Gerald de Jesus' Blog of Art

"La Luz de Jesus 25" and old Animation Insider interview

noreply@blogger.com (Gerald) — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 13:39:00 +0000

Yes, yes, it's been a while! As most of my friends know, if they haven't heard from me in a while, it usually means I'm working 2-3 jobs at the same time. Anyways, I plan to clean out my closet full of old stuff I've been meaning to post. But let's start off with the easy stuff!:

La Luz de Jesus 25th Anniversary show / book:

La Luz de Jesus Gallery (no relation, haha) is one of the oldest institutions that supported the low brow art movement and they released an awesome book showcasing all the artists that have had a show there... including me!!! I had my first gallery show there over 10 years ago and it was such a huge honor being asked to be a part of this historic book. So buy one and support the low brow art movement!

...and here's an old interview I did with Animation Insider back in April 2011 about my experiences with being in the wacky world of animation!

http://www.animationinsider.com/2011/04/gerald-de-jesus/

Okay, I'll post some actual art one of these days!

Ex Nihilo

noreply@blogger.com (Gerald) — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 03:37:00 +0000

A happy painting.

"Dan VS."

noreply@blogger.com (Gerald) — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 14:10:00 +0000

...and here are some backgrounds I painted for the current show I'm on, "Dan VS." which airs on the newly hatched Hub Network! Layouts by Jairo Lizarazu and Marina Levikova. Everyone watch it so we can get a second season and more free sodas at Film Roman!

"Drawn Together: The Movie"

noreply@blogger.com (Gerald) — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 14:03:00 +0000

I'm starting to get my portfolio ready again (time to sniff around for work... again) and saw some stuff I worked on a couple of years ago. Here are some backgrounds I painted for "Drawn Together: The Movie". Layouts were done by the awesome Angelo Vilar!

"The Ricky Gervais Show"

noreply@blogger.com (Gerald) — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 13:59:00 +0000

Hey folks... it's been a while. Just working the usual three jobs at the same time! Anyways, here are some backgrounds I designed and painted for episodes 1 & 3 for Season 2 of "The Ricky Gervais Show".

Purgatory Afterglow

noreply@blogger.com (Gerald) — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 01:09:00 +0000

Metroid Field Guide

noreply@blogger.com (Gerald) — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 15:44:00 +0000

Here is some art I did for a pre-order bonus proposal for the release of "Metroid: The Other M". It was supposed to be sort of a field guide detailing the various creatures that you would encounter while playing the game and possibly providing hints on how to defeat them. Unfortunately, it was taking a while for the red tape to get cleared and there wasn't enough time left to do a full on field guide, so this project didn't get off the ground. Text for the page was written up by Jon M. Gibson!

Somewhere Back In Time Part 1: "Carmen Gets Expelled" backgrounds

noreply@blogger.com (Gerald) — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 00:21:00 +0000

So sometime last year I helped my pals Jorge and Sandra out with a little pilot called "Carmen Gets Expelled". Here are some backgrounds I made before "Carmen" got expelled from being a full series. You can also watch the rough pilot here:

Hex Omega

noreply@blogger.com (Gerald) — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 02:37:00 +0000

Birdy 002

noreply@blogger.com (Gerald) — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 07:25:00 +0000

Three Wolf God Sun

noreply@blogger.com (Gerald) — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 07:16:00 +0000

Here's the t-shirt design I did for Capcom's "Okamiden" limited edition Comic-Con 2010 t-shirt! It's a parody of the "Three wolf moon" t-shirt.

Mega Man 10 Cover: Start to Finish

noreply@blogger.com (Gerald) — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 02:28:00 +0000

Hey it's been a while! So this is probably old news, but here is the "Mega Man 10" cover I did way back in November. Initially, it was supposed to be three different boxes with each one for the Wii, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. In the end I wanted to do something on a more ambitious scale and decided to do one huge image, or a tryptic as they say.

So this is the first sketch I came up with as the "main" cover to get approved by Capcom. I wanted to keep it in the realm of the amazing painted covers they did for movies back in the 1980's... seriously, movie posters are kind of lame nowadays. When I was a kid, my favorite thing to do was to open up the Friday edition newspaper and look at the movie section and just stare at all the cool posters they had. If the painted poster was a guy fighting aliens or monsters or dragons, I HAD to see that movie, even if they were R-rated and I was only 8 years old! So for the Mega Man 10 poster, I wanted to invoke that feeling. So I took inspiration from the posters of "Star Wars", "Transformers: The Movie", "Excalibur" and "Escape From New York". I just wanted this thing to look EPIC.

So here is the first version of the tryptic. The robots and the sizes / positioning of the characters were really different. At the time, I didn't know who any of the bosses were for the game, so after this initial sketch was sent to Capcom, the major notes were to add bosses from the game as well as make Mega Man more prominent in each section of the poster.

So here is the final approved sketch before I went into color / paints. As you can see, I made Mega Man more of a focal point in each section of the tryptic as well as made Proto Man more of a background character. I updated my old robot designs to sort of match the characteristics of the ones in the video game, but not exact replicas. And yes that is Dr. Wiley on the far right, fully transformed into a robot like his creations. And that bird thing on his shoulder? I ripped it off from the cover of Mega Man 6! I just wanted to continue with the spirit of the bad interpretation of Mega Man covers.

So here's how it looks when I start painting! I come from a traditional painting background and I pretty much approach it the same way when I work digitally. I make a layer and just color it with burnt sienna, then I make a layer with my sketch on it and set it to "multiply" and I start my underpainting. This is where most of the heavy lifting is done, just messing with colors, pushing back stuff, bringing it forward. As you can see, my main problem was trying to knock back Proto Man since he was wearing red and thus getting the most attention. So I dimmed his red a bit and also added some rim lighting to Mega Man's body with that obnoxious turquoise color from his laser.

Here you can see some of my sketch showing through and some more progress on the overall painting.

Oh yeah, these paintings were HUGE. Each part of the tryptic had to be 18" x 24" with enough room for bleed. So the final image had to be 55" x 25" at 300 dpi, which is pretty monstrous if you add in all the layers I make in Photoshop. So I had to work on each part of the poster individually and stitch them back together once all the pieces were finished and flattened. I would import a little piece of the finished middle painting into the side I was working on to make sure everything hooked up.

...and here is the finished piece. I was pretty excited when I stitched the whole image all together. This was such a fun and awesome project to work on!

Update: Updated the post with the new version where I added BASS!

When Santa stopped believing in himself.

noreply@blogger.com (Gerald) — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 06:55:00 +0000

Ghost 1

noreply@blogger.com (Gerald) — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 06:55:00 +0000

Since it's that time of year again, I'm going to force myself to do some kind of spooky drawing every day until Halloween. And I'm going to do each and every one of them on my iPhone! So if anyone has any suggestions on what I should draw, scream it out!

Mobile Paintings Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Gerald) — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 05:34:00 +0000

So here are some paintings I did on some mobile devices, namely the Nintendo DSi and iPhone!

I did this one using "Colors" on the DSi. I think I prefer painting using a DSi and its stylus, plus it is kind of pressure sensitive, allowing thick to thin lines. Although it definitely is not as sensitive as a Cintiq or Wacom tablet. The negatives are the DSi's small screen and the resolution of the final paint isn't that great (512 x 384).Here is a painting of my rabbit Frida I did on the iPhone. I've been fooling around with pretty much every paint program released on the iPhone. I first started out with "Brushes", then moved on to "Layers", since it supported, well, LAYERS. Then I found out about Autodesk Sketchbook Mobile and of the three, I feel it fits my needs pretty well. It supports layers, undo and more importantly, the customization of brushes. Pretty intuitive interface as well.

My main gripe with painting on the iPhone is that it feels too much like finger painting. And it doesn't help that I have big fingers that cover up most of the screen. I've kind of alleviated problem by using the Pogo Stylus. It's small enough to stow away in my wallet, but it has a really spongy tip and I feel that I have to press down pretty hard to make a brush stroke. Another negative against the iPhone is the lack of pressure sensitivity, so sometimes I find myself faking thin to thick brush strokes.

Of the two devices, I'll most likely end up using the iPhone the most since I carry that around with me at all times. I figure that I'll get used to painting on it and maybe bust out something I'm totally happy with. I just found out that they released "Colors" for the iPhone as well, so I'm going to give that a shot and post my thoughts on it later.

Crew Meeting Sketches Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Gerald) — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 05:19:00 +0000

Here's some doodled I diddled during our last crew meeting at WB.
These could be paintings in the near future!

EVO 2009 Posters

noreply@blogger.com (Gerald) — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 14:11:00 +0000

Hey, hey, me again. Took a quick little break from Sandra and Jorge's project (maybe I'll post some of that stuff a year and a half from now, haha). Here are some posters I did for the upcoming "EVO 2009" tournament. These went by pretty quick, under 20 hours from sketch to paint for both of these. Jon Gibson wanted a 70's Kung-Fu movie poster vibe for these, so I was happy to oblige. That's it from me for a while! Soyonara!

Not From Concentrate

noreply@blogger.com (Gerald) — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 07:04:00 +0000

Here it is, all done! Truthfully, I'm not totally sure what it means and if it has to do anything with Los Angeles myth. I think it's going to be one of those paintings that I look at again months later and finally figure out what it mean to me. But if anyone has any idea what it means to them (especially in regards to Los Angeles!), I'll gladly use your story to explain this to anyone that asks!

L.A. Myth digi-painting, "work in progress"...

noreply@blogger.com (Gerald) — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 17:27:00 +0000

Hey gang, it's been a while! Anyways, I'm busting out a digi-painting for the upcoming "L.A. Myth" show, which opens Friday, February 6th at Meltdown Comics in Hollywood! I didn't have the time to do a full on traditional, "blood sweat and tears" painting, so I decided to stick with good ol' Photoshop this time around. I should have this done by tonight / early tomorrow morning.

Mega Man 9 is OUT!!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Gerald) — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 07:02:00 +0000

Well, out in cyberspace, that is! You can download it on the Wii this week, or the Playstation 3 next week, or Xbox Live the week after that! Jon Gibson mass produced these awesome Mega Man 9 press kits for Capcom a couple of weeks ago... you cannot imagine the hundreds of old NES carts that gave up their innards for his triumphant return. So if you are lucky enough to get one of these rare press kits, be sure to appreciate the blood, sweat and other bodily fluids that went into them.

Also here is a waaaay better looking version of the actual Mega Man 9 "cover".... see, it looks slightly better than the one that's been floating around that was taken off a t-shirt!

Unicorn of Death

noreply@blogger.com (Gerald) — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 20:14:00 +0000

Here's the tribute painting I did for the Gary Gygax show that's being held at Titmouse Studios this coming Saturday! For those who don't know, Gary Gygax was the father of "Dungeons & Dragons", and without him, I wouldn't have created so much horrible fantasy art in high school. REALLY HORRIBLE fantasy art. Maybe I'll post some samples later... I was laughing at a lot of it when I was at my parents' house this past weekend. Anyways, one of my favorite monsters from D&D were Beholders, floating sphere monsters with eyes all over the place which shoot out death rays and freeze rays and all kinds of rays to screw up your party. Okay!!!

Super Mario Armageddon

noreply@blogger.com (Gerald) — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 15:45:00 +0000

Here's a piece I did for the 2008 i am 8-bit retro video game art show! This was done using acrylics on masonite board. It's been a little over two years since I've used acrylics (digital painting has really spoiled me), but I was guiltedto go traditional by show curator Jon Gibson. After hitting a couple of brick walls, I think it turned out pretty okay!

Mega Man 9 "Unofficial" Offical Box Art

noreply@blogger.com (Gerald) — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 06:17:00 +0000

So here's the leaked image of the "Mega Man 9" box art I did for Capcom! The image was taken by 1Up.com's Jeremy Parish at E3. Capcom printed the painting I made on T-shirts and handed them to the staff to help promote the game. Yes, the original image looks waaaay better than this, but I'm not supposed to post anything up until the Capcom marketing department "officially" releases this image. I'll be sure to update this post with a better quality image once this happens. Special thanks to Jon Gibson for recommending me for the job!

Patsy Cline

noreply@blogger.com (Gerald) — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 06:11:00 +0000

This is another digi-painting I did a couple of months ago for the "depARTed" group art show... the show was dedicated to those famous individuals that left our world a bit too early. I chose Patsy Cline because of the interesting imagery that is associated with country music, plus I haven't done a country type painting for years. She died in a plane crash, btw.

Old School: Roman Zombie

noreply@blogger.com (Gerald) — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 06:08:00 +0000

I did this in October of last year as a "goodbye" gift to my co-worker Roman who was leaving El Tigre to move up to San Francisco. He really likes zombies. And he chews pens.... a lot.