Thanksgiving 08

Here's a couple of digital black and white sketches I've been working on. The first was a possible freelance gig with a UK band looking for some artwork, but they went with a different artist. It's too bad it turned out that way, but the guy I had been speaking with was very friendly and at the very least I got to work on a drawing I actually like. I'll be coloring it eventually and most likely be using it as a part of my portfolio.


It's been said quite a few times that the creature in the image is our cat Kenny. Pretty much any disturbing creature of the night is automatically likened to him.


The next is something I whipped up tonight after Natalie and I watched Reign of Fire. I don't know if anyone has seen or remembers watching this movie, but it was about the end of man-kind at the hands of dragons who had been in a long hibernation. They were responsible for the death of the dinosaurs and then, eventually, the ash from all they burned clouded the sky and brought on the ice age. It had gotten really bad reviews and I had seen it when I was pretty young, but had remembered liking it. The film features Christian Bale and Mathew McConaughey. McConaughey's character, Van Zan, of the Kentucky Irregulars is, quite possibley, one of the strongest men ever to live. He musters a make shift militia in the USA, flys them accross the ocean in a rebuilt C-5, (which he probably welded together himself) then rides around England on the cannon barrel of one of his tanks. All the while smoking a cigar, swigging from a flask, wielding a sawed off shot-gun, and looking for dragons to kill, because he is just plain pissed off at them.

The character inspired me to draw. I used a photo from the web for reference but it was fun practice.


Maybe I'll expand on it. I'm not sure. Might just stay as is.

UPDATE***

I thought it might be cool to show my work progress for that drawing. So here's a animation showing my steps. You'll have to click on the image to show the animation, for some reason it doesn't preview below.

Goblin Gunslinger

A character concept done for this weeks CHOW. Unfortunately you needed to provide them with a "character sheet" for this round which I couldn't stomach completing. So I did this action shot instead. Not terribly detailed, but I like the pose.

Recent Cover Illustration

Here's a recent digital painting I did for a cover I have been working on. It hasn't gotten approval yet, though I hope it will.

Roman Standard Animation

I've still been plugging away this morning at models. I made a Roman standard to act as the "Princess" object for the Warlords game. Here's a quick animation I did with it.

More Gaming Things

I'm continually feeling as if I'm being pulled in a million different directions by the goals I have laid out for myself. Just when I start in on the Torque Game Engine, I feel the need to start creating game assets for Sim Ops Studios Wild Pockets Game Jam that's next weekend. I'm unclear at the moment whether I'll be teamed up with people or not since I signed up as an individual. But, I figure, even if I am on a team and we go in a different direction, I can still use these assets in the future. Anyway, there are a couple screen shots below. The premise was to recreate the classic Atari game Warlords in a 3d environment with physics. I went with a Roman setting for the game, which I think turned out fairly well. We'll see how the rest of it turns out in the future. I'm confident in the art, but as far as the coding is concerned I'll be a little lost unless I have something to work from. Coding for me is a lot like speaking Spanish. I get the gist of it, and can chop it up ok, but I could never speak it fluently.



In addition to all this stuff going on I still have work and I really need to make more time to draw. I got in some good sketching this morning and was really happy about it. The outcome was good and so was the experience. I was surprised today with a phone-call from work letting me know we're getting tomorrow off, so hopefully I can take advantage of the time and crank out some more work.

Torque Success

I've been trying hard lately to stay focused on my goals and to get a little more organized in the things I want to create. So far it's been a horrible failure. I'm notably bad at organization and it seems that there's no sign of that trend altering. However, I have managed to spend enough time digging through the Torque Game Engine, and the tutorials posted online, to start getting some objects "in-game". I worked on a vehicle this past week. After being crushed by an overwhelming belief that I could build an entire demolition derby game by myself. This single model took me a couple days to just get working in the engine and that was with all the hard stuff already done for me by those who have already tread this path. Here's some screen shots of it in the stock environment that came with the sample. It's my first car (with a specialty paint job,) a 1983 Mercury Grand Marquis four door sedan. I seriously would buy one if I could find one and the mileage was reasonable.

Books

Submitted for your approval. Some recent designs that I'm sure will never see print because they're too "artsy". Anyway, I like all these covers.

Dr. Pamela Lillian Isley

Here's my final rendition of Poison Ivy for this weeks CHOW. I spent a lot of the week working on it but still feel like I didn't draw enough. I think I'm going to try to take part in some of the Creature of the Week and Environment of the Week competitions as well.

Poison Ivy

An update of the picture below. I think it's coming together rather well. I still don't know how I'm going to work the character aspect of the image. I have become so caught up in the anatomy that I haven't concentrated on much else.




Here's my WIP for the next CHOW. More info to come.

My hand is swolen

I've been trying to spend almost all of my free time lately drawing. Here's a WIP I did tonight. 2 hours of work into it so far. Not too bad. I like the skin tone ok, but the pose needs refined more; particularly the left leg. Time to get some sleep.

Another Week

Another Chow. This weeks topic was the John Carter of Mars. A character from some old sci-fi stories. They wanted something Frazetta-esque so I did my best. It's hard for me to see much improvement in my work. I feel a bit in a rut.

CHOW 118

So this past week I have been busy doing just about everything other than finishing my CHOW entry for competition #118. I finally get on task tonight, and scrape something together, only to find out after I'm done that it's been canceled. It's very unfortunate because I think that my character actually had the most dynamic pose and I feel that the image is a good fit for a fantasy cover design. Regardless, I'm happy with the way it turned out. Though I'm exhausted and tomorrow will surely be long I think it was worth while. Here's the image.

Smaug

Here's the WIP so far for the CHOW. I'm really happy with it. I feel like I've learned a lot and have a lot of fun doing this one. I don't know how well it will fit the brief that's posted though. I get the feeling that they wanted a more expressive creature when it comes to the face.

Smoke

I'm working on a new CHOW seeing as how I didn't keep it together to finish the last one. Part of it will involve smoke, something which I don't have a lot of experience with. Here's a image I did as an experiment to get a feel for a new brush I've been using.

New Painting

Two nights in a row with something to show! This is digital painting that took me about an hour and half. I'm not really content with the way the fabric looks, but I did not spend much time on that area. I like the colors alright, but it could may be use a higher contrast.

Hour Sketch

Here's a sketch I cranked out this evening. It was a lot of fun and very relaxing. It's nice not to be too worked up while you draw. The landscape below continues to bother me the more I see it. So much is wrong with it. But it's good practice. Perhaps I'll redo one this week sometime. I look forward to being able to do more illustrations this year for the 2009 schedule of titles. I think we have a few that should lend themselves well to it.

New Book Cover

Here's some work for a new line of books in what's being called The Winter Trilogy.

How 'bout that heat?

Summer here in Pittsburgh arrived with the grace and subtlety of a sledge hammer to the back. It's been in the mid 90's the past few days made worse by the high humidity. Running has been troublesome for us since it started to warm up earlier in the month, but then we were lucky that the we would only have one hot day now and again. It's taking much longer to get used to it than I thought it would. Running a very short distance seems to drain me completely. Hopefully that will improve.

I've been continuing drawing a few things and recently colored a sketch I had drawn during the winter.

It's not too bad, but not exactly how I wanted it.


I'm also working on this at the moment. This is a close-up on the first figure. It will have 3-4 in it by the time it's done.

Yet Another Update

Here's a pretty final rendering of the head. I think it's in a pretty good state right now. I plan on using this for the "Underwater Utopia" CHOW that will be finished the end of next month.

Production Comic

I haven't updated with any new Production comics recently due to my work schedule. Despite the BEA madness (soon to be over thankfully) I've been able to get these done for WritersNewsWeekly.

Picture update

Here's an updated image. This one's getting better. I've softened the features and reshaped the face a good bit. Tweaked the eyes nose and mouth. I have to finish up the right side and forhead then I'll fix the hair. I'm having a lot of fun just working on this one.

Post - Race Day

Race day went off with out a hitch and both Natalie and myself posted times much better than we were expecting. Here's a recent digital painting I've been working on. It needs a lot more work but it's something to look at. I may use this as a part of the next CHOW which will encompass all of the other competitions on conceptart.org. The final isn't due till the end of next month and the topic is "Underwater Utopia".

Some days it gives me great solace to think to a time when women did their hair like this.

Tomorrow brings the "Race for the Cure" here in Pittsburgh. Myself, Natalie, Jeff, Jess and my Mom will be taking part. I'm looking forward to it a great deal. Work has been very hectic in the weeks leading up to the BEA, but it's been a good kind of hectic. I'd much rather feel pushed than bored. The image below is a profile of Natalie. It's one of the few sketches I've managed to do in the past few weeks. I really should start doing "Character of the Week" again on conceptart.org. That or their "Environment of the Week." I think I'll start up again in the coming weeks.

IMBLTD

The final design for International Book Management's logo has been decided on. It wasn't quite what I had in mind originally but I'm just glad it's finished.


In addition to completing that project I also had the catalog completely laid out. However, the layout was turned down and it was suggested I try to redesign it. So that should take a great deal more time. I did manage to finally get the stock photography purchased for our 2008 titles so that will let me finally get the files ready for print. I have started on some and the remainder won't take me long to edit.

Then there's the case of Writers News Weekly. My comic has been going fairly well these first three weeks but I now find myself dry of ideas. Here are the previous two weeks strips.




On the personal side of things, I've been doing a good deal of 3d modeling lately. This was spurred on by my recent design of our booth for this years BEA. Getting back into it has been a great deal of fun and I immediately started modding a game I'm currently playing: Sins of a Solar Empire. It's been difficult to get the models into the game correctly. Mainly I'm having trouble getting the textures to read right. It seems that there are some problems with the bump and light map text files and I can't tell if the problem lies within the image or within the model's settings.

I also succeeded in doing a profile sketch of Natalie over the weekend. I hadn't really put pencil to paper in about two weeks and it felt really good. I was surprised and pleased with the results as well. I think it's one of the better drawings I've done and think it may have been a turning point for me. I can look back on different drawings I've done over the years and know which ones specifically ushered in a new era of my abilities. I call these epiphany drawings, and I think that it may have been one. I don't have the image scanned in yet but I will post it later this evening.

Pre BEA Woes

This time of the year is apparently always insane, although I really can't remember how last year went. Anyway, to give you an idea as to what I have on my schedule, here's a list:

Produce a Corporate Identity for International Book Management
Create, Print and Have Delivered, marketing materials for 3 of our authors at BEA
Layout and Design this years releases catalog.
Design our BEA Booth for LA and take care of the ordering and shipping of materials.
Maintain 1.5 webcomics on the site writersnewsweekly.com (I say 1.5 because I'm only doing art for the one and the other I'm doing both the art and writing)

Each of those things has a number of tiny pieces to them that are slowly driving me insane. The logo design for International Book Management is my largest concern at the moment. I want the company launch fully prepared with a solid identity for itself. It should be able to convey exactly what it is and how it does business from the moment you see any of the marketing material for it. I've spent a great deal of thought on the matter but my ideas keep getting shot down and it's becoming frustrating. Here are some of the logo ideas in black and white to establish a solid form.





None of these have garnered much response. I'll be working on some new ones this week. Below you can see some of the choice covers for this year. These are the ones that I'm happy with and had the most say over.









And here are some more covers that didn't make it, but I prefer over the final.





You can see I took the colors from this version of The Cruelest Cut and applied to The Frame once I knew this one wouldn't be used.

Here are some of the interior designs for this years catalog.






Here's some 3d renders of what I have planned for this years BEA Booth.








And just for kicks here are the two comic strips I'm working on. The first I write and illustrate and the second I just do line art. Coloring is done by Nicole Allen.


So I'm pretty busy.