My Greatest Creations and my Stunning Sidekick!!

I thought I'd share a blast from my past! these were taken about few years ago of my daughter Bijan MaiLei and of my son Aiden Cruz, I still get a kick out of their imagination and laughter, you'll see why! Hope you get a kick out of them as well. I have to capture my wife Jackie on film one day! She's hard to get on camera, but I vow to get her on this here blog soon enough. She's the main reason why I'm still sane and the greatest LOVE of my life! One day honey ONE DAY! 'Til then here's a couple of pics of this Stunning Vixen along with two of my greatest creations, Bijan and Aiden, I love you both more than you'll ever know! Enjoy.

Dragon Princess 2.0

Hi again! As many of you know the Wizard Con Chicago will be here in just a short time, June 26th - 29th! So I am preparing a few pieces that I will be selling and showcasing in the upcoming Con. This is one of them, The Dragon Princess. I'm hoping that the prints will be a big hit, One of my favorite pin up artists is Jim Silke, and like him I tried to bring the sexiness and fun into my pin ups. Don't know if i did a good job? you be the judge. I'm still in process mode as far as compiling my ideas for other projects so please PLEASE! write in and let me know if you like this piece, otherwise I'm just calling this whole thing off and becoming a librarian! Gracias all!

What I've been up to these past months!

Here's a few things I've been busy creating at home and work. I've been busy preparing for the June Wizard Con here in Chicago. The first piece here is Kalypso the Greek Goddess from the Homer tale. She'll be one of the prints that I'll be selling at the con.

Next it's a pin up I did for a buddy Ash Jackson, of Eve: Vampire Diva for his pin up book he will be selling at the Philly Con later this month, May 30th thru June 1st to be exact.


Next I did this cover (I gotta color it too so this is the before shot) for my friend LaMorris Richmond up at BLAM comics. He's going to be putting out a graphic novel and I'll be providing the cover, logo and some older pin ups I did for JBD. The novel will feature art by the Great Seitu Haydon of "Tales of The Heart" fame.


Here's some poster art I did for McD that will be gracing the Orange lines this summer. If any of you ride the "L" and take the orange line, look up and you'll notice these posters on the roof of each rail car. Let me know if you see any of them on your way to or from work!


Lastly here are some more pieces I've worked on. 'Til next time true believers.

Thanks Ollie, for making illusions come to life!!

Yesterday a "Great" passed, Ollie Johnston went on to join the rest of the 9 in animation lore. He along with eight others were the original animators that brought us classics such as "Snow White", "Fantasia", "Cinderella", "Lady and the Tramp", "Alice in Wonderland", and "Sleeping Beauty". Although he was a pioneer in animation he was best known for his long friendship with Frank Thomas who passed four years ago. They have a magnificent book titled The Illusion of Life, a must have for any artist. He was also "animated" in a few animated films, 2 by Brad Bird, "The Iron Giant" and "The Incredibles". He was a kid at heart and at 95 was still enjoying life. Hope we in the art profession remember those who came before us and learn about the great accomplishments they have given to our craft. Thanks Ollie, you'll be missed!


Frank and Ollie in "The Incredibles"


Ollie in "Iron Giant"

Some more, old and new sketches

The title says it all, Oh the scanner is working again now so expect more posts in the future! I've been good so far, or at least a whole lot better then last year!

Some old sketches and some new ones!

Here's a few sketches from my not so distant past, some of these are just a few years old and some a couple of weeks. Stuff i do in my spare time at work, LOL! Well hit me up my scanner at work is going caca so i might have to get a new one, I hope you enjoy these. You know there's so many projects I have not finished especially with my dear friend Raf Nieves I feel ashamed. Hope this will inspire some of you to continue on with current projects, don't let up, I learned from my mistakes so don't let it happen to you. Well, keep on keeping on and let me know your thoughts!

Woa I forgot I had this!

Back in December I did a couple of pieces for a very talented director, Bryan Kinnaird for his movie The Vilkron Chronicles. I had one of the pieces up before but I never posted this piece. It's of Mystere and it's a non action pose. I just wanted to create her looking hot and ready for action. The character in the movie is played by Cara Fawn, great fit for Mystere and it seems the cast is full of great actors from all over. I'm exited about the project, and even though it's a small contribution I'm proud to be part of it. Well as always let me know your thoughts and I hope to putting some more pieces in the not so distant future!

Messing around with 3D again

Hiya all again! I started playing around with 3D again it's been a sec but I still know how to get around the interface. Now I did this as a part of a pitch for the Chicago Fire, a soccer team here in Chicago, that Hernandez & Garcia has been working on, so far it looks promising. This took me a day to create and a day to render, I'm rusty so give me a break. Regardless it was fun and I really liked playing around with 3D again, it's been too long. I'm actually doing a few projects in 3d and I'll be posting a few as they get approved to be shown. For now let me know what you think of my 2 second end animation that I came up with.

Dave Stevens, Thank you!

On a sadder note another ICON has passed, One which I held in high regard and got a chance to meet in person and who I admired. Dave Stevens passed from a long battle with cancer. Read about it here http://www.aintitcool.com/node/35965


I really loved this man's work and even now I like catching The Rocketeer movie, cheesy as it might of been, it still rocked, no pun intended. Thanks Dave for everything!

Mainasha's Tweening Art, Diamond in the rough!

There's a great site that I have not talked about and that, apart from me being ashamed of myself for not mentioning it sooner, I'm also part of as far as contributor of content. The main Gal in charge of putting together such kick@$$ content is Mainasha, an accomplished animator and talented all around femme fatale! http://tweeningart.blogspot.com/ is the site and it's also below in my links under Tweening Art. Not only is it filled with inside info on animation and the animation industry but it's a chance to see her work. Well I promised to be posting more so I will on both sites! Go check her out!

Justice League The New Frontier animation

I have to say with all the talk about the Justice League Live Action movie in my opinion The New Frontier should be considered as the benchmark for its live action counterpart. Either that or begin the movie as a sequel to this one. If you have not seen The New Frontier animation yet, You really should pick it up. i got the 2 disc version and loved it even came with 3 episodes of Justice League Unlimited for under $20, not a bad deal. Seeing I've been trying to post in here more often about my mindless ravings I figured why not give props to some of these great pieces of geek delight. Thanks Ken for reccomending this Vid! and sorry Akey for not jumping at the chance to get this series when it first came out! For those of you who haven't seen it here's the trailer.

I can't wait!

Now when I saw this Vid I got pretty exited. Not only is this overdue, I think they should do this treatment for all American Superheroes, DC and Marvel alike. I think this type of artistic collaboration is very much needed in the existing Comic Book genre of today. Let's hope this is a seed for future projects, Excelsior!!

Doodlin' @ lunchtime!

See told ya I'd be posting a bit more consistently! Well so far so good as far as using time wisely I've adapted a habit of sketching here at work when I have some down time. I found a great resource for just brushing up on your sketching (as well as your anatomy skills). It's found here, http://www.characterdesigns.com/index.php?sitepage=tutorials It features some beautiful renderings that will help as far as reference and just letting loose. I love to sketch in Pen, don't ask me why but it helps me develop a sense of urgency as far as getting the proportions right from the get go. Everyone has their own little method this is my little quirk. Here's a few samples I came up with. Check it out, Kevin Chen I believe is his name, really has alot of samples to sketch from.

Hi Dee Ho!

Hey, Happy New Year! ok now that the festivities are over, oh wait and have a safe Valentines day! ok I'm done ok so you might be wondering what in God's name I've been up to well, A LOT OF WORK and not only that but I've been up and about looking for a place to move to. I love Chicago I've called it home for most of my adult life. Sadly opportunities here for what I'm looking for have pretty much dried up. Me and the family have set our sights on a warmer climate somewhere were the temperature wont drop below zero, actually below 40 :) Where is such a place you ask? Well we've narrowed it down to Austin Texas. Seems like a 360 turn but luckily I've done my research and it seems like a great place to live in, let alone work from. I happened upon this state oddly enough applying for a job there, just to see how far I'd get. I don't think I got the job but it opened up a world of possibilities for me. So I've been doing my homework and looked around to see where I could fit in, so far it's looking pretty good, we'll see. Anyhoo besides all that I've also been busy creating collateral material or plainly put some art for our clients here in H&G. I've also been hard at work putting together thumbnails and final penciled pieces for my little en devour - RIMANAKUY YAWAR the blood covenant.
Well enough chatter for now here's some of the stuff I've been working on.




Well hope to hear from you soon I have more, but that'll be when I start putting the pages together. Stay tuned!

slackjaw lazy good fer nuthin' swine!

Yea that's me sorry I've been BUSY and with this crappy weather it hasn't helped things any. I'll be posting tonite some of my new stuff I've been working on, So go easy on me, 08 I feel will be a better posting year for me!

Hey look new art!

I was hoping to put up more, but I have a couple pieces I can show and that I'm pretty proud of. One is for my day job up at H&G. It's for an upcoming promotion that I've been assigned to do. I had alot of fun doing it and learned a few things along the way. It's very Alphonse Mucha inspired, he's an amazing artist that I have admired for years now. I have always wanted to create a piece that would pay homage to his great works and even though I'm not close by any means I hope I've gotten a bit closer with this one. It will probably change once it goes into the revision state, adding of legal copy and logos, so I want to share what I have so far while still in it's early stages, hope you all like it!



My next one is a piece I did for Bryan Kinnaird. I created a piece for his up coming flick called "VILLIKON CHRONICLES" I'm also pretty proud of it and being involved in a film project is pretty sweet. My art along with many other pieces from various talents from across the globe will run at the end of the movie. This is the first one I came up with, I'm hoping to create a couple more. The pissed off hottie jumping in mid air is Bermusa, and the hottie about to receive the beat down...(or will she? stay tuned...) is Mystere.


Well let me know what you all think I'll try and get more in as they get done. Once I finish up some of these jobs I will get back into my web comic. Yea I'm hoping to get that off the ground and put it up with the help of Transfuzion Comics by next year. More on that soon.

ORIGINAL DESIGN GANGSTA

OHHHH HEELLLLZZZZZZ YEA DAWG!! This is my new acronym yo, ODG, Foo!

Holy Mama!

Hey all! Sorry I've been busy doing some writing for a web comic I'm (trying very hard!) to wrap up. I have alot of sketches and thumbnails drawn out unfortunately not enuff time to scan all of them. I know, I know I'm a slackjaw lazy good fer nuthin' swine, I couldn't agree more but I've at least posted what I sold as prints in the con. You can find them in my comicspace site, But as soon as i can get some time i will start posting some thumbnails and other sketches too. So if you have some time to waste check out my galleries. Just a few of shout outs to Tony "Malo", Raf, Norm , Gary, Doug, Crystal, Gio, Arnie, LaMo, man so many I can't count them all, Thanks for checking out my stuff and putting up with my last minute posts and CONGRATS on each of your individual projects. I look forward to hopefully contributing to some of them. I know I always forget to post stuff i said I'd post and maybe I will next time around when i re read what i wrote a month ago...man that sounds bad..EEch!

The Con...eh?? yet it still rocked!!

The Chicago Con is not the San Diego Con by any means, but for the first time in a loooooooong time I had a blast! There's a whole list of stuff to write about and art to post but seeing I still have a day job that takes up a good chunk of my time, I will do it this weekend. I wish there was more hours in the day in order to create and put up all the things that I want to do. Thanks to this Blog I can at least talk about doing it! Well the Con was a reason for a bunch of artists, writers and comic book aficionados to get together and simply dwell and bask in the grandeur that is comics. I got to meet tremendous talents like Gary Reed, an award winning writer not to mention publisher, Len Kody a great writer and his lovely girlfriend, Dan Dougherty an amazing artist, EricJ an incredible all around talent... just to mention a few. I hope this little club of ours, "The Chicago MOB" continues to grow and include alot more of Chicago's great pool of talent. Well I'll get to some more on the con this weekend.

MOB RULE DECLARED IN CHICAGO!

Authorities uncovered a plot by a nefarious group of artists, writers, and other bohemian ne’er-do-wells planning to storm the upcoming Wizard World convention in Chicago on Thursday, August 9^th, through Sunday, the 12^th.

The insurgents are intent on taking over the event, inciting riots and attempting to add numerous supporters to their dastardly cause. Their goal seems to be world domination!

Early intelligence reports have identified key members of this mob; a full disclosure of their names and areas of expertise are as follows:

Rafael Nieves, a Writer (VAMPIRE: THE MASQUERADE; THE PHANTOM; MR. MOTO), and the apparent ringleader of the mob whom, it is said, has threatened to sell and sign numerous publications from his 20 year stint in the field. Nieves has aligned himself with quite a diverse band of hooligans, which includes these known associates:

Douglas Klauba, Painter and Cover Artist for THE PHANTOM, KOLCHAK, THE SPIDER, DOC SAVAGE, ZORRO... will have copies of his Sketchbook for sale, packaged between full color covers, with never before seen drawings, sketches and roughs from throughout his career and, for the very first time, includes a special Phantom section of preliminary drawings and studies. Along with the Sketchbook, Klauba will have collectible postcard sets and DC VS trading cards on hand, and there will be a selection of limited edition fine art prints available.

Juan Arevalo is an Art Director and Freelance Artist who has collaborated with Nieves on various projects in the pre-production phase. Arevalo has worked with leading Christian publisher UMI and comics creator Michael Davis on the initial launch of THE GUARDIAN LINE of faith-based comics. He has also created character designs for an upcoming animation in association with toy company RC2. Rumor has it that Arevalo is currently working on a personal project, RIMANAKUY YAWAR-THE BLOOD COVENANT, a web comic due out next year.

Antonio Maldonado, Artist and Radical (CHILLIN'S , the cover art for band Aiden's RAIN IN HELL CD, and Game Animator for Spongebob Squarepants:Diner Dash 1 and 2 for
Nickelodeon and Playfirst) has a number of projects in the works: a back-up story for Nieves' re-release of EDGAR ALLAN POE’S THE BELLS titled "Alone", and the graphic novel BLACKBIRDS, also with Nieves. This malcontent will be selling copies of CHILLIN'S and his CUCOS! sketchbook, and will be doing Commission Sketches.

Dan Dougherty (CYCLONE BILL AND THE TALL TALES, KOLCHAK) will be previewing several upcoming projects, including two zombie period pieces, ROTTEN and NATIONAL HORROR, as well as the long awaited anti-gravity yarn NEWTON'S LAW.

Len Kody: The up-and-coming comics Writer started his career contributing short stories to the MOONSTONE MONSTERS anthology series, which is now available in trade paperback. He'll be selling and signing copies of his dark, Western mini-series, CISCO KID: GUNFIRE & BRIMSTONE. And he'll no doubt be talking up his long awaited CISCO KID vs. WYATT EARP crossover, a two-issue event also featuring the talents of Chuck Dixon and EricJ, scheduled for a late '07 release. As a Convention Exclusive, Kody will debut pages from his first independently produced original graphic novel, SOUTHSIDE COP, about the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

Nick Muntean, the Writer of "Kay-rash" from the anthology CHILLIN'S. Currently working with Antonio Maldonado on their upcoming 2008 project DOOM DOOM: 21ST CENTURY GIRL, a book so quirky, so odd, so manic, so pop-culture that it's best and most coherent description is "The Archies on acid!" Nick and Antonio will preview their book with a special, for-sale print of the characters.

Juan Gomez, Artist (CHILLIN’S, EDGAR ALLAN POE’S THE BELLS) will be previewing his latest project, WHO? THE HEX! as well as MALGATO, a graphic novel to be released in 2008.

La Morris Richmond is a Writer/Publisher/Revolutionary who, through his B.L.A.M! comics imprint, has produced the comic series CANTON KID and PURGE. His BOOTS OF THE OPRESSOR and JIGABOO DEVIL remain benchmarks in provocative, guerilla storytelling. Richmond will invade the convention on Thursday, Friday and Sunday, and will have copies of these books available for purchase.

John Siuntres is Host/Agitator of wordballoon.com, the best place to find podcast interviews with comicdom’s best and brightest. Siuntres is a raconteur and bon vivant nonpareil, so be warned!

All law-abiding citizens are urged to attend the WizardWorld Chicago convention and seek out this rabble at booths 4110 through 4120. Only by purchasing as much of their tracts and propaganda as possible can we deflate their scheme for rampant anarchy, preventing them from spreading their misinformation and half truths to the unsuspecting world!