The end of a decade, the beginning of something new

Well it's here again, an end of year post right on the grace period! Well this years been good in an interesting way but before I get into my novel long shpeal about how the year, how about some pics! The first pic is Jarrett, Bianca and I when we went to the beach. (We decided to do some goofy pose) Anyway, good time.. I think that will forever remain a good memory for me as apart of 2009 as a whole. Now on to the rest!


OK so with news of new SF characters comes fan art. Oh yeah. Anyway, heres the new character Juri, she's got a mechanical eye (from what I read on the capcom site) and thats why it's glowing. it looks like she's got a pretty sadistic way of fighting so I wanted to make an intimidating pose for her. So this is the first run.

Second is more of a if she just kicked someones ass and then turned around to you and was going to kick your ass. Truth be told I should have put a weird tilt on her head to get the effect, but I think it turned out.. ok



the second run is playing with angles and anyone who knows me knows that I love screwing around with messed up force perspective. So I was playing around with how I wanted a flying knee to look like if it was charging the viewer. As you can see I failed many a time trying to get the angle right, but of all the poses I liked the middle one best. I'll probably try and sit down and push the pose more to get a better sillouette out of it later.


the next one is suppose to be Juri doing a drop kick on Chun li whilest she's doing a high kick. It's suppose to be in the same vein as the Ken vs Ryu one, but the fun element was going to be that I want to throw in BG characters from SF in the background either cheering or booing the event. Sakura cheering on Chun li for revenge, and Ken cheering while his wife stands over head disapproving of the situation. Another thing if you follow my blog you might notice that I like telling a story in a picture but cramming it with... stuff. Eitherway, this and many more will end up as spill over work in to 2010.


Lastly I was working in Photoshop for the car piece.. and as you can see I barely scratched the surface. This is about a day and 1/2 of work and since working on it (mid nov) I haven't gotten a chance to get back at it. and also I suck at photoshop.

Anyway.. that about ties up pictures for my final year post. Now on to the novel! So if your not interested I suggest you stop reading now. But hey comments and critiques are welcome as always.

The end of year post.

2009... what can I say about the year? From my view all I saw was that I was out of a job for most of the year. Not all a bad thing, but not a great thing on the career front. Here's the highlights (I apologized if I missed anything)

- Had 2 family members pass away, one I wasn't that close with and one that I was. Saw my dads side of the family form a rift that will never be rectified... probably within my lifetime..
- Jarrett and Bianca moved back to the east coast (not too sad considering they're doing better out east, but I miss them)
- didn't have a job, probably black listed from a studio
- the most trying year for balancing my budget I've ever had due to unemployment.
- unaccomplished goals (3D and finishing pieces)
- miss opportunities (applies to all aspects of life, love life is one)
- falling out of touch with people (it's just the way it is I guess.. when your a bum that is)
- Embaressing moments involving alcohol
- the risk of remaining in the west and passing opportunities out east. A decision that came down to the wire and kept me up late at night lost in thoughts and anxiety.

on the flip side..

- a year which I feel I've improved as an artist
- setup a book with friends and put out 2 within our first year!
- the books been really successful in my mind in terms of exposure and how much we've been able to keep on top of things.
- my boy Dan Carter
- Jarrett going back to school
- trip to Tofino
- meeting new people
- my old roommate Shayne and Tarna doing well for themselves.
- new roommate
- one of the best relaxed summers I've had in a long time.
- throwing nice parties (mostly loud and obnoxious)
- losing 20+ pounds of weight from being outdoors and having an excercise routine
- the opportunity of a new year

thats a basic summary, I'll probably update as I go. But eitherway a year of ups and down.

Like a track and field runner ready to take off. Who knows what problems will he come across. Will he have a bad start? Trip on his footing? be completely defeated? Or walk away the victor? This sort of thing can be applied to any way of life or living, but I like using a runner.

I remember at the beginning of the year I was at my grandma's place in Toronto. My mom was reading an Chinese Zodiac book for the years predictions. And depending who you are, and how vague as this may sound... my mom told me, " 2009 will be a year of drastic changes." And at first I wasn't really thinking about it much, I knew I'd rise to the challange just like every previous year. But this year was different. If you sat back and took a moment to reflect on what a year it was.. it's amazing how different the dynamic of this year was. A lot of things on a global scale like the recession.

I just remember the first part of the year for me was like everything was crashing down, no job, no roommate, full rent cost on my back, EI stretched to it's limit. Middle year, book in full swing, summer, working out, partying every now and again, but still an excellent summer. fall, embaressing moments, friends moving away, collecting myself to find a job again, pressure of holding out. Then the now.. can't wait for 2010 to start.

It's been a spectacular year of ups and down... but for all this years mess ups and victories.. I think this year I'll remember not as the year that the recession happened, it'll be a year I remember how I felt alive in life.. and while I can sit back and think of how fast this year was ripped from the calender.. I can only think of the things which bring a smile to my face about the year.. And now it remains how anxious I am about what there is to come in the new year.

And like a runner I'll keep running forward. Everytime I feel I've lost my way this year, I always ask myself if I've done what I set out to do. and while I didn't meet the goals I was looking for in certain aspects, I think my destination has come more into focus.

2010, the end of the first decade of the 21st century of the 3rd millenium. To me, another year to look forward too. Brimming with opportunity.

For my end of year shout outs, To my family, my mom, my sister and everyone part of my extended list of family. To my friends, All my east coast boys, the one brother in the florida keys, To all my friends out west who have help me make Vancouver a second home. To people I have met this year, and aquaintances.

You all have helped shape who I am, and help me grow, and for that I am truly thankful.

- Chan

note: this probably came off really corny, I should have composed it better instead of drinking before making a rush end of year post... Anywho...

2010, bring it on.

The post for October thats happening.. NOW! Huge Update!

OK well as I said in my previous post, I'd be making up for missing october and what could be better then a more then neccessary documented look at stuff I did for Sketchrospective's second book in our "VS" series, Robots Cowboys and Dinosaurs!

I've been working on other things as well in the meantime but I'll save that for December seeing as how it's a week away and It'll give me sometime to build up more stuff for my December post. Also the fact that December will be CRAZY busy most likely since I'll be starting work on the 30th. Anyway, enough talk because.. I'll be talking more as the post goes!

Piece 1


OK so to kick it off, we had our first 2 meetings in August and early September and we had yet to decide our themes. but eventually after a democratic vote and hilarious suggestion from Lawrence which won over the people we arrived at our theme Robots Cowboys & Dinosaurs. I tried getting an early jump on the work and started roughing out stuff. Keeping with the idea I had in my last book submissions, I wanted something epic and something fun. So I started working with the epic idea first and this is what I wanted, well sort of... a robot train attacking a town with cowboys riding dinosaurs.


I started thumbing more ideas out and as I was going.. for some reason all I could think of was that awful movie Wild Wild West.. and worst was the theme of it was playing through my head. Reguardless I thumbed out some other ideas of angles, like the first one where the cowboys are chasing the train that came to life. Second was a stand off in the town from a worms eye view of it. and the third thumb I was thinking of an old western portrait of a family but to throw it off, a robot butler and the man of the house holding the reigns of a raptor. The 2 on the left are other designs for the robot train where it was more of a snake. I ended up opting those ideas out because I decided to go with a more steam punk-ish look.


after i decided to go steam punk I wanted some head roughs, I wanted it to look intimidating, as you can see I went through a couple of different roughs of an idea for a head. The head is suppose to be part of the actual train engine with the smoke stack on top being an ornament or head crown piece of sorts. Either way things were looking goofy and I ended up messing around with it till I arrived at...


The final head design I went with! I wanted it so that the whole head piece was the engine of the train and it sort of unfolded upon it. I tried making logistics of it's tranformation, but it's like trying to make sense of how G1 transformers "tranformation" make sense. and they don't. (but I still love it) Anyway the main section was to sit behind the head, I guess where the evil mastermind is suppose to control the thing.


First rough of several, this was just one of maybe three I did for the first one. basic idea was that the robot was attacking the town.


rough 2 I changed the head tilting and re-drew it again since I wanted to get comfortable with it.


After talking with Ragnar and my roommate Mike batting around ideas. Mike came up with a cool thumb while we were talking and the angle looked awesome, so I set about reworking a thumbnail and this is what I arrived at. Slight dutch tilt, floor shot with a crazy up angle. So a group of people charging a giant train, I ended up calling him Monstrotrain at last minute and I suck and naming stuff. the thing in the fore ground was suppose to be a piece of paper. The piece of paper was suppose to have on it "World Fair Expo: Most advanced locomotive coming to the new world!" to try and give a story to why the train exists. needless to say I scrapped the idea, too much work.



So after lots and lots of drawing and clean up here was the final with crop lines. I referenced a lot of stuff from it to make the train look very authentic in terms of piping and gears etc. and steam punky.. and referenced the dinosaurs for looks and structure. The Robot took 3 days of work, 1 day spent for just the head area. the Dino riders in the foreground took a day, then the guys running around finished another day. The original cropping I had here wasn't right I felt like I was cutting off too much so I scaled it back and cleaned it up and then...


The final line work! I went in and cleaned it up more fixed some things around, thickened the line work more and got this! This piece ended up taking me the longest and basically ate up all my time. The worst part was, I had to head back to Ontario while I was doing this, and I'd miss the deadline while I was away, so I packed up my tablet PC and all the hardware, and dragged it back to Ontario. The final version of it, with colour, is in the book. I since I had spent so much time doing line work, and had little to no time to do a second piece and think about colouring, I ended up handing the colouring to my friend Steph Sim, who THANKFULLY helped me wrap this piece up since I was simply trapped for time. All in all, I was happy with this piece but next time to make it feel like I did everything I'll make sure I can budget my time well enough to do it all myself.

Piece 2


Piece 2 was a rush, I was in Toronto and running out of time while running around with a wedding and my grandma's birthday it was BUSY. but luckily I had a sort of quite night one night, and the idea hit me. Went out, got an extra large double double and sat down to hammer ideas out. The first thumb, top right was the idea I wanted to have where I have them swap out brains. I thought it'd be funny but I decided against it since I wanted something simple and with impact. the second thumb was sort of in the right direction. but I needed to have a way to have less details and rely more on just shapes. The robot on the left started up as line work then I ended up filling it in to get uhh.. a really crude looking robot.


i was still trying to think through my idea so I just ended up toying around with the robot. and while I was goofing around with it, the idea suddenly struck me.


Extreme angle and bright colours, strong sillouettes that I could fill in small details into and then put some overlay in the background to fill space up. So I ended up hacking away at it until about 6am.



What I ended up with was this as my rough. The final copy is again in the book. I ended up going back and adding small details where I could and really cleaning it up, but it uh sort of looks like this, just way more cleaned up.

So yeah that's my update for now. uhh, there is more, but again I'll save it for a big end of year post. I'll probably have more by then for sure. Actually I already have alot but I end up talking way too much in my blogs.

Comments and crit's welcomed as usual, look forward to my next post where I'll have more other drawings and stuff!

gad dammit I missed October...

Well here's a picture from the internets that pretty much expresses the way I feel about missing a month of updating. I was hoping to have at least a post a month on stuff but.. damn. Ah well.

Updates are that.. October was busy! My cousin got married, my friend Andy got married, two of my friends from animation got married. I was back in Ottawa for most of October. The group I'm helping run, Sketchrospective, released a new book last month as well. And I finally got a damn job! (Not animation, but hey that's cool, it pays the bills!)

November is almost over and the month just seemed to flash by. Heck the whole year, while uneventful in terms of career progress has been a great year for drawing on a whole!

Anyway, I'm not going to go into one of my blog novels now so what I will say is that there is a BIG update coming soon. SO big in fact that it will overshadow the month I so clearly missed... FFFFFUUUUUUUUUU-!!!

The drawing train keeps on chuggin along!

And so it's time for this months update! Truth be told I could probably make more posts in a month but I find one big update just saves time. So here's whats new!


OK so.. to kick things off, these are some roughs I was working on for the next book we're working on. If your wondering what was happening with this.. well I can't even explain.. all I can say was it was early morning. Dino Riders and Street Sharks!!


Just a quick posing page, not sure why I posted it. I kinda like the girls pose and the guy that's doing the upper cut


So I got a chance to go back and work abit more on Ryu and Ken, I just did the grey shading but I'll probably end up revisiting this one more time for colour.


One thing I got a kick out of while in animation school was doing BG's. I loved getting lost in them and adding things here or there. Maybe that's why I like doing detail oriented work so much. Either way, here's a rough of the BG I'll be doing which is the pathway leading up to a shinto temple.


Another piece I got further along in finishing is the postlogue piece to my pirate ninja zombie characters. I finished up the pirate guy and messed with the ninja woman's face more. I'll start colouring as soon as I can find the time. Probably when I stop giving myself other work I need to finish heh heh!


Yet another piece that I'm close to finishing or well I finished doing clean up on is Travis from No More Heroes. I want this piece to look like stock art so I'll need sometime to get the colours right and find a good filter layer to get that gritty look.


ok so heres a piece that I sat down and did last night and I started off with a car, I really liked the design of this car (It's an Renault Alpine A110) So I sketched off the car, then wanted to ad more stuff to it instead of just the car. One thing I've discovered about how I draw is that I always like to add a story to things when I can. Even something to give it some depth or reason I like doing it.


What started as a relatively simple piece got me going on BG's again. I'll sit down and finish these pieces I swear. But anyway, I was going for a european mountain road that runs along the Spanish coast where theres a small village and a gorgeous view of the sea. I can see the image in my head, but drawing the town will be a pain hahaha!


Finally, as you might have noticed I changed my page around again. And with the new page layout I figured I'd change the top banner for it. So I finished that piece a while ago and thought I'd just leave it and move on. But now that I see it everytime I load up my blog.. the errors stab my eyes.. so! I decided that I'd do some quick work to redo it and probably make it look better and actually accurate. I should be able to finish this one up pretty quickly.

Anyways, thanks to all who come visit! Feel free to comment, suggest, criticize!

It's been a busy month, and heres the update! At least I'm still drawing?

Well that's what I would be saying if any of these were kinda recent. but in keeping with my rule to post at least once a month, I thought I'd have more to show.. anyways, one piece is something I'm working on just for fun with my characters from the book I worked on. The other 2 are from a Wii game called No More Heroes. So again to no one in particular who comes here... enjoy!



Rough under layer, clean up layer on top, however still working out some proportions, need to fix up the ninja womans head a bit. Still need to finish up the pirate guy.



No More Heroes Character Shinobu, really liked her design, sat down and drew this kinda on the fly. As you can see, still really enjoying the custom brush.



Total rush job on the colour with this.. not too happy with the outcome but hey, at least I'm making more effort to colour stuff!



Last one is the main character from NMH, Travis Touchdown. Really liked the game, thought that Travis needed some artwork so again doing crazy perspective with no reference to perspective (again my teachers would kill me), I'm just trying to get a wacky shot down. I will get around to finishing that, sooner then later hopefully!

Piece of the month (wish I had more to show..)

OK so it's been a while since I've posted something up, but oh well better late then never. Recently my minds been preoccupied with other things like... job and.. I need money.. and well with the economy in the crapper right now, things couldn't be tougher.

So with that said, I'm kinda making excuses for myself but oh well, hopefully I'll hop back on the drawing train soon.

Also! My friends and I FINALLY got the books for the artbook we've been working on and they are officially now on sale! So if you'd like a book, fire me a message! but in the meantime check out our website for the book at the Tenmenhub blog site!

Small Update.. other artwork in progress

Hey guys, well small update this time! I mean.. really small.. like.. the picture you see up top is all for this time! Anyway, getting my groove back since I've been busy with life. Next update I'll have more to show, in the meantime, back to the PF! Thanks for stopping by!

Big Ol Update n Stuff!

Hey everybody! (once again referring to the 4 people that browse my blog site)

So the big news is that I've been working on an art book with some friends and it's been a pretty cool and very educational experience doing it. I sort of assumed the role of being schedule guy and "accountant" for the group on top of working on pieces for it. It's been a long time coming, but I think we're finally close to finishing it! Which is why I'm saying it now since last time it seemed like it was still a ways off.

Anyway first things first. Here are some roughs and concepts I did for the book. I'm not going to post up the finals because... it'll be in the book...

Anyway... TO THE ART WORK!

Cover Concepts

So well based on this first picture it's pretty obvious whats inside the book. When we started we had gone through several different ideas for the cover and several different styles. This was one of my draft contributions. I sorta liked the ninja posing on the pirates shoulder even though he looks like he's taking a crap hahaha!

Version 2 I was trying to make it a little more dynamic. The logos I suggested and actually made to print, but the actual drawings were different from the ones posted above. Also I just realized but if someone was going to pick this kinda book up just for art, I can assume that some people would actually be offended that there is a zombie/person getting decapitated on the front cover. Either way, both roughs and both designs scrapped but it was still fun.

The silhouette ended up being what we would go with in the end. I drafted this (and about 13 other versions and variations) for the front cover but it made it on the back cover so I was pretty happy. The colour pallet ended up changing in the end, but I just worked with what we had drafted originally. The decision to go with silhouettes as oppose to having artwork is that we realized that from all the artist contributing we had a HUGE variety of styles in the book. So this ended up being the most non favoratisim cover style we decided on.

Piece One

This is my draft page for the ideas I was thinking about. At the time when we started I was playing a lot of Fallout 3. So originally I had thought of doing some 1950's style advertising posters. Only thing was that I wanted to make one poster template that I'd do 3 versions of with Pirates, Ninjas, and Zombies. But the more I thought about it, it sounded like a really REALLY time consuming task (tonnes of ad reference for accuracy etc.). I mean... yeah, you could sight laziness as the culprit. At the same time I also had to contribute 2 pages. So on a tight time budget, was it wasn't in the cards. The idea in the bottom left ended up something like what the final would be based on.

Concept 2 was to just make a bunch of short panel comics originally dealing with a Pirate, Ninja and Zombie parents and children. It was sounding like fun, but at the same time I was also behind with my progress on this due to life stuff and procrastination. Also because I started to notice that people were doing full pieces instead of small comics. So this, and a couple other ideas got scrapped but again still fun doing them.

This was my draft for what would be my final piece. This is just the roughed out version so there are 6 or 7 different save versions plus countless layers for clean up, lots of details and colour and some re-composition. I think the final product turned out well. But man o man, I really need to explore colour more. The next book I'll definitely invest more time into colour to really help my pieces pop more. Also work on posing a do more posing drafts.

Piece Two

So yeah this is the kinda stuff I should have been doing more of forrr... mmost of my drawings to this point to make sure my stuff wasn't so stiff. Eitherway, the second piece was a PAIN to get into. After finishing the first one I just didn't really know what to do for the second, so 2 weeks from deadline I started drafting this. Inspiration came from the fact that some people were doing some really nice serious pieces. At this point I'll note that I also started reading "The Walking Dead", which is a pretty awesome comic book and I highly recommend it! I already had one semi light hearted piece with kids. So I ended up wanting to do a piece that really challenged me more and had lots of detail. I really started to realize that one of my strengths lies in details.

So several versions and revisions later I got the base for the 2 main characters down. I was working with forced perspective and this was one of my early drafts for making the female ninja character. She went through about 4 different styles before arriving at the final. I was working up until morning on one of the drafts and I was so tired that I unintentionally made it look like Kasumi from the Dead or Alive game series. Anyway, at this point, I started thinking about what was going to go around them. But then it dawned.. I wanted bodies. And lots of them to sort of fill the space.

So once again, SEVERAL versions later after revisions and finally finalizing the look of the female ninja and the pirate, I set out to do the horde. So, uh yeah this was... a lot of work. Originally since they have blades I wanted to put some hacked up bodies on the ground. Only problem was that as I started drawing the bodies cut in half I wanted to add all the detail for accuracy sake, so I researched dead bodies and dismembered stuff and well.. lets just say it looked gory. Just... crazy gory. Needless to say after running it by a couple of people, I scrapped it post haste, took a long shower and started on this one which ended up being way tamer.

And the other stuff!

OK so after everything was said and done I just wanted to goof around a bit so I played some SF III (yeah that's right... 3, hate all you want but I actually like it better then 4) and then got some ideas. top left was the original pose for it. I think it worked alright as a sillhoette but stiff overall in pose and impact. Bottom left ended up being the exaggerated but definitely way more weight and impact which I thank Ragnar for helping me bat around ideas and do kung fu in my living room at 4am. Bottom right ended up being a crazy angle of the one on the left. I'll clean these ones up because I feel like doing more of these "vs" pieces.

One thing that Ragnar helped setup for me in sketchbook is the custom brushes, and I ended up using custom brush to get the right effect for blood in piece two of the book. But as I sat down and sort of fooled around with it I ended up having alot of fun with it. It has a very guash/chinese calligraphy brush feel to it so I started running with it.


Uhh yeah.. hahaha.. well, it started out with the bamboo then the chinese zodiac animals then I thought well if I'm making it this asian I better trying drawing some old guy with a fuu man chu and to help everything along write "STEREOTYPES" in an asian stereotypical font.
To keep things rolling with stereotypes I started drawing an asian woman that quickly just turned into Chun Li. I kinda liked this one. and I know people say you shouldn't really be happy with your own drawings.. but.. well I still kinda like it so.. yeah!
I thought Chun Li looked ronrey so I put Cammy next to her who happens to also look asian. I didn't mind the shading I put on Chun Li but the pink highlights I'm still not sure I like them. On Cammy at least it sort of defines certain details.

ANYWAY, first! Congrats if you've read up to here! I realize I write alot. Secondly... This blog is now, for the most part, completely caught up with most of my recent drawings!

.... shit I gotta draw more...

I'll try and update in the next 2 weeks as I'll be revamping my 3 year old portfolio.

In the meantime! I updated my portfolio blog with my new demo reel I just finished which you can check out here!

Anyway, thanks for checking my stuff out! Leave comments critiques whatever I'm open to suggestions etc.!