concept central

Since I can't read Japanese, and all I can find are toy-related articles, it seems there's really only so much one can say about the notorious Shunya Yamashita.

Like some of my favorite Heavy Metal artists, all he seems to draw is sexy nymphs.



Sure, he'll draw the occasional big, badass dude, or as you can see above, the nymph with a big gun/hairdryer thing, but that's all part of Mr. Yamashita's appeal.

Would it matter if I spouted stuff from the guy's Wikipedia article? Would you care if I said he worked as a character designer for various Japanese videogames, eventually landing (quite comfortably) on toy design?


Maybe. I suppose it would. I don't want to insult anyone's intelligence, but I guess Mr. Yamashita's just one of those guy's portfolio you just wanna' ogle at and not think about anything else.

Like what makes him popular? Why the anatomy seems very idealized? Or why his annoyingly pricey figures keep disappearing from shelves a day after their release?

Nah. You don't need to ask those questions anymore. All you need to to do is observe what people keep twittering or posting about Mr. Yamashita's latest high-priced toys and you'll get it. Your subconscious will just accept why this guy deserves the success he's having.

If this post read like another one of those poorly researched, train-of-though bullcrap that doesn't make a bit of sense, I truly apologize.
 
His work can be a little distracting you know? I'll try to make it up to you. There's this one decent write-up for Mr. Yamashita's 2008 artbook "Wildflower".



Eh? How does that sound? Good right? Great.

Finally, you might come across this conservative looking illustration below, with a heading called "rick-o-sound". I'm not sure why Japanese likes naming things like this, but it seems its his personal toyline.

Have a nice day! Hope you enjoyed my little treat!!

Born in Madrid, Spain, in 1979, little Mr. Mieglo studied his ass off learning the fundamental of things and at the age of 17 he began interning at various animation studios in Madrid. He moved to jolly ol' London were now he lives and works as a freelance painter, art director, designer and animator for a bunch of companies we'll hear about because of non-disclosure agreements.



 If I could describe his work, I'd say it is... pure eye candy. I get a rush just looking at them sometimes.


According to an interview entitled "Modern Rebel: Alberto Mielgo & Pinkman.tv" at the Motionographer, he is almost completely self taught. So for all you art academy students, listen up... don't do what he did unless you are dedicated and supremely talented!!

It was an early education at animation and guidance from his peers did he evolve to the artist you see today.


He's created some pretty interesting shorts, including “Pill, Kill Your Stress, 女孩陰毛, and PINKMAN” under the banner of "Pinkman.tv" and the thinking behind that is that he feels 2D has pretty much gotten the short end of the stick in recent decades.


Like most of the people working in the 2D animation field, he feels that the cold, calculated world of 3D has collapsed the 2D animation market in such a big way that people view it as an antiquated medium. Unfortunately, with the success of a number of 3D-only animated and live action projects means this trend will only get worse, and 2D work will be relegated to the a very niche crowd... Damn!



But like any fine connoisseur, he believes that the world of 2D can be graphic, and holds no boundaries to the imagination. In fact, he has become somewhat of a spokesperson for the medium, constantly pushing studios to use it more. This has resulted in one of his pride and joys, the Beatles: Rockband intro, which he did color keys and backgrounds for the first half:


Every piece is traditionally animated, frame by frame. The process is simple: scan, pencil, animation. He describes the fairly painstaking process in his own words: "...  Once the animation is right, I do a very basic color action. For example, pink for body and dark pink for shadows. Then, I paint on top of each drawing. As the shadow layer has also been animated, I don’t loose shapes. As each frame is hand painted, the skin has that moving feeling, something that here, I was looking to see in the animation. So, every frame is a painting."


His tools are the usual Adobe Photoshop and After FX. In the end, he has no interest to enter 3D, and I really can't argue with his current output!

Aside from his animation work, he busies himself with conceptual design for commercials and Cartoon Network, as you can see in the images posted here!

One more thing about this amazing artist...

Yeah, apparently he did some comic work for Image Publishing's Popgun anthology. If you're into that sort of greatness, then order one!

Have a nice day!

I admit, I am one of those guys that claims to love indie animation and yet watch only a handful of shorts every few months. However, the fact that I am recommending to you "Fard" a short directed by Luis Bricenco and David Alapont, should tell you how awesome I think it is.



I also recommend you check out some of this other short, this one was partially done by Scott Kravitz, who did the wonderful closing credit sequence in Madagascar 2. It's an ad  for United Airlines, directed by Jamie Caliri (who also did the end sequence of Lemony Snicket) and it's pretty sweet.



And for a little more diversity in style, watch some of this hand-drawn stuff by Argentinian designers Matias Vigliano and animator Dante Zaballa work.



Thanks Cartoon Brew!!

Ever heard of Juan Giménez? No? Nobody? Fine.

I could only find bits and pieces of info about this 'modern master' on the net, which is a good thing as it will make this post shorter. Isn't that the trend now? Shorter blog posts? But I digress. Mr. Jimenez is described as "... one of the most renowned artists in the history of comics, excels in a variety of genres, from fantasy to science fiction, and adventure to erotica."


To my knowledge, he pioneered what I call the "Badass Wearing Helmet Staring Down At You". (Unfortunately, it's not the most clever thing I can come up with at the time of this writing)


Good ol' Giménez was born in 1943 in Argentina. He took up industrial design (always a plus for great sci-fi artists) and then he traveled to Barcelona's Academy of Fine Arts (that always does the trick, doesn't it?)


He settled in Europe at the end of the 1970s where his art has been published in Italian, French and Spanish magazines, graphic novels and books. His collaboration with the likes of Carlos Trillo and Ricardo Barreiro gave the guy a lot of cred.


If you're old enough to remember his published work on the French mag Metal Hurlant, more power to you.


He is probably most well-known for his work in "La Caste des Méta-Barons", published by Les Humanoïdes, where he collaborated with some Chilean writer named Alejandro Jodorowsky. This epic series covered the origins of the powerful clan of the Meta-barons and a lot of other events I don't seem to remember.


Metabarons was the series that introduced me to the all that awesome European comic stuff that nobody seems to really appreciate.


It was brought in the States by Humanoid Publishing in collaboration with some other major publishers in the early 2000's (or noughties or whatever you want to call that decade) but from what I heard it didn't pan out so well.

In any case, Juan Giménez is an awesome artist and I'll leave it at that.

I regret I've never done a feature on Adam Hughes. You do know Adam Hughes, right? The guy who did all the Catwoman, Wonder Woman, Starwars, Danger Girl, Power Girl pinups? I figured it's time to do one. Sort of.

Y'see, I stumbled upon this ol' post at The Drawing Board forums. It's a fairly old interview with Adam Hughes his coloring technique, from his Yahoo group. I can't be too sure if his technique has changed much throughout the years, but I figured it would make a good read for the time being:

*Note that there might actually be newer Adam Hughes tutorials I've never ever seen, but I really just posted this as an excuse to get some great Adam Hughes artwork on this blog. Silly me.

Q: What version of Photoshop do you have?
Adam Hughes A: I'm still using Photoshop 5.0, because every time a new version comes out, yes they have exciting new features, but they also seem to like re-assigning keyboard shortcuts, which I LIVE for. I've got my key board shortcuts so memorized, it's like I'm playing the piano. If I switched now, the learning curve would slow me down.

 
Q: What are the main tools that you use in Photoshop?
A: The Lasso Tool, the Magic Wand, the Path Tool. I do a lot of my rendering with the Lasso Tool. I select an area, then fill it with 10% of the FG color. Then I move the selection (or make a new one) a little to the left or right, and do it again. Do THAT 6 times, and you've got a nice analogous gradation.
Sometimes I'll make Lasso selections with the feathering set up to give me a soft edge. Lara's Gerber-baby cheeks in the TR piece was done that way.

I also use Lighten and Darken (regardless of the tool) a lot when applying color.



Q: Do you keep a (color) palette next to you?

A: Definitely. I keep a lot of my Preference windows up while I'm working. The Palette is VERY important to me.


Q: What general sequence (if any) you use to color with Photoshop? (Such as) scanning inked artwork. Do you save a copy with lower dpi for easier coloring?
A: I color at print size. I upgraded my PC to handle a regular-sized comic cover with relative ease. I SHOULD upgrade again, now that you mention it…


Q: Is your local color midway between the item's shadow and highlight, or more towards its shadow…?
A: Darker. I treat the flatted piece as an imprematura, upon which I go in with my 'opaque' colors.

Q: (Do you) render the shadow areas with cuts and the airbrush & paintbrush tools?
A: Render light areas after. I never use the airbrush (or paintbrush) tool. It's got that phony digital softness I can't stand.



Q: Since you say you don’t use the paintbrush or the airbrush then do you smudge a lot?
A: No. I think the smudge effect looks digital and phony. I'll post a file with a detail from WW's face so you can see what I do up close. I let the printing and the reader's eye do a lot of the final 'closure' for me. My selections look like tiles in oil or gouache painting, when seen up close.


Q: Do you use different layers or channels for rendering? Do you render certain elements first, such as skin before moving on to hair, or foreground elements first before background? Do you render certain elements completely - shadows & highlights - before moving on to other elements? Do you render from shadow to light or vise-versa?
A: It's a judgment call. Whatever the piece calls for is how I handle it. I usually only have two layers going at a time. The basic background Layer, and them the section I'm working on (i.e.; WW's face) I save the selection of that area as a channel, that way I can get as sloppy as I want, and then I just load the inverted selection, delete the unwanted crap, and merge the layer back down to the base BG Layer.


Q: How do you go about changing the black line work in some of your pieces in Photoshop? (For example the trees in the background of the Hammer of the Gods cover). The closest I can get is choosing "Load Selection" and using the airbrush to color the inverted selection. But there always seems to be some color that creeps outside of the selected area regardless of how tight the selected area is. Please tell me there is an easier way?
A: By 'creeps out of the selected areas' do you mean that unselected areas (non-line art) are getting colored? If that's true, then something's up with the feathering on your selection. If you mean, areas of your line art that you don't want to be colored are getting color, either de-select what you don't want to receive with the Lasso tool or don't use the airbrush tool.
When I want to change line art to color, here's what I usually do:
1. Load selection.
2. Invert the selection
3. Deselect everything but what I want with the Lasso Tool.
4. Activate the Line art Channel and delete the selected areas.
5. Leaving the selection going, I activate the CMYK channel, and Fill with whatever color I want.
This is for a PC, which is what I use. Macs have the ability to eliminate a step, and I can't figure out if it's a setting I can change in Photoshop, or it's just something that Macs do. On a Mac, you can make a Lasso selection in the Line art Channel, and it automatically 'grabs' just the black line art info.

 
Q: How do you do those amazing shines?
A: I do a large feather selection, then fill with a light color like a yellow or orange, set on Lighten. I do this to 'set the stage' as it were. Then I fill it again with a color like orange or red, set on Color Dodge. I then use the Fade filter to control how much the highlight 'burns'. Try it; it's fun to experiment!

Q: What do you use the Path tool for?
A: If I need to make a large gradeful color selection, such as might be found on a reflection on her armor, or on a leg or something, I'll use the Path tool to create a very graceful arc to my selection. It's also good for rendering color highlights on hair.


Q: The Lighten feature doesn’t seem to do anything when I use it?!?
A: The color you're applying (i.e., your Foreground color) has to be lighter than the areas you're trying to affect. It won't affect any areas that are lighter than your FG color. For example: a 50% magenta in your FG color selector, with your desired Tool set on 'Lighten' will only affect pixels that are 51% magenta or darker. Anything 49% or lighter won't be affected. It sounds confusing, but I stumbled upon it all by accident. I use it a LOT.


Q: How do you use the Fade filter?
A: The Fade Filter is at the top of the Filters drop-menu; it's the second from the top. On a PC, it can be keyboarded by hitting Ctrl + Shift + F. You'll also notice you can alter your color application there, after-the-fact. This is where I discoverd the value of Lighten, Darken, and Color Dodge. In the Fade Filter, you can change the color application of the function you just completed. It's a great 'before and after' tool.
Q: Do you use any Photoshop filters in order to give your colors a particular finish?
A: I never used to, but I've gotten braver about it. Sometimes when I feel my flesh values are too high-key, I run them through the Auto Levels filter, just to see what it does to them. Sometimes I use the result, sometimes I don't.



Q: What filters do you use commonly? What would you recommend for specific effects, such as metal gleam or rain?
A: I disdain the use of filters, until you can prove you can render that stuff on your own. It's like Ian Malcolm's diatribe against raising dinosaurs with genetic engineering in Jurassic Park. If you don't take the time to master a technique, you don't learn the even more important disciplines that come with the experiences. Any decisions you make with shortcuts are uninformed ones, and you open yourself up to a world of bad judgments.

And that ends this wonderful interview with Adam Hughes, brought to you by Adam Hughes Yahoo Group. Find it and join it if you like. Oh, and before I close this one out, I stumbled upon another post about good ol' Ah! at this comic blog. It's a bunch of Marvel beauties in swimsuits. I think it was done in the early-to-mid 90's... Here we have Black Widow, the Wasp and if you're into it, She-Hulk as well...

Head on over to this link...

And that's that!!