Birthdays...

I always struggle with birthday cards...

Text Boarder

 

 

Just someone I clocked while out for a run last weekend - sort of did a double take when I noticed this fantastically economical yet ludicrously unwise technique for texting while getting around fast.

 

The diagonal line in the back helps the image, but is a bit out of sorts with the perspective on the board- but hey-ho. If I were to start over I'd be keen to loosen with more exaggeration and character I think.

Holiday sketch/paint

 

WIP, a paint based on a slightly wonky sketch I did sitting by the beach on holiday last month. Nice to do something fairly self contained.

It's kind of casually exploring the extreme sunlight and shade, temperature and artificial depth of field type stuff etc. but think I'm going to leave this here, and look at some more studies - as otherwise I'll just over render things and I feel I need to go back a few steps to get things right. (Need to get back on those self lead Nathan Fawkes lighting course videos on Schoolism...)

Summer update Part 1 - Conceptart.org workshop

Now nearing the end of summer I figured it was way past time to do an update, it's my intention to get a bit up to date with things then try and just keep things regular with more images and less text. (joy)

For now though however, you may need to indulge me in a bit of a text heavy recap...

Back in may I attended the London Conceptart.org event - it was utterly chaotic but met some good folk, my professional games work has always been in the sphere of casual and mobile games so was a good opportunity to see how the high fantasy AAA guys do things. 

Mark Taro led life drawing and 'free-concepting' workshops and these definitely stuck with me - very liberating to hear someone talking about the value of originating ideas as opposed to the rendering and polish in executing them. Especially fascinating seeing his initial approach where he just jammed out on a roll of packing paper, and picked out and worked on the most lucid points, while this is not unlike any typical artist's sketchbook actually seeing this in context to a studio's work-flow and process (not to mention how he earned his money) was interesting. 

Some other bits covered were some life drawing and using models to generate fantastical or monster ideas which could be the origin for something to explore later. 

The rest of the event were mainly presentations and demos, which while impressive and interesting definitely resonated less for me. 

Ipad paintin'

Been able to get hold of a sensu brush and have been playing with sketchbook pro, It's great to be able to do photoshop style paints in front of the telly or a spare moment. Bush is better than the stylus that's for sure - still a lot of opacity changes as it's not pressure sensative. (it's still no cintiq but it's made it easuier for me to use sketchbook pro on the pad)

A quick study from some one else's image - I was liking the red/orangess in the skin.

Did this guy while watching the Snooker over the bank holiday at my parents as a sport it provides much time for drawing. (I think it's got a slight bit of Stapley/Scott C vibe going on here which I like) I have no significant interest or understanding about the sport beyond "Gosh, that was quite clever" but I just love the TV format, especially all the close up shots they do of men trying to figure out really hard angles...seems pretty surreal and comic to me. Will try and revisit as a theme I hope!

Sketches n' Studies

Generally my personal output has been very much the rougher sketchbook and development stuff recently, partly because there's a release dates looming so works getting pretty time demanding, but also amongst the creative team at MC there's been much discussion and exploration of our art and encouragement to go back and learn a few basics and break into some new habits (in my case anyhow)

There's been much colour studying going around, i've really negelcted to do these for some time so have really enjoyed giving them a go, trick is to keep doing a study a day according to Nathan Fawkes; these are just 20 mins each from movie stills, but i'll be doing whatever looks nice is suspect!

This time last weekend I was able to attend a sketch-crawl for a few hours in the Natural History Museum, so got a mix of sketches there. (Man was it busy)

Plus the pleasing Pangolins!  A few of us were quite taken with this curious creature, one can never really be 100% sure with the exhibits at the National History Museum, how much is down to it's naturally exotic form or just a Victorian taxidermist buzzing off his tits on Morphine. (see the stuffed Jerboa a few cabinets down)

Still the Pangolin is a very characterful fellow regardless...As a video games artist it just feels like someone has already designed this fellow.

Fun with life...

We had a fun life drawing model this week, who was really relaxed and imaginative we got a load of drawings done but towards the end just I started to have some fun with it. These aren't the greatest, but they're starting to get more expressive than my usual (probably as i'm around more gesture based sketchers at the moment) Still a long way to go before i'm confident that I can capture more of a figure (and it's intent) on a page but there's a touch of this (plus I like how i've managed to get a few more bits on the page.)