gambino is a mastermind

As a way to get ready for my Romeo and Juliet personal project, I started studying how to paint darker skin colors. I first went with copying Childish Gambino's cover from his new album, because the internet, because I've been listening to it recently. Check it out if you have the chance as it really expands beyond the music: he wrote a screenplay (becausetheinter.net), made a short film before the album release, and a bunch of other stuff to make it a more immersive experience.

 Here's the video for one of his singles, 3005.

Childish Gambino "3005" from Hiro Murai on Vimeo.

Pretty simple video but goes beyond just a simple ride on the ferris wheel with his beloved teddy bear.


 Here's what I painted, 1 hour and a half study:

And here's the original album cover.

That's it for now. Have a merry Christmas!

Fall 2013 Semester Review

The semester's finally over! I couldn't be any more proud of myself in finishing my classes and be satisfied of the work I've done throughout.

Along with an amazingly talented crew and a great director, Dave Yee, we finished Dave's short film, Jimmy Loves Juice! Apparently it is the first time that a crew has managed to finish a film within a semester despite doubts that it could not be finished. As one of the background leads, it was definitely an honor and a great learning experience working on this film!!

Here's the trailer: Jimmy Loves Juice Trailer

I've updated this blog a couple of times on my progress within my visual development class. Our last project was Robin Hood set in the California Gold Rush.

For this round, I was set on trying to paint realistically rather than stylized. It's something I never really touched upon digitally, and if I wanted to work for the video games industry (heck, even the film industry), I needed to get my realistic painting skills up. I also set myself the goal on finishing my environments because the last three times, the environments I've done did not get to the level where I could have taken them. Fortunately, we had 2 extra passes for this project and working on my environments taught me various things that I did not pick up on previously.

Over the break, I plan on working on my own personal take of Romeo and Juliet and use my acquired knowledge from this semester to bring out something great!

Portfolio Website

If you haven't noticed, I updated my portfolio! Instead of it being a page from this blog, I now have a website.

My Portfolio Website

It's definitely (and always) a work in progress! I also uploaded my Robin Hood project in there, which I'll talk about soon!

Teemo vs. Pikachu

A piece I did for a friend of mine. A nice little break from working on my projects.

Submarine Project

Third project for class is to create two anthropomorphic animal characters, one captain and one co-pilot for a submarine. I went with ravens, after thinking about different animals that would look out of place underwater, because 1) I never drew anthro birds before, 2) birds would be a great contrast to the underwater setting, and 3) ravens are practically my dad's favorite thing ever so I wanted it to be kind of a homage to him.
Greatest challenge for me was the interior. I had the drawing down but I wish I set in more time than I thought needed to work out the color and lighting. This is something that I hope to fix in the next project and shoot for an actual finish on both the characters and the environment!

Kolkata

Yesterday, I finished my class's second project, Kolkata Food Vendor. I had tons of fun and was definitely challenging. I tried my hand in painting without relying on my line drawing, trying to use edges, saturation, value, and color to get some form. Second lesson I learned is how to push shapes in consideration for character design. I really had a tough time in this part at the first phase but I've come at the end where I just fell in love with drawing my food vendor. There are some issues I still need to fix but they aren't as much compared to my environments! Lastly, biggest lesson of all: I just need to get through developing as fast and as far as I can so I won't have any trouble when it's time to get to the finish.

Here's to the next project, which is super exciting already!! 

117B Raiju + 118

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