Name: Jennifer Brazas
Email: jenniferbrazas@gmail.com
Alias: Savagesparrow
Birthday: 11•29•1986
Local: Chicago
Interests: Comics, Manga, Fashion, Cyberpunk, Poker, History
Resume: Click here!

Artists's Statement:
I began my artistic career by undergoing art ninja training. It involved lots of standing under waterfalls while painting, leaping through trees while snapping reference photos, and making multiple copies of myself to handle a bunch of projects at once.  Often times my art ninja school would have to engage in life or death, draw or die competitions to determine which school/clan would become the Supremely Awesome Best Art Ninja School Under the Heavens (and in Space). Though the training was extremely rigorous (and at times hazardous to my health), I emerged a better ninja…and a better artist.

Like myself, my work is very colorful, comedic, and ultimately an exaggeration. I really love creating an environment and an atmosphere within my illustrations--I like to give people the impression that the characters within my illustration could be real people that they know--instead of being figures composed into a space to fulfill a brief. My favorite part about the drawing process is creating the little details in illustrations; from  having a couple empty Chinese food boxes scattered around the tables and floors of a very messy apartment, to a particular purse brand with an interesting dice pattern on its fabric to even the bizarrely exaggerated hairstyles of contemporary high fashion. I'm very flexible with my subject matter—I am perfectly happy working with character-driven pieces as I am with environments, sequential art, and editorial work, as long as I can add my happy, somewhat neurotic level of detail to it. My style tends to be very cartooney, with lots of curvy lines and exaggerated figures, and I love to experiment with weird camera angles and poses just to challenge myself. Usually I create a dozen thumbnails of a piece, just to make sure I have a variety of idea and designs to choose from before I settle on one to do a final piece on. I draw and ink my work traditionally—using a combination of Micron pens and a Japanese brush pen to ink my work, while I color it all digitally in Photoshop. I love working with Photoshop because it's quick and easy, and I can get a variety of colors, textures, and effects that I wouldn't be able to achieve traditionally.

I am very much influenced by the Japanese “manga” style, though I find myself drawn more and more towards some of the Westerners influenced by this style such as the guys over at Studio Udon (the artists of the Street Fighter comics), Adam Warren (artist of Empowered ), and the Korean artist Kim Hyung-Tae (the character designer for the Magna Carta game). What attracts me to these artists is the way that they combine their knowledge of anatomy with the fluidic exaggeration of the “anime” style. Ultimately I wish to join their ranks of creativity, attention to detail, and complete mastery of digital painting tecniques. My goal is to someday be an accomplished storyboard, concept or comic artist—I love the fast paced atmosphere of these industries, and above all I love how they really test the artists' level of creativity. I also know that I have the drive, the desire, and the tenacity to reach these goals, so it's really only a matter of time before I get there.