12/19/2013 Tactical Bard Sketches

A doodle for the Tactical Bard

9/24/2013 30 Day Challenge: Day 10 & 11

 

Experimenting with integrating cross hatching into this new more geometric style.

9/18/2013 30 Day Challenge: Day 5 & 6

Got side-tracked yesterday and couldn't post anything.  Making it up today!

7/28/2013 WIP

It's that time of the year again! Summer time is here, and it's time to do another Summer Girl themed painting!

Update on the comic:

I just got my pages scanned on Saturday.  I just need a little bit more time to do clean up and screen toning!  Wait just a little longer, people!

2/24/2013 Double Page Spreads

Here's a shot of the double page spread I'm working on.  I'm doing my best not to show you every page I work on, because I want there to be the element of surprise when you finally get to read it.  But this page is a bit of an exception because I worked on it for so long and I was just too psyched not to show people! 

Been also messing around on my sketchbook.  Red and blue pencil lead sure makes everything prettier!

I should probably get a scanner for some of this shit.

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!!!

9/1/2012 Update

 Holding slow and steady on the comic front.  Progress is by no means fast, but I'm at a comfortable pace.  I thought I'd update a bit of my work progress, so enjoy!

Inks and Screen Tone

Slowly getting the hang of this.  Basically the problem with the last batch of screen tones was that the resolution was too low.  When I photographed this ink painting, I split it up into 9 sections and then auto-aligned them in photoshop.  With more pixels to play with, I was able to keep the dot matrices small enough to not compete with the line work. 

6/23/2012 Speed Paint

I've been concentrating on my comic these days, so I haven't had a chance to do paintings.  I thought I'd kill 2 birds with 1 stone by practicing some painting, and doing a color study of one of my characters at the same time.

More Inking

 The inking continues!

I'm getting a bit more familiar with what I can get away free hand and what i need to use a ruler for.  Basically any line that's shorter than my index finger, I can get done with just free handing, but any line longer than that, I need a ruler to keep my hand steady.  The problem is if I have to reposition my elbow mid stroke, the line becomes wobbly, and the line weight becomes inconsistent.

I'm thinking it's time I try screen-toning.

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Been watching a lot of car shows as inspiration.  Top Gear, and Fifth Gear being the major TV shows I've been watching, with a healthy dose of Initial D and Wangan Midnight.  They're super fun shows, especially if you're into cars. 

At first I was looking for good car chase movies on netflix, but there's not a lot there to choose from...  Ronin definitely has my favorite car chase scenes, but other than that, I can't think of anything good.  Any suggestions?

Findings from the Inking Laboratory

Today's challenge was cars and motorcycles.  I'm getting a little better at creating "mechanical noise", and there's really no easy way around it.  You just have to build up a vocabulary of mechanical looking jargon and figure out where you have to place it.  You can build this vocabulary much easier when inking and painting than graphite, and im not really sure why yet.  Possibly because the mechanical noise you create just becomes a grey mess.

Another thing I need to practice is not to get too zealous.  The inks on these should be a bit more blank, and I have to stop myself from trying to shade with cross hatching.  Shading on mechanical things should be done with screen toning (especially if it's surface color, shadows could be done through cross hatching though).

A few more useful tips to consider:

-Be patient.
-Cannot stress enough, do not use a dip pen when using a ruler.  The ink bead gets under the ruler and ruins the drawing.
-When drawing long lines, spin the paper around so the line is consistent with the arch of your arm.  It's nearly impossible to draw a clean line if your drawing a long curve that bows towards your own elbow.  Spin it around so it bows away from your arm, and use anatomy to your advantage!
-You should know how to draw wheels without stencils (with graphite), but just use stencils when inking
-Microns seems to bleed much less than Sharpie felt tip pens
-Be patient

I still have to work on getting better at drawing wheels.  I have a few stencils, but they're never the right size/pinch to draw the wheel angles I want.

Next episode, we shall have people ON vehicles!

5/13/2012 WIP

Oh good heavens, this painting is taking a long time.  I want to say I'm about 50 percent at this point.  I hate it when i get ideas for new paintings before I'm done working on the current painting!

4/23/2012 WIP

Been chipping away at some of the many projects I've been working on!

This one's going to be part of the blog redesign project (that's right!  I haven't forgotten about that just yet!)  I got some specific plans for this one that I'm not going to go into right now, I'll just hint at the fact that I've been dabbling in some GIF animations, and I want to flex my muscles in new territories.  Stay tuned for the real fun stuff down the road with this one!

As I've mentioned in previous posts, I've converted my wall to a drawing board.  And I have some more ambitious ideas for the drawing board, but this is just a test run I thought I'd do real quick.  It's taking a bit to get used to drawing upright again, but it's great that I can engage the drawing in a more physical manner.  I can move back and forth, and use my entire arm to create lines, and that is definitely fun.  Also, seeing anime type drawings at this scale is always a bit unusual, and I like to use scale to my advantage.

I've decided that I'll be streaming again.  I'm trying to decide what days to do it, but one thing's for sure.  The drawing board will be a frequent guest on it!  I just have to figure out the logistics of it!  I draw super light some times, so maybe this will teach me to work more boldly.

Also in the works is a small game project I'm working on with my buddy Leo.  I've worked with him during my stay at Harmonix.  He's one of my favorite people, and he's a blast to work with!  I'll be posting some of those works as well, so stay tuned!

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!

3/10/2012 WIP

Still moving along with the blog redesign.  I've finally got something down that I'm happy with.  Much work is needed to be put into this piece, but I haven't posted in a few days, so I thought I'd give everyone a preview of what I've been working on! 

3/4/2012 WIP

Hello everyone, it's been a few days, so here's a bit of an update on what i've been working on!

The city skyline painting is something I'm doing as part of my blog redesign.  I don't want to give too much away, I want there to be a bit of a surprise on what the end product is actually going to look like, so stay tuned!  It's going to be a fun one!

I hesitated posting this skyline painting I'm working on, even though it's a WIP, I'm a bit dissatisfied with it.  I'm not sure what's going on with the colors in this one, but hopefully I'll be able to pull things together sooner or later.  Working on environmental shots is always a challenge for me.  I'm used to understanding forms, but when it comes to creating space, it's a bit more difficult for me.  Which brings me to a realization I've had; Always include a background to your painting!  The practice is invaluable.  I've done too many paintings where I simply draw a figure on a white background.  Since I was a character concept artist by trade for most of my professional career, I've neglected mastering environments for a while.  Learning's always fun, but it's tough to think inversely (from forms to spaces) from what I'm used to.  But in the immortal words of Kintaro Oe; STUDY STUDY STUDY!

Also, a few friends came over during the weekend, and we had a bit of a movie marathon.  And movie marathons are a great opportunity for some doodling!