2/4/2013 Shit that's goin

I'm going to post a few desk shots as well, but just to shake it up a bit, I'm posting some FAN ART!!!

Seems like I'm in a bit of a marvel kick these days.  I thought it'd be cool to do some Spiral fan art over the weekend.

Dance, you sweet lady, dance!

I'll be honest, I first fell in love with Spiral from watching people play her in Marvel Vs Capcom 2.  She has a bizarre dance for an idle animation, and she has really weird looking moves.

Readers who have good memory will remember I talked about my attraction towards weird fighting game characters.  I wondered for a while why she was so weird in MvC2, and one day I ended up on her Wikipedia page.  Apparently she has to do these elaborate hand gestures and dances to conjure up her cosmic powers, allowing her to teleport, skip dimensions, summon swords, etc.  WHICH IS TOTALLY AWESOME.  And that's pretty much when i fell in love with this character.

Last week I was passing by my co-worker's desk and saw this.  Pretty old news at this point, but I haven't been paying too much attention to what's going on in comics these days.  Spiral's part of the Uncanny X-Force!  I was stoked to see her again!  Seems like she's some sort of raver in the series, which is kind of a cool/silly re-imagining of her cosmic dances, but either way I'm actually interested in reading an American comic!

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As promised, here are some more desk shots.  I'm finally done with the "build-up."  NOW IT'S TIME FOR ACTION!!! I still have a ton more pages to finish before this chapter is done.  But hold on to your horses, it'll all be worth it in the end!

Close followers of this blog will have seen this page develop over the past few posts

Also, I'm working on another drawing project (doing the spiral fan-art has inspired me to do an ink painting.  More on this in the future.)  I dug up one of my old sketchbooks.  Finding it still had a few blank pages, I started to sketch in it.  But while I was flipping through it, I found a drawing I haven't shown anyone!  This is a really old drawing, but I was so psyched to see it.  I remember this drawing took me almost a week to finish, and I had to look at a TON of reference for it, too.

I'M DEFINITELY DOING MORE DRAWINGS LIKE THIS!!!

11/18/2012 BACK IN ACTION and other stories

I finally have a new apartment, received all my stuff from the movers, hooked up my internet, and now I'm fully back into the swing of things!

I thought I'd take a break from the comic for a couple days, and keep my painting skills sharp.  It seems whenever I start a job at a new place, I'm inspired to do a painting that relates to my new employment.  When I started working at 38 Studios I did a painting of baseball.  Now that I've started working at Playdom, I'm surrounded by Marvel stuff.  and I was inspired to make this painting!

GAMMA CRUSH!

I hope you enjoy gangster hulk!

Some updates on what's going on

I've posted about going to and coming back from Korea, but I've been pretty absent from the blog since.  So here are some updates on what's been going on!

I've been swamped with work every since I got back.  It's gotten to a point where I've made a laundry list of things that need to get down, and I've barely even made a dent in it.  My father has asked me to do some product illustrations for him, which is impossible for me to refuse, seeing as he raised my pitiful ass.  So there's that, and a slew of other projects I need to get done before I get back to the fun paintings I so love to do!

Anyway, I've atleast had time to rearrange my room a bit so i can do some larger drawings.

I've cleared off the entire drafting table to make room for a nice diptych, and also...

I've made space on one of my walls so i can draw some really big drawings as well.

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For those who are in the competitive fighting game community, you might know a little legend from the third strike days.  His name is Dr. Sub-Zero.  AKA John D. Rockafeller.  This guy was one of the main reasons I decided to join the fighting game scene.  He really convinced me how fun and interesting it was being part of that community.  He was incredibly funny, and charismatic.  I found myself hypnotized and allured to this quirky community, and I have to thank him because I met some great friends indirectly because of him.

I found his old old podcasts through gootecks (whose podcasts taught me a lot about the technical aspects of fighting games), and I was sad that he wasn't active anymore.  Well, after years of waiting, he's back!  He's being doing Live podcasts again, and they are hilarious!

This is basically a long winded way of me saying that I ended up doing a design for him!  And I was super happy to do so! 

Hey, if you ever get the chance, tune into his show!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cI1HSdEwV-c

 

Street Fighter X Tekken

Kazuya and Ryu!

I'm going on vacation for a couple weeks starting Thursday.  I'll be in Korea visiting the family.  I'm quite excited.  I haven't been in Korea in years, and because my parents live there, it's hard to see them as regularly as I'd like.  I'm taking my camera with me, because the massive mess of neon signs and night lights are incredibly beautiful, and i want to bring home some reference for me to paint!

Though I'm going on vacation, I have a ton of work I'm taking with me.  I'll still be posting regularly, so don't forget to check in now and then!  Maybe I'll finally get some inspiration for the blog redesign finally!

Street Fighter X Tekken WIP 3/28/2012

SOOOOO close to being done!  Just gotta finish up the gloves, belt, and a little bit of tweaking here and there!

Street Fighter X Tekken WIP 3/27/2012

Some more work in progress!  I've been messing with the colors on this painting and I'm finally getting them to a place that I like.  I still have a few places where i want to mess around with the colors, but this is a good starting point so far.  I'm getting a bit more comfortable messing around with multiple brush-sets.  Pulling together tricks I've been picking up in the past few months finally. 

Street fighter X Tekken WIP 3/20/2012

It's been a few days!  I have a secret project in the works right now, and I'm trying to figure out how to start releasing info on it.  If you want to know more, I guess you'll have to just wait and see  ;-)  I've been drawing out ideas and what not for this secret project, and it's been taking up a bit of my time.  But I didn't want to start neglecting the blog, so I'm back with some drawings!

In the very little spare time that I get, I've been playing a little bit of Street Fighter X Tekken.  I used to go to tournaments and have met some great people while playing the Street Fighter 4 series.  Since moving to Rhode Island, there aren't as many people to play with, so I haven't been able to attend tournaments, but I've been keeping up by practicing combos every night, and getting a few games in online.  The game is really fun, which inspired me to do some fan art! 

I'm planning on making this a full painting, so stay tuned!

Oro

Got to mess around with dummy oils this time around.  Fun stuff!  I'll have to think of a way to keep the texture of the paper, but clean up the sketchy line work.

2/25/2012 WIP

Oro!  The man of gold.  Still working on this one.  Utilizing the layer properties to keep the colors in check was definitely a good idea.  Also, the texture from the paper doesn't get obliterated immediately this way!  I have a few more tricks up my sleeve that I want to use for this one.  Stay tuned!

2/23/2012 WIP

For those who don't know already, this is Oro.  He's a cool character from the most beautiful fighting game ever made, Street Fighter 3: Third Strike.  The observant reader will know that there's already been a WIP of this drawing, but I thought I'd update.  Oro's been also called Wrinkly McScrotum face, and the previous drawing was not doing his nickname justice.  So i threw his face down ugly canyon, and he hit every rock on the way down.  Now I'm much happier with his face, and will begin painting soon!

Friendship is Magic

I'm going to call this one done!  Had a long day at work today, but thankfully had some time to finish the painting up.

Didn't really learn any new tricks with this painting, but I'm getting back into using layer types.  In the past, i've tried to steer away from using layer types, and just painting in a single layer.  I thought it'd be a good way to practice my color control.  It has been pretty good for that, but I've been losing a lot of texture and depth in my final pieces.  There's also the option of creating texture with brushes, but when rendering the texture kind of just disappears.

That's all for tonight.  Remember.  Friendship is Magic!

2/21/2012 WIP

  That last experiment with the soft edge brushes wasn't working out so well, so I repainted from scratch.  Soft edge brush only was definitely a mistake.  also, working from my darkest value out to my lightest value was screwing with me.  Must remember to block out the shapes of the shadows and the shapes of the lighter forms and then work from there.

Also, must remember to keep colors under control.  The colors on this one is much more to my liking.

2/20/2012 WIP

Hello everyone!  I hope everyone enjoyed the weekend!  Fortunately, I had Monday off too, because of president's day, giving me time to do some fan art.  Neither of these are by any means done, but I wanted to start documenting my progress by posting unfinished/ in progress art.

The My Little Pony piece is starting to get out of hand for me.  The colors are becoming hard to keep under control, since the characters are so wildly colored, it's hard to try to pick out the right colors on the first go.  I have a few ideas to pull them back together.  I'm also trying to paint only using soft edge brushes.  This seems to be giving me an overall soft piece, but I'm trying to figure out how to get some depth, and layering while keeping it soft. 

Barely even got started on my Third Strike fan art.  I always seem to gravitate towards oddball characters.  I thought Oro and Q were the coolest designs in third strike, so i thought I'd do some fan art for the old pooper.  It's too bad that Oro has about 0 mass appeal.  It'd be cool to see him in one of the newer games.  Anyway!  I'll be posting more WIPs of this one soon!