Art Adventures 2011

What's goin' on everybody. Accompany me on this post as I go over the past few art events that I visited: IndieCade, DesignerCon, and a Joe Ledbetter signing. Prepare for a lot of pictures! (I'm going to apologize in advance for the quality of some of the pictures. There was quite a lot goin' on at these events. Lol.)

First, IndieCade. IndieCade was held in early October this year. As a brief background, IndieCade is an independent game festival held in downtown Culver City every year. It's fairly young, this year was it's fourth year. This year was my first, and I was pleasantly surprised. At IndieCade, there's a check-in point where you get the essentials for the event: festival program, event listings, map, etc. From there, you have a number of places that you could go to. The way it works is certain stores/locations in Culver are specifically open as a gallery for game creators to showcase their games.  The whole festival isn't contained to one big location. It was spread out all over downtown Culver City. The best location, in my opinion, was the Fire Station. Check out the pictures below!

IndieCade

There were these enormous Space Invaders replicas all around Culver!

The coolest venue of the festival, the Fire Station. It was filled with great games and independent game enthusiasts of all kinds: gamers, creators, execs, producers, etc.

The best game I saw there was a game called Bridge. We got a chance to talk to the creator, Ty Taylor,  really cool people. The game has a brilliant concept and amazing mechanics. I highly recommend it. I know the picture I took sucks, but you can check the game out here http://thebridge.hypercubegames.net/.

Next, Designer Con. Designer Con was pretty damn awesome this year. It's held in Pasadena every year in November. It's a convention for Vinyl Toys, Urban Art, and Designers. I've been to a few and it gets better every time. This one was by far the best. There were rows upon rows of booths with amazing toys, artwork, and  artists. Toward the front, they were shooting webisodes interviewing some of the top designers that showed up this year. Towards the back, there was a stage for featured artists to do live painting. This year I picked up some vinyl toy Mp3 players and some prints. Very cool stuff, check out the pictures below!

Designer Con poster designed by Ragnar (sorry for the quality)

Inside the convention hall

Just a couple among thousands of incredible Vinyl Toys that were there.

Spanky Stokes monster! Looks like a cross between Mike Wazowski and Sully!

The very thing that makes time travel possible,the Flux Capacitor.

Ragnar doing a live painting at the back!

A booth with amazing lego displays!

Star Wars Mural

Star Wars chess sets

Lord of the Rings display! This is a recreation of when the Ents marched on Isengard.

Designer Con, until next year!

Lastly, the Joe Ledbetter signing. Poly Imaginative recently released a line of Chinese Zodiac toys designed by Joe Ledbetter. Joe is probably my favorite designer, so when I heard there would be a signing at Munky King LA, I was as good as there. I picked up my respective year's vinyl toy, year of the Dragon. I got that signed as well as a book that I bought of Joe's a while back. Check out the pictures below!

Well, that wraps up our adventure! Thanks for joining me on this trip. Hope to see you all again soon. Until here, Peace! Happy holidays!

Stephen

More Animation Academy

What's goin' on, people. I recently took another trip to Disneyland and visited the Animation Academy again. The character of the session was Tigger. I had already done Tigger and was hoping for someone different, but it's all good. There's always next time. I have yet to post the shots I took at IndieCade at the beginning of last month and DesignerCon which was this past weekend. Look out for those, but until then, enjoy! (Sorry for the wash of yellow over the photos, I shot them at my drawing desk, my lamp's fault.)

Sam's Tigger

My Tigger

Ricky's Tigger

Stephen

Guy

What up, everybody. Here's a progression piece I did of Guy, the character that I use in SSF4. I'm not very good at Street Fighter by any means, but Marvel on the other hand, that's another story. I've been wanting to do this piece for a while and finally found the perfect opportunity to do it when starting a brand new sketchbook. I used the usual materials: Tombow HB graphite for pencilling, Copics and Steadtlers for inking, and Prismas and Copics for coloring. Hope you guys dig it! Peace!

Stephen

PS
I'm praying that the basketball season starts soon... sigh

I Can't Control It!

Not too many words this time. Just artwork. Here's a Phoenix piece I did a while back. Done with col-erase and Copics. Hope you can dig it. Peace.

Stephen

I Am Super 8 Bit

At long last, here's my post for my visit to the I Am Super 8 Bit gallery. I went about three weeks to a month ago. It was super awesome (haha get it?). At first impression, the gallery seemed fairly small, but that didn't mean it was short of artwork. The left and right walls were filled with awesome pieces of video game inspired artwork, different artists giving their different takes of video game characters, levels, and nostalgia. Down the middle were tables that were hanging from the ceiling. On them were art books by the various artists that contributed to the gallery along with video game merch that was created specifically for the event. Not only was there artwork on the walls, but there were sculptures, maquettes, and other different types of art. At the end of the first room, there was a door that led to an even larger room with even more artwork. It made me wish I was there for opening night. I won't spoil all the suprises, I'll just direct you to the pictures below. Enjoy!

Here's the outside of the gallery.

The interior of the first room.

Some of the amazing artwork that was displayed in the first room.

Ice Climbers!

Rampage!

I particularly liked this one a lot. It's the Van Gogh Terrace at Night, but depicted as one of those old school text RPG's, some of the first RPG's ever made.

The top piece was created with neon duct tape on wood. Awesome.

Custom, one of a kind, video game based beanies.

This is Link's!

This piece is a Zelda piece: Link vs. Gannon.

The Michael Jackson Power Glove!

A door to the girl's bathroom in the bigger room at the back.

They had a bunch of 3D pixelized art. This is Link's sword!

Epic Mario Brothers piece.

Super cool bob-omb metal model done in a kind of steam punk style.

A display created that was inspired by Sonic!

More pixelized 3D art: (if i'm not mistaken) the boomerang, the flute, and the candle.

The bow and arrow!

Very cool Zelda piece.

They had a Galaga machine hooked up to a giant projector so it displayed on the wall.

The backdoor exit from the big room.

On our way out, we saw this! A huge Atari joystick! And guess what? It actually works, the joystick itself and the button! There are AV cables so you can connect it to a TV. I'm guessing this was on full display on opening night.

Stephen