Well, Halloween is about 7 months away, but the monsters came out ahead of schedule! I always enjoyed designing halloween themed illustrations, so when I was asked to come up with some, I went to work immediately. In the latest commission by DJ Steve-S, four characters were designed. Three dressed in their devil costumes and one spinning on a demonic looking set of turntables. Since the sketches were approved last night, they are well under way to being colored. I will work on adding some cool lighting effects when I get started. A cool tip for great lighting reference is to take some pictures of yourself with a flashlight lit underneath your face in a dark room. I took over 15 photos and ended up with so many great shots. The toughest part of coloring for me has always been figuring out interesting light sources and how the shadows are cast. I am really looking forward to coloring these samples up. Stay tuned for updates. 

Running a business is a lot of fun. I'm learning that it requires a lot of discipline. You make your own hours, and are responsible for the amount of income that you generate. There are many new challenges that I face but one of the toughest is the struggle between managing my time between my personal projects (pleasure) vs. business projects. Above is a model sheet of "Slick Rick", a rapper from the 80's. I'm a huge fan of his, and his song Children's Story has always been my favorite. I decided I was going to make an animated video out of it just for fun. The above sketch was designed almost a year ago. I still haven't been able to dedicate more time to the video other than a few character sketches. The reason is as soon as I got deep into it, a new client would come along. I have to the keep the lights on in my studio, so of course the client gets priority. However, it's important for me to remember that I need to treat myself to guilty pleasures as well. 

Though my day job hardly seems like a job, it is. I must remind myself that even company jobs offer perks, to their employees. It's about time I offered myself some perks! So that being said, I want to use some of my vacation time, sick leave, paid time off, etc..to get back to working on some of the projects that I have started and never finished. I started putting up some of the most developed of these projects up on the walls around the office to remind me of this. I will be sure to keep you posted on the development of the animated music video.