Well, I finally decided to take some advice given to me to start a blog as a means of sharing my art. I originally didn't find the idea too appealing, but after some consideration I decided I would try it out. Some benefits to keeping an art blog are first and foremost, it helps me become less self-conscious about my own artwork as I'll get more into the habit of sharing it with others. Second, I guess I'll be a bit more motivated to do some serious sketching as I'll try to post regularly. In other words, I can use the blog as a means of accounting to myself and others for my time spent during the week (as I really should be spending several hours each week doing sketches for my animation portfolio).
With the starting of this blog, I really would appreciate feedback and some serious critiquing of my work. As I've come to see, there is a lot of value in the constant flow of constructive criticism, so please help me to improve by offering your comments and suggestions.
So, without any further delay, I'll post my first drawing. This particular piece was done for Kelly Loosli's layout assignment for the 2D animation class. In particular, we w
ere to focus on perspective and using design elements such as line and spacing to draw the viewer's eye to the focus of the piece. I originally wanted to do a lighthouse (being my mother's son), but soon discovered the possibilities of a water mill instead. The drawing was originally done in red colored pencil, which as you can imagine, wasn't the most pleasing to the eye. So, I desaturated the color using Microsoft Image Viewer and played with the contrast a bit. So, while this isn't the most high-quality image, you still get the idea. This proved to be a lot of fun to design and overall I was very happy with how it turned out. Let me know what you think!
For my 3D graphics class, we had to produce two images using Maya. The first was an exercise in observation, so we had to model and texture a lego figure as accurately as we could, but then place the model in any type of environment we wanted to create a general theme with the figure. I originally was going to go with a pirate sort of theme for the lego scene but after some major delays in the modeling, I decided to simplify it a lot and went with a sort of desert safari man. This assignment was also my introduction to polygon modeling. Previously, all my 3D graphics modeling had been done using NURBS surfaces, but BYU animation has since phased NURBS out of the curriculum as there aren't any major studios that use those surfaces anymore. 
The second project was more of a conceptual assignment. Our only instructions were that we had to create a bug or insect and place it in an environment. As for the rest of the details, we had complete creative license to do whatever we wanted. I chose to do a mosquito of my own creation and go with a 1920s mobster theme. For a long while, I debated with myself over what color scheme I would use for the mosquito himself, but I stumbled across a photo of what was described as the Asian Tiger Mosquito (Aedes albopictus) and I thought that the stark black and white brought an even more intimidating aspect to the bug as a whole; and if I was going to have a mosquito gangsta, I thought he should be just as (if not more so) intimidating as what is found in real life.
