Steven Ray Brown

Indiana Uploaded Motion Graphic Viral Video

2012-03-16T19:41:00.002-04:00

One of the newest Indiana Uploaded competitions is to make a viral video! So show your support by watching and liking the video below;

Also, donate to Indiana Uploaded on Brackets for Good.org !

Sketch-A-Thon Results!

2012-03-15T22:46:00.003-04:00

Sketch-A-Thon was a success! Some technical issues with Justin.tv's chat.. But otherwise a very fun and exciting experience. I was really happy to know that a few of the people who watched did donated! As promised here are all 15 10 Minute sketches made in order!

And remember to go to Bracketsforgood.org and donate to Indiana Uploaded and help them stay in the race and make it to a Round 3!

Sketch-A-Thon

2012-03-14T13:36:00.006-04:00

If you've been following me on Facebook or Twitter you then its no surprised that I am been a big supporter of Indiana Uploaded, especially during their campaign on the non for profit funding competition Brackets for Good.

I am happy to announce that I will be doing a live stream tomorrow night at 8pm (Eastern time, -5:00) to help bring in donations to their cause. What is Indiana Uploaded? What are there causes? Well, Indiana Uploaded's founder Zeb Wood explains it best.

They've made it to the second round, but for them to survive this week their going to need all the help we can bring in!

For more information on Indiana Uploaded and their campaign on Brackets for Good, please visit this link; http://indianauploaded.org/bfg/

The live stream will feature me dedicating 15 sketches in 3 hours. That's 10 minutes dedicated to each of the 15 sketches, with 3 10 minute breaks. Zeb Wood will be in the chat to talk about Indiana Uploaded, and I'm hoping to bring in some donations. But don't worry you can still watch without donating.

All 15 sketches will be posted here the following day. Hope to see you all there.

Into the Lion’s Den: An Outsider’s Look into the Fighting Game Community

2012-03-13T00:49:00.004-04:00

Here's another Nightmaremode.net illustration. This time the article is a inside look at the fighting game community. I drew Ryu... cause he's iconic! And Poison... because people like traps! Good o' Trapcom. Mmmhm.

I feel like I say this a lot, but this one of those pieces that had the sad fate popping on my list-of-things-to-do when it was already a big list. Well... the coloring is good.. right? Oh and the article (with my illustration) made its way to Penny Arcade, but they pixelated the image and forgot to credit me. Whoops!

Dumbing of Age Make Out

2012-03-12T16:02:00.003-04:00

I rarely ever do romantic pictures of love or lust... so when Dumbing of Age's author made a "slashing" contest I jumped at the chance. I did the in-cannon Mike and Amber and I was trying to make it really intimate.

Here's the Dumbing of Age's author David's and his thoughts on my entry;

"Here's an entry from Steven Brown. Bonus points for sweet Mike abs. Points detracted for putting Amber in a Shortpacked! Uniform! This is a Dumbing of Age contest, man! But seriously, this is hot."

I didn't mean for her to be her uniform, I just thought the color looked nice on her haha. Oh well. Maybe next time.

Big Brother is watching: how developers use game analytics

2012-03-11T20:52:00.003-04:00

Another week, another illustration for Nightmaremode.net. Check out this week's article about game analytics.

Another Bowling for Soup Promo

2012-02-27T14:06:00.003-05:00

The above promo uses another illustration by me. It was a quickie too. Jaret emails me saying they need a pic ASAP. Wham, bam, thank you ma'am. Got it to him as fast as I could. Check out if their playing near you, their concerts are a riot!

NightmareMode - YOU ARE HERE

2012-02-25T15:29:00.004-05:00

Check out the Nightmaremode.net article that this was made for, "YOU ARE HERE: How games have come domesticated." The illustration shows Link and Navi from Legend of Zelda looking at a to do list, to help illustrate how games have become nothing but to do list.

Update Edit:

The article AND my picture found its way to Penny Arcade!

RYE Bread Radio

2012-02-23T20:54:00.003-05:00

RYEBread Radio is Chicago's top performing arts podcast and radio show. The show's host Akeem sent me an email about a month ago saying that a mutual follower suggested me to him. They were looking for some illustration work done for merch and for the new website. Which is all kinds of exciting. Not only did it bring a new opportunity to me, but it also shows that some of my followers care enough about what I do to actively share my work with others.

I still don't know who this person is, but if you're that person and reading this I want to thank you. I greatly appreciate it, and makes what I do so much more rewarding than it already is.

Akeem was impressed by my ability to change up my work's style to look like other popular cartoons. The first one was suppose to be Hannah-Barbera's Scooby Doo style. But instead of giving them a flat look, I gave it a B-Movie paint look.

The next set of illustrations were design to emulate The Gorillaz art style. The first being them in their studio. What happen was we had Akeem take pictures of the studio and I alter them to make them fit along with the drawings.

The next two are my favorite out of the bunch. Akeem asked for the crew to be in intimidating poses. The drawings were done first and then we played around with different backgrounds. The later is going to be a wallpaper.

This is not all, there's more to come. Which includes a 60's retro styled piece and there might be some animated segments in the future. Stay tune, and how the RYEBread would say, this post is toast.

I Heart Community

2012-02-17T10:27:00.005-05:00

Community is easily my favorite show on television, and pains me to see it be on an hiatus. If you haven't seen the show you are easily doing yourself a huge injustices. I'm might be a tad bit obsessed, but I can't help it... the characters are so likable, the stories are so much fun to watch, and its so damn witty. So today, I thought I would share with you all the Community related Stuff I've done in the last 6 months (sans Boopy Doopy Doop Boop Sex Shirt), with commentary!

One of my favorite things to do ever is recreating Live-Action tv show characters into "What If" cartoons. I know that the show already has a cartoon end tag, but that was a joke as if the Dean was drawing the cartoon. And I always wanted to do something Community Animated....

The week after graduating college, I decided the time was now. I've had a few people ask me why I didn't just do something like a 2 minute long cartoon, and it was because I just finished my Senior Capstone that was 2 minutes long 3D animated short, and I wasn't ready to jump into such a huge project.

I edited together clips from "Paradigms of Human Memory" and "Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas". I just thought it would be funny, and easy to animate. I like the above clip and hate it. You can easily see where I got lazy, but I think it looks really good as stills;
I'm still trying to find my style for animation. And this was a lot of fun to experiment with. I do know that I'm not going to do straight up 3D background again. It was just much for my computer to handle. I do not have the best computer, and I spent the week I worked on this project mostly letting the backgrounds render and tweaking them.

I did edited together audio for a second minute and a half mini animated episode based off the Webisodes "Study Breaks". But between getting really busy with freelance work and other things I just don't see it happening anytime soon.

I love 8bit graphics, there's a certain charm of that kind of simplicity. So of course I had to make "Troy and A~~bed in 8~~~~bit." Trying to make the handshake like it would have been done in an NES Game, I had to alter it; and you can see below from an earlier piece that I do know that its not incorrect. Some one commented on how 8bit Abed looks more like Joey from Friends. Its funny cause its true.

POP POP!

There's a hidden "Pop Pop" if you put the gif on a black background.

Now this is was my first Community fan piece. The handshake. Its funny, I really really like how I got Donald Clover's Tory, but Abed is look awful haha. Normally I crop out areas I don't like, but it would look weird to have Troy clapping a dis-in-bodied hand.

The above is a mock up and sequel to the Boopy Doopy Doop Boop Sex shirt concept. I really like the colors, the only thing stopping me from making this one is that I suck really bad with half tones, and with all the gradients this requires a lot of have tones. I may go back and do other songs based off the other songs from "Regional Holiday Music" sometime in July as a Christmas in July thing. Maybe.

If you don't get the above shirt here's a video;

Glee literally means... Glee!

Have Some More Soup

2012-02-17T10:10:00.005-05:00

I was commssioned to create another lllustration for Bowling for Soup, by now I just have several notches in my desk for every commission I get from them. I love it, so many people get to see my work, and I get to help out my favorite band. I only did the car illustration, the rest of the above was done by BFS' design team.

This illustration was for the Jaret and Erik Acoustic Tour 2012, and will appear in promos like above, the website, and an UK Tshirt. If you live in the above areas you should totally got check them out. They have more dates here.

Here are some early color test of the illustration;

Good Grief, Designers!

2012-02-16T20:15:00.000-05:00

This one was done a few months ago. I had owed a friend of mine Devon an illustration. She's a very opinionated and talented graphic designer. Which is awesome to me, to compliment that I thought it would've been fun for her to be able to add speech bubbles to a cartoon version of herself. Those speech bubbles could share to us what's she's thinking of.

Kind of like of a meme and Twitter had a baby...

I remember there being a reason why it was in Peanut style... but I don't remember what that reason was... Anyways here's an example of the image being used for its initial purpose;

Putz Cast

2012-02-16T15:33:00.004-05:00

The Putz Cast commissioned me to do the illustrations you see above. What is the Putz Cast you ask? Well its a podcast that covers video games and nerd media, topics ranging from the Stay Puffed Marshmallow man to Bronies. They are delightfully eccentric and if you have some time to kill or want something to listen to while you work, give them a try. They do use some colorful language so be warn there.

Also, remember to follow my Facebook page as its the first place I do all updates, and even has exclusives. But if Facebook isn't in your taste, check out the tumblr!

Shaggy and the Reluctant Girlfriend

2012-02-15T12:38:00.000-05:00

Since I just made a Derrick J Wyatt post, might as well make a second one. I did this fan illustration of Scooby Doo and the Reluctant Werewolf in Mystery Incorporated style, a little while ago. I used to be so good at blogging, what happened?

Season 2 of Scooby Doo Mystery Incorporated is only a few months away, and I'm excited. Its easily the most well written Scooby Doo series ever. And its been doing a great job at dropping cameos and references to old Scooby Doo characters. From mentioning how they'll never talk about Scrappy Doo again to Vincent Van Ghoul being Shaggy and Scooby's favorite actor.

With Dynomutt has been announced for season 2 apperance, I just can't help but imagine who else could they include? Well since the show tackles relationships a lot.. what about Googie? Shaggy's one movie girlfriend from the 80's with the worst name ever. Yep that's the one. It could even work in plot wise of Shaggy getting over the whole Velma drama. Who knows...

Mmmm... needs something more...

Not funny enough...

THERE WE GO!

Ben Chin: Omniverse

2012-02-15T12:21:00.000-05:00

Ben 10's latest installment's been announced as Ben 10 Omniverse, and its been revealed that the show is going to be getting a face lift from Derrick J Wyatt (Transformers: Animated, Scooby Doo Mystery Incorporated). He's redesigning the show around his very unique tastes.

Derrick J Wyatt has done amazing work on both Transformers: Animated and Mystery Incorporated taking old designs and redesigning them with everything that made the character intact. But its very common for all of his characters to have really large chins. Which are both good looking, and hilarious all at the same time.

The above image is parodying the big chin formula with the previous aliens of Ben 10. Derrick J Wyatt did see it via Twitter, which he replied with... "LOL, nice".

Kids, Don't Play With Matches...

2012-02-15T12:17:00.000-05:00

A lot of websites have a place for you to put your ID or a picture of yourself. I always put a drawing of myself. And this is the one I am currently using. Thought it was funny, what do you guys think?

Nightmare Mode - What Do Bosses Do?

2012-02-15T12:02:00.000-05:00

The above is an image is one I created for Nightmaremode.net. I am doing their weekly top articles now, and this weeks was "What Do Bosses Do?" Go give it a read!

Boopy Doopy Doop Boop Sex

2012-02-15T11:52:00.000-05:00

Its not easy to see that I'm obsessed with Community.... So here's a T-Shirt based off the "Teach Me About Christmas" bit from "Regional Holiday Music". Such a hilarious parody of how Glee sexualizes teenagers in the style of "Santa Baby". Of course I need to further parody it with Betty Boop.

"Its a Wrap" Backgrounds and Props (Revisited)

2012-02-15T10:56:00.000-05:00

Guttamind's Christopher Perkins is one of the most talented and dedicated animators I have ever met. He's a really good friend of mine and we've been helping each other for a few years now. When ever one of us has a project, we can easily count on each other to help bring that project to its peak. Today, I am going to talk to you about the latest project of his that I've worked on, "Its a Wrap: Wiz Khalifa Whipped by Amber Rose".

Now the subject mater is completely out of my realm, in fact I think we've should of kept a list of the names I got wrong here, "Kid Wiz", "Amy Rose", "Kid Wickid", etc... The above video is doing amazingly well on Youtube, and has over 160,000 views on the popular hip hop site World Star Hip Hop. Its easy to see why, even thought the subject matter is beyond me, the jokes are still there.

The beauty of the humor is you can replace the celebrities with average joes and janes and it would still be funny. Its relate able. Also between the comments and the people Chris has shown this to, everyone laughs at a different joke and at different times. Its kind of neat.

The above is all Chris, but I should mention that the music was created by Almost Free Beats. Seriously check him and Chris' website Guttamind.com out.

So What did I do? Thank you for asking! Some of my followers will remember that I posted some backgrounds for the animation already. Well, today I am going to revisit those backgrounds and add more later additions I did for the animation;

Scott Pilgrim Vs. The Collaboration

2011-12-04T11:15:00.000-05:00

Looking around on my computer, and I realized that I never actually posted this on the old blog. This was a collaboration effort between myself and Wil Brendel, illustrator of the comic book The Redeemers. I was looking for something to do to add to the portfolio and Wil brought me the line art to this. I like to think the above is a pretty successful print and tribute to the cult hit Scott Pilgrim.

Wil liked my color job so much, that he did a drawing for me for free; I told him to just "draw me something awesome" and I got this;

Beautiful.

Whiz Backgrounds

2011-12-04T11:05:00.000-05:00

A good friend of mine, Christopher Perkins of Guttaminds.com is working on his next animated comedy "Wiz Khalifa". The above is my contribution to the project, some simple backgrounds and props. I'll keep you updated when the projects is finished and published to the web.

A Bear in a Forest

2011-12-04T09:03:00.000-05:00

Last week I thought it would be nice to get some practice in Adobe Flash since most of my classes are After Effects and Maya related. Started out as a quick sketch but evolved into;

Still Image:

The Original Sketch:

Why Wont You Love Me

2011-11-27T13:13:00.001-05:00

The above is J.D. and Dr. Cox of Scrubs in the Canadian cartoon Clone High art style. Both Scrubs and Clone High were (co-)created by Bill Lawrence, which is where I made the connection to connect the two shows. I'm sure Scrubs is popular enough to be known by most; but Clone High was a season-long comedy that aired on MTv in the states;

Its one of my most quoted comedies, right there next to Community.

Here is the line art and sketches to see the progression;

Happy Halloween, Savy

2011-10-31T15:14:00.000-04:00

Also enjoy this appropriate and much more funny internet video;

Bowling for Soup meets the Ghost-busters

2011-10-30T21:11:00.001-04:00

While chillin' on Facebook I noticed a friend of mine liked a fan page entitled "Bowling for Soup for GhostBusters 3". So I decided to check it out, and it was a page dedicated to the concept if a Ghost-busters 3 was made the Pop-Punk band Bowling for Soup should do the theme song. Which, I am a fan of Bowling for Soup and I am a fan of Ghost-busters; so why wouldn't I be for this?

With that being said, I made the above to support the fan-page and as a little treat for Ghost-buster and BFS fans alike. If you want you can download a high resolution for wall paper here.

The above has been featured on the fan site "Ghostbusters News". And its been brought up in a "Room 13" Article. Here's the snippet;

R13: There's also a facebook campaign to get you to do the theme to Ghostbusters 3, should it ever get made.
JR: An awesome fan of ours named Steve Rosier had that idea and just started this facebook site which was floating around out there. We have this inner group of really amazing, hardcore fans that have all gotten to be friends, and they're all from different parts of the world and they communicate all the time. Anyway, this kid named Steven Brown who's been doing some art for us for a few years - he did all of the 'Fishin' For Woos' booklet, and some of our merch - I guess Steve (Rosier) got a hold of Steven (Brown) who then did a picture of us as the Ghostbusters, and it was just the coolest thing I've ever seen. I thought 'I've got to get behind this now', so I started tweeting about it and put it on our facebook page, and then Ghostbusters websites got hold of the story. It just really organically grew from this facebook page that had, like, 17 people liking it to.

The one problem with the whole thing is we actually have covered the song 'Ghostbusters' before for a movie with Reese Witherspoon. I can't for the life of me think what it was called (Just Like Heaven). I like our version of it, but it was years ago and it was under the direction of the music producer for that movie, and they wanted it exactly like Ray Parker Jnr, so we didn't really get to put our spin on it. It kind of sucks, we need an asterix by that song and next it say 'Yes! We really want to do that song for Ghostbusters 3, but we would do something really cool'. All of the feedback out there is people hearing the version that we've already done and thinking that we want this to be the theme, and then they're just like 'The original version is better' and, yes, it is, but we did it under a certain set of circumstances. It would be interesting if something happened. That would be one of the coolest stories ever, where some fans just decided 'we're going to make this happen' and it happened.