shite

whoops, wrong blog

Closed for business

Well folks, it's been a good run. Unicorn Picnic will be closed until further notice (if any) since most of us are focused on our own endeavors. Thank you to all the people who dropped by to take a peek.

dump.

Some of the stuff I've done in the past few months that's yet to be shown here.




(this ones a bit of a James Jean homage)

Violent stuff

*12/13 Added pirate. Thanks Ed, saturation in the skin is under control now, I think.

A Happy Bear

Here's a bear because I'm in a good mood.

recentish stuff, part 1

matt and I have done an interview for creaturedesign.org, a russian illustration art. they needed us to submit some art, and i thought it would be a good opportuniy/excuse to bring out some newer stuff that i havent scanned yet. so, here it be, some stuff i've done since the summer, the first half of some of my less hated skethes

here are some random creatures and aliens


i was starting to partake in some conceptart.org contest thing where you designed 10 versions of 10 creatures in 30 days, and then after i did these, and about 10 beetle designs, i reread their post and found out they were supposed to be only 100x100 pixels, so i stopped. that and i had to hand in this sketchbook with my portfolio to apply to acad






the two on the left are a character from a book i'm writing. a short book.


here are some random sketches of aliens and bone studies/parodies

The Survivor

the idea behind it was to just draw a woman who looked like she survived an alien invasion aboard her space station or ship or whatever. just trying to put my money where my mouth is when it comes to my theories about character design. i wanted to make something down to earth, and wouldnt look retarded if translated into film, but is also interesting enough to make someone want to pick up a comic if it was on the cover.

oh yeah, im also starting to work on a larger scale. this drawing is about 8-9 inches tall, and i normally draw stuff half that size. anyway, here she be!

I'll be scanning a bunch of things soon for an interview i'm doing, so there will be an influx of art from me in the next short while. also expect photos of the (award winning) tradeshow booth i designed with my boss for the company i work for

no scanner or camera, but isight'll have to do, i got news!

hey gang, me again. its been a while.

so anyway, i got a letter from ACAD saying i'm hoppin' aboard in the winter semester coming up. IT'S DEGREE EARNING TIME.
i love my job though, as well as having evenings to myself. but I'll survive. It'll be worth it once i graduate.

so yeah, ACAD here I come. and i'm bringin' the pain. (by pain i mean hard work and effort this time)

so anyway, heres some art so my update isnt worthless

(PS: i'll scan these right proper next time i get to at work)

Does the body good - Connor Willumsen

I'm noticing a trend of milk in my work

Clockwork Orange finished - Connor Willumsen

The ball is rolling

here is a teaser for something on its way.

Info Design

Oh for interested parties... my Jekyll & Hyde illustrations are now available for order at www.inprnt.com.

anyways, here's some informational design bits from earlier this year. bit of a change, but thought i'd drop it anyways.


a 'how to' poster assignment.


educational poster for highschool students in north america.


postmodern design, timeline/outline assignment intended to be a 30 foot by 8 foot wall display. ironically, i actually hate 'pomo' design with a passion, especially from the 80's.

+

i didn't really know what else to do with this.
so i thought i'd post it.

Batman - Connor Willumsen

Reminds me how much fun I had drawing as a kid

Getting back into digital after a year : (

I couldn decide which i liked better. the Pre, or Post production one. i need to get back into digital. this was also practice for that.

I looked at Joy Ang's website today. she has some new stuff up. I believe the best way I can describe how her update made me feel was that it was like getting kicked in the art-nuts. Im seriously floored, you should look her up.

So all day at work i fought the urge to not just start drawing, TRYING vainly to catch up, or at least let myself feel like i might be as good as her one day, and so when i got home, i just started drawing. i had to draw a girl, since i never do. i started sketching an alien hybrid humanoid thing, but then i turned it into a woman. i was listening to some music that reminded me of a story im working on in my head. its been in there since high school. but anyway, post apocalyptic stuff.

this woman is a 40s-something broad who's been driving through the desert heat scavenging for food and fuel, and fighting off the inevitable bands of perverts and cannibals which will, quite asuredly, exist once the "bomb drops". i didnt give her a shirt, because it made sense not to. what does she care? shes been alone for months. she might want a sports bra, so i might add one later. ive been told she looks sort of mannish, and thats exactly what i wanted. i wanted her to be unsexually nude. she doesnt have makeup, shes cut her hair short to keep it out of her eyes and to help stay cool. she also looks quite mannish because the further away someone is from the prime breeding time, the more unisex they look (think infants and the elderly, they all sort of look alike to an extreme point compared to the 10-35 range where women look the most like women)

so thats my rationale. i hope the nudity doesnt offend you. its a bit more post-modern than i usually tend to go. ive just gotta keep drawing!

(PS: i rushed the breasts. because im a bad person.)

Or-tis, the Kalkar.

The Moon Men was written by Edgar Rice Burroughs in 1922 and published as pulp sci-fi in 1925 (Burroughs created Tarzan, by the way). One of the things I like to do when I'm downtown is to stop at the used book store, and buy the book with the cheasiest cover I can find. It was about two years ago when I recognized some tasty Frank Frazetta art, and I snatched it up right away. I didn't think it was cheesey, I thought it was gorgeous. So this book sits on the floor by my bed for the better part of a year, when one day I'm really bored and since I'd finished reading Deathbeast, I thought I'd take this one for a spin.

I couldn't put it down. The book is the best thing I've ever read, and I think I'll ever read. If you want to know what being a man is all about, read this book. The main character is the perfect role model. He represents everything I want to be and be willing to do. I can't wield the english language well enough to put into words how simply and utterly amazing, intense, original and inspiring this story is. When I read the last sentence, I caught myself just staring at the page with my jaw dropped. I reread the last page 3 times, and I just sat in the dark for an hour and a half thinking about it. It's just something to behold. My eyes were opened, and I've been in love with the story every since. If I ever have sons, they will be read this story by me. I highly recommend it. And I never say that. Take a chance on it, it's short anyway. Here it is online http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/B/BurroughsEdgarRice/prose/moonmen/index.html

So anyway, this picture is a drawing of the main villain. When I first read the book I pictured someone built sort of like Ratigan from Disney's The Great Mouse Detective. Large, strong, beastly, but clean and arrogant and snooty. He's part of a race of men which came from the moon and enslaved humanity. They're generally described as big and ugly. That's about it. I think it said darker skin? But I can't remember. I still have to read it again.

I started with a red pencil as a sketch (I did a few previous sketches, I might get those up here in a bit), inked it with my handy Faber-Castell S brush and a 01 Staedtler pigment liner. Then I colored it with prismacolor markers (of course). I experimented, not to subtely, on this one with something my brother explained to me once. It was that when you look at a face, the forehead has a yellow base, the brow to just under the nose and across has a red base, and from the bottom of the red to the jaw line, it has a blue base. It's all very subtle and hard to pick up on, but it's there. Yellow because the skin is thin with not a lot of blood there, and is also reflecting the most light, the cheecks and nose are red because of the myriad blood vessels, and the lower portion of the face is blue because of 5 'o clock shadow, and the fact that since the face tends to angle away from the sun around those parts, it picks up the blue of the sky. So yeah, I tried that, and I think it was succesful.

'Til next time!

Group portrait - Connor Willumsen

Sean Bigham
Justin Tan
Ed Kwong
Rachel Revera

Fish woman - Connor Willumsen

A Sky For Nivbed

Hey gang, me again. so anyway, there was a monsoon-style dump of rain tonight, it was wild, i dont remember seeing anything like it. i ran outside for 15 seconds and came in drenched and shivering. that, and lightening was flashing and thunder was booming every 5-10 seconds, and i've never seen that in the city, or up close. but anyway, before the crashing and splashing began, yae, the sky was filled with ominous clouds. ive only ever seen pictures of badboys like these on wikipedia. i took some pictures.

TO THE EAST!






i uploaded them onto my computer and quickly realized they looked like something justin cherry/nivbed would use as a background for one of his paintings. so i tweaked the colors slightly so it resembled something he'd painted.



TO THE WEST!



this is where the sun was last seen by me tonight. this was at 10:00. it was hard to not speed through the playground zones to upload these, i was so excited!

here's one for matt. he loves the mountains


i might upload some more another time. that should be it from me for now

The Men of Facebook

hey gang! yeah i'm making another post this soon. i need some practice, and i need to get better at drawing specific people, and also drawing reference pictures. so i started doing that last night. some suck, some are alright, otheres are way off, but i expect to do a lot more of these, so hopefully in a month's time, ill be able to feel like ive grown a bit