Chris Lee

landscapes

2011-03-13T16:39:00.001-07:00

based on the poem "the spell of the yukon". trying to show character through the interpretation of the landscape, as opposed to showing the character himself.

pulp fiction!

2011-03-09T13:16:00.000-08:00

two pulp fiction covers, based on the same story as the animatic i made awhile back.

Bond..

2011-02-10T12:06:00.000-08:00

Two black and white silhouette illustrations, focusing on form and shape. I decided to do Casino Royale as my subject. The first one is slightly more conceptual, as I wanted to avoid all the cliche imagery of flying card suits and busy compositions that plague many of the official posters. A figure, who looks reminiscent of the famous bond silhouette, is in fact not bond at all, but Le Chiffre as indicated by the tear drop of blood. Once the viewer notices that, he or she will then notice the significance of the martini. Not only is the martini an integral part of the James Bond image, but in Casino Royale Le Chiffre poisons bond's drink. Ironic that an element so crucial to bond's legacy almost kills him. For a double play in meaning, bond also names the drink Vesper after his love interest in the film, hence the heart instead of an olive. Again ironically, Vesper, the only woman bond's ever loved, also betrays him and almost kills him.

The second one is an actual narration of the last scene in the movie. Bond and Vesper arrive in Venice, and the illustration depicts her running away with the briefcase with bond following. The action follows the man with the single black glass lens all the way to Vesper's drowning and eventual death. The entire illustration's form is grounded in the 0 0 7 numbers.

Final design project

2011-01-31T22:49:00.000-08:00

whoops, forgot to upload this. Just doing it so that you can zoom in and actually read it if you're interested as opposed to the version on my site. The whole thing is about me and my life.

game jam!

2011-01-31T13:15:00.000-08:00

spent this weekend making Endangered Zpecies, a zombie game due for the app store in the next few weeks. Here are some of the character designs and other stuff from the game. You play as the zombies, and the humans are the bad guys, they've taken away your ability to live. It's time to fight back!

Character illustrations

2011-01-19T17:09:00.001-08:00

The illustrations are meant to embody the characters, their personalities, and their relationship to the world.

more work

2011-01-18T22:04:00.000-08:00

more catchup work, all of this, + the two in the previous post, done in a week. The two illustrations I will be posting shortly are two weeks, one of the weeks also spanned the same time frame as all these assignments. fun stuff!

holy smokes

2011-01-15T22:47:00.000-08:00

geez, they're really not giving us a break. I underestimated how much work I actually have to do this week! I have to do four of these tonal studies, four landscapes, and two finished illustrations. What the heck!?

two of the first four tonal studies:

Personal Map

2010-12-15T18:36:00.001-08:00

Finished! I really like this one, probably cus it says so much about me. I think I'll print one to take home.

some screens from my animatic

2010-12-06T16:07:00.000-08:00

Pretty much what the title says. WOP for our end of semester Illustration project. The world corresponds to the one my character design lives in.

Phizzi!

2010-12-01T16:08:00.000-08:00

Designing another website (yea I'm keeping myself busy) that's dedicated to rating games, except that the reviewing is focused on casual games, and targeted at the community. The idea is a user based rating system, and apart from that I'm not revealing too much in case someone steals my idea before it's executed. :) Games can be either Phizzi or Phlat, ie they are worth your money or not.

Design Project

2010-12-01T13:23:00.000-08:00

A personal map of myself. The concept represents my scattered skills, scattered thoughts, and scattered goals. It's in progress at the moment. The bottom string is a timeline of my life in the last two years, the string of squares coming from the top are what has affected me. It crashes into the timeline, and "affects" the direction of it, joining into one line on the right hand side. The colours are the ones I attribute to the particular element (Calgary is cold = blue). The colours after the joining are a social experiment I attempted on myself. Every day for the last month I've picked a colour depending on how I felt for that day. I strung them together to form that last segment of the timeline. Having trouble with asymmetry at the moment, I think the left side is too heavy.

Character Designs

2010-11-02T17:55:00.000-07:00

These are some character designs for my illustration class, our last project is either a graphic novel or animatic! I used a storyboard & script that I was in the process of writing awhile ago for this character and the next project.

Magazine design

2010-11-02T17:48:00.000-07:00

Design is getting harder, but I think I'm getting the hang of it. This sheet is for a HOW TO article on drinking wine.

Storyboards

2010-11-02T17:38:00.000-07:00

So much is going on! Finally we've started doing projects that are relatively interesting in class now, here are a set of storyboards for illustration class - Try and guess what movie they're from.

concept art

2010-06-30T11:41:00.000-07:00

want to get back to doing this sort of work, very very busy these days though, client work and game design taking up a lot of my time, along with a full time day job starting next week. Don't know when I'll get this done so I'll put it up as a draft first

catching up

2010-06-12T22:50:00.000-07:00

so much going on, don't know where to start. I'll start with the business cards I recently finished.

post modern design

2010-04-30T15:59:00.000-07:00

A bit late on this one, I had to move out and fly back home this week so it's been chaos. This is an info poster designed in the post modernist style.

woohoo!

2010-04-20T20:22:00.000-07:00

almost done the semester! very exciting summer ahead, absolutely can't wait to see what's in store! Here's the final Zorro painting:

Style

2010-04-14T12:12:00.001-07:00

I've been painting... and i love it. I think.. i might have my style! Maybe, but I definitely see myself exploring this type of style more.

Chocolate!

2010-04-07T20:46:00.000-07:00

Chocolate package designed to compete with Lindt. The package was created and engineered completely by me. the L emblem on the box slides out and the violet part slides out to show the chocolate. The dye flat is below the ad.

digital portrait

2010-03-29T19:23:00.000-07:00

Digitally painted portrait

Canada

2010-03-25T12:23:00.000-07:00

Have had a rough patch lately, my favourite prof passed away, some other stuff has come up. Will get back on track and start posting weekly once again! To start it off here's an illustration done of Canada and it's nature.

Montage

2010-03-10T09:57:00.000-08:00

This is a drawn montage of the film Pan's Labyrinth for illustration class.

Life drawing

2010-03-03T17:21:00.000-08:00

Here's me catching up on posting life drawing!

Watercolour life drawing

2010-02-27T16:00:00.000-08:00

Surprisingly very fun! It's very spontaneous and I enjoyed it alot.

Box art

2010-02-18T10:44:00.000-08:00

http://kotaku.com/5471577/

FINALLY someone recognizes how terrible some AAA blockbuster title box-arts are.

dragon boat!!

2010-02-17T22:33:00.001-08:00

DRAGON BOAT!!!

portrait pen

2010-02-08T22:57:00.000-08:00

three portraits in pen, high middle low key. If you can't recognize him then I guess I haven't done my job ><

sketches

2010-02-03T12:29:00.000-08:00

update on sketches. Some were done before my anatomy class was finished and thus have some problems.

New work

2010-01-25T15:26:00.000-08:00

Newest work - Been trying really hard to get some personal work together before applications are due - I'm trying to get a concept artist internship at a video game company somewhere.

This was an old one actually, I just reworked it a bit so it doesn't look as amateur. Listening to Cohen's Masterpiece and dreaming of that other place down below.

I wanted more character designs to show to potential employers - been so busy with school it's been really tough squeezing in projects like these, luckily this semester is a little lighter than last. Too bad apps are due soon. This was a full body version of the drawing of a mask I did last semester.

For Illustration class. We had to do some sort of magazine page that would include fruits/veggies. I tried to advertise how tasty fruit dessert is.

more '09 sketches

2010-01-19T21:27:00.000-08:00

These are from the zoo!

These are from starbucks in kerrisdale, vancouver. People waiting in line for their coffee. Images are slightly distorted because the sketchbook wasnt flat when I took the pictures.

sketches 08/09

2010-01-13T15:31:00.000-08:00

Most of these are finished pencil drawings really, because I can't find last years sketchbook either. But here's work from last year.

looking back

2010-01-09T11:50:00.000-08:00

I was trying to find my 07-08 sketchbook, and I realised it was gone when I failed to pickup my portfolio after acceptance into the VCD program. Also made me realise i don't sketch enough, I think I only had one sketchbook for that whole year. Though by digging I found some sketches from back in the day when I drew the people with big eyes. Can't post a lot of them because some of them are just so terrible to look at now I feel like burning the files. You have to come to terms with what you've done though so I've kept all the files to look back and wince at every now and then.

Especially the coloured ones. Some of them make me want to puke.

However, that being said I miss some of the detail I put into those old sketches, it seems to me like my sketching is a lot more confined and tight than it used to be. Gotta let loose and have some fun with detailing again. I think it has to do with growing up perhaps, it almost feels harder to tap into my creativity pool as directly as I used to. Maybe it's because there's so much more to worry and think about these days.

Oh and I also can't remember when I drew these, but the newest one is at least 2 years old i believe.

Sketches! Old ones uploaded first. ~2003-07 Chronologically

2009-12-29T00:29:00.000-08:00

Wow this one surprised me when I looked back! Too bad it was so dirty when I found it.

Hahaha nice to see how flawed my anatomy was. Always fun to go back and look at old work.

Starcraft! Nydus worm I believe.

Orc! Had to put at least one in.

More first semester

2009-12-25T15:49:00.001-08:00

The rest of first semester second year! First is cross between bat and human character, skeletons are merged and muscles etc. Metamorphosis project. Don't really have time to go in depth about each project this time around.

website

2009-12-09T17:11:00.000-08:00

Almost finished. You can find it in my profile or at www.kal-arts.com. It's fully functional and everything it's just still too big... That and I haven't actually uploaded anything yet. Thanks to Mark and Byron for helping me out, I really need to learn some code..

first semester art

2009-12-09T16:24:00.001-08:00

I can't show everything, there's just too much. Here are some of the best - will be posted on my actual site when it's finished. First off is a typography poster for a fictional event. The idea was to show off the Century Gothic font and its typographer, Sol Hess. I chose to emphasize the modernity of the type face, it being invented in 1991. The concept was also to show the even line weight shared by all the letters, thus the implied line being created between the l and H as well as the texture in the background.

Logo Design for Derivative design class. Top right is the actual logo, colour variations along with palette are below. Logo is for a fictional band named the Yellow Jackets. They are based in Vancouver and focus on a variety of music from blues to rock-a-billy.

Perspective Fantasy House exercise - rendered in prismacolour markers. The concept is a derelict theatre that somehow still has the power running in it. Eerie?

Playing Cards from Derivitave design class - cut out paper mounted on illustration board. Concept is Jack, Queen, and King cards, designs taken from the French Renaissance.

Perspective/classical light study - had to include chess pieces. Concept is that the two kings are competing in a game of ring toss the object of which is to throw rings over the opposing team's queen. Playing field is a chess board on ice.

Final perspective/lighting class project. Project was to create a mask with multiple vps, concave convex shapes, and varying textures. The Prof told us to really delve into the narrative and derive a strong concept, so I'll actually explain the piece.

The guy invented the gold standard in Britain in 1816, but was denied the authorship due to the fact that he was a leper and couldn't show his face. People wanted a face to attach to the invention, and eventually he was lost in the books. Someone who had worked with him on the project took the title himself. His leprosy could not be cured and he delved into his own research, frustrated and ambitious he secluded himself in his work. He funded his own lab by siphoning money from the current financial system that he knew his way around. Due to his research the people close and still loyal to him became leaders in their respective fields, giving him indirectly a massive influence in many parts of the world. Of course being power hungry and having a lust for research, he tried to conquer death as well. Thus creating the mask, which his sons had to finish for him as he was too old to continue research. The mask allows him to stay in a state of projected consciousness as he maintains his influence on the world. Trying to play god the mask therefore has a crown of thorns, however the thorns interweave through coins which embody his financial research. The porcelain mask of course to hide his leprosy, along with leather straps and knobs to release the mask and place onto another body. Because of his skin condition he is wrapped in linen, which trails out the back. The tile of black marble embodies the essence of the character, and also (hopefully) serves as a compositional element.

To finish off a boring muscle chart. Necessary but creatively stifling. ugh.