Steph's Brain Farts (NSFW): 11/17 - Creatures and CTN

[Steph Laberis]

purb36 Thanks so much! I don't expect tp be back in Boston until the spring (End of April/May) and I am not sure how long I will be there, but I'll let you know once I figure that out. MacWorld was the first week in January, but you can catch a glimpse of how it went in this post

Bill Thank you for the kind words! I love love LOVE giraffe heads, they're so bumpy and snobby looking to me. Plus, they're shaped so irregularly that they're easy to fake

HunterKiller_ Haha, it doesn't make you furry. Only a fan of boobies and... hooves?

Clochette I am so glad that the shipping as all resolved. I felt terrible when the packages were returned to me! I hope all is well with you

lefran Thanks dear! How have things been in your part of the world?

0kelvin Thanks Eric And I look forward to having you crash at my place in... holy shit, a few weeks. Where is the #!%&$@! time going?!

Patch Hahah, thank you! I'm glad that vag humor didn't send you running for the hills ^_~

Ok, so this year has already been crazy busy with like a buncha gallery shows, a change in jobs, MacWorld and soon WonderCon. AIEEEEEE!!!n So I'll start with the wonderful surprise I got at MacWorld...





Big art is BIG! This is the second year that I've been a demo artist for Axiotron and they had asked if they could feature the dog piece in their booth; I didn't realize they were gonna use the octopus one too! It was crazy to see my stuff that huge and what's better is that they let me keep these once the show went down. My bedroom and living room walls are now full of awesome and I will be using the lower half of one of these at my booth at WonderCon in a few weeks!

So, time for new content! I made a train piece for A.Okay's CTA show, which opens this Sunday in Chicago! Sadly I have to sit the opening out because I'll be in the middle of a sequoia forest with my sweetie that weekend. Happens.



So the assignment was to buy a model train of any kind and decorate it how you wish. I picked up an $11 wooden bullet train with magnetic fasteners and went from there. This guy is made from wood, plastic, metal, various Japanese papers, upholstery trim, bronze paint, matteboard and paper clay. Phew! And a smidge of blood... there was one tiny incident with the X-acto yesterday.



I put a section of a cardboard tube on the roof to give the guy a more natural slope to his back and avoid corners for when it came time to shingle him. Unfortunately none of the online dollhouse stores had the small fishscale shingles in stock, so I had to resort to trimming the edges off of these tabbed shingles by hand. Considering I was planning of paper maché-ing each shingle by hand anyway, this extra step wasn't a big deal.



Here he is with 2/3 of this scales and a paperclay base for his tail.



A primitive head of matteboard and paperclay...



...then a bucha stuff happened all at once and he ended up looking like this.



I was going to document this much more but I got into a big time crunch and well, there we are. I PROMISE I will take much nicer photos of him tomorrow before he begins his overnight journey to Chicago, so for now, bear with the yellowed, slightly blurry mess. I am one of the most impatient people on the planet, you see.



It was great to get out of my element and start sculpting again. I forgot how much I miss making puppets and letting tangible materials have so much of a hold over a character. Great times, let's hope I find something nice to make from all the remnants I have leftover.

Thanks for looking, guys

[Carnifex]

awesomeness! i can't imagine how awesome that must be to have such big prints of your own work. brainfart ftw.

[Call0ps]

oh my god! thats crazy! xD those gigantic prints are soo awesome ^^ keep up the great job

[Steph Laberis]

Carnifex Thanks dude! It was much easier than normal to be critical of my work when the pixels are the size of small insects, that's for sure

Call0ps Thank you!
Forgot to post this random bit from the last month!

A spoof meat poster used as a prop for a friend's short film (based on this vintage poster):



Mmmmm. Curly sausage.

[loveandasandwich]

wahhh i love that dragon it looks awesome!

[krossj]

haha! great poster! awesome posts!

cheers!

[Caledonian]

That's one cool dragon and awesome giant posters. Recently spotted some of your work at Books-a-Million in "Force: Character Design from Life Drawing". Congrats!


Manga style cartooning and art supplies recommendations for kids:
http://cartoonsketching.blogspot.com/

[Onir]

Hey Steph, it's been a little while; congratulations on all the success you've been having!! It's definitely deserved hehe; also big congrats on the giant posters at MacWorld! As has been said, I imagine having your work at that scale must be pretty amazing hehe The train had a beautiful transformation as well! It's always cool seeing process shots on pieces like this; the change is quite dramatic, so it's really interesting seeing how it progressed. Love the pug too! certainly makes me interested in the short it's being used in hehe

On a quick note, I wanted to know if you would mind if I put a friend of mine in contact with you? I was talking with her recently and it hit me that her work reminded me of yours; she works with a pretty stylized look and she loves sea creatures and pugs lol. So, I showed her some of the work on your blog and she loved all of it. From what I can tell she is looking to go a similar route with her work that you have (she's been leaning away from animation towards illustration for a little while now, I think), so I wanted to ask if you mind if she contacted you to ask some questions and such? Obviously if you're busy or would rather not I understand, figured it wouldn't hurt to ask hehe Either way, great work once again! I wish you continued success and the best of luck in everything!

[Dan Valkar]

the dragon train its just awesome!!!!, looks like a hard job but def worth it, its simply beautyful....and the large prints rocks too...hehe nothin' to crit really..


cheers

[FAST ART]

hah.. this dragon is sooo cool .. great stuff in here.. please keep on posting

[crazy3dman]

Really fun stuff in these latest updates. Thanks for sharing.

[HAJiME]

Awesome, your stuff is such great fun.

[sketchling]

Haha. Your stuff is so cool. That poster must have been fun to see and im so loving that dragon! Looks like its behaving badly... or at least thinking about it.

[Knarf]

It was a great pleasure to meet you today Steph. Hope you had a great time at the Wondercon. As I said earlier, great work!

-Franklin

[princessbunny99]

Totally cute characters, they're awesome

[kelly x]

Hi my Steph!!! I didn't see these larger than life its self blow ups of your work!!!! Great and also we have the same hair now, just saw yours yesterday!! Raspberry hair rocks!

[Steph Laberis]

Hey thank you guys! I'm feeling under the weather and can't reply personally to everyone this time around, but your thoughts and crits keep me going. Much love to you guys and for taking the time out to look at my brain farts

So I have clearance to show some sketches for an unnamed project... Ask me no questions, I'll tell you no lies. Just be patient, I will post up the colored versions of these guys in due time Sketched on my Modbook in Autodesk Sketchbook Pro.

I like the Chimera best... and oh wait, can that be a SPECIAL CAMEO FROM INSECT BATTLE?! Only time will tell...

[Dished]

Yeahahahaa! steph laberis update! miss you bud! hope to see you in SF soon. always a treat looking at your sketches, its making my rainy windy stormy day in vegas a bit more sunny

[crashMMVII]

That train turned out really well. This last update is really fun too, very nice designs.

Hope you get feeling better!

[Carnifex]

omg omg omg
you tease!
love the fluid sketches.
and yes,the chimaira is most fun.

[Taj]

amirite or wut?

[Scotty]

Steph, Cripes, I don't know if you remember me (I haven't been around in forever) but when I saw that you had a thread, I had to check it out. Your talents have exploded girl..wow, I'm thoroughly impressed/inspired/pleased by EVERYTHING I see in this thread. So wonderful!

[Adrian Wilkins]

yeah... I guess I love you, would buy all of this stuff!!!

bookmarked into the aboslutely addict/dope section of my fav-artist folder!

[Steph Laberis]

Hygami: Awh, that's really awesome of you to say that. Thanks dude

Scotty: OH MY GOD! It's been like 5 years dude, you were one of the first peeps I met on here! Thank you so much for the kind words, as you can see my sculpture has fallen by the wayside, but one look at your site tells me you too are still in full art bloom. I was showing your stuff around work and everyone really dug it, especially your busts. Great to see you back on here!

Taj: NO U. Yes, you r rite. Can't unveil the colored ones until a bit later though, not that they're anything grand.

Carnifex: Thanks dude

crashMMVII: Thank you! I am still sick with whatever infected my sinuses, but at least I am back to work now. I think I caught the Nerd Flu from GDC.

Dished: Thanks Dawn! Sorry I missed you at Reverie, it just wasn't in the cards for me this year :/

Oh, I've been contracting for Little Big Planet for a few months and a couple of themed downloads that I worked on will be released at the end of the month! I made the 2D stickers for the Egyptian and Norse themed packs; not sure who made the awesome 3D costumes though! Way fun stuff, I will post the sticker sets in FF once they release.





Finally, a tiny update with Eels and Water Owls. I like the wolf eel best.

[Scotty]

Scotty: OH MY GOD! It's been like 5 years dude, you were one of the first peeps I met on here! Thank you so much for the kind words, as you can see my sculpture has fallen by the wayside, but one look at your site tells me you too are still in full art bloom. I was showing your stuff around work and everyone really dug it, especially your busts. Great to see you back on here!

Steph! Cool that you remember. Seems like another lifetime ago or something, guess it hasn't been really. Sure your sculpting has fallen away, but Holy Wow, LOOK at your 2D stuff, it's freak awesome!

I can't help but crack my face when I look at the work you're putting out...never stop doing this! Thanks for showing my stuff to your fellow workies, nice to have people I don't know like my stuff.

Oops, gotta go, my Boston Terrier's draggin' her ass across my carpet again.

Take care girl!


**EDIT**
Geez, got that stopped, sorry I forgot to say something about your latest. LittleBigPlanet is actually a game I toss in my PS3 when I feel creative but my sculpting and writing skills are in the shop. I will definitely grab up those packs, heck, just because you did them...hahaha.
Love the Eels...so much character, cripes!

Again..take care!

[Steph Laberis]

Thanks again Scott Gross as it sounds, I envy your butt-dragging adventures, truth be told; I have been wanting a dog for the last couple of years but alas, housemate has two neurotic dog-fearing cats. Someday, someday! We should swap PS3 codes btw, would love to catch a round of LBP with you!

So a quickie here; I did an interior illustration for my friend's band, miRthkon. The album comes out May 26th and you kinda should get it. I mean come on, who doesn't love songs about dancing bees in hot pants? I had like 3 hours to do this because I totally put it off till the last second. This is what happens when I don't let friends treat me like clients XD

...all of you people who actually know stuff about good graphic design are allowed to rip me a shiny new one.

In other boring news, my taxes are done and I am off to play World of Goo.

[kelly x]

That's great Steph!! Gonna meet some honeys, nice!!

[Jorge Gecov]

Great updates, you make it look so easy. Congrats!

Cheers,

[Steph Laberis]

Jorge Gecov : Thanks for that!

kelly x Haha, thanks! My friend wrote the song and is obsessed with puns and anagrams.

A quick drop of some colored up critters I did for that facebook app! I will likely do a massive dump of these guys in FF once they all are released; for now, this is all I can show

[purb36]

niiiiice stuff here; keep rockin!

love the dragon-train...where's the extra nice pix?
hope all's well.