Tom Zhao Sketch Blog

Agni

2011-03-16T02:43:00.000-07:00

Trying to post as regularly as I can.
I got a great crit on this guy in class today so I plan to go back and fix some things.
In the mean time, here is Agni, the god of fire!

New Project

2011-03-06T02:25:00.000-08:00

Hey guys, sorry for the long absence. School has kept me very busy but I've been working on some things that I'm very excited about.

I've wanted to do a project based on "The Lord of Light" by Roger Zelazny for the longest time and my 8th term classes seemed like the perfect opportunity for it. The book is about a group of space colonists who become stranded on an alien planet. With no way to return to Earth, they use their advanced technology to rule over the planet as gods of the Hindu pantheon. It's an incredible book and I highly recommend it!

Goodbye

2010-12-11T19:01:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was my last day at Disney Consumer Products and I did this quick painting as a farewell to all my good friends there.

Thank you all for everything!!!

Woot Update!

2010-07-29T01:11:00.000-07:00

Cheers y'all

More old work

2010-03-29T02:53:00.000-07:00

Almost forgot...

2010-03-14T22:53:00.000-07:00

my portfolio got a huge overhaul. So head on over and check it out!

Old /New Stuff

2010-03-14T22:46:00.000-07:00

Wow I haven't updated in months...my bad...things will be different from now on. Promise!

This is a jedi I did for Carlo's class back in the day. He's been living in the wilderness, hiding out from bounty hunters.

Here my take on Kerrigan's lair from Starcraft. I'm gonna call this one a WIP since I ran out of time but will revisit it when I'm less busy (hah!)

...and remember kids, only eat as much as you can hold in both hands

Chars

2009-11-04T01:08:00.001-08:00

I feel guilty about never updating so here are some character WIPs that most of you saw in class

Digital Landscape

2009-02-28T17:12:00.001-08:00

From the harbor at Long Beach

Slug

2009-02-05T16:34:00.000-08:00

How bad would you feel if you got beat up by an invertebrate?

Our cruisers can't repel firepower of that magnitude!

2009-01-15T20:20:00.000-08:00

Here are some pieces I couldn't upload over break because I was on dial-up internet. It's the fish rendered in color and its skeleton in a diorama. New semester is looking good with a lot of digital painting.

I'm still alive!

2008-10-30T03:10:00.000-07:00

Firstly, some kind of alien soldier. I'm imagining an ant-like society with soldiers, workers, and a queen (very stereotypical lol). Basically, this is just rendering practice and the design is pretty generic.

2ndly, the Rakshasa mask I made for Creative ID process. Really fun class/assignment. Next we're making our own action figures! Very excite!

Let's all go running!

2008-10-15T01:21:00.000-07:00

Here's a quick rendering of my running fish for imaginatomy. I've got some pictures of my creative ID project too but they're on my camera which is out of batteries right now. They'll be posted as soon as I recharge those suckers.

armored train

2008-08-22T12:05:00.001-07:00

This is still a wip, people have suggested I show the wheels from the sides so you can see more recognizable elements on a train because right now there are really no distinguishable "train features."

Also, this is way too big to run on a normal track so I'm thinking of making it run on a set of paralell tracks and just giving it 4 rows of wheels

All done!

2008-07-18T01:22:00.000-07:00

Well here are some highlights from the last month or two of my life:

If you're interested, I've uploaded my full portfolio here
http://www.mediafire.com/?bmmm2fhwbum

Cheers!

Hang on, we're in for some chop.

2008-04-17T04:04:00.000-07:00

Well I'm finally done! Thank god...by the end I didn't even care what grade I was going to get so long as the projects were being finished. This break is really a life-saver because I'm very close to burning out from uninteresting assignments.

Anywho, here's my final for viscom 1. Congrats to all who survived!

I'm flying back to Charlottesville this Friday so I'll see you Virginians in a few days!
Peace.

Characters

2008-04-08T18:08:00.001-07:00

Here are 2 of the main characters for the post apocalyptic journey to the west project. Had to fool around with them in photoshop to get rid of the gray of the paper scan

Monkey King: Wields a custom expanding baseball bat (think police batons) and has extra groin protection. His armor is based on the equipment worn by riot control squads.

Bajie: He was originally a gluttonous pig so I gave him a huge trash-compactor like maw that he uses to chomp up stuff in order to power his robotic body. Special thanks to Zach for the idea of using weight lifting equipment as weapons.

Layout

2008-04-02T01:40:00.000-07:00

Everyone in my Sketching for Entertainment class is supremely talented and I feel totally worthless whenever I put my layouts up haha.
Anyway, we've been working on layouts for story redesigns. I did Harry Potter set in feudal Japan.

Here's a shitty tonal for Harry's room in the middle of a potions final or something.

Back to work @_@

Package contained bobcat. Would not buy again.

2008-03-29T23:27:00.000-07:00

I haven't been posting much because I've been so damn busy (and lazy). But here is a sketch I did for a sort of promotional piece for my project. I'll do some value studies and then paint it digitally. The monkey king vs madame white bone. I think I'm going to give her a headdress that's similar to a nun's hat which will work well because her color scheme is mostly black and white. She's also using a sharpened half of a garden shear as a knife lol

Peace!

Conflagration

2008-03-01T21:14:00.000-08:00

A house in our neighborhood just burned and there's all these fire trucks outside. I took a blurry picture from my doorway.

My neighbor across the street said it was an abandoned house so no one was hurt. It looks like they had to chop down the fence in order to get to it which would support the abandoned house conjecture.

Stuff

2008-02-23T23:43:00.000-08:00

Time for some blurry photos of paintings! I apologize for the quality (I'm not a photographer)...you can tell how thick the paint is by the shininess of the surfaces lol

Here's one from life...the proportions are all wrong but I had enough trouble just getting the colors to match

And here's a Sargent copy. The photo looks really weird and saturated, probably because the lights in my room are all yellow

WIP Independent Project

2008-02-04T01:31:00.001-08:00

got a long way to go...

Ye Olde School

2008-01-27T15:30:00.000-08:00

So I was cleaning up my harddrive recently and found some hilarious screenshots from the paintchat sessions David and I used to do when we first got our tablets and were obsessed with anime. We would go in and start having hilarious battles or draw strange things next to other people's pieces just to freak them out. It was a good time.

An epic battle

An awesome session. I managed to draw cool faces on some photo a guy was uploading there in the top left corner.

When good hollows go bad

We started a fight with some weird people. Assisted Rasengan
Followed by a classic Naruto combo.

You require more vespene gas.

2008-01-18T01:39:00.001-08:00

Yeah! Back in action!

Here's a piece from my 1st composition and painting class. The teacher thought it was okay except that the head is a bit squished (ears and everything behind ears needs to be moved back) and his chin looks a bit fat.I got some sweet classes and I started TAing for Digital Design 1 this morning. Pretty fun helping people out but I get kind of antsy just sitting around looking for folks who appear lost.

Kick ass semester coming up!

Ahh..Finally

2007-12-15T03:39:00.000-08:00

Well I finished yesterday so I've been just goofing around and wasting time. Feels really weird not having to do any work so I have been doodling a bit inbetween playing games.

Annnnnd here it is! Ladies and gents, I present to you the Dirty Harry Costume Kit

I know the instructions are vague...just deal with it or you can ask me if you're really confused.
Today I bought just enough food for me to survive until Sunday morning. I have a whole bunch of lettuce I have no idea what to do with...Hopefully I can finish everything so that there won't be anything rotting in the fridge when I get back.

Woohoo!!

Design Final: Complete

2007-12-11T19:12:00.000-08:00

Yes! I'm done with my design 1 book...gahhh it took forever but now it's over and I'm pretty happy with the results. Apparently my teacher was too since he's keeping it until next term to show new design students how it's done :D

Here are some pics:

Cover
First page
Random page with gouache swatches

One last final and I'm done!

One down...

2007-12-07T01:04:00.000-08:00

After an all-nighter I managed to slap together a passable essay for my modernism final. It felt really good to do this Wednesday :
By the time I had printed my paper and washed up, it was already light out and only half an hour before my class so I decided not to nap because it would have made me more tired. Here's a picture of the beautiful, taunting morning outside my window:
Too bad my day at school sucked balls. First thing I find out is that we had an in-class exam that I was completely unprepared for. Fortunately, it was writing and my bullshit skills are comparably well-honed thanks to the few liberal arts classes I took at UVa.
With the help of starbucks doubleshots I somehow managed to prop my body up through five hours of life drawing and drove home for a 2 hour nap before heading back to school for some Midnight Breakfast and digital illustration projects. I'm actually very excited about the final for digital illustration. I'm making a paper toy so I'll definitely post the end-product so you guys can print out and create your very own...DIRTY HARRY COSTUME KIT. That's right kids, you too can fight crime with the help of a paper wig and Harry Callahan's .44 magnum.

Until then, good luck with your finals!

Modernism Final

2007-12-05T05:39:00.001-08:00

I found out tonight that my Modernism Final is due tomorrow. Now I have about 2 hours to finish this mother.

This is pretty much how I feel right now:

Be sure to click this image to get the full effect

Taking Care of Business

2007-11-18T18:01:00.000-08:00

First off, sorry for the lack of updates! I've been super swamped so I haven't had the time.

These few weeks have been really busy! Finals are creeping up on me and so is Christmas. I can't believe there's only 2 weeks left of the term because I feel like I just arrived in California a few days ago.

We finalized our business cards in Digital Illustration. I think I'll send mine in to get made into actual cards. Then I can hand them out and pretend to be a pro. Here's the card's front and back:

This is random but: Kefir is awesome! Everyone should try it, it's like yogurt but you can drink it. How awesome is that? Fucking awesome, that's how.

Last Sunday was really productive even though I woke up at noon. I got my hair cut, washed my car, and set up my printer. Notice how none of this is school-work related haha.

This is my glorious Epson R1800. It prints at a godly resolution and the colors are spot-on! It's way better than anything I can get at kinko's or at the school's print shop and wayyyy cheaper. It costs about 12 dollars for a larger print at the school and I usually have to print something every week...it adds up fast haha. Also, the printer is surprisingly large...Here's my hand for a reference.

Note: This was probably one of the most difficult pictures I've ever taken. It really tested the limits of my flexibility.

I've been cooking a lot recently and I finally was smart enough to buy white rice instead of the silly brown stuff that never sticks like I want it to. Here's the red curry with chicken I made the other night.

The recipe is super easy...
all you need is:
1 tablespoon of olive oil, 1 red bell pepper, a pound of chicken breast, 2 green onions, half a cup of cream (I used milk and added some starch to thicken the sauce), and half a cup of red curry sauce (I bought this at trader joe's...you can probably find an equivalent at whole foods or something)

Cooking it all: bell peppers and chicken into bite sized bits and dice the green onions, put the olive oil in a pan and put it on medium heat. Once the oil begins to smoke toss the peppers, chicken, and green onions into the pan and stir-fry until the chicken's not pink in the middle. Careful not to overcook the chicken because then it'll be all dry. Once the chicken's ready put the other ingredients (cream/milk, and sauce) in and let it simmer for about 10 minutes or until the sauce is thick. That's it! Just serve over rice! The best thing to do is to stick the rice in a rice-maker before you start cooking the curry so that both the curry and rice finish cooking at about the same time. Everything should only take you about 20 minutes which is the reason I love this recipe.

Try it out and let me know what you think!

My finals are gonna be bitches...I've gotta make a book for design 1 and do 4 ink pieces for composition and drawing. I'm actually looking forward to the drawings since I chose a mythology theme for mine so it should be really cheesy and fun to do :D

My father got me tickets for December 16th so hopefully I'll see you guys soon! 'Til then I'm going to walk the tightrope and try to xfit while getting enough sleep while getting my work done...shit.

Scholarships are over!

2007-11-09T12:52:00.000-08:00

And I think I'm S.O.L for getting any money but I'm just kind of glad I don't have to deal with it anymore. It was a good way to assess the situation and see exactly where I ranked among my peers, which as I found out when setting up was really really low. 'Spose thats a good incentive to get my ass in gear. Anyway, I've got some photos to share. This is my room right after I finished doing scholarship stuff...so ladies and gents I proud to present to you:

AFTERMATH (of Art Center Scholarship Review)

Here's a shot of my bed which I use for storing clothes, not sleeping since I didn't get any that night.

Ground zero. My desk and floor is where I do most of my work so there's stuff spread out everywhere. It's gonna be a bitch to organize this stuff.

Here's a shot of the whole room to give you a sense of scale. Pretty small room eh? Note the extremely tall bed that I have to jump into/out of everyday

Thats all for now!

Rough self portrait

2007-10-30T22:09:00.000-07:00

Somehow I finished this week's homework over the weekend and now I have some extra time to goof around so I started this self portrait. It's pretty bad and as you can see, I still know nothing about colors. My philosophy is: the more paint you add on, the better it will probably look. So we'll see where this takes me in the next week or so...

Perspective and embarrasing projects

2007-10-25T23:17:00.000-07:00

This time in Digital Illustration we did a project incorporating perspective. Mine's just a graphic-y version of a photo I found in google images.

My friend Ian told me to not be a wimp and post my crappy projects too so here they are:

First one is a project that had to do with live trace. I doodled this weird thing on a scrap piece of paper, inked and scanned it, and colored it with live paint. It's supposed to be a mix between sea creatures and a bulldog but in the end I only kept the gills and the tentacle-mouth. I was also playing with colors and decided to stick it into a desert environment...kind of the opposite of what I started out with.

Here's a self portrait . My first time using Illustrator ! I was trying to translate as much of my personality and experiences that define who I am into this piece but it probably didn't work. The sketch looked way better...maybe I'll post that sometime.

Icons

2007-10-19T23:50:00.000-07:00

Here is a set of icons or signs that I made in Digital Illustration to be used for a national park or camp site. I think they'd make pretty wicked stickers or t-shirt logos too...

Life currently consists of drawing, working out, eating and occasionally sleeping. All is well.

Digital Illustration

2007-10-04T22:29:00.000-07:00

Here's a piece I did for my Digital Illustration class. The assignment was to use at least 3 custom brushes in illustrator...before you say anything, this is what a sleep deprived brain churns out at around 2 am

Cheers!

Whoa a blog?

2007-09-30T02:57:00.000-07:00

So I started this blog in hopes it will encourage me to produce and share some art. Let's see how long this lasts...