Art of Travis Deming

Baby Yoda

2007-05-27T23:25:00.000-07:00

So this week's Art Jumble theme is Star Wars. As I was sketching out ideas, this one sort of came out of no where. I guess I never thought about what Yoda may look like as a baby, well I guess this is one possibility. Anyway, it was fun to draw.

Godzilla

2007-05-14T13:31:00.000-07:00

This is just a quick sketch I did for Art Jumble. The theme of the week was Heroes and Villains, and nothing really came to me until late that week when I realized one of my favorite Heroes has also played a highly destructive villain. So there he is my vision of what Godzilla could look like.

A Decent Dinosaur Animation

2007-04-21T00:14:00.000-07:00

I have yet to see a decent animated feature film about dinosaurs. I give the "Land Before Time" some credit for being relatively decent, but still something lacks. I also have been annoyed with some of the Jurassic Park portrayals of these genius reptiles that hunt as teams as if all connect through some sort of built in blue-tooth prehistoric technology. What happened to the Dinosaurs that I knew as a kid? The Dinosaurs that have brains the size of peas!? What has happened to the cold-blooded slow moving thunder-lizards of terror? And why all of a sudden do we think they now had feathers!

Okay, I can admit to scientific research, but sometimes I miss the idea of the giant reptiles ruling the earth I had as a child. It is that sort of essence I would like to see in an animated feature film. Plus, if dinosaurs were reptiles, no one has tapped into the amazing textures and colors that can be found in reptiles today. I would love to see a dinosaur texture that wasn't brown crusty dry skin. The colors found in real reptiles is limitless, many even have iridescent qualities like the reticulated python.

I also get pretty annoyed how much we think we know about dinosaurs… well in a behavior sense. It’s not like there are any fossils that show dinosaurs hunting in packs, and if there were such a scene frozen in rock I would seriously doubt the source of the fossil. Who really knows, I think all the meat eaters have gotten a bad wrap. In my opinion all the plant eaters could have been the mean ones, and it was the meat eaters that were bullied around. I mean look at the size of some of the plant eaters; one whack of their tail could take out a pretty large meat eater. Lions will rarely if ever attack an elephant, a polar bear would almost never attack a walrus, crocodiles will not even go after a baby hippo it fears the mother hippo so much, so who really was the bad guys in the times of prehistory. Which leads me to this batch of sketches, my own idea for a decent dinosaur animated feature film.

The rules of the supposed film is to shake up what we think of dinosaurs, capture that child-like understanding of reptiles ruling the earth, and make fun of all other dinosaur movies made up to this point. Absolutely no desert, unless I want to make fun the ridiculous storylines of a great migration. It definitely needs a prehistoric, overgrown, jungle feel. Maybe even have a Godzilla-esque dinosaur serve up sushi or something. I think there is a lot of fun you can have with it. So that is what has inspired the above sketches, just some playing around with what some of these characters would be like. Most the characters still need a lot of work plus I still need to think of a storyline, but that will come eventually, just trying to have fun with it for now.

The bully plant eaters! I figured the antagonists could be the three popular long necked plant eaters, Brachiosaurus, Diplodocus, and the controversial Brontosaurus. The Brontosaurus was THE dinosaur when I was a kid, and since then I have discovered that the Brontosaurus I knew of was in fact an Apatosaurus with an inaccurate skull, and that Brontosaurus has not been a scientific recognized name for some time. So I thought maybe he could have an identity issue or a split personality, Pat and Bronto.

Now of course the famous Tyrannosaurus Rex will have to be a big blundering fool, the type of character that could say "Duuuh which way did he go George, which way did he go!” He could be constantly trying to use his hands oblivious to the fact they are miniature and only two fingered. I think it would be funny to see two Tyranos trying to give a high five or something.

Currently I am thinking of using a Deinonychus as the main character. He is a much smaller meat-eater so he could be a lot more picked on than other meat eaters. Plus this dinosaur could easily poke fun at some of the Jurassic park ideas. Still working on the type of personality this character will have. I also like to play with the idea that Dinosaurs had much more bendy and articulate tails than the typical solid tails that are more scientifically correct.

These are some quick sketches of a Stegosaurus character. Not sure where he would fit into the story, but he seems he could be a pretty good bully.

Also just a few explorations into different dinosaurs. I was thinking with the some of the crazy horn structures these could be like punk rocker dinosaurs or something. Really these are the most underdeveloped so far, but kind of fun to draw.

The Great White Apes of Barsoom

2007-03-29T23:40:00.000-07:00

Okay, my absolute dream job would be to do creature concepts for major motion pictures. Ever since I was a kid I loved drawing and creating monsters and weird creatures. So naturally in my free time I like to work on creature concepts. This set in particular comes from the Edgar Rice Burroughs (creator and author of Tarzan) Martian Tales series of books. A movie based on the first book, "A Princess of Mars" is set to be in production sometime soon, well sort of. The project keeps coming up, then being put on the shelf. So there is still a chance to work on that movie! In the meantime I enjoy creating the creature concepts, and maybe I can convince the movie producers to hire me.

This first set I chose to focus on was the Great White Apes of Barsoom. They are hairless creatures with the exception of a tuft of hair on their head and back of neck, they have four arms, two legs and resemble an earthly ape in appearance. One of my goals in approaching this piece was to create something that "resembled" and earthly ape, keeping it very Martian looking, but only being able to describe it as some type of ape. I also figured that there is a lot of cool things you could do with four arms, so I tried to explore what an ape may do with that number of appendages. I think it is coming along quite well. I think there is still some explorative work to be done, but so far I like the direction that it is going.

This has been my most recent sketch. Since the beast has tusks, I thought I would accentuate them as much as possible to give it a menacing, non ape look. A warthog is a strange looking animal, so I thought I could incoporate some warthog weirdness. I also figured since this creatue was hairless, it would have gross flappy skin like those hairless mole-rats. I didn't go that exteme, but I started to incorporate those types of elements. I also tried to keep more of an ape face, but spread the eyes apart to give it a more unatural look.

This one was developed during my unforunate detour into "cave troll" style face. I kind of liked this one, but it just didn't have the 'ermmmf I wanted to achieve.

And this one was a more finalized sketch I did early on. I kind of liked it, but was not totally in love with it. I also felt like he looked like an old man, and not scary enough.

Since I wanted to create an "ape" creature that still looked martian. I tried to do some warping of the eye structure to give it an odd sort of look. But as I was doing a drawing, this thought hit me that it kind of looks like a cave troll from Lord of the Rings. Sure enough, I googled "cave troll" and it looked just like a couple of my drawings. So I figured it would be best to revert back to the natural looking ape facial structure, then push some elements from there to give it a less earthly look.

The first set of gesture concepts on the right was done to explore what this thing may look like, how it would walk, or how it may move and interact with it's environment.

Dad-Robot Concept sketches

2007-03-29T21:02:00.000-07:00

I think this one is my favorite so far, but I still need to explore some other options.

Here are several sketches I did to explore a Dad-Robot concept for a story of mine. Basically I wanted to capture the nature of a Dad, but in robot form. The first few I did was just to explore possibilities of what the robot could look like. I tend to want to draw things that are functionally correct in real life, like I want to make sure the hinges of the arms and legs could function if a robot were really built with the parts drawn. I tried to explore some more expressive or abstract styles, but I don't think I have broken free from my traditional ways of drawing. So it would be nice to push these concepts a bit further. After all it is the exploration of the concept that is fun. But these are the concepts so far.

Welcome to the world of Blogging

2007-02-02T13:44:00.000-08:00

Okay, I have finally gotten my self up to date with all the technology I thought I used so much. I think I started to feel left behind when I found out how big the blogging thing is, and how long I have gone not doing it. So I thought the most appropriate blog to start with is a blog of my art work. It helps keep me motivated, plus I can get feedback from other artists. So without rambling on further, here I go a bloggin’.