AW177 MiniCards & Postcard!

Decided to order some minicards as my business card to give out to peeps who want my contact info, as well as create a small piece of art that people can put up or whatever to enjoy. I decided to get some minicards done, half the size of a regular business card, since they are pretty cool, unique and different than other business cards out there!



I created a set of 5 'art' minicards: "Dragon", "Phoenix", "Koi", "Tiger Style" and "Butterfly Delight", based on my art illustrations; the 6th one, "Dragon Power" (upper left) is an different one that I liked, created w/ gradients, to see how it looked like printed.



"Tiger Style"!



Back of each card contains my contact info and my logo; logo came out a little blurry, but think it's still great!



Also ordered a set of 20x "Circuit Harmony" postcards as well - I kinda consider them 'limited' hardcover prints!



I will be attending New York Comic Con this year, sitting at the Tenacious Toys booth, along w/ other artists selling some customs, doing some sketches (I can't sketch for crap though) and what not. If you'd like an AW177 mini 'art' biz card (or a set, but you have to ask nicely!), come by and say what's up! As for the postcard, I'll have a few of them w/ me that day that I can sign if you'd like one. Time and date details to come!

Jouwe Custom Show - Toy Art Gallery (TAG)!

New blog update! It's been a while, but I'm back to updating and am posting up a new show I'm participating in - the Jouwe custom show at Toy Art Gallery (TAG), located at 737 Seward St. #1 Los Angeles, CA 90038. Show opens on October 2, 2010, so try to be there to see some beautiful custom Jouwe figures!

Pix of my figure will be up soon!

Time for a Break...!

Hey all,

I noticed lately that I've been moody and been rushing my custom making process and end up making a ton of mistakes. It left me exhausted and frustrated, and really made me want to stop. I know I need to concentrate more on graphical/digital design and art, but since NYCC is coming up, I know I need to push out some customs (more details on that later). But rushing it is not really helping and just making it more difficult. Plus w/ a pregnant wife and baby coming, it is really getting more tough on me.

Hence why I took a break away from my customs for a week already, and going to do it again for another week. I will start fresh again by the second week of August - need to take a mini-vacation. Once it's over, I'll be in full swing again and hopefully do things right and do them well!

So peace out for now, will be back soon!

Long Time No Updates!

Hey all,

Long time no updates - been busy after my last few posts and been working on computer art more than custom/toy art! I am working on a few new customs now in time for New York Comic Con - have some news about that! So stay tuned!

AW

"Dragon vs. Phoenix" Custom Artoyz Elements Earth Completed!

If you've been following along w/ my WIP pics for the past week or so, then you know that I was working on a custom Artoyz Elements Earth figure. My design, "Dragon vs. Phoenix" was complex and detailed, but so worth it after it was all finished! Props to my very patient client for waiting!!! Hope you like it! Go to my Flickr account for larger pics!

As a little extra bonus, decided to make a print of the computer design I was following along with and signed and framed it, to go along w/ the custom toy!

That completes my WIP thread! I hope you enjoyed it, and if so, please let me know! Or if you have any comments/suggestions, I'd love to hear it! Thanks for following!

Work in Progress (WIP) Pics - Artoyz Elements Earth Part 6!

Part 6 already? Lol, sorry for the late (again) post, but finally have a chance to post up part 6 of my WIP pics of Dragon vs. Phoenix. I hope you enjoyed this so far, and this custom is pretty much almost done!

Last time I left off w/ dragon side being somewhat done. There are a few more steps from this point, as I want the entire figure to be yellow colored. To do that, I have to color in parts that are white to yellow. Sounds simple, but tough since you have to be careful not to overlap the lines and if you do, go back over them w/ color again.

Here is the dragon side ready for yellow:


Here is the phoenix side w/ yellow already painted in:


Side of custom w/ yellow:


The other side w/ yellow:


The completed dragon side w/ yellow painted in:


Now at this point, for some reason, I just kept going and going and kinda forgot to take pics of my WIP! But the only thing left to do was figure out what color to make the hands and feet. I didn't really want to paint them a different color, as I think it may take away from the colors of the dragon and phoenix. So I thought about painting them yellow to match the rest. Pics of the final will be shown later on.

Also, I forgot that the blossoms are missing some inner details; the lotus blossoms as well. I hand painted the details of the lotus blossoms, but the details of the cherry blossoms were harder, so I had to use a certain technique to get details in places I can't do by hand (can you figure out what that is by looking at the cherry blossom?):


To teach how I do that would be another thread on its own! So will skip that for now, unless I get asked to do so later on!

Anyway, that's mostly it for this time. The custom is FINISHED and all I need to do is varnish and post the final pics, which will come later this week.

I hope you enjoyed this and almost done!!! Thanks and would love to hear any comments and/or suggestions!

Work in Progress (WIP) Pics - Artoyz Elements Earth Part 5!

Friday afternoon update - most people are probably waiting till 5pm to run out the door for the weekend, and here I am updating my blog w/ my latest WIP pics! Sorry for the late update, but better late than never. Here we go:

Last update I finished half of the dragon outlines and the scales; I wanted to clean up the scales a bit, so started doing that and finishing more of the outlines:


After some time being picky w/ the scales and outlining, I finally finish the dragon:


I start outlining the other elements: blossoms, waves, etc:


I should note that I also went over some of the colors 2x to make sure they are filled in and bright. That's how I roll!

I finally got my favorite masking tape in and started to mask out the black background areas - this is to just make the lines nice and straight. I masked out 2x for each line - 2 tapes to make the white lines, then 2x more for the black areas:


This is a very tedious process, which I honestly hate sometimes. I feel I can probably just free marker it in, but being the picky guy I am, feel it's not good enough. ARGH!

Here you can see how I use the masking tape to color in the black areas:


FINALLY, after some hours and days, this is the completed dragon side:


So this is my progress for these past few days! I hope you enjoyed this session! Almost done w/ this custom! I don't know how some of the other artists out there get customs done so fast, but guess mine is just a tedious and long process! Hope you enjoyed this session, more next time!

Work in Progress (WIP) Pics - Artoyz Elements Earth Part 4!

Sorry, after a nice weekend, I am a bit late w/ part 4 of of my WIP Artoyz Elements Earth, Dragon vs. Phoenix. Last time we left off, I was outlining in black the rest of the Phoenix. I completed that side of the figure and will keep the final look of a secret till later! Right now, I concentrated on the Dragon side of the figure; I taped up another piece of paper + paper towel to keep the Phoenix side safe while I work. The paper towel is to prevent any unnecessary bumps or scraps against the Phoenix side.

So I start w/ the Dragon, since he is the main figure of this side by applying gold and red:


Now at this point I realized I didn't draw in scales for the Dragon, which it doesn't really need it, but think it would look so much nicer if it had some scales (would also match the Phoenix). So, I whipped out my pencil and started to add scales; problem is, the pencil didn't really mark well w/ the gold paint, so used my black paint marker to add them in:


Instead of continuing to do all the scales, decided to stop at a certain point and go slowly and make sure everything is nice and neat and continue on. So decided to paint up the lotus flowers:


Next the waves:


And:


Next the cherry blossoms and "Love" kanji:


Now with most of the major elements colored in, I wanted to start outlining in black the head:


Continue down to the flames, hand and fixing up some of the scales:


Till finally:


I spent a few hours on this tonight and am exhausted after awhile! I think it looks pretty good up to this point, and will stop for today. Will continue tomorrow, thanks for looking!