Iron Man again.

It's been good to be drawing what I want again. Being out of school seems to pump my imagination up and I just want to draw junk. So this here is a bad example...I drew Iron Man. I mostly wanted to study the new armor. And this drawing is pretty accurate. As my 1 1/2 year old Kai would say, " Woah, water, water, Daddy." He knows his stuff.

The final drawing I took into Photoshop. I pretty much just wanted to throw it in there and mess with textures and stuff to make it fancier. 

My sketches. The head was going to be in 3/4, but I totally couldn't draw it that night so he got the side view of the head. Some day little Jared...Note: I'm not little, I actually need to go on a diet.

Iron Man 3 - The Armors and a review

 Spoilers ahead!

I loved Iron Man and Iron Man 2 FYI. I did come out of Iron Man 2 wishing they had more of Tony and Peppers relationship instead of them just coming together at the end. Whiplash was a cool character in concept and design but I think the filmmakers initial idea for Whiplash to go more compact and terroristic (See concept art by Ryan Mienerding that was revealed on the new box set with all the marvel movies) at the end of the movie was better than him build a big suit of armor and just have a big set of whips. But it did look cool at least and the suitcase armor was amazing with a cool armor-up process.

from the art of Iron Man 2, taken by me, flash spot by my ignorance.

So Iron Man 3 had me excited. I grew up watching the Iron Man cartoon so the Mandarin was a pretty familiar villain to me. I never really dug him that much and associate him with MODOK (can't we all agree he's a bad idea?) I don't know why mandarin was green...is that scurvy? I loved the Dark Knight feel that Shane Black's Iron Man script gave to the Mandarin. The Trevor moment made it even better for me and the moment near the end when Killian reveals that he IS the Mandarin is a sweet payout for fans. Also he can breathe fire. But only once for some reason. I hate when that happens to me! 

oh my.

So the other twists were great too. The Maya double cross was great and the moment when Iron Man was hit by a car was confusing and a great moment for my brain to catch up with. The Extremis stuff was cool and the graphics were really excellent. I saw it on Imax 3d and the 3d was okay but it's definitely a trade off as you lose a lot of the detail you get from the digital format. I recommend seeing this movie at a drive in. Mostly for the sound quality you get. My paragraphs share no common theme.

A wraparound of the mark 42 for toy design.

The Mark 42 was an awesome running gag through the movie. What was shown to us in the trailers to be the ultimate suit of armor was just a messy prototype. When I told my Dad how Tony armors up with the mark 42 he rolled his eyes and I had to remind him it looks awesome so who cares. I think the concept was not a stretch for the Marvel Universe and really added some fun to the movie. Armoring up is my favorite part of the movie Iron Man and this movie had him going in and out of suits about 20 times. Seriously I think it was about that many. The finale had some great moments of him jumping in and out of suits and even just parts of the armor coming off. 

Concept art by Adi Granov

My only main complaints were Pepper in the finale (I don't know why. It just looked funny and was a weird idea for a newly Extremis'd person to beat the crap out of an experienced guy) and the under-powering of the armors in the finale. Some people say that they were all just prototype units, but I know they just did it to add some conflict and some cool explosions. And along with that they went and designed 35+ suits of armor and only showcased 5-6 of them. After the movie the first thing I did was try and find all the armors. Which was difficult. But I did it. Some dude scanned these in. Some are almost exactly the same as others but all in all I think they are great. I still can't figure out which one he was wearing in the finale when he was fighting on some scaffolding and had small vertical lights on both sides of his arc reactor. The Silver Centurion armor was one of my favorites.

the heartbreaker armor-modeled after James Dean.

The fight scenes were great. Every one. The fights without the armor or partially with the armor were maybe the best of the bunch too. My wife said, "Yeah right." Speaking of great the little kid was a fun addition and Tony's relationship with him was unexpected and fun. The movie had some great jokes and even some Downton Abbey which I addmittedly have watched. And other stuff happened in this movie. It was mostly good stuff. Let me know what you thought in the comments section! Enjoy the Marks 5-42!

 

Scans from-http://forums.superherohype.com/showthread.php?t=455137&page=9

I'm pretty sure they are from 'The Art of Iron Man 3' which comes out soon.

Disneyland for Foodies.

My wife and I went to Disneyland for our 5th wedding anniversary last weekend and it was a great relaxing time. We were going to go to Disneyland two days but after a crazy packed first day we just decided to do it all in one day. And we pretty much did. I love food. Can you tell? As proof I submit to you a picture of me eating a turkey leg.

That was pretty rough. You all still with me? Good. So as a foodie I went and found some top ten lists of the best foods at Disneyland. Here's my top ten. I know this is an art blog but...yeah. I don't care.

5-Mozzarella sticks

I LOVE MOZZARELLA STICKS! During the Holidays I always home make mozz sticks for the fam and am getting it down to a perfect science (though my wife thinks I have a ways to go with the seasoning). So when I heard that the Stage Door Cafe had them I was really excited to try them. They were just okay. Most reviewers will tell you the marinara is nasty so I tried the ranch which was okay. The cheese was great inside but the breading was bland. 

pic from lafoodie.com

4-Dole Whip/float

My lovely wife really liked this. It tasted like pineapple ice cream in pineapple juice to me. Which isn't a bad thing. This lasted us the whole Jungle Cruise line. Favorite joke the guy said on the Jungle Cruise this time? "Anybody here know why tigers are orange with black stripes?" No one answers. "I'll take that as a no." Then he seemed disappointed and didn't say anything else about it and nobody laughed. I got it friend! 

pic from chipandco.com

3-Cream Cheese filled pretzel

I didn't expect to like this so much, but I heard good things about it. We had to walk from frontierland to tomorrowland and back to get this but it was really good. The sweetness of the filling with the pretzels pretzelness was really great. Pretzel.

pic from gastronomyblog.com

2-Corn Dogs

This was the best corn dog I have ever had. It was filling, delicious, and greasy. In that order.

pic from yelp.com from some person.

1-Turkey Leg

As a kid walking through Disneyland I always saw guys eating the turkey legs and knew that was my calling in life-to be the dude who eats a turkey leg. I wasn't expecting it to be very good and thought it would be dry but it was moist and full of smokey goodness. Mmmm. My wife doesn't like turkey and helped me strip this leg down to the bone. It was huge and really good. I almost bought the shirt like this poor sap.

pic from this guy that really likes turkey legs.

The Legendary Monte Cristo Sandwich.

This was the thing I wanted to try the most but we didn't get to the restaurant in time and they stopped taking reservations. My parents recently had it and reviewed it suchly: 'It was really filling and super rich. You should share one.' Also my dad said it was really expensive. At 16 dollars it's a whopper. After missing out on it I went online to see if there was a recipe for it out there. The dish is so popular that disney gives out the recipe to those who ask:

BLUE BAYOU MONTE CRISTO SANDWICH

Ingredients:

1 egg

1 3/4 cups plus 2 tablespoons water

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking powder

8 slices egg bread (challah works well), sliced 1/2-inch thick

8 thin slices ham

8 thin slices turkey

8 thin slices Swiss cheese

3 cups canola oil

Confectioners sugar

Blackberry preserves

Directions:

Line a cookie sheet with paper towels; set aside.

Whisk the egg and water together in a mixing bowl. Add flour, salt, and baking powder and whisk thoroughly for 2 to 3 minutes or until smooth, scraping sides of bowl.

On one slice of bread, arrange 2 slices of ham, turkey, and cheese, covering the bread evenly. Place another slice of bread on top and slice each sandwich in half diagonally.

Heat oil to between 365 degrees F and 375 degrees F in a 10-inch pan. Do not let the oil reach a higher temperature than this; if the oil starts to smoke, turn the heat down. Dip half of the sandwich into the batter, allowing excess to drain, and very carefully place into the oil.

Repeat with the other sandwich half. Cook 3 minutes on each side, or until golden brown. Place the cooked sandwich on the prepared cookie sheet in a warm oven until ready to serve. Repeat with the other three sandwiches.

Cook one at a time, and allow the oil to reach the desired temperature between each.

Sprinkle with confectioner’s sugar and serve with blackberry preserves on the side.

pic from d23blog

Zoo abduction-Greed

Illustrating "greed" For Conceptual illustration at UVU, the concept of conceptual illustration is still hard for me to grasp. Most of my art ends up pretty narrative (and that's how I like it) after a critique in class I was told to go work on this more. I did though it still could use a few hours of polishing. Hope you like it.

Almost done and I'm glad he's done.

With school? Nope. Got a while left. But this semester is closing and I'll be starting to work on my BFA show this summer. Yup, I'm excited. Here is a caricature of some Guy. He's riding a Jar Jar Ton Ton with loads of cash. The awesome Ton Ton has been transformed into something horrible, much like the magic that was lost in the prequels. I've come around to the opinion that the series (and jar jar) were made for a new generation of kids growing up with the prequels. But I was pretty easy to please at the time and was about twelve when episode 1 came out. So yeah. I do love what they've done with the clone wars shorts and the cartoon.

New Title and Header in the works

 Notice my new title? Think it may get me in some trouble? Me neither. Someday I hope to be popular enough for candy companies to care about me. Working on the image that will have all the nerdy things I like in it, after this semester is over I'll try and finish it before I do much else. So far just TMNT and Marvel but look forward to some pokemon, avatar, Neverending Story, and other junk in there.

My Wolverine is from MVC2. All other versions of wolverine bow down to short and stocky and gnarly wolvie. 

Another pokemon entry. It's Beedrill and Kakuna and the other one! I can never remember that one. Weedle? 

A beautiful butterfly

I tricked you. It's more pokemon duh. This one got some decent likes and reblogs on Tumblr. Guess people really like butterflies.

wanted to see if people enjoyed my cartoons on Tumblr. They didn't.

A school assignment, "Tales for Tots-Moby Dick" Still need to go make some changes that were suggested but I wanted to get it up anyway,

A peter and the wolf illustration. Still needs fixes too but I'm never fixing my weird looking wolf! Never!