Caro's Concept Art and Illustrations

More Pup

2012-01-07T21:38:00.001-08:00

Pup

2011-08-16T14:36:00.000-07:00

Acrylic on canvas.

Have I mentioned...

2011-08-06T18:55:00.001-07:00

...I love my studio?

Wip:

Real paint!

2011-08-01T10:34:00.000-07:00

Decided to get back into painting with real paint, now that I have studio space. Since I am super rusty, and sorely miss my Photoshop color wheel and undo, I decided to start with something familiar and inspiring: My Go-Pod, Marzi.

Working on...

2011-05-21T17:15:00.001-07:00

A peek:

New job, new desk, new view!

2010-10-12T13:17:00.000-07:00

Well, I have been at Kabam for two weeks now, and today my team moved to the new area of the building and we got new desks. I have an entire corner of windows which I love, and I get to sit with awesome people all around.
The internet in my row wasn't up when we finished moving, so in the half hour we were disconnected, I painted my new view, looking out my window across the street on Twin Dolphin Dr.

...and color...

2010-09-12T21:34:00.000-07:00

Sketch

2010-09-12T17:03:00.000-07:00

Couple new things

2010-08-10T15:58:00.001-07:00

This weekend I participated in CGhub's Character Forge 2D competition, which was to redesign any character from the Megaman Universe. I chose Tengu Man, because I've always found bird masks to be incredibly creepy.

I also sketched a bit today, after taking the morning off to play with my dog and read "The Age of Wonder", which I highly recommend. Working on some more stuff for Phil's project:

Been doing thumbnails

2010-06-29T23:19:00.001-07:00

I'm trying to get back into some real explorations for environments. It has been way too long since I've focused on organic shapes, composition, and atmosphere, and I have a lot to learn and improve on. I'm hoping to get in the habit of doing a few of these every day. They get easier and easier and I feel I start to see more and more in them.

New Year's resolution clearly failed...

2010-06-21T23:18:00.001-07:00

Yeah, it's been a while.
I just finished this. It's supposed to be a series...we'll see how long it takes me to paint the rest.
It's for Phil's awesome project. Can't say more.

Just a sketch

2010-01-23T20:30:00.000-08:00

One of my new year's resolutions is to post more often, even if it's exploratory or unfinished work. Here goes today's little sketch, inspired by a really messed up dream I had.

Bartleby Picklepot Saves the Day

2010-01-20T21:43:00.001-08:00

That's what I'm calling it. Phil came up with the Imp's name, and I think it fits him rather nicely.

Progress on the Imp who saved the Princess

2010-01-10T21:52:00.001-08:00

It's been a while since that drawing was made, and I've been busy with work stuff in my mind, so I am now trying to play catchup. Still a work in progress, but I've been having tons of fun with it, which is what matters, right? :)

Wow..it's been a while

2009-11-22T20:27:00.000-08:00

Last week I visited Arena Net and met the incredibly talented artists that work there. Of course I came back to major feelings of inadequacy, and with the impending doom of the Spectrum deadline, I have decided to start working on something to submit that I can be moderately happy with.
So here goes the WIP...the little imp that could. Where every knight in shining armor failed, he has managed to rescue the princess and now brings her back to her father, the king.
Thanks Phil for endless inspiration.

Life Drawing

2009-06-26T11:48:00.000-07:00

These five are from the last session of Life Drawing at the Palo Alto Art Center. I try to go every Tuesday, and while it's not a long session, and the light is pretty crappy, it has been very good for me to get back into it. The line drawings are 10 minute poses, and the tone ones are 20 minute poses where I was experimenting with a Derwent Wash Pencil.

Dominance Wars Final Entries

2009-05-17T23:25:00.000-07:00

I am done...there are a million things I'd change if I had more time, but as it is, this is the best I could do in the time I had...life considering and all.

Dominance Wars Illustration

2009-05-09T12:47:00.000-07:00

Here is the illo for dominance wars. I have been running late, so this week it has been paint paint paint non-stop. My boyfriend deserves a medal for putting up with a totally cranky art-hobo girlfriend.

Dominance Wars began

2009-04-03T10:27:00.000-07:00

I started Dominance Wars over at GameArtisans.com
Made my first post with some quick sketches to get some ideas down. I'm going for a total fantasy thing since I don't get to do much of that at work, really.

More to come soon, if the art juices don't run out (as they have a way of doing).

After such a long time...some artwork

2008-09-27T15:01:00.001-07:00

So this blog has turned into sort of a diary/life updates for friends and family type thing, so I figure it's time to post some artwork.
The toucan/giraffe princess and the sea horse illustration are freelance assignments I did a couple months ago, and the little blue fellow was a gift for Phil for his birthday; it's one of the characters from his RPG Tierrus. I am hoping to do some more pieces for this project on my own because it's really inspiring stuff.
Enjoy.

My precious pets

2008-06-30T19:37:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted in a while, so I wanted to update you all friends and family with images of my precious desk mates: Fatty and Ebi-Sue. Fatty is a nothobranchius guentheri killifish, and Ebi-Sue is an amano shrimp with a ton of personality.

Fatty likes:
-worms
-fresh water top-off's
-chasing CO2 bubbles from the counter
-begging for worms

Ebi-Sue likes:
-to eat pretty much anything, from bad algae, to Fatty's poop
-baby brine shrimp (which could be construed as cannibalism, I suppose)
-to hide under the driftwood
-to molt as often as possible

My aquarium is a small desktop open top aquarium. I have planted the crap out of it, so it's pretty low maintenance. I used to think keeping an aquarium was hard work and always ended up with dead fish, but my AD Ken taught me better. Actually, the easiest way to keep an aquarium is a live one, with real dirt, real rocks, and real plants. Establishing it takes a bit of time, and a little bit of effort and research, but once things are going, it is the most rewarding experience to watch this little ecosystem maintain itself. I have a small heater, a filter which I have to clean up and change media on once a month, a clamp-on lamp with an upgraded daylight bulb, and a CO2 chamber where a yeast and sugar "brew" ensures a month and a half's steady supply of CO2 bubbles which feed the plants. I fertilize the water with Flourish once a week, and the plants are thriving. I can often see thousands of little oxygen bubbles rising from them. I practically haven't had to buy any plants, since water plants seem to spread much more readily than earth ones. I started with a small anubias, which I got from Ken, which he just chopped off his larger anubias, and some clover from Ken also. I bought the longish bamboo-like plant in the background, which I basically spread over the course of five months by cutting bits and replanting. It now covers the whole back of the aquarium and it's lush and green. Ebi-Sue loves hiding in there. Finally, Ken gave me some moss, and a bulb which sprouted a beautiful water lily.
It has brought me great joy to grow this water garden. There is something extremely zen about watching something spread and grow and live harmoniously.
At some point, I must have gotten a batch of snail eggs hiding ninja-like in one of the plants, because now I have hundreds of them. They are beneficial, however, since they graze the plants and eat the algae. Sometimes I can see dozens of them on the driftwood and I think of cattle on a field...I feel like a proud snail farmer.
Do Ken and I get any artwork done? yes, in between fish cleaning and feeding we do. :)

Here are the pictures:

Artwork for Issue 12 live online

2008-03-12T18:04:00.000-07:00

I am home sick, and I got an email from one of the people at digital artists management congratulating me on my artwork for City of Heroes. When I went to the website, I find the piece I finished just Friday is online already, for the world to see!
Very exciting, I am hoping I will be able to post it larger sometime soon.
For now, here is the
link.

Three Little Pigs...

2008-02-18T09:04:00.000-08:00

Something a little different for me. This is for Three Little Pigs Studios, my friend Stuart's up and coming awesome project. Keep an eye out for it, because it's gonna be out of this world, and I am lucky to be involved in it.

First post of 2008

2008-01-05T23:57:00.000-08:00

Ivan and I had a fabulous new year's over at Johnny and Glen's, though Ivan got a bit...err...martini-happy. The highlight of the night was Johnny's sadistic move when he forced us to watch 2 girls 1 cup. If you don't know what I am talking about then erase the curious thought or you will be damaged forever.
Yesterday it rained cats, dogs, and a few dinosaurs I think, and the power went out while I was trying to finish Medusa. I had to haul all my crap over to the cafe five blocks away, and then I got nothing done anyway, because there were three six year olds in the cafe who were REALLY curious about what I was doing.
Today I pushed and finished it, though, but I am not sure how I am going to make the Thunderdome. I start NCSoft tomorrow and my commute for the time being is two hours each way, which basically leaves me with no time to do anything much less paint. We'll see. For now, here is the Medusa, as finished as I decided to get...which is not completely what I wanted but oh well...I gotta call my battles.

Medusa

2007-12-30T22:58:00.000-08:00

Hey all, I have been working today on my next submission to the conceptart.org competition for character of the week. This one is sort of special because it is the #100, and it is supposed to be the "queen" of the character section.
The theme was Medusa, and it's supposed to be our interpretation of the greek myth character as a queen. So, here is my work in progress. When I am done I will post it in the concept section of my website, so keep an eye out.

BLOG revamped

2007-12-28T15:04:00.000-08:00

I finally got my butt in gear and revamped my sad little blog.
It was looking pretty bedraggled and pathetic, so I changed the template, cleaned things up, resized images, made myself a snazzy title bar, and added links to my friend's websites or blogs. My friends are cool people so check them out. HA!
I also changed the front page of my website; nothing significant, just me being obsessive; oh, and I had forgotten to mention that the Herald is done and it was posted under the personal section of concept art on my website.
Good news also, I will soon begin working as a full-time concept artist for NCSoft Norcal, their new studio that will continue working on the City of Heroes IP. I am so excited because it's a small team, they are all awesome people, and the project is exciting in its variety and possibilities. Happy New Year! Finally it seems things are back on track, and I couldn't be happier.
Things I am hoping to accomplish this upcoming year: getting rid of my debt, eating better, and I might have to start saving for a car. Sadly the green spell will more than likely end with my job being far away and the two hour commute by train seeming a daunting prospect. I still plan to get something small and economical, but I am sad to even have to think of getting a car, after almost four years of not having one. Oh well.

Shoes

2007-12-14T10:54:00.000-08:00

So yesterday Photoshop gave me the dreaded message: "scratch disks have run out of the mercy of god". So I am waiting for UPS to deliver my external hard drive so I can back up the crap out of my life. And I stumbled upon these three poems that I wrote in my English class a long time ago while attending the Academy. I had completely forgotten about them, but now I am thinking I might resuscitate them by adding some illustrations to them. I remember when the teacher announced there would be three weeks of poetry as part of the English class, and I remember groaning inwardly and thinking how much I hate poetry and poets and the pretentiousness of it all. So while my classmates wrote about worthier subjects like love, hate, pain, childhood; I wrote about my shoes, because that's what I was looking at most during that class.
So here they are, three poems about shoes:

Chucks

I accidentally spilled bleach on your zebra face
but you just stood by my feet
bearing the stoic mark of practicality,
pliable but strong, original but standard.
Your tapered white nose
irreverently peering out of a denim blue river;
a couple submarines, two projectiles,
two little sharks,
traveling in a sea of asphalt, patent
leather and croc,
fearlessly tackling paint and road
like a warrior, like atlas carrying the world
held together by duck-tape and god.
I spilled bleach on your face and you wear it like a badge,
and throughout all the seasons, and all the fads,
You kept my feet on the ground.

Boots

they peek to the beat
of a soldier's chant
fashion forward
red turns the light
I stop to see green
down below;
Italy stands,
parallel twins,
sculptures in leather,
on wooden pillars,
my ticking tools,
my stature spools,
a perch from the runs
of pluvial San Francisco,
made for walking,
never balking
comforting carriage
for tired brothers,
never demand
a well-earned rest.
Trusty companions,
I bow down to you
and let you be still
for a minute,
my favorite boots.

Spikes

From their pedestal point
two patent clad thrones
whisper beguiling:
"your top is too low,
the bottom too big
the outfit so so".
With sensual persuasion
they tempt me to ride
they promise to match
whatever the stride,
to hold back the sting,
to soften the spike.
From their calculations
the distance is short,
the weather is right
to waive the support.
Their murderous depths
their tethering hold
lay my step by the heels
as I vow
to never again bear such foes.

progress on the herald

2007-11-28T13:06:00.000-08:00

Here is one more progress. Cranking right along...

Some art...

2007-11-27T18:32:00.000-08:00

So I have been a busy bee lately, finally I am "feeling" it, even though the interviews are not pouring into my inbox right now.
So here is some stuff I have done in the past week.

I did a little quick castle painting. Just exploring some ideas in some thumbs:

Then here is the "finish", though I am probably gonna continue working on it:

Some beasties that headbutt:

And I hashed out my favorite one:

And right now I am working on the a concept for the weekly character activity in conceptart.org. The theme is "the herald", and I am doing this middle-eastern/fantasy thing...just playing around. Here is the progress so far:

Anyway, that's it for now. More to come soon.