Wussup er'body:} I realized that I hadn't been that active for a while, and that my last journal was about my NY convention! Sorry about that. I know you guys have better things to do than wonder about what's up with me. But I hate to waste anybodies time, and this is after all a community:}
Basically, I've shifted my focus from comic books for the time being. It was a really tough decision that took guts for me to make. I started this journey when I was 12, but I didn't take it serious until I was about 16 or 17. I'm now 28, and 11 years of struggle, being homeless for a time, and being turned down twice in 1 hour from people who told me to email them has taken it's toll on me. Plus not to mention the fact that our income is insufficient to cover our expenses on a monthly basis. I'm just tired man...... I can remember Cheeks telling me over and over that comics is not the end of the line, and I'd always be like "dude, comics is everything...yadda yadda..." I realize now what he means. The people in this industry take all the fun and love out of it for me. I won't go into details, but at the end of the day, this is a business, and the goal of a business is profits. At the same time, it takes a creative toll on me. Don't get me wrong, I'm not hating on anybody in the industry, I'm just saying... ya know?
So, for about a month, I've been really heavy into video game concept design. If you've known me for a while, you know that historically I've always hated character design. I think it's because I'm not that good at it, and I would just get frustrated. But now, I've turned my entire focus to learning the craft of good character, and concept design. I just gotta be brutally honest with myself, and seek out what sucks about my characters. The thing that has helped me learn to love CD is the fact that every little thing has story behind it. A certain type of grenade, why a person has a certain hairstyle and etc. Coming up with a person's life is awesome.
I've also been on this education kick, I wanna know every design program there is out there, starting with ZBrush. I just got it, but I don't know what I'm doing. I spent an hour yesterday just messing around with brushes. Does anybody know where I can get some good tutorials? I'm also learning how awesome Sketchup is especially when you use Vray to do a render pass on top of it. There is an amazing amount of freedom when you get off that one track mind mode. I've conditioned myself to just focus on pencil and eraser, and it's stunted my creative growth.
So anyway, I've been having a good ol time with all this new stuff. I'm doing a huge-mongous sample packet right now, and I'm about 55% complete. When I'm done, I'll be collecting all the designs together in a nice thick sketchbook that I'll be selling (or giving away as I mostly do;} I'll also be posting some of the art really really soon, but I haven't started the digital portion yet. Once I get some of the digital painting out of the way, then I'll post. I just want to be able to put em side by side so as to get better critiques, which you guys better give me. I want you to hammer me, even on the smallest detail. I trust you guys, and we're in the fox hole together! :} Thanks to all you guys who've watched me recently, or just dropped by. I promise I'm better in real life...:}

Stay tuned yall....

jus