The Reason for the Season

So it's been really busy since the last time that I've update anything. But that should change soon. Since it is the holiday season I'm presenting a children book I did back in 2006 called "The Reason for the Season" by Chantal Ellen. It's a cute story about a boy who learns the true meaning to Christmas from his grandmother. You can find a copy of the book on Amazon.com
Happy Holidays Everyone!

In Da Alley

Another one of my characters from a different story. More will be revealed in the future.

Sprinterz Email

There are sprinterz in cyberspace, sprinterz in cyberspace I tell you.

Tancredi

This is cover design from my mentor class for the story of Tancredi by Barbara Alberti.
There is a woman named Santina who had a son with two heads. When the boy was baptized the priest named him Tancredi. After many failed attempts of trying to kill him, she finally accepted his life.
Tancredi grew to form two different personalities. One was good, nice and kind to everyone, religious and obedient, the other was dark, evil, violent and disobedient. Dark Tancredi performed many bad deeds and they both would be punished for it. After many bad deeds of the Dark Tancredi, Good Tancredi lost his patience. Out of fear that they both shared the same soul, he feared his soul would be dammed to hell of the other's behavior. He thrusted his stomach with a pin to prevent immoral deeds.
Dark Tandredi became angry at the other one and he strangled him to death. After Dark Tancredi realized he had killed Good Tancredi, he cried for the first time and he regretted what he had done. But it was too late. One of Tancredi's death also meant his own death. For more on the story here is a link

The Blue Bomber

A little something I did three semesters ago on my all time favorite character from my favorite game sequel Megaman 3. The most memorial thing from my childhood from this game was the soundtrack I must say. Surprisingly video games have good soundtracks too.

That Kid Icarus

So one of my favorite things to draw sometimes are existing characters the way I would draw them. This was a personal project from one of my classes last semester. It's my take on Nintendo's Kid Icarus if I designed the gamecube cover. The character has not seen light since the 8 bit days, but has recently made an appearance on Nintendo's Super Smash brothers for the Wii with a whole new character design. I wonder if we'll see more of him?

Meet Sprintz

Hey Everyone, this is Sprintz. Sprintz is the official mascot of Sprinterz Studio. He's the guy sitting up there on the head banner. You will be seeing him around now and again. He may even star in his own series, an idea I am working on. We will see somewhere in the near future.

The Rise

In 2006 I was offered my first illustration job to produce a book cover for an author by the name of Chantal Ellen. The name of the book is The Rise: Where Neighbors Are Sometimes More. A special shout out to my Uncle Dominique who referred me to her. Good looking out Uncle D. So here are the sketches I did when I got started. The author kind of wanted figures without faces in front of some buildings on the cover to represent the characters of her book. This kind of thing has been done before with other books so I was free to try out new ideas. I wasn't sure what to do, so I thought it would be fresh to add lips, beards, and mustaches to some of the characters. I loved the idea, but unfortunately it was decided to be left out. Perhaps I will use that idea for another illustration. Now I lost the final sketch to this, but I ended up with two finals for the author. One mostly colored with vector shapes.......


and another rendered with a bit of texture. The rendered one was the one selected to be published.


I read the book and it's really good. It's like what the author said, "it will leave you feeling good". It kind of reminded me of some of my favorite old romantic comedies like Lovejones, but that's my own personal opinion. NBC in Washington reported that critics say it's like Sex and the City but in Washington. You can view the interview with the author here. Overall I enjoyed it very much, and I recommend those interested to give it a read. You can get a copy of it @amazon.com link
Enjoy.

Is Traditional Airbrush Really Dead?

So in my freshman year at F.I.T, it was required to take a traditional airbrush painting class, which is no longer a requirement because it's been said that airbrush is a dying or dead medium. Photoshop can pretty much replicate the medium now so there aren't a lot of artist out there still working in airbrush. Most people I know sold their airbushes but I kept mine. I don't think I'll ever use it professionally but I would like to experiment with it some more, that is if I ever have the time. Honestly, the last time I saw airbrushing was on tee-shirts at Jamaica Av in Queens and that was awhile ago. Who's to say if those guys are even still there. Anyway I did this with black airbrush ink on bond paper, much easier and cleaner than acrylic to work with. Since acrylic tends to clog the device if not used and cleaned properly.

About Sprinterz

Hey All! Welcome to Sprinterz Studio Blog. A lot of the art work you may see here will probably be sketches and work in progress projects. Some finished pieces will be present as well, but I kinda wanna save that for the Sprinterz Studio Website, which is currently being built and will probably be on-line sometime in the late spring or early summer if not sooner.
My art work here will display a lot of my favorite existing character drawings along with my own character creations. I like art work that tells a story, I think art and story telling go hand to hand with one another. So in the future you will see illustrations of that nature for I will have some stories to tell. I also admire art that have some form of meaning, one that makes you think and maybe even inspire. So I will try my best to portray that. Now some of you may be wondering why Sprinterz Studio? Why name an art studio "sprinterz"? Well, using sprinters is just a fun theme for me to present my work, that is basically it. However, there is a back story to how this came to be. In my High School days and early college years I was a sprinter on the track team, and man, I loved it. But being on a track team took time away from my art, so this being my career I had to make an important decision to focus more on art. Though sprinting is still in me, it inspired me to create this theme. I rarely train now but perhaps I will hit the track once more for just one more race. Enjoy!