Spectrum & Stuff!

So I found out what I got into Spectrum, and it is as follows:
THIS

AND THIS


Hooray! I couldn't be more happy that I got these two in, I was guessing that if I got picked, they'd probably pick one or the other, but it was a pleasant surprise that both got in! Congrats to everyone else who made it! I'm excited to see the final book in the fall when it comes out.

In other news, here's a taste of a recent assignment for Muse magazine that I was involved in. It was a multi-page story with varying sizes of illustrations about "The Invisible World". The end result of the magazine pages and the layout looks different than it does here, but I'm including the lo-res pages as an example of what I was working with. Here's the first!


Enjoy!
I'll be posting more later.

Also, if anyone knows a good dentist/endodontist in Baltimore, let me know! When I was back in Chicago this weekend I found out I had to have a root canal (great surprise!) because apparently there's been an infection in my tooth for several years now, left over from when I fractured my jaw/teeth in highschool from fainting. Never fall on your jaw. It's a gift that keeps on giving. I got the first part of the root canal done, but I still gotta get the rest taken care of...there's just something inherently creepy about getting your teeth drilled into. Brrrrrr!

BIG HUGE posts!

Well folks, Big Huge Games, the videogame company I worked at for 7ish months, was dropped from THQ a few weeks ago and it looked like they might have been toast. Fortunately they are not, and unfortunately they still had to let go of a lot of lovely people. While I was at BHG I mostly worked on a fun Animalcrossing/Zelda-ish game they were developing for the Wii. I also worked a tiny bit on the more realistic epic fantasy RPG they were also developing, and I'll put that work at the end of the post.

It's sad that both these games have been permanently shelved, but it does mean that I get to share some of the work I did. As you can see, a lot of it was idea-generating and not as polished as my illustration stuff, so it was an interesting adjustment for me. It also got me hooked on sketching on the computer.

So without further ado, here's a bunch of my concept work!
(all work copyright THQ, drawn by me!)














Two posters I drew up for the Wii game:


HI FIVE! Soda-can style.



Aaaand a few bits for the fantasy RPG (you can see the style is much different):




Thanks for lookin'! I will be posting some more illustrations soon!

And Now for Something Completely Different

Can you guess who this happy man is?



I certainly hope so, because it's supposed to be Cedric the Entertainer!
This was done for Los Angeles Confidential magazine, for an article that Ced wrote himself about his 4 favorite gadgets. The fantastic four are as follows: His Iphone, MagicEye cinema glasses for his ipod, a cool watch with a clear background (so anytime someone asks the time, he can say "It's skin o'clock"), and the Magic Bullet.

This is my second attempt at a portrait/caricature-- the first one being the hypnotic David Bowie I did for my fashion class' art show a year ago.



Things have changed. (although Bowie will remain eternal) Any caricature advice appreciated--this is still a very new thing for me!

Fantastic!

Long time no post, eh? I've been remiss in updating lately, but I've also been busy sending out postcards/emails and working on some new projects.

Big news is I've found out that I made it into Spectrum 16 along with my partner-in-crime Sam Bosma and my good buddy Jeremy Enecio (who won Gold in Unpublished!! As he should!)
Still not sure which piece(s) got in, but should be finding out soon!

For this update, I've got a sketch I drew in photoshop based off a vision I got. It wasn't really a vision in the sense of the epic sort of "I AM SEEING THE FUTURE!!" vision, but oftentimes when I'm laying in bed before I go to sleep, I get a stream of images in my head. Does that happen to any of you? Like, just random images? Sometimes they're ideas for fashion or clothing, or sometimes just random pictures, like a person's face lit in a particular way or, in this case, a crumbling wall with two portraits on it.
I couldn't fall asleep, so I decided to just sketch it out. I'm trying to play a little more with lighting than I normally do, and I was thinking about the economy and portents and all that sort of predicting-the-future type stuff.



Photoshop and wacom has officially replaced my sketchbook/pen as my preferred mode of drawing. I just think better when color and shape are involved, and erasing into things, versus just drawing line.

Here's a piece (also entirely photoshop-done) for PagePath Technologies' monthly newsletter-- it's about how their product makes it easier to sort and print receipts and generally keep things organized.



I like how it turned out. I've been trying to use colors in different ways than my usual brights & I've also been experimenting more with texture, though I don't think I've hit the nail on the head quite yet.
MORE UPDATES SOON!

Society of Illustrators

So these past 2-3 weeks I've been transformed into a work zombie, complete with uniform of day-to-night-sweats plus matching haggard appearance and an unquenchable thirst for brains. Or chai tea. I've been working on 12 illustrations for 3 different assignments, so I'll have a bounty of work to show in April! (Including such subjects as Debt collection, Cedric the Entertainer, and the Invisible World!)

In the meantime, I just wanted to say congrats to my fellow MICAns and friends from other schools who got into the Society of Illustrators Student show. To see everyone's great work you can check out http://soicompetitions.org/?section=institution_list. (however, I also think there was a lot of great work that didn't make in in..)
My piece "The Naturalist" made it:



And now, back to work! I'm also aiming to put up some new personal work soon, so keep yer eyes peeled!

5 Reasons You Will Read this Blog Post

1. If you are arriving at the site I assume it is because you want to see what is on it, and thus will probably decide to read the words included.

2. You are a wonderful person.

3. You may think I have a surprise for you.

4. Surprise! I don't! I'm sorry!

5. This post title is merely a cheesy gimmick playing off the name of the article this new illustration was done for.

So this is another full page for Air Tran GO! inflight magazine for an article about the power of numbers in business. Titled, you guessed it, "5 Reasons You Will Read this Article". The 5 in my image is the 5 in the title, I'll be probably be posting what the layout looks like a little later when I receive it.

For now, here ya go!



I think it was good practice trying to draw lots of interesting faces, and I wanted to make sure I didn't revert to my tried-and-true red & teal color scheme. It was also pointed out to me that the bearded man on the lower right looks a lot like Abe Lincoln. Albeit a little fatter.

Hey, Thanks!

A big slice of gratitude for the folks over at Drawn! and a pleasant Hello! to anyone new coming over to check my stuff out! This is the second time John Martz has written me up, and it's awful nice of him to do it. :) (it was also nice of Sam to submit my site to Drawn...)

Lucky for me, I just updated ciesemier.com (although I've found that sometimes it's necessary to clear the cache in Firefox before the new changes appear) and I'm gettin' serious here about freelancing, so now's the time. :)

I'll be putting up a sweet new piece on Sunday or Monday (it'll be in the February issue of GO!) but I can also now share this B&W piece I did for BITCH magazine-- it was about the role of Jane Eyre character archetypes in literature.
(I don't know about you all, but I do enjoy me some period romances on occasion. It's a break from the asian action movies I usually enjoy watching. Anyone else excited for Chocolate? Eh? Eh?)



I'm not too practiced in B&W (or graphite pencil!), so I think this could maybe have been better. I'm trying to play around with some new media though, so any suggestions appreciated!

Thanks again, guys!