robo

robo, originally uploaded by Xyling.

Artwork from the turn of the century.

Kit Box

Kit Box, originally uploaded by Xyling.

Finished, folded box...should have put some old plastic parts in there for that authentic rattle.

Frankenstein Kit Box

FrankensteinFinalFrankless, originally uploaded by Xyling.

Illustration done for co-worker. Made an effort to create a vintage kit box art illo. Got the background color from an old magazine print ad so it had the right halftone feeling, then grabbed some vintage magazine off white for the rest of the background. The main "Frankenstein" font was painted from scratch in Photoshop using Ed Roth kit lettering reference. The rest of the artwork was created in Photoshop trying to replicate the old style analog brushwork. I then overlayed halftone dots on the finished illustration to push the cheap old color printing style. Box scuffs scanned from a 40 year old Kraftwerk record cover in my collection.

rapid49

rapid49, originally uploaded by Xyling.

Apparently, at the designer night drawing competition at this year's LA Auto Show (couldn't make it, business trip with bad timing), the three way final challenge was to draw a Lotus 49. None of the bonehead designers knew what kind of car it was. You only have a few minutes to pull it off, so that's tough, but you'd better know that the 49 wasn't a passenger car. Good grief, kids. Here's my off the top of my head quickie in less than five minutes.

More ships...

Random swag with various influences.

Dwayne Vance chats with Jay Leno about the Masters of Chicken Scratch II book. Jay was very generous with his time to put in a bit of promotion for Dwayne's great sequel to the first great Hot Rod sketch book, Masters of Chicken Scratch I, now available. Jay held up a page from my section...BUILD IT JAY!

Get your own copy of the book with a great tutorial DVD put together by Dwayne here:  Masters Of Chicken Scratch Store

NeoCan-Am step-by-step

NeoCan-Am step-by-step, a set on Flickr.

15 process snapshots of my flailing away at this large winged Chaparral design.

Mech-anical pencil sketch

A mechy for your thoughts. Li'l three inch pencil sketch...

Mid transform...25 minute super small color comp. Unfinished concept.

 Engine detail, clutch side. Clean version.

The Honda RC166 was one of the most interesting and successful bikes of the "Golden Age" motorcycle racing era. It was ridden by Mike Hailwood and Jim Redman to multiple victories and world championships. A few years ago, I decided to tackle it using Alias Studiotools software. It took quite a while due to time available, the level of detail, and also the lack of materials to replicate every detail. I purchased a lot of books and scoured the web for photos for months. The same month I was wrapping up the remainder of the modeling, Tamiya released a model kit- too late to reference, but interesting to validate proportions and details that I had to make guesses at. Rendered here in hypothetical privateer colors, sans fairing. The chop at the lower right is from my father in law, approximating my last name "Frye" with the Chinese characters "fu lai", translating to "luck comes." I have a lucky name!

I've been linking these blog posts to Flickr simply because it's easy to do, but I've noticed that some RSS readers don't display the thumbnail unless the image is saved on Blogger itself. There may be some issues with Yahoo and Google properties not getting along. That's fine- so we have a duplicate post here now, this one being an image saved on Google's servers as a test. I actually prefer that you don't leave the Blogger site if you want to enlarge the image, that's another issue I'm having with the Flickr hosted images. Same description as previous. This one started to take on a JC Leyendecker feel as I was adding color and value so I just played that up.

NeoCan-Am

NeoCan-Am, originally uploaded by Xyling.

What if Can-Am came back? What if Chaparral built a car for the series? What if JC Leyendecker illustrated it?

Well, here you go.

Deep Sea 1 Bathyscape

DeepSea1, originally uploaded by Xyling.

The underwater vehicle genre is a new thing for me to draw, so I'm having fun exploring the freedoms of not needing to ground these, but be less concerned with aero clean-ness as this thing putters around at a pretty slow speed in the inky depths. Mechanical pencil on Tria marker paper.

Pressurized-Hull Bulldozer

SubCat2, originally uploaded by Xyling.

See sketch process video set in previous post.

Pressurized-Hull Bulldozer Sketch Process

Pressurized-Hull Bulldozer Sketch Part 1
Pressurized-Hull Bulldozer Sketch Part 2
Pressurized-Hull Bulldozer Sketch Part 3

I did my first attempt at doing some video of my analog sketch process. I tried a couple of other camera angles, this one is upside down, but has the least hand obstruction. Hope it is useful or interesting. If you have the patience to actually sit down and watch it, make sure you try the full size HD version (change the quality settings.) Thanks!

Soviet LSR

Soviet LSR, originally uploaded by Xyling.

Even behind the Iron Curtain, land speed records were being sought in the 1950's. Inspired by photos of the un-tested six wheel Mercedes T80, this pudgy, optimistic Zil ZL-2 managed to break more parts than records, finally retiring after the W18 engine seized on a freezing October test run in 1956.

Cab Forward 3

CabForward3, originally uploaded by Xyling.

Found a decent line drawing for this in my flat file that I never finished, so this evening i added some color.

Acura NSX Concept illustration

Acura NSX Concept, originally uploaded by Xyling.

Official media illustration for 2012 NSX concept. Mix of Bunkspeed Hyperdrive rendering, Photoshop, and latex paint on bristol paper.