"Inspire Me" - New Cartoon's Backgrounds

     These are two backgrounds from another in-progress animation called "Inspire Me" for now.  It's a twisted tale about a baseball superstar standing up against staggering odds make good on a promise he made to a terminally ill boy.

The scene of the heart-breaking pact between a boy and his hero.

     This takes place at the halfway point of the film.  I wanted to do this scene first, as it has the most (and only) dialogue between three characters.

Like rolling thunder chasing the wind!

     Hospitals always seem sad to me.  Like being in purgatory, or on a twilight.  And I went with the orange sunset color washing over the place as it's contradicting how a sad threshold on life can bathe in such a beautiful and cheerful color.  Sorry for sounding all poetic like.  Yeop.

More to come!

Summertime!

   Finished this last week.  It's an illustration of a character I made named Anya.  It's fun as hell drawing cute girls with lots of bright colors and highlights.  I normally animate and draw angry, scary material, so this is a great departure.  Especially when it's a different style than how I usually draw.

Original line drawing.

Inked, then cleaned up.

Base color!  (I was thinking of strawberries, so I went with this color scheme.)

Final product!  Shadows, highlights, and background.

     Nice!  I'll do some more of this once I find some time between the 3 animated projects I got going on (went up one after a new one I started today).  Back to work.

Sneakers from Philly.

     Custom sneakers done by me for a customer to the Ubiq shoe store in Philadelphia.  The event was a lot of fun to attend and (get paid to) participate in.  For a one day special event in the summer, I did custom designs and illustrations on people's Converse sneakers.  With just some markers and the VAST IMAGINATION of my clients.  How'd the event turn out?

     The second person I had wanted the above sneakers done with his little website logo.  He wanted the robot to loom over the city.  It was my idea to add the waves, graphics, and cool colors.  They're also my favorite colors (green and grey).

     I wish I had a picture of the DBZ sneakers I did.  Those were my favorite.  One customer wanted a sneaker with anything Dragonball Z related on it.  On one side, I did Picolo shooting his Special Beam Cannon, and on the other I did Goku starring down Vegeta.  It was an explosion of color and badassry that blew the mind the sneaker's owner.  Another also wanted something relating to Naruto drawn on it.  I did Sasuke since he's the only character from that that I could draw from memory.

My original idea.  I couldn't fit all of it on the sneaker. :(

The event ended on a slow note, when this one dopey girl asked me for sneakers with neon zebra/leopard markings on them and said it'd be a "challenge".  Lame.        

Current Project: Misshapen, Well Meaning Kid Fucks Up Prank.

   It's been a few weeks since I finally got to starting this piece, but I wanted to make a simple, funny cartoon that can serve as a showcase to as much absurdities and amazing animated flourishes as possible.  I want this cartoon to be both hilarious and fun to watch.

     It's about a kid named Eddie playing the ol' shaving cream prank on his sleeping grandpa downstairs.  He's too excited about the mischief he's going to cause to care about anything else.

  
     Hopefully, he doesn't screw up such a simple practical joke!  The joke is meant to serve as a template for me to do as many insane visual impossibilities as possible.  Kinda like stretching my legs after so many years of being in an art school that put so many restrictions on surrealism.  In a cartoon.

     That'll be discussed another time.

     How well does his shenanigans turn out?  Well, aside from a few small sentences near the beginning, there'll be no dialogue in this cartoon.  And a majority of it will be devoted to the old man's reaction at it. It's going to be a blast once it's done.  It's going to be a bit of a while, but I want it to be perfect.  Each and every frame will ooze character.

     I'll post some snippets of the finished portions of animation over here along the way.

Hello World, I'm [Jaime R.]

                                                      

Hey all, this is going to be a log for all my progress in animation and illustrative art.  I'm a traditional 2d animator schooled from Philadelphia and stationed in New Jersey.  Now I'm a freelance artist, while I work on my own material and hope to get done and ready for the festival circuit.

     Examples of my 2d work include My kick ass 2009 Demo Reel, the octopus cartoon "Phillip's Song", and a gaggle of illustrations on my Deviantart page.  Like my hero Bill Plympton, I aspire to make it big in animation through the traditional, hand drawn means with lots of imagination, character, and surreal elements.

     Progress is a tad bit slow since I do it all on my own, but I've got a lot of big projects in the works.  And I'll update on those works every other day.  Tomorrow night, I'll start with my current project that's coming along quick and well.