Jay Leno Interview

Planes of Fame

Went out to the Planes of Fame museum recently and took a few pics. They have all kinds of fighter planes  from WWI era to Vietnam along with a few other things in the mix. Most of the planes at the museum are

in flyable condition or being restored to fly again. It is quite an inspiring museum and I love WWII aircraft and they play a big inspiration in most of my design work. So enjoy the pics and if you want to use them feel free to do that just give me credit and  link back to my site here. Thanks and enjoy.

Sincerely

Dwayne Vance

So I recently had some stickers done up for Masters of Chicken Scratch. The stickers are 2 3/8″ wide by 3″ tall about the size of a business card to give some reference  The stickers are made in the USA with 1.2 mil heavy duty vinyl with 1 mil waterproof UV laminate. You might ask, what does that mean? Well that means they are made of the best quality material and you can slap those puppies on your outdoor play equipment.  They would look great on your sweet custom 70′s van ( I wished I had one) or your tricked out family ride. It shows you got some style and class. So you can order 1 sticker for $2 but that is not very much fun so I also offer a 4 pack of stickers for $5. Patches are also on there way and you will be in top notch fashion after you put one of those on your corduroy jacket. If get some stickers please take some pics and post them on my facebook page or here so I can see where they have been stuck, and keep it clean kids.

Recently I had a Lego fan by the name of Harald Christ recently ask me if he could use one of my ships as inspiration for a Lego model. I said of course and I was amazed at how fast he got it done. He captured the ship very well and I would love to see it in physical Lego’s. Harald used a Lego building program called MLCad and and LDView to make the images. In the past I have tried the Lego Builder program but for some reason my mind just could not think in Lego’s So I am astounded on some the stuff people build. Harald is from Australia and has a passion for building cool things with Lego’s and if you would like to see more of his stuff you can visit his Flickr account.

Here is a video demo for the one of the racing spaceships I did a little while back. If you want to see the steps that led up to the point I start the video at please see Comic Con Ship 3 post. So I explain my digital painting process as I go through and finish up the details on my final spaceship design. I talk about rendering different materials and different brushes I use to finish up the spaceship design.  I also mention a couple of artist in my demo so I wanted to provide the links to go and check out their stuff. One of the artist is Sycra and you can find his work at www.sycra.net, He has several great tutorials about color and character stuff. Then the other artist I mention is Sinix and you can find his you tube channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/sinixdesign/videos. He has some great design tutorials from robots to character work. So please feel free to ask any questions about my process and I will get back to you. Thanks again for stopping by.

Dwayne

Well I am back at it after taking some time off this past week. I unplugged for the most part and did not look at the digital world while I was gone.  Took  time to really focus on my family and have some fun. It was a great time to be refreshed and get prepared to take on some big tasks. I have a new tutorial series planned for Masters of Chicken Scratch blog along with some tutorials for an online learning community. I have also been talking with Wacom about doing some tutorials and using some of their really cool products. I will also be doing some more stuff with Corel Painter tutorials and webinars. So be looking for those in the near future. Currently working on two more books but no major dates as of yet for when those will be out. So thank you again for stopping by and I will keep you updated on events and thing going on. Then if you ever have any questions please feel free to ask. I will also announce the winner of an original sketch tomorrow so please come back. If you did not catch the earlier post about how to win an original sketch please visit measure your success and read how you can participate to possibly win an orginal sketch. There will be a winner every month.

This is an updated garage scene from the Mac’s Mini Rod app. Mac is a boy that loves to hang out with his dad. They share the same passion for building sick hot rods. So Mac made his own work area and started building his designs out of found parts from around the garage. In this story you will learn more about Mac and his cool Mini Hot Rods. You will even get a chance to build them yourself and give some customization to each individual car.  This Garage scene was done in Painter 12 with my Wacom Cintiq 21 UX and took approx 8-10 hrs to complete. So look for more updates on this app in the future. In the mean time I am taking a week off this week and I will resume on the 28th of August. When I return I will be putting together the next tutorial series on improving your sketches. So have a good week and see you when I return.

This is a small sketch I did recently on my Ipod using a program called Brushes and my new Bamboo stylus from Wacom

Took me about 20mins to get it done. I used a reference shot of the 1909 Blitzen Benz (very cool race car)

I ask myself this question all the time. How do I stay ahead of the game in the design world. There are so many ways to approach this question. I know that as an artist and designer I never feel that I can say that “I am ahead of the game”. I feel I always will need to improve my work. Through the years it seems the more you learn the more you realize you don’t know. Now another approach might be to look at your “momentum”. As you go through life as a designer or artist your projects will tend to get better and better as you improve. Your responsibility will become greater.You have to work hard and take the hard task head on. Even if it means you might fail. You will learn. Believe me I have failed so many times when it comes to clients and jobs but I have to press forward and learn from that experience and not give up. After doing that several times I start to learn what not to do and what to do. You start to build what I would consider momentum. I have been a professional designer for the past 13yrs and I am feeling like I have momentum only in the last few years. I receive jobs from big corporations and they are usually pretty darn cool. It has taken me several years of hard work and failing. I have always viewed myself as one of those artist that has had to work really hard to become talanted. Most of my classmates at Art Center were so much more talented than me but I was like a pit bull when it came to my skills. I pushed myself hard to produce good work. I would do that and my stuff still would not hold up to their work. But I have been relentless on improving myself and by doing that I have been able to build momentum through the years. So to say the least I never take it lightly when somebody tells me they enjoy my work because I realize it has taken me years to get to that point and I never gave up along the way. I heard this quote recently from the Dave Ramsey podcast “Momentum is not an accident it is created”

So please share how you have built momentum for yourself by leaving a comment below. Remember I will send out some original artwork to people that participate. But I will never know your name if you don’t leave feedback.