Cody Gramstad

Sketch Blog

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Another fun Talking Photo on one of my paintings.  It is really fun to see a little bit of life brought to the characters.

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Talking Photos is a really cute app especially when added to paintings!

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Here is a cute little image that I created for an upcoming VR animated short called Rainbow Crow.  This was done for Baobab VR Studios. It was really fun to help develop this adorable story book stylized world.

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I came across a great silly photo of one of my coworkers.  I was inspired to start sketching over the image.  I branched out from the teeth and ultimately ended up with this little cute tooth fairy image.

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I recently packed up and moved off to a new job opportunity in Sweden!  Time for new adventures at Massive Games!

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Making Camp

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Thief!

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"After the battle he didn't say a word.... he just walked past us and grabbed a bottle. "

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Early inspiration art for a cool new little VR company called ForJoy Studios.  I love the world they are creating!

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I will be doing a live talk and lecture for Schoolism’s 2018 live workshops!  If you are near London or Berlin you should come and check it out!

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My favorite shot I painted for The Dam Keeper.  I loved Dice’s lighting direction in this sequence. 

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The Dam Keeper Festival Illustrations

I was lucky enough to be one of the painters on the fantastic Oscar nominated short film The Dam Keeper directed by Robert Kondo and Dice Tsutsumi.

Once the film was out in the festival circuit, all the artists did some illustrations on the side to help promote the film.  Here were a few that I did.  At the time I did these I was working at ILM and doing these paintings on the weekend. They were a huge breath of fresh air to take a step away from live action VFX concept art and do some more painterly, lighthearted work. It was really fun to take Fox and Pig outside their narrative and almost treat them like behind the scenes actors.  In a weird way I actually started learning more about the characters in these images because we got to really think about how they might act in real life. 

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First Post! 

I am finally making the step over to Tumblr!  On this blog I will be updating with sketches, paintings, work and personal experiences from a working concept artists for film, games and VR. 

This first post is a painting I donated to the SJSU Animation / Illustration programs SHMash Charity event.  All proceeds were donated to the Childs Play Charity foundation.  

The assignment was based off of the extremely popular Smash Bros game. I think I have personally put in many hundreds of hours into it myself.  Sad but fun...  Every artist was assigned a fighter or stage we tried our best to capture its feel.   I was given Olimar from the Pikmin Franchise.  I tried to do an image that caught the unseen moment of a Pikmin seedling and the harvest.  Its the calm before the storm before they are thrown into battle and murdered.   Pikmin is a dark story...