Robot Rumpus blog

sci-fi environment sketches

2012-02-07T08:15:00.000-08:00

Some rough sketches of a wacky future. For a commercial.

Robot designs

2012-02-03T14:22:00.000-08:00

Concept sketches of office helper robots for a Microsoft spot.

blimp robot design

2012-01-27T10:41:00.000-08:00

This is a futuristic robot I designed at Mirada for a Microsoft commercial which was never used. It's a hovering, "dust buster blimp" design. It is made of super-light materials and floats around with the aid of a hydrogen bladder and fans. It maneuvers itself through the air with tentacles lined with macro cilia, oscillating at extreme speeds. A blinking icon on the side announces the mode; repair mode, in this case.
I guess it isn't really very practical. That's probably why they didn't use it.

New Yorker cover

2012-01-17T15:15:00.000-08:00

I did this cover illustration for a New Yorker contest. We have Eustace Tilley (the New Yorker guy) as a Mayan shaman, cracking open his new 2012 calendar.

Sugar commercial- matte painting

2011-12-20T16:37:00.000-08:00

These images are from an Indonesian sugar commercial I worked on at Mirada/Motion Theory. I had to design a city made of cakes, and then flesh it out into a final matte painting.

concept sktech

Matte painting


final comp

McRib still life

2011-11-30T02:14:00.000-08:00

I've been wanting to try a classic food still-life for a while, but finally found inspiration from the L.A Foodie podcast. Having never tasted a McRib before, nor eaten meat for over 16 years, I gave my review from the perspective of someone who couldn't possibly like it.
You can listen to it here.

I set up a an arrangement of objects and lit them with candlelight. I had to use two sandwiches because my dog ate the first one.

I recorded the entire process and condensed it into a 2-minute movie...

holiday sale!

2011-11-26T11:58:00.001-08:00

It seems like everyone else is having a sale, so what the hell? I'm having a sale, too. Get these high-quality prints for 34% off at the store!

Renaissance portrait sketch

2011-11-12T18:49:00.000-08:00

Another 3-hour costume sketch from life from the Drawing Club.

Larry Palmer portrait

2011-10-11T21:44:00.000-07:00

This is a recent portrait I completed of Dr. Larry Palmer, a professor of neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania and specialist in visual biology. It hangs in the neuroscience lecture room at the University of Pennsylvania.

It started with a meeting in his lab, where I took a series of reference photos of him in his element. We captured different angles and expressions, and from studying those, I produced a series of pencil sketches to work out the likeness, personality and composition. This evolved into a color thumbnail in Photoshop, and by refining this, it ultimately became the finished portrait, which was printed onto canvas and framed.

KIA Commercial

2011-10-03T13:34:00.000-07:00

I did a bit of work on this epic commercial for KIA at Method Studios, painting spaceship textures and a sci-fi city.

Wormhole

2011-09-21T14:27:00.000-07:00

Another concept frame from a Disney show, illustrating a time warp effect.

Giant crab attack

2011-09-14T12:45:00.000-07:00

Another concept illustration from an upcoming secret project. A giant crab attacks the coast.

Flamenco dancer

2011-09-03T14:00:00.000-07:00

A portrait from life, done in Photoshop on a laptop in my kitchen, and modeled by flamenco dancer Mercedes Ibarra.

framed Zelda prints for sale!

2011-08-22T18:18:00.000-07:00

The Robot Rumpus Store is finally open, and I have my first prints to offer. By popular demand, I will be offering high-quality, limited edition prints of two digital paintings. If it gets a good response, I may offer more in the future. If you like them, please spread the word! Thank you.

gallery reception pictures

2011-07-26T22:52:00.001-07:00

Some pictures from the recent show in downtown LA.

Gallery show

2011-07-04T09:12:00.000-07:00

My first Gallery showing is coming up in downtown LA! I'll be showing four digital still life paintings. The theme of the show is "home," and my contributions will feature objects of nostalgia, including action figures and Nintendo cartridges.

Roman Centurion

2011-06-29T23:30:00.000-07:00

New 10-minute sketches from The Drawing Club of Brant Maynard as a Roman Centurion.

Time Tunnel concept

2011-06-20T20:10:00.000-07:00

This was a concept I did for a Disney show of a time travel sequence. The character runs in super speed and passes several days into the future.

Squid attack

2011-06-12T19:21:00.000-07:00

A concept image from an upcoming secret project. Bio-luminescent squid attack a fishing vessel.

15-minute hippie

2011-02-25T12:20:00.001-08:00

This week's challenge from the Drawing Club: draw a hippie in 15 minutes.

Sketchbook- The Hunchback

2011-01-30T20:30:00.000-08:00

Sketches from the Drawing club, featuring Andy Flaster as the hunchback.

Absolut Vodka commercial

2011-01-13T22:01:00.000-08:00

A matte painting I did for an Absolut Vodka commercial. I had to modify an existing location, as seen in the original frame below...

Fathoms Deep album art

2010-11-29T18:06:00.000-08:00

The Cover for my brother's album "Fathoms Deep," from his band Mr Twit. The image is based on the title song. Here is the evolution...

Nintendo Rembrandt 2

2010-11-23T11:30:00.000-08:00

A copy of the Rembrandt portrait Man with the Golden Helmet, rendered on the Nintendo DS. Check out the timelapse video to see how it was done. It's probably about 45 min of work, condensed into 1 minute.

The music is from my brother's band, Mr Twit, and is available at fathomsdeep.net.

Drawing Club sketch

2010-11-08T20:21:00.000-08:00

Another Photoshop sketch from the Drawing Club.

Sargent theme portrait

2010-08-23T09:30:00.000-07:00

3-hour life-portrait from a live model at the Drawing Club, of a monopoly-man-looking guy, straight out of a John Singer Sargent portrait. I tried to apply what I know about Sargent's brush style to this. He was very judicious about his use of detail, and only hinted at it where absolutely necessary. He could therefore make the viewer perceive a more detailed image by hitting just the right perceptive cues, and the viewer would unconsciously fill in the rest. He would have made a great matte painter.

And here is the process in Photoshop. It's starts with rough blocking, followed by incremental refinements.

Disney billboard

2010-08-15T17:28:00.000-07:00

This is a billboard I did at Motion Theory for the Disney World of Color fountain show at California Adventure. The file was about 20,000 pixels wide, and took a half an hour to save in Photoshop. I took a lot of breaks.

Chinese Ghost Story

2010-06-22T14:56:00.001-07:00

A three-hour laptop portrait from a live model, featuring a character from the Hong Kong classic, A Chinese Ghost Story.

Captain Kirk

2010-06-14T12:00:00.000-07:00

5 to 15-minute sketches from Bob Kato's Drawing club with subject Captain Kirk.
This is my first time experimenting with the new 3D brushes in Photoshop CS5. They add a lot of expression to the line, since it recognizes tilt and rotation, although somewhat crudely, and adds bristle behavior to the strokes.

The brush preview window at the upper left shows the orientation of the brush in real-time. You can adjust the bristle length, thickness, and stiffness.

Kung Fu High School

2010-06-02T14:00:00.000-07:00

Concept painting for a script based on the book Kung-Fu High School.

The image is a blend of photo-manipulation and hand paintwork in Photoshop. This photo was the starting point...

Eastwick matte painting

2010-05-25T20:46:00.000-07:00

I produced this matte painting for the pilot of the now-canceled TV show Eastwick. This would have been the establishing shot for the mansion where the show takes place, but it ended up not making the cut. They still paid me, though.
Production filmed on location at Greystone Mansion. Then, using Photoshop, I added an additional structure to the complex with photo fragments from the location. I then tracked it into the footage with Boujou and After Effects.
Here is what the original plate looked like...

peacock feathers

2010-04-09T15:20:00.001-07:00

Another 3-hour portrait, with a laptop and live model.

Dark Metropolis- previz and matte painting

2010-02-21T15:08:00.000-08:00

For the premiere of Smallville season 9, the producers asked for a sinister, more Batman-like view of Metropolis. I started with a couple digital concept paintings with opposing color palettes. They chose the second one.
The actor was filmed on a green screen and partial set in Vancouver.
Overlaying the concept painting with the live plate, 3d artist Andrea Shear assembled the Metropolis 3d geometry from the show's library of buildings to match the concept. She rendered it out in multiple passes, breaking out the windows, neon signage, radiosity, Z fog, Y fog, and volumetric fog into multiple grayscale passes.

Layering the passes in After Effects, I comped them all together and added color.

Dax Jordan does Portland

2010-01-29T17:00:00.000-08:00

This is a video I shot with my cousin, comedian Dax Jordan. We shot the thing around Portland on an ipod nano.

Holiday card 2009

2009-12-24T12:34:00.000-08:00

The Robot Rumpus holiday card, featuring a digital still-life of IG-88 and a candy cane! Happy whatever it is you celebrate!

VFX reel 2009

2009-11-17T11:33:00.000-08:00

Robot Rumpus reel 2009 from Jason Dunn on Vimeo.

New exciting reel for 2009! Now mostly explosions!

Destruction of Kandor

2009-11-15T19:25:00.000-08:00

From the Smallville episode, Kandor, in which we flash back its destruction on planet Krypton.

The matte painting was built as a still in photoshop, and I used the warp tools in Nuke to animate it. I then comped it in After Effects with footage of an LA firestorm to get the smoke to billow.The destruction of the city is a cocktail of particles, breaking glass elements, gas explosion elements, dust, and exploding Styrofoam.

Destruction of Kandor from Jason Dunn on Vimeo.

Halloween still life

2009-10-30T10:58:00.001-07:00

Digital still life of Halloween stuff, lit by a glow stick and a candle.

Portrait of Mike Nusbaum

2009-09-21T11:00:00.000-07:00

This was a commission I got from the University of Pennsylvania, to paint a portrait of the head of the neuroscience graduate program, on the occasion of his retirement. He is an expert on the crab nervous system, and an enthusiast of all things crab.

They have a centuries-long tradition of portraiture at the university, although it seems to have lost some steam in the last few decades. My brother and I decided to try to revive it. We wanted to emulate the classical style of a lot of the older portraits, but this one was done digitally in Photoshop.

It was meant to be a surprise for his retirement party, so I went to his lectures covertly to study his face and mannerisms. Along with that, and random snapshots and a mirror, I built this image.

art nouveau-themed portrait

2009-08-02T23:22:00.001-07:00

Three hour digital sketch from a costumed model (Sara Streeter) at Bob Kato's drawing club.

Terminator submarine sequence

2009-07-28T13:00:00.000-07:00

Here's a sequence we did for Terminator:The Sarah Connor Chronicles at Entity FX. A bunch of stuff happens in a submarine, so we needed a series of establishing shots of the exterior, as well as the climax shot when the submarine *spoiler alert* blows up at the end.

I started with a series of concept sketches based on the storyboards for color and composition...

The sub was modeled and animated in Maya by Pharoah Barrett, and the chrome terminator eel was animated by Andrew Lema. I comped the shot in After Effects, and used several layers of fire elements, spherized and color-corrected green, as the underwater explosion. I also layered in several time-warped dust-explosion elements to simulate underwater bubble clouds at a large scale.

Scanning aperture three dimensional display device

2009-05-16T14:20:00.000-07:00

These are the first in a series of patents filed a couple of years ago by me and my business partner, David Hartkop, for a three-dimensional flat-screen display. It would work without glasses and allow for a wide viewing range. Essentially, you could display a 3D object on the screen and view it from different angles, relative to your viewing position. It would have been great, except our funding for the second prototype fell through when the majority of our claims were rejected by the patent office, because it was found they infringed on a similar patent by a Japanese company who had thought of it first.
Our original prototype resides in an unmarked crate in a secret warehouse, but you can read the patents here.

David has since started a coffee company around a solar coffee roaster he designed and built.

Zombie Ostrich

2009-04-08T23:30:00.000-07:00

Sketch of a plastinated, zombified ostrich from a museum exhibit.

The Great Buck Howard

2009-03-17T13:05:00.000-07:00

My rough poster design for the new movie with John Malkovich, in which he plays a hypnotist. I thought it would be fun to make a straightforward magic show poster, and really not even acknowledge it as a movie.

Spirit background designs

2009-03-17T12:30:00.000-07:00

Concept backgrounds for "The Spirit," painted in Photoshop at EntityFX. Each of these panels was a green screen element, which I had to key and integrate into a full environmental sketch. We then comped them into each shot, and edited it all together. Beware of potential spoilers.

"The Spirit" matte paintings + concept

2009-01-22T18:00:00.000-08:00

Here was a fun thing to do... two epic explosion shots for The Spirit which I got to take from sketch to final comp.

concept art

matte painting in final comp

We started with sketches, which sat as placeholders in the edit, while framing, composition, and design issues were all addressed in editorial context. When Frank Miller was finally satisfied with these things, they were next fleshed-out into detailed matte paintings.

Matching the angle of my sketch, matte painter Roger Kupelian rendered an overhead view of the city in 3D. I took his renders and painted over them in Photoshop, basically to tweak, re-light and modulate detail. I layered in clouds from various stock photo sources, and translated the smoke tentacles into 3d particles.

The final comp was done in After Effects, using warpers on the clouds to make them billow.

concept art

matte painting in final comp

X-files waterfall sequence

2009-01-18T22:24:00.000-08:00

Here are some early environment concept images I did in preparation for a sequence which was ultimately cut from X-Files: I want to Believe, in which Mulder investigates by a frozen waterfall.

These are preliminary designs for what would have been the waterfall matte painting.

Zelda still life

2008-11-19T16:00:00.000-08:00

click to enlarge

Digital oil still life of some assorted Nintendo paraphernalia and a rice krispy treat, painted from life with Photoshop.

detail view.

Time-lapse of its creation. Scrub through it to see the image at different stages of completion.

Terminator has bad face day

2008-11-17T18:43:00.000-08:00

Some concept illustrations I did for Sarah Connor Chronicles showing what to do if a terminator comes after you: shoot him/her in the face with a shotgun. The actor was filmed with prosthetic make-up, and a patch of greenscreen to be replaced with CG.

Terminator matte painting

2008-11-10T16:25:00.000-08:00

A matte painting of a post-apocalyptic nuclear power plant from Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles which I did at Entity FX. The plant was an actual filming location, but I modified it by painting decay and battle damage over it.

Here is what the original footage looked like...

And here is the final composite, featuring a CG human-killing robot by David Alexander.

Flower study

2008-11-06T18:30:00.000-08:00

Digital oil still-life, done in Photoshop over a couple of days.

detail view
Here is the painting setup.

Curmudgeon

2008-10-19T16:38:00.000-07:00

3-hour digital oil painting from Bob Kato's drawing club. The theme was Van Gogh, but it doesn't seem to look too much like him except for the hat.

Sarah Connor Chronicles

2008-10-14T15:34:00.000-07:00

Here are some concept frames I did for a sequence in the Terminator TV show in which Summer Glau escapes from an aircraft carrier full of angry robots.

Pushing Daisies matte painting

2008-10-09T18:08:00.000-07:00

Background matte painting I did for the show Pushing Daisies. The black areas are where it blends into the film footage.

Marie Antoinette with Head

2008-09-01T16:49:00.000-07:00

A life portrait, painted from a costumed model in the three-hour pose of Marie Antoinette enjoying the use of her head. Painted with photoshop on a laptop in at Bob Kato's drawing club.
Click to enlarge.

Caracalla

2008-08-17T21:00:00.000-07:00

Caracalla, briefly emperor of Rome.
He enjoys assassinating siblings, avoiding assassination attempts by siblings, and generally being a prick.

Still life with shiny stuff and hologram

2008-07-13T22:50:00.000-07:00

A still life with CDs, a hologram, and other cool, shiny stuff.

Still life with canned air and gameboy

2008-07-09T23:58:00.000-07:00

detail view

evolution

Pendulum Album Art

2008-07-08T01:30:00.000-07:00

An image of mine was used as a CD fold-out by Pendulum on the album In Silico, published by Warner Music UK.
Here's the image full-screen.

Moulin Rouge

2008-06-27T22:33:00.000-07:00

A digital painting in Photoshop, painted from a live, costumed model in a Moulin Rouge-inspired theme. It was done on a laptop in in Bob Kato's class in a three-hour pose. I was also totally blitzed on absinthe for maximum authenticity.

Nopey

2008-06-06T11:37:00.000-07:00

Basic Astronomy album cover

2008-05-24T13:14:00.000-07:00

Here's an image I did recently for the CD Slow News Day from Basic Astronomy. We went with an antique sci-fi theme, and looked to Jules Verne-era illustrations for inspiration.

There were a number of other concepts we experimented with. Here are some of the better ones...

Rembrandt on Nintendo DS

2008-05-15T10:00:00.000-07:00

A couple of Rembrandt studies I painted with Colors on my Nintendo DS.
Here's an article on Wired explaining on how it's done.

More Nintendo DS paintings

2008-05-13T01:06:00.001-07:00

Nintendo DS sketches

2008-04-30T22:28:00.000-07:00

I just got a Nintendo DS with the paint program Colors. It's a great program. Here are my first two attempts... A creepy bird creature...
...and Enik, the time-travelling Sleestak scientist.

witch doctor

2008-03-30T21:16:00.000-07:00

Here's a character design for a horror movie, which apparently hasn't been made, cause I haven't seen it yet. It's about a witch doctor who lives in a cave and punishes promiscuous teenagers.
And some of the earlier sketches...

turbine destruction concept

2008-02-26T23:41:00.000-08:00

Here's a concept sketch from Smallville, blueprinting the destruction of a hydroelectric plant by a fight between Clark and Bizarro. Below is the original plate...

court sketches

2008-02-22T22:54:00.000-08:00

Sketches from various courtroom goings-on. The names have been withheld to protect the innocent.

miscenlaneous heads

2008-01-17T14:34:00.000-08:00

A collection of various sketchbook heads, which includes a gangster and a baby.

Dog date

2008-01-10T00:08:00.000-08:00

The first in a series of pointless shorts I put together with my friend Danny Nutter.

Butterflies

2008-01-05T16:01:00.001-08:00

These are sketches from the butterfly room at the Seattle Science Center.
The one on the left sat there perfectly still, long enough for me to draw it.
Then some kid ran up and kicked it with his shoe.
I think it survived, although it's probably dead by now anyway.

more portland hipsters

2007-12-29T20:46:00.000-08:00

Portland Hipsters

2007-12-22T23:30:00.000-08:00

Two field sketches of hipster from my recent expedition to Portland. Note the varied adaptations of hat and glasses.

Kidbot

2007-11-27T23:41:00.000-08:00

Here are some character designs I did for a short I made several years ago about a robot who goes to elementary school to learn how to act human. It's called Robot Rumpus and you can watch it here.

here's how he finally turned out... realized as a life-size puppet, built by Robert Miller and puppeteered by David Hartkop and Brendan Gill.

Planet Krypton concept art

2007-11-14T16:44:00.000-08:00

So we had a flashback sequence in Smallville to the city of Kandor on planet Krypton which I had to design for Entity FX. I referenced mainly the original 1978 movie for the natural formations, but tried to innovate somewhat with the design of the city. The first thing we knew we wanted a reddish cast to the the thing, reflecting the red sun of Krypton.
I had this idea about the building having a glassy look, which would catch and reflect the red sunlight and do some interesting things with it. I figured maybe the towers were grown, just as the fortress of solitude is an organic, crystalline structure, but that the towers were also carved and polished by human effort, and not as chaotic as the fortress.

I had this idea in mind of a cathedral-like structure, out in the middle of a vast wasteland.

And the final sketch...

I refined the landscape into a hi-res matte painting, while Kaz Yoshida built and rendered the structure in Maya and Metal Ray. I then assembled all the elements into a final composite in After Effects.
Click here to see the final shot and layer breakdown.

Haunted cave

2007-11-10T20:34:00.000-08:00

Concept art for a horror movie from Sony, involving a haunted cave which rebellious, unsuspecting teenagers use as a hangout.

3 statue-guys

2007-10-13T16:57:00.000-07:00

Sketches made from three statue-guys at LACMA.

pointy-faced knight

2007-09-30T14:15:00.000-07:00

I like this one, for some reason.

Dick Cheney

2007-09-23T01:29:00.000-07:00

...an extraordinary rendition of our creepiest leader.

Self portrait threatened by stormtrooper

2007-09-01T22:00:00.000-07:00

Businessman

2007-08-17T13:48:00.000-07:00

The Ghost Island of Singapore

2007-08-02T18:24:00.001-07:00

.. also known as Pulau Hantu.

I started this one without really knowing where it was going. Here's the evolution..

scenesters

2007-07-26T13:49:00.000-07:00

Tallinn

2007-07-24T16:13:00.000-07:00

The tower of city hall, sketched in Tallinn, Estonia.

Ugly bird

2007-07-19T10:33:00.000-07:00

An Egyptian vulture from the Natural History museum in London. A fine specimen of ugly.

modern art guy

2007-07-17T00:15:00.000-07:00

A guy I saw in the cafe at the Tate modern. I spilled some beetroot hummus on the page while I was drawing it.

Tomb of Elizabeth Finch

2007-07-16T17:54:00.000-07:00

The tomb of Elizabeth Finch, at the V+A Museum in London. She has kind of a pained expression on her face. Her life must have sucked.

Old woman on bench

2007-07-15T17:51:00.000-07:00

A sketch of an old woman on a bench in Bath, England... sitting near the cathedral, thinking about something.

Old man on bench

2007-07-13T17:50:00.001-07:00

And old man in Bath, England. Look at the way he holds his cigar.

British Museum

2007-07-13T16:13:00.001-07:00

This is the Lion statue from out front, sketched while I was waiting for the museum to open.

cool skeletons

2007-07-11T03:44:00.000-07:00

...pre-production design sketches for a horror film from Sony, involving conquistadors and the supernatural. More to come...

Sargent knock-off

2007-07-05T00:48:00.000-07:00

Another reproduction done with a Wacom tablet and photoshop.

Freak of science

2007-06-29T18:26:00.000-07:00

Lobotomized wrestler

2007-06-22T00:28:00.000-07:00

Smallville super soldiers

2007-06-12T20:40:00.000-07:00

So Lex Luthor has this secret lab inside a dam, where he's building an army of experimental super-soldiers, and, according to the script, we see a vast room filled with them. First, I started with some quick-sketches to establish the basic design of the room.

The feedback I kept getting was that the frame was too busy and complicated. Keep it simple and go lighter on the sci-fi.
I removed the central tower altogether, and added racks of soldiers in the distance. Tim Ketzer and Glenn Curry built some 3d soldiers to stick in the background, and projected the extreme foreground guys onto crude geometry to get some believable parallax out of them, and I assembled the rest as 3d layers in After Effects.

Here's the final shot

Mr. Mustard

2007-06-09T13:42:00.000-07:00

zen tree

2007-06-06T16:53:00.001-07:00

From Nanzen-ji temple in Kyoto.

Venice Beach Holy Man

2007-05-26T21:10:00.001-07:00

...preaching all things Venice to tourists.

spy show concept art

2007-05-26T20:20:00.000-07:00

These were two designs for a network pilot involving a spy and a supercomputer.

They were never used, and never made it past the sketch phase.

spooky cabin

2007-05-20T17:41:00.000-07:00

So for the opening shot of the Smallville season finale, we needed a spooky cabin. They cut in some stock shot from the Warner library, which I incorporated into a larger matte painting.