Some of you may or may not know that aside from my passion for art, I am extremely passionate about the world of MMA (mixed martial arts). I have been watching it for well over 10 years now, and I have seen it grow from a “bloodsport” to the fastest growing sport in the world today watched by millions and millions of fans. For the past few months I have been a contributor over at MMA Komikazee. I’ve done everything from post news, to write articles, to create artwork for the site and it’s reporters. I’ve enjoyed my stint at the site since it’s provided me with an outlet to express my love of the sport, and even helped me get noticed by a few of the fighters.


I was just informed yesterday by the site’s founder Steven Molen that he will be joing the “No Holds Barred” show which airs on SIRIUS satellite radio on channel 122 (check your listings for days & times). While I was first shocked that he was going to leave MMA Komikazee, I completely understood why he was doing it once he explained the big picture to me. It’s a chance to be part of a bigger, more recognized MMA community that has sponsors, and a built-in-audience behind it. Basically, it’s achieving the goal he had for MMA Komikazee on a bigger scale, and much faster.


So where do I fit into all of this? you might ask yourself (probably not) well, since I am an MMA geek and I live in an MMA friendly state (Ca for those of you who haven’t been paying attention) Molen wants me to be the California “field reporter” that gets into all of the events, interviews the fighters, and screams at the top of his lungs when he sees a BS call (like the Bisping/Hamill call from last Sat). In addition, he has requested my design services in giving the website a much needed face lift complete with new logo, t-shirt designs, caricatures, etc.


Everything is being finalized right now, and I should be up and running on the site by the weekend. Not sure when I’ll attend my first event, but hopefully it’ll be some time soon because not only is the UFC picking up, the MMA in general is becoming huge and these events are the hottest ticket in town. I’ll make sure to update everyone on the progress of the site and with any news, or articles I contribute.


The current site can be found by clicking here, but wait until you see it once I’m finished.

Lately I’ve been having these really vivid dreams that involve me doing some sort of activity that leaves me with a total feeling of peace when I wake up. On the 28th I read that there was going to be a lunar eclipse, and being the geek I am I knew I couldn’t miss it. Since I live so close to Cal State Fullerton I decided what better place to watch it so around 1am I packed up my bag and walked down to CSF and sat on their baseball field waiting for the eclipse to take place.


The actual eclipse didn’t happen until a few minutes after 2am, but while I was waiting I broke out my sketchbook and started to “doodle.” Since I spend most of my time in a fantasy world of my own creation I began picturing what it would be like to witness an eclipse up front, high above the clouds, above the Earth, above everything. For some reason I couldn’t get my brain to work properly so my sketches kept coming out really sloppy (I’ll post some later).


When the eclipse came I put my stuff away, sat back and just enjoyed it for what it was. I walked home around 2:45am, and went to sleep. When I woke up I had the most vivid account of an incredible dream I had. I guess my brain decided to work once I had fallen asleep because everything I couldn’t seem to picture while I was awake was brought out ten fold. After I got up I grabbed my sketch book and did a really rough sketch of my dream. I ended up liking it so much that I threw on some quick Photoshop colors to aid in the effect (I did it with a mouse so cut me some slack) and it ended up turning out almost exactly the way I wanted it, and more importantly, it represents the feelings I had in the dream.


Kind of cool don’t you think?

Over the next few weeks averagejoeart will be getting a much needed face lift. When I originally designed the site in 2005 I did it in a matter of days just to be able to get something up on the web for people view my artwork. Like I do with a lot of things, I became distracted by other things and never really got around to making it look the way I had always envisioned it. The first step in giving the site a face lift is updated the site’s official logo....namely, the caricature of myself.


Originally I wanted to do something completely different, however after about 10 different conceptual sketches and ideas I kept coming back to the original. I guess the old saying is right, "if it ain’t broke don’t fix it." So I’ve decided to keep the logo relatively the same, however I have changed around the coloring a bit by adding softer tones, and ditching the thick black outline, and I’ve also given myself a much needed change of clothes as well.


So over the next couple days/weeks I will be posting some of the sketches I did of myself. Some I like a lot and would like to use on future projects, and some will be filed under the “what was I thinking” category. With the help of a friend the site will slowly begin to reflect my original vision, and who I am, and have become as an artist. I intend to organize the site in a way that will make it much easier for friends, and potential clients to find exactly what they are looking for, and I’m also toying around with the idea of adding a section called “Ramblings” where I post some of the things I’ve written that have been used for print or web.


Anyway, talk is cheap, so for now just sit tight and await the re-launch of averagejoeart. In the meantime here’s a look at how I changed up the site’s logo.

So as I’ve mentioned before (if you’ve read anything I’ve previously posted) I have been teaching myself the basics of 3D modeling, and lately I think I’ve gotten a fairly good handle on it. Currently I am using Google Sketchup because I really like the simplicity of the interface, and because it allows me to learn the basics while still being able to pull off some pretty cool models. If you’ve never heard of it I HIGHLY recommend you check it out over at Sketchup.com. I think they allow a free trial, and it’s definitely worth downloading if you’ve ever been interested in doing 3D.


Anyway, a few months ago a friend of mine contacted me about doing a model for him as a presentation piece to a potential client of his. The project was modeling an entire showroom complete with fixtures, crown molding, sinks, toilets, cabinets, tile floor...etc. At first I wasn’t sure I could pull it off, but I took the project to at least get experience and test myself. After about a week of going back and forth with changes I finally completed the model and he couldn’t have been happier. Check out some of the pictures below, and in my 3D gallery section!

Some of you might know that when it comes to sports I am a complete dunce. I’ve never really been into the world of sports as I find most of them to be completely boring. That is unless, you are talking about the wonderful world of MMA (mixed martial arts). I’ve been a fan of MMA, namely the UFC since the mid 90’s. Back then it was the excitement of watching two guys get locked in a cage and beat the crap out of each other, however today MMA has grown as a sport and is becoming more and more accepted across the globe.


When I first started watching the UFC the top guys were Royce Gracie, Ken Shamrock, and Ken’s brother Frank. I can remember watching these three guys go to war with different opponents and utterly destroy them. I’ll never forget when Ken Shamrock fought Royce Gracie...it’s still one of the most memorable matches in UFC history. During those days no one stood out more than Frank Shamrock. The guy was just a complete fighter. Needless to say I was a HUGE Frank Shamrock fan during his stint in the UFC.


Fast forward to present day. I help run an upstart MMA website called MMA Komikazee, and since we’re an upstart site it’s been tricky landing interviews with big name fighters like Frank Shamrock. Recently I was contacted by someone from Frank’s site about the possibility of doing an interview with the legend to hype his big fight with Phil Baroni on June 22nd (tomorrow). Naturally I was more than happy to oblige in any way I could. We got the interview done, and right before it went up Frank’s guy (Alex) asked me if I would be interested in doing some Frank Shamrock artwork.


Recently I’ve noticed a lot of artists getting their name out there by doing artwork of professional MMA fighters. It took me all of about 30sec to say “yeah sure, I can probably come up with something,” and off I was. The only problem was I was working on about a 24hr deadline before the interview went up on Frank’s website. I printed out some pics of Frank, and started to sketch. Luckily I was pleased with my first sketch so I scanned it in and started to color it. 4 hours later out came a finished piece that I am pretty proud of.


The piece has been added to the gallery, and it’s entitled Frank Shamrock. What’s even better is that if you go to Frank’s Official Website it’s on the front page underneath the banner MMA Komikazee Interview with Frank Shamrock.


Not bad for an Average Joe eh?

I finally decided to join the 21st Century and create a Myspace account for Average Joe Art. I’ve had a personal account (come on, who doesn’t?) and over the past year I’ve seen Myspace become a very handy tool when it comes to marketing yourself. It allows you to make countless contacts with people that might have been very hard to search out on an individual basis. At the Average Joe Myspace page I will be adding the same galleries as on this site, posting news, upcoming projects, and appearances.....ok so I’m kidding about the last part.


I am looking to network with other artists and people in related fields so if you want to be added on as one of my friends please feel free to send me a friend request, but know that even though it’s a Myspace account, I want it to maintain as professional as can be which means no vulgarity, nudity, obscene images, etc.


If you want to check out the new Average Joe Art Myspace page click here

Well tomorrow is the day comic geeks have been waiting for, for a long time. “Spider-Man 3” finally comes out, and everyone’s favorite snaggle toothed villain, Venom makes his long awaited appearance on the big screen. Being one of those previously mentioned “geeks” I was excited (to say the least) when I heard that director Sam Raimi decided to include Venom in the film. Once the pictures were leaked I became more excited (ok I flipped out) at seeing him battle Spider-Man on the big screen. Over the past week I’ve been doing some Spider-Man themed drawings (shows you where my mind is) and about a week ago I had an idea of putting myself in the black suit and seeing how it would turn out...it’s one of the benefits of being an artist.


After a few sketches I decided upon a pose and a look for the piece and set out to draw it out and color it. It took me about 2.5 hours to color today, and I’m pretty proud of the way it came out...exactly how I pictured it in my head. Please take a second to look the piece entitled “Back in Black” which should be to your right under “RECENT UPDATES.”


Now if you’ll excuse me I have to go get ready to see “Spider-Man 3”.....

Did anyone catch UFC 70: NATIONS COLLIDE on Saturday? Man, who would’ve thought that the main event would’ve turned out like it did?? I mean I’ve watched Franklin lose his title, Hughes lose his title, Couture destroy Sylvia (which was awesome), and Serra topple the seemingly unstoppable Georges St. Pierre (another awesome match) but in my mind Cro Cop was the exception to that. When he went in to face Gonzaga I thought he was going to walk right thru him. When Gonzaga took him down I thought “no sweat, he’s calm”....that was until they got stood back up and Gonzaga landed that devastating head kick (Cro Cop style) that KO’ed Mirko instantly. It took me 10min to pick my jaw off the floor.....what’s going to happen next??


Anyways, some new updates including an avatar I did for my friend “Juicebox” (with his newly permed hair) and a quick sketch I did of Topher Grace as he appears in Spider-Man 3.

I’ve just uploaded about 6 new images from my sketchbook into the (what else) sketchbook gallery. Lately I’ve been listening to A LOT of music, and really paying attention to the words and the feeling behind the song (or at least what I interpret the feeling to be) and I’ve been inspired to do what I call “Musically inspired visual blogging” which means I’ll draw a picture of what I get from a certain song, and then post the song along with it to see if the reader gets the same thing. So far I’ve done this with my “Stupid Boy” and “Sea Breeze” pictures, but I’ve really enjoyed doing it so I plan to do some more sketches based on a few of my favorite songs.


Anyway, check out the sketchbook gallery or just look to the right under “recent additions” to see my newest entries.

With the recent awesomeness (yes, I said “awesomeness") of this past Saturday’s UFC 68: The Uprising, I felt inspired to try my hand and rendering some of my favorite UFC fighters in an artistic fashion (basically I felt like drawing them). After sketching out a few different ideas on a paper towel at my local Hooters (the only place to watch UFC) I decided that I didn’t want to draw the fighters in a traditional fashion, instead I wanted to give them more of an “iconic” feel...almost like a logo, or something “official.”


After a few failed attempts I finally came up with a look that I was satisfied with. It’s very reminiscent of what was seen in The Incredibles, and even in the Batman and Superman shows during the 90’s....which is cool with me because I love that stuff.


I started off by doing my personal favorite UFC fighter, Matt Hughes in a very “patriotic” pose, that I think might look cool on a t-shirt. Who knows, maybe I’ll even send it over to his webmaster and see what he thinks. How cool would it be to see my artwork endorsed by Matt Hughes??


Head over to the “graphic design” section to see the images (there’s the original, and a variation), or just look at the top of my RECENT UPDATES section to your right to find the images.


UPDATE: Tuesday March 6th, 2007
Well, sure enough I sent over my artwork, and the good people at Matt-Hughes.com were kind enough to add it to their galleries section. How cool is that??

Well after nearly 4 months away from updating this thing, everyone’s favorite (heavy sarcasm) Average Joe is back. I’m another year older, and infinitely more wise than I was last time. I’ve been trying to retool with the structure of the site, hoping to add in more categories and sub categories, and after thinking about it I think what averagejoeart.com really needs is a complete overhaul design wise. Don’t get me wrong, I like the feel of the site, but being an artist I’m always thinking about how things can look better. Besides, it’s looked the same way for over a year and it’s about time for some change. Hopefully by summer 2007 the site will be back with a new, fresh look, and have a lot more categories to showcase my artwork.


In the meantime the site will stay up as is, and I’ll continue to update it with all the new stuff I’ve been working on. Lately I’ve been working on some really cool 3D models for some big name clients, as well as some really cool t-shirt designs for an up and coming business. Hopefully all of those images will be up in the next 2 weeks. For the time being just added is a caricature I did for a friend of mine. In my opinion this is one of my best ones yet due in part to the amount of detail I put into the background. When you get a second check out the file named “Reis.”


That’s it for now. Hopefully it won’t be another 4 months before I update my blog again!

While browsing thru e-frontier.com I came across the latest version of Anime Studio 5. “AS5” is an awesome tool for creating movies, cartoons, or any kind of animation you can think of. I’ve heard of this program before, and I’ve tinkered with it before, and I can honestly say it’s an AMAZING tool to use. You can create so many different styles it’s not even funny. I’ve seen people do basic animations, to detailed anime style, to a cut-out style just like South Park.


I’m going to download a trial version of this software and give it a shot. I’ve got a couple of ideas I’d like to see animated so hopefully I’ll be able to produce SOMETHING using this software. For anyone interested in this program you can check it out here. And if you’re concerned about price, don’t be because AS5 retails for only $199!

So I was browsing around google earlier today looking for some new material to experiment/write about, and I came across this great tutorial on how to get a “Sin City” style look and feel with Photoshop. I’m a big fan of the gritty look behind Frank Miller’s Sin City books so for me this tutorial is right up my alley.


For anyone unfamilar with what exactly Sin City is, I would highly recommend checking out some of the trade paperback books over at Amazon. The artwork in these books is some of the most original work I’ve seen not only in comics, but in pop culture period.


The tutorial is SUPER easy to do because it’s just a mixture of taking an existing photo and adding some filters/effects in Photoshop and getting an awesome result. For those of you who are looking to learn how to use Photoshop filters then this tutorial is definitely something for you. Not only is it easy to do, but you get a clean look that would make anyone think you’re a pro at Photoshop.


I’m going to mess around with some of my own pics and post the results later on.

So a lot of people know that I’ve been trying to get more into the world of web design since it presents a new challenge for me, and since I’d be able to take my designs from concept all the way thru completion. About a week ago I was in Barnes & Nobel looking for some new reading material, and I stumbled across the Visual Quickstart Guide for HTML, XHTML & CSS. Now I am more than familiar with the Visual Quickstart guides because I relied heavily on them when I was first learning Illustrator and Photoshop all those years ago.


For me these books are great because as an artist I am a VERY visual person (duh) so if I were to just read plain text about a program not only would I be bored stiff, but my attention would start to wander. These books are great because not only are they extremely informative, but they present detailed pictures of what exactly they’re trying to teach you.


I’ve been reading this book for about a week and I’ve been experimenting with the coding side of web design. Right now I have no idea what I’m doing, but just like anything I know it’ll only get easier as I go on. I’ll be adding some examples of some websites I’ve been working on. Right now I’m only responsible for the design, but I’m still proud of the work nonetheless.


I can’t really give a full review of the book since I just started it, but for anyone interested in learning HTML, XHTML & CSS I would highly recommend picking up this book simply because I know how great the Visual Quickstart books really are. If you’re like me, and you rely heavily on visuals to teach you anything then this book is for you!


You can check out the book on Amazon right here

I posed a brief column over at Komikazee on the latest group shot I am working on for the Komikazee team. The idea behind creating the group shot in the first place was to be able to turn us into different characters such as the X-Men, Fantastic 4, Avengers..etc.


I recently started working on a new group shot for the site, and naturally I decided to start off with Superman Returns. So far I’ve only got myself done (as Superman of course), but I’m hoping to have the rest of the group (with some new additions) done by month’s end. In the meantime, check out what I’ve done so far, and as always please feel free to leave a comment!