I have moved!!!

Hey, everyone. I have moved my blog to Tumblr! So any new sketches or posts will now be posted here. You can also find my new website at junomendiola.com. Hope to see you guys there!

Dream Weaver

Breath

Card Illustrations 2nd ed.

For the second edition of cards on Fantage, I did a chibi style which was really fun and something new for me. For a better look, see the original image with a new tab.

Card Illustrations

These are some illustrations that I did for a card game within Fantage. Only two actually made it into production.

Fantasy Illustration

Since I started work, I haven't done any finished illustrations. This one took me some time collecting loads of reference and doing the line art. I'm going to try and do more finished artwork. Looking back at my portfolio it seems that I only do about one a year which is pretty sad. I've started a new illustration and I will hopefully be posting that soon.

Sketch_boy

Usually when I draw girls, I draw the girls I want to see. But when I draw guys, I usually draw kids. I guess because I still feel like that awkward kid hiding underneath a silly hat and picking up anything I could pretend was a sword. I think kids should be who they are for as long as they can before they become adults who have to hide who they are everyday. We lose some things behind those masks.

Lady Sketch

Fun Sketch

Punk Girl Sketch

I've been fighting myself for sometime now on being more productive and getting work done. I have a lot of interests including sculpture, animation, comics, and illustration. I want to be good at all these things and still try other things. It's hard to master one thing let alone 4. But I figure that doing any work is better than none so I guess I'll just try to keep busy with any art I can produce finished or not and hopefully I'll get to a point where I can be prolific (word of the day, homies). 

Having said that, here is a sketch I did.

Fantage Artwork

Hey, everyone. It's been a while since my last post. I'm sad to say I haven't done a lot of personal work due to my job. I'm trying to do more work on the side, but I seem to have that problem of never finishing projects. Go figure. It's a never ending cycle of self loathing for not being the good artist. Bad me! Bad! I have been doing some sketches, so I'll have to scan those in and post them. But for now, I'll post my artwork from work.

I've been getting a lot of practice in Illustrator doing some background design, an area that I haven't personally worked on in the past, so it's been good practice at the studio. Hope you like it.

This background I did for an event tailored after Alice in Wonderland. I especially like the cake in the top left corner.

This is a home I made for the game. This was my most successful house and I was given the most freedom on this project as I was able to pick what I wanted wanted to make. A lot of the kids bought this house in Fantage.

Bee hive home. Obviously. I feel it's misleading as living in a beehive may not be the safest living decision.

I had a lot of fun working on this event for the game. It was a futuristic theme set in space. Most awesomously (yeah, I made that word up) I got to design robots! I had a lot of fun with the spaceship interior. I like making shiny things.

This is a redesign (left) of one of the characters in the game that I did that didn't go into production. 

This is a redesign (right) of one of the stores.

Another redesign (top) of a store, which didn't make it in to production.

I recently did this candy home. It's vastly different from the one that made into the game, but I'm partial to this design.

Jewelry box for her

This is a jewelry box that I wood burned and stained for my wife a couple of years ago. I never posted it before because she had it with her in NY while I was still in Maryland. Now that we are happily married, I can show it off. Looking back I did a lot more projects than I give myself credit, although I could stand to do more...

Blob Monster Sculpt

There is this great comic I've found from an awesome artist and I love his character designs. It's simple but eye-catching. I wish I could read it, but my french is a little non-existent. In any case I decided to sculpt one of his character in sculpey, which I then molded and casted in resin. It's the first time I casted my own toys, which is an indescribably awesome feeling. It was far from perfect, but to think that a person could actually do it from the comfort of their home is mind-blowing. I know, I'm simple...

I still have yet to paint them, so if they don't look like anything at the moment, it's because of that...also it's a blob.

You can find the artist's blog here: http://billotomo.blogspot.com/

Thoughts on Miyazaki

"In this borderless age, a man who doesn't have a place to put his roots will be looked down upon. A place is the past and also a history. A man without history, or a people that forgot its past will have no choice but to disappear like a shimmer of light or to lay eggs endlessly as a hen and consumed."

- Hayao Miyazaki (The Art of Miyazaki's Spirited Away)

I think the reason why Miyazaki's films are so successful is that his vision is built on the foundation of his history and ancestry. In this way his spirit is linked to those before him.

I think of myself and I see how I have no link to my past or who my ancestors were. My history is unknown and I have always felt lost in this sense, as if a a part of me is missing. There is a wealth of knowledge and ideas buried in my past that my life and art can benefit from. I hope to uncover these things in my lifetime.

Concept sketch

Since getting my new job, I haven't had a lot of time to sketch. Hopefully this will change in the near future because I would go crazy without doing my own work. So, I did a quick sketch in Photoshop also using Alchemy. Alchemy is an interesting program because it's all about random shapes and pulling shapes from that chaos. Cool stuff. In any case, it was nice to sketch again. It's almost like taking a deep breath.

Pure Bang Games - Concept Art

I interned at Pure Bang Games for about 3 months doing concept art. I had a lot of fun working with some really cool people. Be sure to check out their future games: http://www.purebang.com/

Stamp Design

My name in a modern baybayin.
The font is Aklatin Heavy by Frederick Victor Paredes Anana (aklatinheavy.blogspot.com).

Breaking in to 3D

I've always wondered what it would be like to make my own toy sculptures. I've practiced a couple of times in sculpey, but it takes a lot more time and money to make it, so I decided to give 3D programs another shot. Normally, I don't like to sit in front of a computer all day -- I like tactile processes, but with free programs like blender, how can I complain?

I'm planning on modeling a character that I sketched in my sketchbook. Once I'm done with the model, I'm going to have it 3D printed for the world to see in all it's 3-dimensional glory. Really, I just want something tangible to sit on my shelf. I'm very excited as I go along seeing my 2-dimensional character slowly come to life.

So far, I just have some facial features. It's a long process because I'm new to this as I follow along a very good blender tutorial. Hope you like.

Outlines Finished

Got everything inked in Flash. Now for some fun coloring in Photoshop.

Space Girl Illustration_WIP

Illustration that I am working on and I'm liking how it's going so far. Inking in Flash at this stage.