Beards and Bellies

Robo-nin

2012-01-22T23:42:00.000-08:00

Just a quick drawing before going to bed. Been slacking off all weekend, back to work tomorrow.

Blue Lead Up In Here

2012-01-02T11:48:00.000-08:00

Baaaane!

2011-12-27T02:51:00.000-08:00

Pugilist

2011-12-24T08:32:00.001-08:00

YEEEEEAH legs still need work, but I'm pretty happy with it.

2011-12-23T16:00:00.001-08:00

Quick Spidey sketch before I get to work.

2011-12-21T14:20:00.000-08:00

Okay! Sketch dump time!

2011-09-08T08:26:00.000-07:00

Finally updating this thing again! whooo

Song

2011-03-27T23:38:00.001-07:00

Recorded in a car going over the causeway.

Banjo: Vanja (my first time ever playing one)
Vocals: Joel Rudolph
Driving: Joel Rudolph

PS: My phone, which is recording this, falls off the armrest half way through.

DeviantArt

2011-02-26T11:28:00.001-08:00

Hey guys, so by now I'm sure everyone knows that I rarely update this thing. Sorry about that, but if you want to check out any updates you're better off checking my deviantART.

http://vanjamrgan.deviantart.com/

-Vanja

Bearded: Banjo

2010-05-12T15:43:00.001-07:00

Banjo from Banjo-Kazooie

The Incident

2010-03-30T10:24:00.000-07:00

I did some artwork for my brother's upcoming iPod Touch/iPhone game, check it out, and check out the trailer on their site: http://bigbucketsoftware.com/theincident/

Rambo

2010-03-02T09:49:00.000-08:00

Probably one of my favorite action heroes

Commentary

2010-02-10T20:23:00.000-08:00

Me and my friend made a bunch of youtube videos of super nintendo games. They're pretty funny if I say so myself.

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=59695D6AB525EFB0

Video Game Santas

2010-02-08T08:38:00.001-08:00

This is from a commission I did for www.Asylum.com; figured I'd post them here.

Random character

2010-02-08T08:37:00.000-08:00

Grinch Bearded

2010-02-03T14:58:00.000-08:00

The Grinch

Green Arrow Bearded

2010-02-02T18:07:00.000-08:00

Green Arrow bearded

Beards Forthcoming

2009-12-17T14:22:00.001-08:00

I apologize for the lack of updates, I've gotten crazy busy with work recently. More beards are on the way, so don't fret. :)

-Vanja

Sketches

2009-12-07T13:02:00.000-08:00

Just some random sketches.

Bearded

2009-12-06T23:31:00.000-08:00

By the power of Grayskull....

Bearded

2009-12-03T13:15:00.000-08:00

Bearded

2009-12-03T12:34:00.000-08:00

Still Alive

2009-11-27T07:48:00.000-08:00

So my flight got shifted to Sunday, just letting everyone know I'm still alive and more beards are forthcoming. Thank you everyone for the kind words, and I am taking your suggestions. I can't wait to get home and draw the hell out of them.

Thanks again!

-Vanja

Bearded

2009-11-19T11:42:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone, I'm currently away from my home for thanksgiving. I'm still drawing Bearded, I just won't be able to update until I get home on the 27th. So expect a big lump update then. :)

-Vanja

2009-11-12T18:02:00.000-08:00

Brock Samson, ultimate bad ass.

2009-11-11T19:42:00.005-08:00

You call for backup?

Bearded: Day 10

2009-11-11T17:32:00.000-08:00

I'll post day 11 in a little bit, here's yesterday's Beard: Hellboy.

Bearded: Day 9

2009-11-08T22:02:00.000-08:00

Today's beard, the bad ass bounty hunter himself: Boba Fett

Bearded, part two

2009-11-08T13:01:00.000-08:00

Here's a big chunk of the characters I've done so far.

In order we have: Mr. Game&Watch, Clint Eastwood, Wario, and the Black Mage from Final Fantasy. I promise it won't be all video game characters. If I can help it.

Bearded, the series

2009-11-08T12:57:00.000-08:00

So I was sitting on the toilet recently reading a Conan short story when it struck me like a bolt of lightning. Conan should have a beard! Instantly I conjured a list of characters that need beards and raced to my computer to get to work. I'll cover games, movies, literature, etc. until I run out of ideas, suggestions welcome.

Anyway first up, Batman.

Concept Art

2009-11-08T12:16:00.000-08:00

So I'm doing some art for a game for the iPhone. It's an old school point and click adventure, hopefully it'll get made. Anyway, I was aiming for a Day of the Tentacle kind of look.

Updating; Random stuff from the last few years

2009-11-08T12:10:00.000-08:00

Blog is back up

2009-11-08T12:06:00.000-08:00

Updating again! Let's get right into it: this is Grumpy fighting an Ogre back during his Ogreslayer days.

ROCK!

2007-12-18T09:20:00.000-08:00

Deviant Art Sketch Dump Comments

2007-10-22T20:42:00.001-07:00

Ok, something I have to get off my chest about DeviantArt.

For those of you who don't know, DeviantArt is a place where you can browse other artists work and post your own, sort of like a MySpace for artists. So when I first stumbled upon it, I gave it a passing glance and moved on. Several months later I received a link to a friend's DeviantArt where this person had made some comments I didn't agree with. So, I immedietly made an account and responded.

Another month or so passes, and I go back on there and post a bunch of artwork, and begin updating it regularly, mostly because it was a fun tool for showing people my artwork.

So, what's my gripe? Well, DeviantArt has 2 galleries available to each artist, a 'scraps' gallery, which is only accesible through a small link on your page, and a main gallery, which is the meat of your account. Now, maybe I have some weird perception about these two galleries, but I beleive the MAIN gallery should be things that are portfolio-worthy, and the scraps is a sketch dump (as it's name implies).

This is also a great tool personally for judging other artist's when I receive comments and so forth. If I get a message from a stranger, I automatically head to their scraps, and this is where my gripe is.

I'm going to go ahead and say that a lot, if not most, of the artists on DeviantArt don't have an idea of keeping these seperate. I constantly see the Scraps section covered in full blown colored pieces, that clearly took a lot of effort, and the main gallery polluted with quickies. So I'm going to dish out some advice I got a long time ago, DON'T MIX UP YOUR SKETCHES WITH YOUR MAIN WORK. It gives a bad perception of you as an artist, makes you look lazy, and I immideatly lose intrest in anything you have to show me. Not to mention that it makes you look worse than you really are, it's exactly the impression you give when someone scans over your main body of work and your throw aways, and sees that they look the same, and not in the good way either.

-Vanja

Sketches

2007-10-12T09:41:00.001-07:00

Did some animals today.

2007-10-07T17:43:00.001-07:00

Been a while since I posted scanned sketches, so here ya go.

-Vanja

Memory Sketch: Bus Stop Guy

2007-09-28T15:30:00.000-07:00

-Vanja

2007-09-24T23:05:00.000-07:00

I just heard of this new thing online called Sketchcasting, so I thought I'd give it a try. It was quite fun, and I plan on doing more in the future, so stay tuned.

Yeah, this one is just a basic display of how I go about doodling people or getting ideas for concepts.

-Vanja

More memory sketching

2007-09-24T22:34:00.000-07:00

-Vanja

Memory Sketch

2007-09-23T19:16:00.000-07:00

Sketch.

-Vanja

Random Sketches

2007-09-20T23:58:00.000-07:00

Random.

-Vanja

Memory SketchES: Suit and Lumberjack

2007-09-20T20:53:00.001-07:00

Memory SketchES: Suit and Lumberjack

2007-09-04T21:08:00.000-07:00

Two updates today, missed a day so I'm making up for it. One is in black and white, been really busy. These are two gentlemen that came into the store, the bearded dude seemed to know a ton about monitors and video inputs.

Memory Sketch: Small Man

2007-09-02T18:51:00.000-07:00

Man, the Apple Store is a great place to find intersting people.

Memory Sketch: Chilis lady

2007-09-01T19:56:00.000-07:00

Our waitress at Chili's.

-Vanja

Sheriff Ideas

2007-08-31T09:41:00.001-07:00

-Vanja

Bithday

2007-08-30T21:25:00.001-07:00

Yay.

Memory Sketch: Manager

2007-08-30T21:18:00.000-07:00

Manager from work.

-Vanja

Sketch Dump

2007-08-30T00:07:00.001-07:00

I dare you to listen to one of Stephen Silver's podcasts, or watch one of his videos and not be inspired. The man is truly amazing. Drew these while catching up on his ArtCasts.

-Vanja

Memory Sketch: Hauler

2007-08-29T22:45:00.000-07:00

Saw this guy on my way to a friends house.

-Vanja

Lowest Score Ever

2007-08-29T10:27:00.000-07:00

Apparently GameSpot is dishing out scored lower than 1, take THAT Big Rigs!

-Vanja

Daily Memory Sketch: Beardy

2007-08-29T09:29:00.000-07:00

Getting into the habit of doing daily memory sketches of people. Got the idea from Stephen Silver (amazing artist, and one of my biggest influences). So anyway, this dude came into the store today, and was seriously the coolest looking man I've ever seen.

Interesting

2007-08-27T14:56:00.001-07:00

So I'm over at a friend's house, and he opens Firefox to google something. When the window opens, it displays my Flickr account. Cursiously, with a hint of excitement, I ask if that is his home page. Sadly, he reponds no, it's just the last site he visited. It sorta felt like getting a silver medal instead of gold, but meh. Anyway, he then tells me that he checks it pretty regularly for any updates I make.

After some researching, I find that my blog, my flickr, and my deivnatART are checked regularly by some of my friends (bookmarked even!). Which is a good feeling to say the least.

So thank you to all who do this.

-Vanja

Schtuff

2007-08-26T22:26:00.000-07:00

Some random sketches I did while up north for my Grandpa's funeral, more on that after I sleep.

And another.

-Vanja

Doodles

2007-08-23T00:30:00.000-07:00

Some doodles I did in photoshop, mostly of Bullpen (the cowboy dude). Though I do like the Walter from The Big Lebowski thrown in there.

-Vanja

BnB Comic

2007-08-22T15:27:00.000-07:00

We have set up a blog to post the comics, along with jibbah and/or jabbah. Anyway, that's where we'll be posting our comics from now. You can find the link on the right.

-Vanja

Kirby Kannabalism

2007-08-21T17:37:00.000-07:00

-Vanja

Character Design in Games: Fable 2

2007-08-19T11:50:00.001-07:00

Another installment of Character design in games, this time, to prove to everybody I'm not all negative, I will be praising the fine work of one particular studio who tried to do what Oblivion did. With the first Fable my opinion is that they did a better job from am artistic point of view. Gameplay, not so much.

ANYway...

That studio is Lionhead Studios, and the particular game is Fable 2.

Now, the original Fable had it's drawbacks, it wasn't anywhere close to what they promised, which in the end sort of ruined the game for a lot of people. Had there been no hype, I think it would've done fine. Still, despite the downsides of the game, the art was not one of them. Everything in the world looked stylized, unique, and fantastic.

So far, only concept art has been released of the new game, and I've been devouring it like a mad man. Take this concept of the hero and his dog. The character is a stylized version of the time period, easily recognizable, and just plain cool looking.

Need more proof they know what they're doing? Here's another sort of classic look revived.

Thumbs up.

-Vanja

El Duderino

2007-08-19T10:59:00.000-07:00

The Big Lewboski is the greatest movie ever.

For example, I've been kind of down on myself about school and such, and I was talking to a friend of mine, who is an avid fan of the movie, about my situation. To which he replied

'Relax dude...nothing is fucked, nothing is fucked.'

This just proves my point, that movie can be applied in any kind of situation, at any given time.

-Vanja

Don't Try This At Home

2007-08-17T13:36:00.001-07:00

Second comic up, we're hoping this will eventually become a webcomic, but until we get a site running I'll just post them here.

-Vanja

Old Comic: Scene

2007-08-08T22:32:00.000-07:00

Old comic I dug up, did this forever ago in Illustrator. Always liked it, hope you enjoy.

Title: Scene

-Vanja

If Only

2007-08-04T21:00:00.001-07:00

True Story.

Character Design in Games: Oblivion

2007-08-04T20:11:00.000-07:00

I'd like to talk about character design in games. Seeing as it's a field I plan on venturing into in the future, I've always focused on it in games more than anything else. Even to those who don't notice it, it still affects their experience with the game. It could mean the difference between feeling like a cool badass, or a pathetic wimp.
Often I'm amazed and dumbstruck at how creative these designers can get. Just look at any Blizzard game. Sadly though, more often than not, I'm disappointed and wish I was in on the meeting when this crap was decided. So this is the segment where I'll point out some designs that deserve praise, or death threats.

The particular game I chose for the first segment was Oblivion for the 360. Now, don't get me wrong, this game was amazing, but the concepts were, shall we say...lacking. I enjoyed the game immensly anyway , yet there were times when I'd picture myself as a cool badass archer, only to hit the inventory button and find out I looked like a school boy in armor. When I first started looking for an image to display here, I had a hard time choosing, there were so MANY bad ones. I think I've found one that accurately displays how pansy-like your character was. I'm sure you'll agree.

Now, this particular character is an orc. Apparently they assumed that meant green human being, so they gave him a pushed up nose to show they meant business. I was appaled when I saw this, in my mind, Orcs were bad asses, not pig men. Blizzard nailed the orc in my opinion, hell, even the ones from LOTR trump this one. In game, the orc is barely larger than a normal human, and no more physically fit, so I don't really see the point, aside from playing someone ugly.

Race aside, this shot fatures some cool armor, which makes it even sadder. The awkward pose suggests that he's too afraid to ask Jenny out on a date, let alone mace a monster to death. Now, this can be argued by saying it was the modelers mistake, that the artist presented a cool concept. Sadly, that is not true, as you can see from the second image. I don't think old man jenkins in his medieval fair costume could ask Jenny out either.
Thumbs down.

-Vanja

Simpsons Movie!

2007-07-31T12:59:00.000-07:00

Ok, here's my review of the Simpsons Movie.

It was perfect in every way.

That is all.

-Vanja

Harry Potter Fan Art

2007-07-31T12:37:00.000-07:00

Just finished the 7th book and was inspired.

-Vanja

Kwik-E-Mart

2007-07-02T12:25:00.000-07:00

A Jolly Rancher is NOT a sprinkle, sir!

-Vanja

California Pizza Kitchen Logo, Blech

2007-06-28T12:00:00.001-07:00

As I was leaving work the other day, I noticed a California Pizza Kitchen. My friend with me commented on their food and told me how he hated it. As we walked past the restaurant I noticed their logo at the entrance, which is what I've posted.

This is a god awful design, I don't even know what the point was, other than to tell the name of the restaurant. Is that a pineapple in the back? Is California famous for it's pineapples? Not to mention that the palm tree, for some reason, crosses through the lettering making it seem as though it's attempting to spell Califiornia. And just in case we don't forget, they added the CPK at the bottom to remind us what the acronym for California Pizza Kitchen is.

-Vanja

Class of 3000

2007-06-26T22:58:00.000-07:00

So one day while I'm having lunch at home, I start flipping through the channels on the TV. I come across the Cartoon Network which I had written off as a lost cause. I mean, with shows like Squirrel Boy and My Gym Partner Is A Monkey, it's hard not to. The latter is a show about a kid that goes to school with animals, come on.

Anyway, the show Class Of 3000 is on. A bit of backstory first, it was created by Andre 3000 of Outkast fame, which sorta set off a red flag. But I figure it's worth giving it a chance, so I watch some of it. The show revolves around Sunny Bridges, a brilliant musician (and pretty much everything else) who gives up his life of fame and fortune to teach music in his home town of something, Atlanta. The first episode seems interesting enough, and would you know it, Cartoon Network is showing a marathon. So episode 2 comes on, and it's about the Blues. Immidietly I'm sold. I'm not embarrassed to say that I watched that whole marathon, and loved it.

Every episode contains a song written by Andre about whatever the particular subject is. Oddly enough, the music is quite good with the episodes usually focusing on a specific type of music (funk, blues, jazz, etc.). Since the kids in the show all play instruments that are not exactly front line (clarinet, harp) and a particular song will revolve around them, it's really cool to see what Andre can come up with. The wit and jokes are suprisingly mature and some of the refrences and jokes can be appreciated by adults as well as kids.The main character, Sunny, is quite cool actually. He's like a musical House, except without the drugs and disabilities. The art in the show is also quite good, very John Kricfalusi. Lots of curvy lines, very little straight edges or abrupt line endings. Overall a very clean, flowing look. Not to mention that different artists are hired to do the music videos for the songs in the episodes, including John, who's doing an upcoming video.
Another thing to be noted in the show is the very well done character design, each person is very unique in look and clothing. and easily recognizeable.

Anyway, give it a look. Here's a YouTube link to one of the videos:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=KrNiKh9_q1g

Sorry for the video quality, best I could find.

-Vanja

New Blog

2007-06-26T22:46:00.001-07:00

Set up a blog, mostly for art and ranting. Will post more later.

-Vanja