This is a small watercolor painting I did as a birthday gift to Steven. I know it looks random, but it basically represents one logo giving birth to another. (The orange being the company where Steven, Andy, and I first met, and the little gear wheel inside representing our current team logo.)

It's been such a long time since the last time I touched watercolor, or rather, any traditional medium at all. Working as a motion graphic artist, my job never requires me to draw anything traditionally. I do do some sketches occasionally, but even that's done on my Cintiq.

It only makes sense considering how convenient and time efficient digital painting is. 

I used to think back in college, painting digitally can never top using traditional mediums. I had some sort of pride about this, and it was almost an excuse for me not to learn to use photoshop or flash. I quickly realized not learning them was a big disadvantage, and decided to delve into it. 

Once I became comfortable painting digitally, I fell in love with it. 

I loved how easily I was able to reverse mistakes, and the choices of softwares I had for different types of artwork. Not getting any paint on my hand was also a plus. 

All my paint tubes, pencils and brushes rested somewhere deep in my drawer and never saw the light for years since then, until a few weeks ago, I took them out to work on this painting. 

From the first brush stroke to last, I was reminded how much I loved to paint traditionally. 

I loved mixing colors to get the color I want, using the right amount of water to get the opacity I want.. and the ability to zoom in closely and work on small details without seeing pixels.

I'm glad Steven asked me to do a painting because it woke up the artist in me. I still have a long way to go in terms of skills, but it really motivated me to paint more. In fact I've been watching watercolor tutorials for hours the past few days. I even ordered more paints and some brushes from online. Watercolor was something I always didn't feel confident using. (I mainly used acrylic) I loved the look of it, but didn't have the skill and knowledge to do it right. I plan to watch more tutorials and practice more, and hopefully I will have something worthy of sharing it here.

I have three mothers. Two in heaven, and one in Virginia. 

Despite unfortunate events, I always had a mother. I am so very lucky because of them.

Happy mothers day. 

So After about 3 years of working for at&t as a contractor, I got to start working as a full-time employee since February. This job is perfect for me because I get to work from home and work 4 days a week which allows me to dedicate some time for Idle Wheel. Another thing I love about this job is that I get to do lots of character animation which is what I've been wanting to, and trained to do. The orange character you see above is Murray, who I animate almost on a daily basis. Murray appears on many of their security campaign posters and videos, and these are two posters I created recently. 

Website headers

 This is also long overdue. I did some illustrations to be used as website headers for at&t.

I don't get asked to work on illustration jobs that often, but when I do, I have so much fun!

Sometimes I need a break from all those diamond keyframes you know...

Illustrations2

Some more sketches I did for the same project below

Illustrations

Not that anyone reads this but hope you are all enjoying the holidays!

These are some illustrations I did a long time ago for at&t.

I was given multiple topics related to cyber security, and was asked to do some illustrations with different styles and treatments. More to follow!

AT&T Cyber Security Conference Opening

090413 AT&T Conf Main Personal from Sun-Joon Robert Hwang on Vimeo.

Early sketches

Some modeling and rigging

About two months ago, I got to work on the opening animation for at&t cyber security conference with my friend Michael. This was an awesome experience because 1. it was one of the most exciting projects I got to work on this year, 2. because I enjoy working with Michael, 3. I got better at 3d animation.

Prior to this project, I barely knew how to animate anything in Cinema 4d, but with the help of Michael and numerous tutorials I watched, I can now say I know cinema 4d a little bit if someone asks... I'm still a newbie but I hope this is a stepping stone to exploring more 3d animation. 

Character Design Gig

First post this year!!

I love it when at&t gives me occasional character design/illustration gigs.

For this one, I was asked to design a simple character using a blobby shape. 

Hopefully I'll get to animate these guys.

Quickie 2

I know you do it.

Character Designs

Character designs done for at&t a while back.

And these are the animated clips before compositing. 

These were done a while ago, but I thought I'd post them since I don't have much recent work to share. College Board has been keeping me busy and I am mostly doing corporate style motion graphics. There are cons and pros. I definitely am hungry for some creative work though.