Flashback Friday #3 -'Out of Character'

Looking through my old folders, I find myself looking at 95% fantasy art. And then boom. Something like this:

lol, lol, lol.
This was a friday lunch-sketch challenge I'd done with some colleagues ( theme: Chocolate).

Anyone looking at my portfolio of work would think this highly out of character
 -- unless they've actually spoken to my silly self.

Falling upon this now reminds me that it's great to get out of your habits and muck about. Sometimes the result is something much more true to character :)

Glimmer Tree

So, I'm officially on maternity leave and the proud (tired) parent of a small creature who (albeit being wonderful) is an enormous drain on my time and energy... Who would have thought? (Only every mother who has ever existed)

I naively thought I would have a ton of free time while he slept, but, as can be discerned by my lack of posts, that's hardly the case. Don't get me wrong, this time is wonderful, magical (etc etc etc) and I'm enjoying it immensely... I'm just sad that I've lost the time for other things I love (like sleep. Oh I miss sleep...)

However--eureka!-- there's bee a small breakthrough in past days: I've discovered that I can wedge a nursing pillow into my computer chair and do a bit of loose sketching, while he snoozes away.

Just taking the time for little sketch exercises feels great (and is much more rewarding that binge-watching tv series on netflix).

Woo!

Process - Armageddon Angel

I was looking for something fun and brainless to work on during my lunches at work, and dug up some old thumbnails as a starting point.

After choosing one which I felt would allow me to play around with some bold color/contrast choices, I moved on to a grayscale sketch, checking my image flow and composition now and then to be sure I wouldn't have to rework something crucial.

From here there was a whole lot of fiddling with the pose in various sketches and getting feedback from friends and colleagues. If there is something I wish I would have spent more time on here, it would have been getting better references for the pose. A lesson to be applied on another day!

Color comp was easily the most fun part. I opted for orange/purple with high contrast.

After that it was just hacking away at the actual painting of the image. All the hard thinking was pretty much done (except for some outfit explorations).

 There's nothing too magical about the rendering phase. I work in layers, back-to-front, trying to get the 'boring' stuff out of the way early. Halfway through this part is where the doubts come in. Since the fun part, the figuring out, is already done, this is where I tend to drop an image and start another. Since I'd been doing some thinking on that lately, though, I was able to catch myself in the act and force myself to see it through (huzzah for introspection!).

Lately my main exercise is to force myself to stay loose, to keep some painterliness in the final. I failed that on the hair, where everything is rendered a bit tighter than I'd like (Poor choice of a rough brush at the midpoint required too much cleanup work), however the elbow and forearm came out, I think, quite well. Small victories :)

Much of the fantasy art that attracted me back in the day was simple, bold and almost graphic. I'm still playing around with how to integrate that into my own work, but I'm quite satisfied with the punchy-ness here. It's about as subtle as a shovel to the face, and that feels right.

Doodle!

This started out as an experiment with some of those soft feathery background brushes and ended up here... Been listening to a little too much psychobilly lately, I guess.

Beatrice Goodbrough

I had a small gap of time to fill one night this week, and went fishing through some older folders for inspiration. Some old moodboards did the trick, and I started idly doodling...

Process wasn't anything fancy here. Just a sketch and cleanup, followed by some flats, flat texture and finally some gradients and overlays. A nice break from the precise renders I usually lean towards. It's not really a fully polished piece, but fun nonetheless.

Ode to the Unfinished #1 - What makes it 'Done'?

Like every artist everywhere, I have my fair share of unfinished work.

In many cases, these images have been pushed to near-completion and lack only the finishing touches. I find myself flipping through the 'Unfinished' folder and thinking: "Why the hell don't I just... finish these?" In many cases, the ideas are pretty good, and they would make successful images (Trust me, there's another folder for the abject failures).

So what's stopping me?

Is it that I hate the final polish steps of illustration? (Because I do)
Is it because they are so old that I'd have to go back and fix so many things that I now know? (Because I would)

It's a little bit from column A, a little bit from column B, I suppose, but another realization hit me recently. I saw that whatever I was trying to accomplish and learn with a given image, whether it was how to make reflective materials, or how to set up a story within a scene, actually had been accomplished. Regardless of their level of polish, these images had given me what I was personally looking for. And ultimately, I draw and invent and create for my own knowledge and enjoyment first.

Sounds nice, right?

It is, in a way, but the flipside is that I also like to share what I do. I like interacting with others, seeing their reactions and absorbing them to improve myself. I'll be talking more of Input vs Output at a later date, but I feel there is something stagnant and stifling about creating only for yourself. You're missing out on what everyone around you can teach you through their own observations.

So what's the solution? There may be none. Perhaps it's only a matter of plowing through and finishing things before I get distracted by the next challenge. Perhaps being aware of my own subconscious intentions will change the way I work (ha.). Or perhaps I can simply share the unfinished, from time to time, and hope that the intent comes through.

In that light, here is a piece that has bee loitering in the Unfinished folder for a few years. It started as a sketch, then, after I did a few studies (of reflections on muscle cars) I started on a clean render. I got bored at some point after doing the face, and as often happens, started feeling it wasn't such a great image... something else soon caught my eye.

Is this successful? Is it done? Probably not on either count. But I did learn a few things, even if it was what to avoid in terms of design (High-heels on robots. And that abdomen. WTF). And while this would never count as show-worthy in another context, in my mind I can already see what it looks like complete, and it's as good as done.

Does that mean I shouldn't finish it? Nope.
But it does mean I've made peace with it, and the guilt that came every time I looked at that 'Unfinished' folder with a sigh. I'm over it.

Flashback Friday #2 - Search for Simplicity

I remember a time when the most intimidating thing about painting was simplicity. How to render a form or an idea with as few colors and brushstrokes as possible. It's still something I have to watch out for, and that I consciously apply in my current work:

More detail does not make the image better.

And yet even while knowing this, I'd still produce images like this one, full of photo-texture and background detail. Exhausting to work on, and with an end result that was, well... muddy. I'd be left vaguely uncertain as to whether I'd succeeded.

Almost simultaneously, I would be exploring exercises like those below, trying to force myself to do more with less. At the time, I felt them to be abysmal failures. Hardly worth a second glance. If you ask me which I prefer now... well. 

What makes these work is their readability and clear intent. It's something I've been missing the mark on during the broad explorations of style that have marked most of my work.

Perhaps only a handful of images I've created over the years (a small handful--like a two-year-old's hand) give me a level of satisfaction where I feel they really work. Or perhaps it's more fair to say: they feel like what I want to be making. None of this wishy-washy faded color high-texture stuff.

Simple, bold and legible. Images that have the guts to just be. Everything in its place because it belongs there, and nothing more.

Looking back on these old exercises, I know it's a realization I could have come to long ago, but that doesn't cause me any fuss. Every mishap and meander takes you to interesting places, and as long as you're moving ahead, it's all worth it.

Just take some time to look behind and remember where you've been :)

Flashback Friday #1 - Forgotten work

Recently I managed to re-access my previous defunct blog and, as often happens, ran across some old forgotten work. Surprisingly, it wasn't bad. Like many artists I have a pretty brutal opinion of my own work. Very rarely can I look back without cringing--even at things made weeks ago.

Considering this stuff is from the mid 00's, I'm surprised at my own reaction. Maybe because I forgot this existed? Or maybe because I can identify what I was learning then, and can appreciate the effort it took at the time. Or maybe I grew up a little and I'm willing to cut myself some slack.

What I liked about this batch is the loose story that grew around it. I've since forgotten the details, but enough of the thematic remains to get the general gist of the world I was trying to create.

I liked the grunge and desperation, the clockwork monstrosities and the dim promise of hope... but it never did evolve past a basic pretence to make some art.

Will I ever get back to this world? In all likelihood no. Like with any idea, it was quickly supplanted by something else. Which was then kicked out by another idea and another...

Often, when I have just the germs of an imperfect idea, I'll pick it up again years later, merge it with others, modify it, pull it apart and put it back together. If I'm lucky, it survives and is added to the backlog that sits in my subconscious ( and on my Trello ). But for each of those, there are dozens more that just fade away.

All those lost stories are kind of sad--so much time and potential wasted right? Wrong. Or at least I feel so. Any artist will tell you that even the pieces they discard have served to teach them something, and by the same logic, stories and themes that don't make the cut still served to develop your thought process along the way.

Besides--isn't it great to know that there are always more ideas? I know many creatives who hold onto their ideas, fearful they'll be stolen or that they won't be able to do them justice.

That's the real waste.

Get it done, get it out there--then get over it and make something else. It will be better. I promise.

Side Projects - Collaboration vs Flying Solo

So I mentioned that I'd been working on a longer-term project, and I wanted to leak a little bit of that. But first, some backstory:

I love collaborating with others, bouncing ideas off them and building creative projects that utilize everyone's strengths--that's the reason I work in video-games and would, I think, get bored as a solo freelancer. But I noticed a funny thing, over the years: Collaborative projects that I undertook, be it for a small indie game project, a board game, a comic or simply an image--never seemed to get very far.

My assumption was that having to answer to others would keep me in line. It's hard to maintain the energy and focus for a side project.

Well, you know what? It's even harder to do that with another person. Make it a small group, and you're asking for it. What you embark upon is not only a creative project, but also an exercise in relationship management.

You become the one who cajoles others into spending time on the project. You make excuses for yourself. You occasionally drop communication and return to things weeks later, and wonder why no one did anything... What I'm saying is that it requires group discipline to have all members keep their pace and enthusiasm until completion.
Does that mean it's impossible?

Heck no.

But it's something I came to see as an additional hurdle. And as much as drawing from the strengths of my talented friends and colleagues is exciting and motivating--I realized that I don't need to.

To be completely transparent here, I'm all too aware that my solo projects also struggle in the dark and slowly die away. But collaboration wasn't the answer to that. The only thing that solves problems of discipline, whether self- or group-, is just sitting butt-to-chair and doing the work.

And it's far better to scold and cajole myself, than to do so to others.

So here's a little teaser of a graphic novel I'm working on, by far the most organized project I've undertaken.

After the initial gush of inspiration, I approached it methodically, revising my drafts, getting feedback, dividing it into pages... Then I took a few hours to input everything, page by page, into Trello. I pasted in my script snippets on each card. I created checklists. I added labels to indicate which pages had tension, action, flashbacks-- In short, I got so caught up in the organization of the thing, that I I didn't realize I was putting off working on it.

Clearly, I would never be prepared enough.

It was one of my colleagues (who was also the art director who got me started in the games industry) who gave me the best advice. Just start the damn thing.

And I did.
And I've made multiple mistakes, and kept going. I've had lazy periods and periods of intense productivity. I've changed the way I do things, and stopped worrying that I wouldn't be able to draw well enough. That the story was flat.
At this point, I'm just happy to be producing. I can open the project up, see where I am, finish a page, and look at this cheery sight:

And it feels awesome.

Back from the Dead... Again

Since my last post was, quite appropriately, an apology for being absent due to work, I won't waste time repeating myself. I'm still in the same place of employment and exceedingly busy due to a promotion... and I'm about to become busier yet since I'll be going on mat leave. Life, I've noticed, doesn't slow down to let you catch up.

Excuses, whether to myself or to others, to avoid work will always abound, so it's my goal to structure my time and make the opportunities to communicate and post what I do, for those who care to follow :)

That being said, I'll be doing some thinking regarding what I'll post to this blog.

The past year and a half has effectively restored my faith in humanity (and my gaming colleagues) and I've learned a great deal about how to collaborate with such a diverse group of people. I have knowledge, creative philosophies and anecdotes to share.

At the same time, I still enjoy showing processes and the minor revelations that come when I learn something new.

...And of course, there is also some of my more narrative side-projects that have languished in the dark for too long... They need sunlight and outside opinions to grow...

I'll make no promises to change all at once--there's a word for that: overcompensation--since my previous attempts after a long absence have proved that it doesn't stick.

But I'll be around...

Greetings and Apologies!

So my best intentions of keeping this blog full of constant content went a wee bit awry. The past summer was spent on a job hunt which went rewarded in the fall, and I've basically spent the winter with my nose to the grindstone at said new (terrific!) place of employment. Now that I've fallen into a nice groove I'm crawling back to my previous online haunts and wondering why I ever left!

As such, here is my first post in yonks, a little test I did on making color thumbnails using the lasso tool. I wasn't fond of the results at the time (this dates back a bit) but looking at them now they were fun little exercises and definitely something I should try again.

Basically this is all lasso tool with rough brushes borrowed from Kekai Kotaki's set. The color palette was picked using the Kuler plugin for Photoshop.
 ...
I forget why the smiley-faces were there...

New Tricks

So I've been plowing my way through some matte-painting tutorials with the ultimate goal of improving my environment work (ah--the eternal struggle!). As a little break and reward to myself, I took a few afternoons to throw together some matte portraits. Turns out all those new techniques work smashingly for characters as well, so I'm quite tickled to add this skill to my toolbox.
 Looking forward to doing more of these as time permits!

Radiance - Process

I wanted to create an image with multiple figures, some cool FX, and a clear focal point. Usually I'm pretty sloppy and try to use shortcuts which end up being long-cuts. This was my most methodical painting yet, and I definitely feel the difference that a little (ok, a lot) of discipline makes...
Everything was done in Photoshop CS6 in a pretty darned straightforward manner.
Here's the process:


1. Thumbnail - As you can see this was a very elaborate start... erm. Ok, It's a mess. basically I was just trying to throw down the idea at this point...

2.Sketch - Also very rough. Clarified some of the shapes and added some tone so I 
could get a feel for the basic light setup.

3. Lines - Since I wanted this image to have a decent amount of detail, I took the time to make a fairly clean line drawing. Used reference for inspiration on the clothing and armor...

4. Color Comp - Slapped down some rough colors using a mix of Overlay and Color layer styles first. Definitely feeling the benefits of having read through Gurney's excellent tome: Color and Light. A must-have book...

5. Background - I separated the foreground and background into different layers so I could paint the sky and mountains freely... Used a two different cloud brushes and resisted the urge to leave some of the under-painting visible. Covering up the sketch can be scary, man...

6. Mountain - Again, separated the mountain onto its own layer and painted that in using a regular soft chalk brush. I tend to color pick from my color comp as I go (alt+click while in brush mode). This was my first time really painting with the chalk brush. I was never a fan and preferred the detail that the plain old round brush gave... that was to change halfway through the image, however...

7.Renderrrrring - Again I showed admirable fortitude (no please, hold the applause!), and separated each of the characters onto their own layer. Then it was just a matter of painting away methodically. I decided to tackle the majority of the zombies first, for fear that they might bore me to death if I left them for last. I kept myself entertained by occasionally rendering part of the wizard. It might be good to note that at this point I still felt the whole thing looked like rubbish...

8. More Rendering... - Embarked upon the epic journey of rendering all the costume details on the wizard. I hated everything at this point, but possibly because I finished this step at the wee hours of the morning. On the bright side I had a new-found appreciation of the Chalk Brush. Because it's soft and a bit messy, it lends itself better to rougher painting, something I was never really comfortable with. Hallelujah. I was a convert!

9.EPIC BLAZING SKY!! - This is the point where the image really came to life (or as my pessimistic mind puts it: started to look like it might not be so bad after all...). I did the rays on two different layers and faded them out with the airbrush where needed. Added the spiral-y business after I felt that it lacked something and used the smudge tool to break up some of the brushstrokes. An Overlay layer with some bright yellow airbrushed in helped make certain areas pop, while another on with some dark reddish brown gave some of the distant clouds a more bruised look. Pretty sure there are some sparkles in there too... I can't resist sparkles...

10. Touchups - At this point I figured I was on the homestretch. Which meant I figured... what, another half hour, right? Wrong. The finishing touches are always the longest, because there is always one more thing... and one more...

Here I fixed some of the lighting on the characters and rocks using an Overlay layer and some bright yellow. Rendered out our wizard's luscious locks as well and roughly fifty other tiny things I hadn't noticed or had been too lazy to fix the first time through.

11. Pushing it Further - luckily at this point I got some well-placed advice about the blazing light looking flat and strange being only behind the wizard. I added some beams whizzing down into the foreground. All using the chalk brush and the cloud brush from back in the beginning. Oh and my magical sparkly brush too. Bright yellow on an Overlay layer and the airbrush came into play again to punch things up (you see a theme here?). Also added some darker speckles in the sky to help the spiral pop.

I let it simmer for a few hours undisturbed and came back to it contented. Always a good idea to let things sit a bit. I did a quick Unsharp Mask, then called it a day...

So there are certainly things I learned with this one that will carry through to the next image I do. Definitely some processes that sped up my work considerably. Some parts of this I'm immensely proud of (those three zombies near the top, the FX, the backlighting on the wizard's hand, the staff and 'holy hand-grenade'). Some parts I'm not crazy about and will surely hate within the next 24 hours (seriously... that haircut...what was I thinking?)

All in all, a positive piece and much learned, and I was happy to share. Hope some of it was useful!

Generators - Process

I thought I'd post some process shots of one of my recent portfolio pieces, since I managed to streamline a few things during this one that might be of interest.

First and foremost was setting things up in Google Sketchup, which enabled me to build some simple shapes to work off of, and place a camera.

Next was cutting out each of my respective grounds (sky, background, each of the generator towers and foreground) so that I could use them as masks.

The rest was just painting as I normally do, although with a... subtler palette than my normal eye-popping rainbow hues...

With one sinking ship comes a single little life raft... or something....

Opening this one up with an image I created as logo/identity, shortly after the closure of EA Montreal. 

It could be that this was a not-so-subtle prod from my subconsciousness about my current situation--but I rather think I just like krakens and pirate ships...