirsten shots

Chas is one of my best friends from back home, Caliente, Nevada. He recently got engaged to Kirsten. They wanted to get some pictures taken of them since they didn't really have any so they asked if I would do it. These are my best pictures so far, I love how they turned out.

Papercase button book

Taken with Canon A700

Here it is, my papercase book. We were strongly encouraged to have closing materials on the outside (something to close the book). I came up with this idea while I was thinking about the closing materials. I thought 'Hmm, so closing materials is commonly one button with a string to wrap around it. What if I put two buttons? Fifty? What would I be able to do with the string if I had fifty? Ah!' The idea was born.

Taken with Canon XTi

As the name implies the cover is made out of Saint Armands paper, which is a very thick paper and made to simulate handmade paper. You can see here the rough texture of the paper. It feels so good in the hands.

XTi

The string for the closure is about six feet long. I braided three strands of Perle Cotton thread together to make it. at the beginning of the thread is a slip knot so you can move it to whatever button you want it to start from.

On the fore-edge of the book there is a half inch yap, the bent-in ends of the cover. Common for this style of book.

The paper is Frankfurt paper. I gave it a deckled edge (ripped edges), similar to the Coptic book I made, but this deckle is not as large.

I intended this pattern to look cool when I sewed on the buttons to the front cover and it turned out even better than I had imagined.

XTi with flash

There are four button sizes. You can see in this picture that I played with the direction of the thread on the buttons when I placed them on.

A view of the back cover. Strings on buttons also placed with a direction in mind.

Now here's what's fun about the book, infinite pattern possibilities.




The rest of the patterns were made (and photographed) by my friend Lauralee.

A700

Whenever you're over let me know if you'd like to give your hand at a pattern and it might make it onto my blog! :) This was really fun to make (and almost as fun to play with).

Update:
I wrote a post with some resources for how to make your own coptic book here. The post also gives links to other books I have made, or you can see my posts that are tagged with bookbinding.

Easter Youngs

Took some family pictures of my sister and her family on Easter. Here are some of my favorites. The last one is part of my learning how to make good looking black and white photos. Some things I'd still tweak on the picture, but I think it's looking good.

Easter Eggs

Spent Easter at my sister Angela's place with her family and our parents. I made four eggs.

Here's my smarmy egg. Just after the first picture of this guy I accidentally cracked him on the island in the kitchen.


Clark the Shark egg.

Just a fun face.

One serious egg. I wanted this to look really nice with patterns all over it. I drew on it with a sharpie after I dyed it. I did most of it on Easter then finished it today. This is a view of the bottom.



The top view.

This picture is totally staged, it was never hunted. :)

I just got a dremel and hope to do a carved egg this summer.

Swirl Cover Pattern - part III

Here's how the cover drawing is coming. It's not much further than the last time, but I love how the white swirl area is starting out, so I had to show it.

part I, part II, part IV

The Peeps Show, and Voting

Some past coworkers and friends of mine are doing a Peeps Show contest, diarama's made with peeps. I didn't get mine done for the contest but here's what I had in mind.


Go over to the Green Wallet, blog of Micah and Elizabeth Heiselt, and vote for your favorite!

(I think I might submit this design to threadless.com. What do you think?)

Ellis Yoda

Here's a great picture from when I served a mission for my church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I went and visited these Indian ruins in southern Phoenix. I saw this hut and I wanted to get a picture of me next to it so that when I returned home I could mimic the Episode I poster and add a Darth Vader shadow to the image. Well, turns out I didn't need to do any editing of the image for it to have a Star Wars reference in it. ISN'T THAT AWESOME!?

What is it? Answer.

In a previous post I asked what this picture was of.


Here's the answer, it's a light in my kitchen (the kitchen in my last place). These pictures are taken while the light is turning off. I had one hand on the light switch and one on the camera. I'm glad no one else was in the kitchen at the time I was doing this. :) Here are some more pictures from when I did this. I love how this next one looks like it's on fire. I love the long streak of the second to last one. I used the last one as my background for a while, great color with a subtle gradient.

Dreamcatcher Book - Bookbinding #2

Completed my second book for my bookbinding class. The theme of this book was a 'dreamcatcher as a book.'


It's covered in leather.


I chose medium value paper, darker paper, so I could draw dark and light. I have a set of colored pencils that I'm really excited to use in this book. This pumpkin man is done in pen and pastel pencils and a blending stick. I'm also excited about them, I just got them for Christmas from my parents.



The leather had this silver stamp of these numbers and letters. I asked the people I bought the leather from what it was for and they said it was the original size of the leather piece so they would know how much to sell it for. I liked the look of it so I included it.


I did sewn end bands on this book, the stripped thing at the top and bottom of the spine. This was sewn with green and brown silk thread.


The distortion around the edges of this picture were because I was using two macro filters on my camera to magnify the image 8 times, and the distortion happens more the more I magnify it.

I love how it turned out and I'm really excited to use it.

Update:
I wrote a post with some resources for how to make your own coptic book here. The post also gives links to other books I have made, or you can see my posts that are tagged with bookbinding.

Jac and Kalli's Wedding Announcement

I took the announcement pictures for Jac and Kalli then they wanted me to design the announcement as well. I was told what size paper they were going to use and this is what I came up with. I wanted some kind of nice swirly pattern in the background so I used the Spirit Swirl drawing that I did a while ago. Jac did the calligraphy himself. I'm very pleased with how it turned out.

What is it?

What do you think this is? If you want to guess go ahead and leave a comment. I love this picture.

Just to Your Left - Going To Pieces

I was in a band soon after my mission playing the hand percussion, the congas, bongos, and djembi. The band was named going to pieces. My brother Russ said that he wanted me to learn how to play these drums and be the drummer for him and his friend who was soon to come back from his mission. So I learned. So it was Matt West and my bro Russo on guitar and harmony vocals, me on the hand percussion, and we later added Janel on violin. The band sounded great I thought, especially with Janel. Here I am starting off this song with a drum solo. There are also some digital drums on this track. I like the work I did for this song. Enjoy. Oh yeah, there is a ten second gap at the beginning of the track.

Quarter and my Canon A700 story.

I have loved my Canon A700. It's a point and shoot camera with some nice features. I got it two years ago with my tax return. A couple weeks before I got the camera I found this quarter and decided that it would be the first thing that I took pictures of when I got the camera. Well it wasn't the first, but almost. I can focus on objects being a half an inch away from them! I did that for this picture. I love how this picture turned out. I still carry this quarter in my camera bag in case I need something interesting to photograph. I carry the camera, in it's case, in my handbag everywhere I go. This camera was my only camera until I upgraded just over a year later with my next year's tax return to my Canon Rebel XTi. I averaged six pictures a day for that year that it was my only camera.

Swirl Cover Pattern - part II

Phase one of this image is almost complete, to fill in the area outside the swirl with dark detailed drawings. I'm going to do light detailed drawings inside the swirl. I do this drawing while I'm listening to someone, either in church or in class, to help me pay attention. I wanted a drawing to do like this that had many monotonously detailed areas that would take a long time and not much brain power so I could listen to the person talking. You can see my previous post on this drawings progress in this post just after I started drawing it. As you can I see I somewhat changed the direction of the top area because I wanted it to be dark. The pattern on the right and the patter on the left are inspired by patterns that I made up for the spirit header, Patterns all the way down. They patterns are in the background and are pretty hidden, but you should be able to pick them out.

See the other posts for this drawing: part I, part III, part IV

Spirit Header - Two Vines Final

Here's the final drawing for this spirit header. I love how it turned out. One thing that I learned after doing the original swirl spirit header was that there is a general shape that your drawing has, so I wanted to design the shape that this one would fit in. Simple shape but I love it. I love the swirl above the word. The first image is the composition of this design on the page.

See the progress of this drawing: part I, part II

Jac and Kalli Photos

Took the engagement photos for Jac and Kalli a week ago. Here are some of my favorites. It was a cold and beautiful day up in Alpine Grove to take pictures.

Pumpkin and Bird cleaned up

My markers ran out of ink while I was drawing this so I went over it again with my fresh new markers. You can see the description for this image at this post.

Illustration's Second Project Final - part VI

Here's my final painting for my cliche illustration project. I move the doctor down a little and the apple up to make the relation between the two nicer. I love how the shine on the apple turned out. You can see all the work that lead up to this picture in these posts:
part I, part II, part III, part IV, part V

Richard Ira Elkins

I've inherited much fof my artistic genes from this man, my grandpa, Richard Ira Elkins. My sister and her family and I went and visited him in a nursing home just this last saturday. Wonderful man. Here he is with my sister Angela's son Walker. He drew this picture of the camel. Love you, grandpa.

GC Stack and Night Light

A couple simple picture taken in my room. Took it with a digital camera that I checked out from my college library a few years ago. There's just something about black and white photography that makes simple things look good. I love the depth of field in the first image, click to see it.

Food 4 Ellis

There used to be a store in Provo
Named Food 4 Less by Movies 8.
In there my brother and I would shop
In the afternoon or sometimes late
To buy our bread or cheese that's grate.
Best store to date.

My brother joking called the store
Food 4 Russ, so I didn't wait
And made my own word play
To get my personal estate.
Name's popularity innate
Friends took the bate.

I made this image for for a shirt
And for friends fridge to decorate.
Couple months later on a mission
Surprise came, new friend said "Wait!"
He'd seen the logo I made of late.
On fridge ornate.

(Made in Corel Photo-Paint)

Family Stories

Made this for a BYU group called the Children's Media Initiative. They had a show called Family Stories and this is first page of the website for them. Clicking on the tabs would bring you to different pages. I love how this turned out.

Screw Driver for 3D class

I audited a 3d modeling class, which means I took it without getting a grade in the end so just to learn. Here is one of the pictures that I made for the class. I used this image in my portfolio to get into the Visual Arts program for BYU.

Sketchin and Pumpkin

Here's a couple images from my new sketchbook.


Inspired by an illustration of a robot silhouette that I saw in a magazine. I wanted to do my own, and this is what came out. I didn't want the edge to just be black, I wanted it to have texture so I did all these drawings around it. In those drawings is a few dice, many plants, chain link fence, a cathedral tower, the sun, the moon, Jack and Jill, etc. Nice interface between the drawing and outside the drawing.


This pumpkinman has a history. I started drawing him while I was taking my figure drawing class in my sketchbook, but then I found out that I was only supposed to draw from life in that sketchbook. I was just looking through that skecthbook and decided that I needed to revive him. Here's what came of that. I'm excited to be developing this character again. I love this picture.

My brother Russ has written his second kids book and I'm doing some illustrations for him again. You can see the illustrations I did for his first book at this post.

Bookbinding - Coptic Book

For our first assignment in my bookbinding class we learned to make a Coptic book. The stitching on the back of the book is what distinguishes this book. I ripped the sections to the right size and that's what gave it the deckled (frayed) edges. I made it to be my sketchbook and I've already filled a few pages in it. I covered the book in a thick paper, Arches 88, so I could draw a design on it. I love how it turned out.

Update:
I wrote a post with some resources for how to make your own coptic book here. The post also gives links to other books I have made, or you can see my posts that are tagged with bookbinding.

How Far Will It Be - March Madness '06

Each March flashkit.com in The Arena there is a Photoshop battle. I played in the tournament in '06. This was my first entry. We were given the image of the inch worm and I did the rest. I took the photo of the overcast sky with my Palm Pilot (the camera on it wasn't to bad, for the time, 1.3 megapixel), the road and trees picture, the design around the words, I got those off the internet. I added a color gradient over the picture to make the road a more warm color and the sky a colder color. I won this round. I didn't have much time for the next round and I was up against the person who went on to win the whole tournament so I'm not sad that I lost that one. I love how this turned out. Please click to see the larger picture with more detail.

Spirit Header - Two Vines - next step

Filled in most of the texture. I'll finish the texture, add more little ones and a few medium sized ones, and shading. I'm really liking how it's turning out. I love the title area. This is presented in the format that I made it on the page.

See the progress of this drawing: part I, Final

backpacks and bricks

backpacks and bricks at YouTube

You can follow the link above to my movie backpacks and bricks. I originally posted the video here in this post but I decided to just put a link because when it's here it has a watermark and you can't watch it full screen. Go ahead an put a comment on there and rate it so more people will watch it. Thanks.

Here's the making of story.

I found out that I could check out a video camera from the library but that there was about a month waiting time to get one. I signed up.

I got the camera on a Thursday, it was due on Monday. When I got it I talked with my bro Russ about it and he jumped on board to make a movie with me. Friday was a holiday or something and we spent the whole day coming up with the story and making the story boards for the shots.

Matt West, a friend of ours and fellow bandmate, agreed to be the main character. When went to our first location we were a little disappointed that it was snowing but we decided to go ahead with filming. When we were all done with our five hours of filming we looked at the taped and immediately fell in love with the snow, it was beautiful and perfect for the movie.

I was behind the camera for the whole movie. Russ was co-director and helped me setup the shots.

I found the friendly old woman by chance. I knew which street I wanted to film the middle section of the movie on so I just needed to find a tree for the shot with the brick in the tree. I found a good one and went to ask the owner of the house if we could get in her tree. This nice old woman came to the door. Margaret Childs was perfect for the neighbor part and she let us use her tree and agreed to be in the film. I found a dog to use on that street just by knocking doors. That was my bedroom that we used.

Right before we were filming the last scene some guy started coming up the stair case. At first we were going to warn him that we were filming, but then we had the idea to have him in the movie. We told him to just walk up the stairs on our cue and look at the brick, so he did and just continued walking to class. Thanks random unknown guy.

When we went to my brother Bryan's place to look at our day of filming, the time and date stamp were on! Great, that was the end of our movie, we couldn't make the movie with that there! So we thought, but Russ found where to turn that off on the camera. Yeah, all was not lost!

A few weeks later when I had a rough cut of the movie I brought it over to Bryan's place and he came up with the soundtrack to the movie and we recorded it in one afternoon. That was awesome.

One of the shots was messed up when we filmed it. The shot where Matt is sitting on the curb. I've cleaned up the shot the best I could for this version of the movie in After Effects (kind of like Photoshop for video), but it still isn't perfect. We submitted the movie to the LDS film festival, but we think they rejected it because that shot was messed up. Too bad.

If anyone would like a copy of the DVD just let me know. The DVD also has a special feature, a storyboard comparison. I'm going to post that on here soon as well.

Hope you enjoy the movie, we had a great time making it.

Idea Swirl - Idea header

This is a header for one of my idea pages. I write down all of my ideas on my idea pages so I can remember them and do them later. This one I drew after the Spirit Swirl that you see in the title picture of the blog. On my idea pages there is always a light bulb in the header, except this one, there actually is no lightbulb there, what you see is made out of the vines.

The Life of Famous Bricks

I auditioned these bricks at Lowes just over three and a half years ago and thought they would be perfect for the part. I was in the middle of the productions for the movie my bro Russo and I were making - backpacks and bricks.

Working with them was good enough, they played they're part really well and the camera loved them.

But I found out that bricks are temperamental and lazy. This one quit the show after the first hour of shooting. It stayed here on these steps when we left and when we came back to get it, hoping it'd blown of some steam, it had walked off with someone else.




The other four stuck it out for the rest of the movie and they did a great job.

I ran into them a few weeks ago. It was a sad sight. They were washed up on the bottom of the steps at the place where I lived at the time of the filming. I said hi, chatted for a bit, I told the people living there now that I had made a movie with those very bricks, and I encouraging the bricks to go and do something with themselves. I got a picture of them and said good-bye.

The last time I saw them they were doing better and they were servants in Go Devereaux's tank there at that house.

Good luck to you, bricks, good luck.

Selections from my Animation Sketchbook

For my animation class we had to sketch 60 pages in a sketch book. We had to draw from life, meaning that our drawings had to be inspired by something we saw.


Naisi is a girl in my ward. She's from China. I drew her while we were both in the Cougareat (a food court at BYU).


I enjoyed how this guy wore his beanie. Pointed.


I drew this guy, then on the next page I decided to draw with an animal theme, so I drew him again. Doesn't look too much like a lion, but I like it.

Video Emergency

Katie was one of our video editors at my work at BYU in the TLL. This first extinguisher holder was just installed but they hadn't put the extinguisher in there yet and people were taking pictures of it and making funny things with them. Someone else took the main photo here and I had this idea to put Katie in there, so I took some pictures of her and put them together. I love how it turned out.

The sticker on the bottom says "In Case of Video Emergency Break Glass."

Spirit Header - Two Vines

So I left the design I've been working on in the scanner so I didn't have it to help me pay attention during Church (it really does help me pay attention), so I started a new one. Here's the next Spirit header. It's at the top center of my page, not like it is shown here. I like to make these desktop format because I like to make them my desktop backgrounds on my home computer and my work computer. I'm still going to add texture to the vines and add more little curles. All of my Spirit page headers say "Spirit" in them, this one is a little hidden. See if you can spot it, you will need to click on it to see it larger.

See the progress of this drawing: part II, Final

Illustrations for The Adventures of the Palo: The Owl Watcher

My brother Russ wrote a childrens book called The Adventures of the Palo: The Owl Watcher. The story stars my nephew Clark and his sister Dana. They find a magic stick and when they touch an animal with it they become an animal just like the one they touched. Good times and an adventure ensue.

My bro asked me to do some illustrations for it. I hadn't done this before so I decided that a good way to learn to illustrate would be to copy some illustrations that I love from Alice in Wonderland, first edition. The last picture is one of my sketch book pages where I was learning to illustrate. It shows the Mad Hatter (In This Style 10/6), the Gryphon, Alice, and Clark and Dana that I drew from a photograph. The rest of the pictures are illustrations that were in the book.

Russ also did drawings for the book, chapter heading drawings and little ones throughout the book. Jammie, Russ's wife, made the cover of the book. I put the whole thing together in Adobe InDesign. We finished it last summer.

You can find the book at his lulu.com store: http://stores.lulu.com/russoelk. I have a copy as well. If you'd like to see it ask me or buy a copy.

Kalli's Senior Vocal Recital

Kalli and I were in Concert Choir here at BYU together two years ago. She's engaged to my roommate Jac. She had her Senior Vocal Recital today. It's surprising to hear such a large pretty voice come from this small girl. She did a great job. Here are some of my favorite pictures that I took from the event.

Walking Cycle - Animation project 3

For our third project in Intro to Animation we had to animate a non-stylized walk cycle. There are three parts to this video. The first part was the second animation test I did for this assignment, really getting familiar with all the intricacies of the walk, minus the twisting of the shoulders and hips. The second part is the rough final draft, adding the twisting of the shoulders and hips. The last part was the final draft that I did, cleaning up the animation so you can see which leg and arm is in front. This was the first cleaned up animation that I did so there are some obvious mistakes (to me) that I would fix if I were to do it over. So glad that I could learn this.

Vick Vamp

My friend Vick was sad that he hasn't seen his picture up here, so here ya go.
We worked together in the TLL (Teaching and Learning Lab) at BYU (Brigham Young University). Our boss wanted me to make a picture of Vick as a vampire so that he could put up when he was really busy and scare other people away so they wouldn't interrupt him. I love this picture.

New Cover Pattern

The Santa and baby Jesus drawing is the current cover of my notebook. Here's what I'm working on next.

See the progress of this drawing: part II, part III, part IV

Spirit Header - Patterns all the way down.

This is my latest Spirit header. I call it "Patterns all the way down." The Spirit Swirl header (part of which you can see in the title picture of my blog) was the one I did just before this. The first picture is how I designed it on the 8.5" x 11" sheet of paper. I erased my notes from the page so you can just see the design. The second picture was edited to be my desktop wallpaper (the Spirit Swirl is also desktop wallpaper size). Click on the second one to see the header in full detail.

The page started off with just the one swirl coming in from the side. For the top I wanted a design with patterns/pieces covering the whole header, not a single bit of space without a pattern, and I wanted to stick the word in the middle of the patterns. The title is in there; you can see most of the "S," the descender of the "p," and the feet of the "irit." The title got covered a little more than planned, but that's okay. It's muddy, it's hard to tell the patterns/bits apart, but I'm okay with that because now I know to try and avoid that next time. I also wanted to learn new dimensions of patterns, so I tried many different kinds. I love it.

The title for this header "Patterns all the way down." is inspired by funny story in the science world. The story says that a while back a scientist gave a talk on the solar system and how the earth is held in place by gravity. After the lecture he was approached by an old lady in the audience. She said "I don't believe it. I know the earth is sitting on the back of a giant turtle." The scientist smiled and asked "But what is the turtle standing on?" The old woman replied "You're very cleaver young man, very cleaver, but it's turtles all the way down."

Jessica Stubbs

Coming home from church today I looked out at the snow and thought "I've got to take some pictures today of someone with dark hair!" I knew Jessica Stubbs would really enjoy it. I knew some of the cloths she had so I told her what to bring. Here's what came of it.
She is a pretty woman. I love how the pictures came out.

Snow Art

I went on a date after the ward Christmas party on Saturday. For part of the date we made art in the snow. I drew this smiley face in perspective on an incline so that it only looks right when you look at it from a certain place. The bottom pictures is the smiley face from the top of the incline (you can see the smile above the eyes) so you can see that it looks wrong from somewhere else. I drew a square in perspective at first to help me work this out. The square at the bottom of the face is about eight feet across and at the top it's about twenty-five.

Ward Christmas Party Table Art

They put paper on the tables at my ward Christmas party to keep them clean. They also put crayons there too. I love it when they do that. I didn't know what to draw so someone suggested a cow with a Santa hat. Here it is. The same person that suggested it gave it the name, and I love it.


I've had this next picture in mind to do for a long time and I finally felt that I could do it well, with all the sketch booking that I've had to do this semester it's helped me get better at drawing faces. The idea isn't original, I've seen a painting that had this idea, but I still wanted to do it.


Also done on the table's paper, but done in ink (pencil underdrawing) 'cause crayon just wasn't going to cut it.

Flour Sack Animation Final Rough

Yes, this is the final rough. Enjoy.

Thanksgiving Photos

I went to Boise for Thankgiving and spent it at my brother Russ's house. Here are some of my favorite pictures that I took from the weekend: my nephew Walker playing with the piano, the dogs, and Russ and Jammie with their dogs.

Flour Sack Animtaion rough - Animation project 2

The criteria for the assignment was to animate a flour sack, have him jump, and be creative.

I thought "what does a flour sack live for?" Baking, of course. So Here he is making a cake. He grabs the milk carton and throws it, and it pours some milk into the mixing bowl as it flies over. Then he grabs a couple eggs and throws them into the air, they crack open in the air spilling their contents into the bowl. He opens his top then jumps and pours his contents into the bowl, lands and shows off the cake.



Final drawing coming next week.

Empower Playgrounds Commercial

Just made this commercial for my marketing class group project. There were four of us that came up with the idea and planned it all out, John Lyon, Mike Ward, and JJ Campbell, then I put it together. The company, Empower Playgrounds, makes playground equipment that harnesses the energy put into it and stores it. They have a merry-go-round that they're installing in Africa that will be kid powered and will power lights for their schools. I think that is such a great idea.

Guitar Night

I had a guitar night at my house a few weeks ago and it was great. My friends Laura Hess, Sarah Walstad, and Lucas Hill played some songs each then I played for almost an hour.

We're having another this Thursday at 7:30 at my place. There will be more friends playing then I'll play a long set again. I'm using this as my practice run for when I go up to Boise Thanksgiving week because there I'm going to play at an open mic and I've got a while to play. If you're in the area come on down, it's a good time.

Animation - project 1

I just started my Intro to Animation class taught by Ryan Woodward. He worked on Spiderman 2 and 3 as a storyboard and animatics artist, and has been an animator on many other shows. I'm really excited to take this class from him.

The first assignment for the class is to draw a ball bouncing. Here it is, my first frame by frame animation! This is straight from drawing to computer, no touch-ups. This is really fun.



I cleaned it up just a tad and since I didn't have any more time I took some and added another couple balls with a syncopated bounce.



So I actually drew this on 24 sheets of paper. I knew that animators used a lot of paper but it was never a reality until I did it myself. Good thing I just bought a double ream of paper at Costco.

Illustration's Third Project Final

For an editorial on the problems with airports and delays at them. I'm very happy with how this final painting turned out. From the sketches it wasn't my favorite drawing but it was by far the strongest idea, so that's why I went with it. My teacher suggested a few touchups for it, which I'll do and show to him later.

Temple Square pictures

The same day as the wedding that I shot I took some pictures around Temple Square in Salt Lake City.

I took a very similar picture to this first one a while ago and posted it here. I always have a camera with me. Usually it's just my Canon A700 that I carry around in my bag. I took pictures of the wedding with my nice camera, my Canon Rebel XTi. If I had my nice camera with me the day I took the other picture, it probably would have looked just like this one. I'm glad I didn't. I got this picture here, and I like that other picture too.

This picture just makes me laugh.

Fun with dry ice

We had a ward Halloween party, then some left over dry ice. My roommate and I had some fun with it and I took pictures. Here's a couple of the best pictures:

Wheeee!

Heh heh. This idea just popped into my head so I drew it. That's all.

Convoluting stuff at uFlash

I'll be presenting again at uFlash. I'm so happy with how my lesson went last time. I'm sure this will be good too.

I'll be presenting on the Convolution filter for Flash. It's a complex filter, but very powerful. Some of the things you can do with this filter are directional blur, embossing, find edges, sharpening, and unsharpening. I'll explain how it works and how to use it.

Illustration's Second Project - part V

This is a final drawing that I'm not going to use, there's too much detail on the doctor. I'm going to use this apple, but I'm going to put the doctor back in scrubs. I really like it though. Click on this one to see the detail.

Photos of the Wedding

Jessica Andrews is a good friend of mine from my ward. I photographed her wedding on Saturday. Here are some of my favorites.

Provo Temple Picture

Saw this as I came home from work and I just had to take some pictures. This is the top of the Provo Temple, the angel Moroni that stands on the top of the spire. It was very foggy so the mountains are almost completely washed out, just a tad sneaked in on the right side.

Illustration's Second Project - part IV

Here's another two color comps for the project. Added a bit too much purple for that last apple. I'll do my final of the tan tinted picture, the one with the red scrubs; everyone in my class liked that one.

uFlash was displaced!

The presentation on displacement mapping went perfectly. Maybe I'll put up a tutorial sometime. For now, here are the files I used in my presentation.

Here's a site that actually uses the displacement map filter: ilavayou.com. Cool animated displacement filter on the glubs in the lava lamp.

Sadly it's not a commonly used feature of Flash, I love it.

Presenting the displacement filter at uFlash

This Thursday I'll be presenting at uFlash, the local Adobe Flash Users Group. I'll present on the displacement map filter in Flash, and if I get time on the convolution filter as well. We'll meet at 6-8p at mediaRAIN in Orem.

Here's a good tutorial on displacement mapping in Flash.

I made this water droplet effect with displacement mapping. (oh, and that's an old roommate of mine. I morphed his face with my nephew's)

Another presenter will have half the time and he will present on Papervision 3D.

Illustration's Second Project - part III

This is my second little color comp for this project. The first one didn't turn out that great, it was my first attempt at painting a picture. I'm happy with this one, but there's more to come to explore more colors. This one I tried to do with a blue shifted palette.

I'm excited to see how this project looks in the end.

Illustration's Second Project - part II

My second set of thumbnails for this project. Though I love how these turned out, especially those daddy-long-legs, this apple is too scary for what I'm going for and the spider legs are too distracting to the message, so I'm going to pull them off and take off the fangs.

Illustration's Second Project - part I

Thumbnails for my second project in my illustration class. My favorites are 2, 5, and 12 (with the moon from 13). I'm really enjoying this class.

Which one's your favorite?

Spirit Swirl

I've been working on doing a design like this for a long time. Took me a long time, but I love how it turned out. Not the last of it's kind.

This drawing is the header on one of my "Spirit" pages, where I keep my notes from church and such. This one takes up about half the page, most of them just take up the top inch of the page.

Please see my Swirl labeled section for more drawings like this.

Start sketching

I've been carrying around a sketch book for about a year and a half now. Every once and a while I draw something that actually turns out looking good, and that is becoming more frequent.

I was surfing the net when this one popped into my head.