Inspiration Spotlight #10: Dave Rapoza, Dan Warren, & Crimson Daggers

Lately I've been listening to / watching illustrator Dave Rapoza's livestream. You've probably seen his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series, but in case you didn't here's a mash-up Dave made of all the finished portraits.

Dave's been really influencing me for a while now. The above series is one of the big reasons I decided to do the couple Power Rangers pieces I did. But now that I'm been watching his livestream I'm getting some really great advice, I can ask him questions and from time to time he'll give feedback on people's work along with his also illustrator friend Dan Warren. Dan's been doing a 2 hour study everyday in order to better his skills for when he goes to do new portfolio pieces. An example of one of his studies can be seen below...

Dave and Dan run a study group called Crimson Daggers. There are no real rules or anything, a basic outline is in place that everyone can work from in order to become better artists, and every month on Dan's livestream they host the Golden Boy awards, where they name one of the participants the Golden Boy for really improving their work through studies. Dan also hosts his study sessions on his livestream and encourages others to work alongside him.

 The Crimson Daggers just announced a challenge called the Crimson Daggers Deathline Challenge. Basically you set up a couple big seemingly unachievable goals to accomplish over the course of the next year to better yourself and your artwork by setting miniature goals to achieve every month and you have to do something every single day to work towards your goal. Every month they are going to have up meet-up on the livestream to talk about everyone's progress. If you wanna learn more click the link and join in yourself! I'm partaking, and I've already started the process. I'm starting off by making sure I do some sort of study every single day no matter what. I'll post the studies up on the blog next week, I've already done a bunch. I think I forgot to link to Dave's website...BAM Dave Rapoza!