The Beautiful Jillaine

From time to time I'm asked to pick up my camera and push buttons.  I've been doing photography for Jillaine Chaston for a few years now, and a gig back in March had her performing for the Chocolate Extravaganza--a charity auction (Jillaine worked for free and paid her band at her expense) where rich people get together and have fun paying exorbitant prices on relatively normal items to help hospitalized children.

Jillaine's family basically adopted me, and I've always felt like they were my home away from home.  If you ever get the chance to see her, take it!  Not too long from now her ticket prices will go way up!  You can catch her in the Provo/SLC area during the school year, or you can listen to her amazing voice at www.jillaine.com.  But take it from me, you gotta hear her live!

And now for something new...

Expanding the repertoire.  Hi-Rez Studios is located about 30 minutes from my house so there might be more of this in the future.  For friends out there who are interested I think I've decided to settle in Georgia near the family.  And there's nothing like waking up to the songbirds of the South!

Pangea: United We Divide

So I have this idea for a story.  Tribes of cavemen roamed Pangea with early, wacky dinosaurs and other flukes of nature.  The tribes hated each other, and could be united by only one thing: their common hatred. Each tribe chooses its champion and the champions are given the task of finding a way to divide the landmass so the tribes can live in peace.

Here's a conceptual image for characters of a particular tribe...the one that becomes South America.

Ecorche - or filleted man (and yes filleted is spelled correctly)

The French like to make things difficult on Americans by incorporating their cuisine into art.  Ecorche means to filet (or skin, or remove the bones, as in fish, lots of translations apparently) and so when you do a study like this you are really just prepping for cooking.  Eww.

On a side note, this is not the best exercise to learn to draw.  I think this is a great exercise after you've learned the basics of construction...my drawings for a long time have suffered from too much knowledge and not enough basic construction.

Carpentero

This guy's a carpenter.  I thought of a new style I wanted to try and here it is!  Kind of a mixture of everything, really, but I felt it turned out.

Recent Sketch

Just doodling.

Environment Reel

Hey all,
So I've decided to go the world building route.  Looks like there's more job opportunities there than anywhere at the moment, so I figured it would be wise as a career.




Michael Mercer's Environment Showreel Mar 2010 from Michael Mercer on Vimeo.

The portfolio blog moved to http://michaelmercerenvironment.blogspot.com.

And here's a few of the new things I've been working on...got several more on the way!!

PS - if you visit my environment portfolio, you'll get to see some of my textures for Pajama Gladiator I did back in 2007 as a sophomore...unfortunately not all of them made it into the film as there were some props that just got discarded, and I lost the files a long time ago.  I'm not sure anyone but the director and producer knows I did these textures because there was no one on campus that summer.  Have a great day!  Best of luck to everyone in their job hunts!

Witch

Here's a witch painting from my last semester of school...

Demons

And to keep my blog from being too girly from that last post here are some very quick black and white beat boards I did for a local guy awhile back.  While they may look like they could be sequential they all represented different scenes.

Disney Princesses

So I'm a follower of the Avalanche Software Blog.  Last fall there was a series of Disney Princesses they painted, and I did this one just to see if I could.  They have recently revived the princess theme but I think with a bit of a twist, so I figured I'd post my painting, too.

Redneck Scrabble

So my friends and I invented redneck scrabble.  Anything flies as long as you can justify it in redneck dialect.  Here are the definitions for the above game.

smouh-- a country in the south Pacific.  Also a way to ask for more food

hagl - what you do at the farmer's market

muode - what cows do all night long

bfo - the US was better bfo the civil war.  bfo this game started we were also smarter

baiarhs - they live in the woods and try to eat you

grisiie - pots and hair both get this way with time

imixsit - you didn't mix it, I did

mastr - your mastr cylinder helps control your brakes

moov - your cars used to be able to do this before you got them

tasd - your friend Jethro got tasd last weekend by the police

hounny - the woman you love

od - you od your father money before you made it rich in the boiled peanut business

dunnit  - when you don't have to do something again

It's a cooking blog again

Hey everybody. I changed the blog back to getting fancy. Finicky me. It just didn't feel right.

This painting started on my iphone.  Touched it up a little in photoshop.  It was something different and I went with it.  Paintings where I have no idea what's going on and I have to make up the rules on the fly are my favorite.

New Label!

Hey all! I just consolidated my other blog, "Art History as it Should Be" into this one. This means you can take a look at my artwork from my childhood (about age 10) up until the time I got to BYU (age 23) just by clicking the "Childhood Artwork" label. I apologize if not all the pictures are functional...

URL Change

Just a side note if anyone has problems with subscriptions it's because I changed the URL of the site (and the title of the blog). This blog is no longer a blog about cooking, but is instead called "The Sketch Hunter" (see quote at top of homepage for explanation...)

This change reflects a better understanding of life and my place in it.

Walmart Shoppers

Look for these guys on your next visit to Walmart.

My new favorite blog

http://parkablogs.com/

Sorry to all you guys with great blogs. This one's better.

Master Copies and Emulations

If anyone's curious about my method of study, which no one has really inquired about yet, but I'm going to share anyway, is I find the "Master Copy" and "Emulation" one of the fastest and best means of learning art.

1. Copy a master. In this example I copied Dan Lee.

2. Emulate the style.

Both images done by me, the bottom is the copy, from Ratatouille.

A few more pages...

I liked these ones so I thought I'd share!

The Spanish Mermaid

I have some new work! To see my updated portfolio, visit my portfolio blog.

Interview with Armand Serrano

Hey all! I was honored with the privilege of interviewing Armand Serrano, one of the art directors at Sony Pictures Animation! We posted it as BYU Animation's first podcast! For BYU people out there, talk to Aaron Ludwig if you want to be a part of the podcasting team.

Armand's interview can be found at the BYU Animation Blog.