Wow, I haven't written a new journal entry in years. I thought I would just say a little something about what I'm working on now and what I will predominantly be posting about in the upcoming year.

I have two semesters left of graduate school and have declared my thesis project. This is a huge project and will be taking up most, if not all, of my time. For this reason just about all of the creative projects I will be working on will be working towards finishing the thesis project. I will still be drawing and digitally painting things that are geared towards helping me improve skills where I am lacking, but will probably not be posting them as they will probably be gestural anatomy drawings of humans and animals and still life paintings. I might do some Illustration Friday.com illustrations to keep me fresh and give me a break from the thesis project.

I chose to work on concept designs for Homer's epic poem, The Odyssey, for my thesis project. This will include, but not limited to (I may be forgetting things at this wee hours of 3am Christmas morning, Merry Christmas all!) two character pages, two creature pages with ecorche, five interior environments and five exterior environments. Time permitting I also want to do a sculpture of the characters and creatures with some being digital zbrush sculpts and some being sculpey sculpts as well as plans for Odysseus' ship.

Concept design became my passion after taking creature design class at AAU's graduate program with instructor Terryl Whitlatch. If you've never heard of her she's an amazing illustrator and creature designer who has worked on many movies with some being Jumanji,  Dragonheart and Star Wars.  After this class I contacted another phenomenal artist, Christopher Burdett ( [link] ),  who has been designing creatures for many productions with some being Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Firefly. I took a directed studies course with him instructing as well as having him pass on his experiences prior and since. This has fueled my passion to become as skilled a creature designer as possible. Chris Burdett also made me aware of one of my new favorite tutorial sites, The Gnomon Workshop ( [link] ). I have also become aware of my new favorite illustrator through Chris as well as his Gnomon Workshop tutorials, Neville Page. I have since procured every tutorial, book and production Neville Page has worked on. He is, in my opinion, the Michelangelo of creature design. I have also become enamored with many other creature designers with one of my favorites being Carlos Huante.

The first bit of the thesis I have accomplished was the creature designs for the monsters of the Odyssey, Charybdis ( [link] ) and Polyphemus ( [link] ). Visit the links and let me know what you think.

Thanks for taking the time to see what I'm up to. I appreciate your curiosity