Welcome To My Art Reference Dump @crushedpinecone - Tumblr Blog

A Necropolis layout from last year. I still work on Necropolis here and there, but anytime I start to pick up the thread, to find my way, the job pulls me out again. The struggle of making television has demanded almost all of my time since July 2020.

Getting to make cartoons with so many talented people has been a huge, all-consuming privilege. It's taken me five years on the job just to get my legs under me, just to begin to feel that I know what I'm doing. It's taken everything I have just to keep my head above water, to get something resembling our crew's talent and effort and intention onto the screen. For that entire half-decade I have longed to make comics, to write stories for myself, to draw for myself. But there was always something that needed doing.

Recently I've realized that denying that part of myself, telling it to wait its turn through one more script revision, one more review, one more retake, one more episode, one more season--it's taken a toll that I can no longer afford to pay. I don't think I can keep going unless I take some time to write and draw and explore outside of the studio production system. As we fight through post on the third season of My Adventures With Superman and start writing the first season of Lantern, I'm looking for ways to work and lead that will get me some of that time back--and my teams are really coming through for me.

But even if I can find that time, I still need to decide how to spend it, and where to put the things I make. I need a place away from the urgency and deadlines and pressure of the studio. Tumblr has always had the best community, is where I've always been the most comfortable, so I'm gonna start here. I will cross-post some of what I do here to other, more hellish parts of the internet, but this is going to be home for a while.

I hope that those of you who never left don't mind me coming back. I hope that those of you who've nested here in the meantime don't mind some new-type Oldtype showing up. I just want a place to be myself, instead of another dusty piece of production equipment.

Thanks,

Jake

magicforces

This gorgeous pre-production watercolor painting was done by by background artist Peter Moehrle for Lilo and Stitch. There’s so many fantastic qualities to address in this piece, it's difficult to know where to begin! The palate is so vibrant and rich with the warm flames atop the torches, perfectly illuminating the cradle of the hammock while the cool watery blues and purples of the Hawaiian evening give you the sensation of being right there amidst the flowers, headed for a relaxing reprieve with a cool coconut cocktail. Just an outstanding execution!

thecollectibles

Art by Line Grenèche

jettpack

New Painting and prelim sketches, Gouache on Paper. Feels good to be making fantasy work again. Very proud of this it’d been a while since i made something entirely for myself that wasn’t a study or a sketch. I’m trying to develop some sort of Los Angeles Cryptid vibe. This is for the Character in Context show at A. R. Mitchell Museum in Colorado May 2nd.

sparrowlucero

honestly i think a huge part of getting better at creature design is gaining an appreciation for "normal boring" animals and realizing that they also have evocative character designs that are just as good to draw from as tigers or deer or vultures or piranhas or anything else on the whole have deemed more charismatic or interesting looking in some way

arsanatomica

About 10 years ago I was working for a gaming company doing creature design. After work, I would go home and dissect animals in my garage. I borrowed a tiger carcass from a local taxidermist. I wanted to understand how the jaw muscles worked, so I stop motion animated it.

The muscle on the back of the head (Temporalis) bulges out when the jaw is closed. But when the is jaw is open, it depresses in like the surface of a trampoline. But not uniformly, in a Y shaped pattern.

I ended up getting evicted for stop motion animating tiger parts in my garage…..but it was worth it. I still have hard drives full of animal carcasses reference animations today. Fun Times.

doglover43-deactivated20250923

such a gentlemen. i would invite him for tea i think

rose-of-redwall

The slope of their head in the fourth photo... that's how it is in all the drawings. Just beautiful

jettpack

San Francisco paintings from a 2021 trip. I used to live in SF, first 6 years out of school. Gorgeous City. Can anybody guess these locations ?

jettpack

Concept paintings I did for the VR game “The Under Presents” back in 2018, loved doing these. really cool incredible concept for a game involving Live Actors.