"Interworldly Creatures"

What happens when two creatures seemingly from different worlds meet one another and discover that they are not only very similar in several ways but that they are linked together romantically through fate?

This illustration is a theme related to the real-world dynamics of interracial dating, particularly between black women and white men or within the arena of black and white relations. The subject has been reinterpreted in an imaginative out-of-this-world context.

I think that by bringing it into this fantasy realm, people can step back and take an objective look at the underlying message. I also think the story stands on its own as a playful and innocent love story between two different but similar creatures.

I created this illustration originally in Illustrator 10 and brought it into Photoshop for further enhancement. This piece, like many of my artworks, has gone through a few rounds of revisions. I am happy with the way it has turned out so far. I especially like the glowing and textural effects that I included on both of the creatures' bodies. I am intrigued and highly stimulated by anything that glows, radiates, shines and gives off radiosity. I don't see a lot of digital designs that incorporate the effects of radiosity.

Radiosity is a term often used in or by 3D programs. I like to use it outside of the category of 3D computer graphic jargon.

If a bright blue ball sits on a shiny marble white flooring with a top left light source, not only will that ball cast a shadow and display a reflection on the marble flooring, but the blue coloring of the ball will cast a subtle blue tint onto the marble flooring right underneath it. That would be an effect of radiosity. I love that effect both in nature and in art.

I try to incorporate this into my work whenever I can or when it seems that it would be a very effective element too add.

Ginger's Song

My favorite thing to do is to tell a story and to illustrate it in some fashion.

The art piece "Ginger's Song" has gone through a lot of revisions. The character even looked different in the beginning. Not drastically so, but Ginger was less refined. I like that her features remain odd and characteristic so that you know that although she resembles a human, she belongs in the fantasy realm.

Ginger's Song is a short story concept that I have yet to write. The story is about a young girl with a talent for playing the piano. While practicing in her room on her scaled-down piano that her mother purchased for her years ago, she thinks of a new tune that she's quite fond of and wishes to try out on the piano. At first, the tune doesn't sound right. Some notes are off and it's incomplete.

When she manages to finish composing the tune, something very fantastical happens. One of the walls in her bedroom starts glowing around the edges and eventually breaks away completely to reveal a hidden world. She sees a valley of lush green rolling hills, marbled white fluffy clouds in the sky with a brilliant and crisp sun amid a pale lavender sky tinged with lemon tints and an inviting quaint little schoolhouse with children playfully running around on the grounds not too far in the distance.

Ginger realizes that this special song that she's created is the key to this enchanting world. Anytime she wants to visit, she knows she can play her song, Ginger's Song.

"Fantasy Checkerboard"

I really miss working in 3D Studio Max…I haven’t worked in the program for awhile but I am a huge fan of taking 3D work into Photoshop for a fusion effect. I am currently looking into getting a licensed version of Max so that I can begin creating new photoshop/3D fusion projects again. A friend installed Max on my old computer and currently I am not able to get a hold of the installation disk…so that was the beginning of my hiatus from working with 3D.

I created a traditional and plain black and red checkerboard set with a wood base a couple of years ago with Max. I decided to update the look of the board in Photoshop today. I wanted to give it a magical fantasy look so I themed it in purples and pinks with glowing accents for the checkerboard pieces. I definitely like the revision. It makes me want to have a glowing checkerboard set just like it.

The Asymptotic Faery

The Asymptotic Faery is a character design I plan to develop further. It's based on my writing identity under the same name as well as the writing blog site I started recently:

The Asymptotic Faery Writing Blog

The name, originally just Asymptotic Faery, came about several years ago as one of my alter egos. I have many alter egos that I like to characterize. The Asymptotic Faery's name was originally Inkair. I might still use this name for the T.A.F. character but for now it represents another facet of my personality under my real name.

Additionally, I used this name as one of my online discussion board aliases for a few years and it eventually stuck as a username.

The name depicts a state of mystique, curious intelligence (cerebral connotation) and childlike whimsy. More directly, the name implies my ability to relate to other people through ideas, thoughts and emotions while remaining quite solitary and distant on many levels. Others get close to me but never really get to know or understand me fully...so to speak. This has nothing to do with placing myself on a pedestal of any sort. The meaning should not and is not intended to be interpreted this way. It is more about my acknowledgment as a solitary person...tending towards being social on my own terms out of habit and nature. It also reflects my experience of being able to only relate to a few people in my life very well on a very intimate level.

The design was originally developed in Illustrator, but taken into Photoshop to add in background elements from other related pieces. I wasn't sure about how I wanted to interpret the look of the character. I had some other sketches in mind. I am still in experimentation stage...so the design can change if I wind up not liking it as much within a week or so. The character was a bit different than what I usually design because was very insect-like.

Originally, the legs were not encased in bubble sheaths or material as they are now. They just stood out of bare stick-like limbs. I wasn't too satisfied with that after a week had passed. I wanted the limbs to look more substantial.

I've also always liked the look of easter eggs, colorful beetles (especially scarabs), ladybugs, butterfly wings, reflective glassy objects with a hint of water and mirror elements and alien-like creatures. So this character takes on all of these associations. It's a faery...a unique being but it also has the ability to transform and adapt to various environments with its appendages and body.

The head is the central stagnant look but the character has the ability to change and adapt...body-wise.

I added in the character holding a shiny glass with pink liquid in it circling around several small planets which depicts a snapshot or section of the universe. The slogan for The Asymptotic Faery is, "The Whole Universe Inside a Glass of Water."

The meaning behind this slogan can be seen as my T.A.F. blog site linked further above.

"Confetti Palace"

I came up with the concept for this fictitious company about a year ago. I was working on a project in an Adobe After Effects course and the objective was to come up with an idea for an advertisement short.

I thought of many ideas but I wanted whatever it was to be fun, different, exciting and playful. I thought about my interests and desires in life. I've always thought that if I ever became very independently wealthy, I would often plan and host themed parties and events for friends and family.

I love the idea of entertaining and creating fun. I liken creating fun to the effect of an explosive display of confetti, fireworks or dazzling bright light shows. These types of effects and actions surprise, entice and engender a very euphoric and celebratory series of feelings. I think many people find anything that breeds these emotions exciting and alluring.

I also thought about the movie The Game with Michael Douglas and Sean Penn. The unusual plot of the movie gave me more ideas.

So I thought to create a make-believe advertisement for a surprise party planning business. I thought for days on what the business name should be as well as the slogan. I finally came up with the name Confetti Palace and the slogan: Celebrate The Unexpected!

I thought both the name and slogan were catchy and emotive.

I created a video for the advertisement in After Effects and after I completed the project, I uploaded it on YouTube. It can be seen here:



The music is by the artist Twink. He's a favorite. The title of the track is called "Not Enough Crayons For Everyone". He's an artist that uses toy piano to compose his music. He's quite the artist in many facets, which includes illustration.

I decided to use the graphics that I illustrated and designed for the video to create an advertisement for the faux business. Recently, I went in finalized the design and layout by illustrating it further. It was created in Illustrator and then taken in Photoshop to finalize the digital painting involved in many of the highlights, shadows, sky drop and surfaces.

In order to see the details of the piece, click on the image to download a larger version of the image in a new window.

"Bunanki: The Bunny Boy"

Bunanki, The Bunny Boy, is one of my central characters for my Pink Laughter Kingdom world concept.

I had designed his look a few years ago and used him as a mascot for my Pink Laughter Designs website, within an older template that I had created.

I started this illustration in Illustrator CS3 and completed the design in Photoshop CS3 recently. There will be more development of him as I need to draw him in various views and angles in to illustrate his personal environment/space within Pink Laughter Kingdom.

Underneath Bunanki's hat, resting and curled up, is a magical pet bunny named Binky. Bunanki, with the help of Binky, has a special gift in helping others to find their way or showing them the path to sought after locations.

I'd like to write a lot more about Bunanki, but I feel I should keep more details about him private for now.

"Sholi: The Candy Bear"

I am working on various character personalities and designs for Pink Laughter Kingdom. This illustration was created originally in Flash CS3 and taken into Photoshop CS3.

Sholi [SHOW-lee] is a panda-like bear creature that inhabits the world of Pink Laughter. He lives on a diet of candy wish sticks which possess and contain many magical gumball candies. In the image, he is on his way to his hibernation cave and home where the interior walls are completely embellished and covered with tons of tantalizing candies and sparkling multi-colored jewels and stones of various displays of brilliance.

Sholi has magical powers and invokes these powers through the gumball candies. When he is ready to create magic, Sholi will go into a very odd, kooky but playful ritual dance, where his peculiar-shaped, double-jointed arms and legs will begin to flail about in a hypnotic fashion.

As he is doing this dance, his glass-plated belly, which stores and makes many gumball candies inside, will start to shake and rattle all of the contents. Eventually, this will cause Sholi to give off a very forceful hiccup and from that hiccup; he'll release some of those gumball candies.

The gumballs can then be given to others to eat. The color of a gumball represents the magical property it holds, so the person, who ingests a gumball, will be temporarily endowed with the magical property of the gumball.

The expelled gumballs can also be planted into the ground and they will eventually grow into other candy wish sticks for Sholi to dig up, carry off in his cave and indulge in.

Sholi, the candy bear, is obviously a very very self-reliant and mysterious creature.

"Tangelo Nostalgia"

Tangelo Nostalgia was originally a casual story concept that came about randomly. Over time I came up with a plot surrounding the title and illustration theme. In the future, it will become a full-fledge book series.

This piece was created in Illustrator 10 on a very large scale. I felt that the title fit the energy of the illustration. Most people who've seen it say they get this hazy, dream-like sentimental feeling from just looking at it and that's exactly the impression that I wanted to create.

The storyline also centers around this impression and involves time travel transformation, through longings, wishes and regrets, among friends who've known one another since childhood.

Isometric Designs

These are my first illustrations created using an isometric perspective. I found the perspective a bit challenging but it was harder to illustrate in a free form fashion.

In order to make things easier for myself, I winded up creating a custom grid on the walls and flooring of the isometric room. I was able to get the measurements of the room through a project manager that I had worked with as these illustrations were designs for a virtual world website for a large plush toy company. The themed rooms were to be featured on their website for their virtual world animal characters.

Once I got the measurements and created the custom grid, I began creating the sketching out ideas for the interior designs of the rooms based on the themes I was assigned. I worked on over 7 different theme room designs and created custom furniture in different angles and views (SE, SW, NE, NW). The rest of the themed rooms were given to others on my team as we all had to reach the client's deadline by completing a total of 20 themed rooms.

I enjoyed the learning process of working with illustrations in not only an isometric perspective but in different angles within an isometric perspective. So, for example, if I created an Easter themed bed, then I had to create that bed in a front, back, left and right view so that animators could program the views into the room's virtual world function on the website...and more importantly, so that the animal characters could interact with the furniture by having the user be able to rotate the views of the furniture pieces.

The themed rooms featured here are the Zoo, Art and Music Theme rooms respectively.

"3rd Eye Cinema"

3rd Eye Cinema is the name of a company that I started with friends and fellow classmates in my Visual Communications program. A lot of us had the same classes throughout the program and as a result, many of the connections developed into friendships.

One of the most enjoyable classes that I had was my Final Cut Pro class. As with my 3D Studio Max course, I didn't know what to expect. I hadn't taken a video editing class before or done anything extensively with motion graphics. I was very intrigued however and as with all of my classes, I dove in head first.

We were given quite a few assignments and the theme of our final project was to be developed by the class as a group effort. The initial idea was to do a karate skit but I felt that we should perhaps do a horror film. I have to admit I wanted my idea to come through because I am a fan of horror genre films. I argued that this would be different and exciting and we could choose to add in other genres to a horror theme...for example, horror comedy, horror drama and so forth. It could have gone any way.

Everyone eventually agreed to my idea and we each brainstormed and worked on creating a plot. We decided to base the horror film on our campus...making it a whodunit horror film that took place in a school environment.

We worked through creating a storyboard after developing our plot, and we even got school administrators, other students in different programs, and various teachers involved in a lot of the acting roles. The next step was to shoot our scenes and take turns getting involved in different film crew roles so that we learned about all of the processes involved in making a short film.

I found that everyone became closer and I really enjoyed the energy and chemistry we had together as a group. It was so amazing that I started to think that we could do this as a business if we wanted to...if we all invested in the idea, put our heads and talents together and went for it. As the film was near the end of its production, I brought up the idea to my friend and classmate Emily. She immediately liked the suggestion and later we discussed it with everyone else in class.

This brought on, initially, the idea of starting a film/video club on campus. We talked to a few administrators and signed up for petitioning the inclusion of this club. Our idea was accepted and we started to have regular meeting and advertise the club around campus for others to join. We got great response and at some point, I brought up the business end of the film making idea again, but I wanted to include people who were in our small circle because that was where the trust and chemistry was.

Everyone in that circle came on board and we went ahead and established 3rd Eye Cinema. I was responsible, as president, for getting the business affairs together and establishing the meetings. We got the FBN statements filed, we began writing our business plan as a group and I mentioned I would start working on the website.

Some people agreed that one of my character designs was going to be the mascot design of the company. I had created a character called Panash [puh-NOSH] and I established the website design around him as well as our business colors which were blue, lime green and deep purple.

The page template was created in Photoshop CS, taken into ImageReady CS for slicing and rollovers, as well as optimization and then it was taken into Dreamweaver CS for further customization, set up and HTML adjustment. We were able to get a domain deal through one of our favorite instructors as well as web hosting. So once all of that was set up, I used CuteFTP to load the HTML and image files onto the server.

What happened to the company that we started? Well it was all about timing and ongoing collaboration. It was a tough year and we were all nearing the time of graduation so classes and projects were piling up intensely as well as personality obligations. Meetings were harder to schedule and hold consistently so over time, the buzzing energy around the business fizzled out and became scattered.

However, I still think it's a great idea and I still own the rights to the name and identity as well as the domain, so I'd like to do something soon with the business idea in the near future. It certainly shouldn't be completely abandoned.