Blood Makes The Grass Grow!

Done with a set palette for a weekly art challenge on tumblr.

Partners

I just got a copy of my friend Rochelle's comic and artbook in the mail. It is GORGEOUS so I feel the need to post photos.



This one was my contribution!

If you want to get a copy for yourself, it's on sale here!

3D pose + lighting ref

This was supposed to be a quick perspective reference and I got a little carried away.


I think lighting and texture are my favorite things about 3D.


EDIT: So, I received critique that my reference was too washed out, which is TRUE. I ended up upping the contrast a lot in the final, which was made in, of all things, Tegaki.


I'm not fully happy with it, as is typical, but it was a lot of fun trying out a different process. Next time I'm using Photoshop, though.

Tegaki Background

I used to participate in a Tegaki (drawing-based) RPG. I've joined another because it's basically daily drawing challenges in this little MS-paint type program. There's an option for a blog background now, so I did this little picture for that. I think her waist is a bit too small, even for the style.

Abomination

This illustration was done as a gift for a friend. It will be included in her comic/artbook as a bonus image. You can pre-order a copy right over here.

3D + Watercolor

... Because these are apparently my favorite mediums all the sudden.

This is a semi-secret project I'm working on, to learn to import into a game engine, something I don't have a lot of experience with. I extruded a cube to make this ugly object (appropriately named "testblob") to see if it would retain smoothing, UV, and texture data. It DOES.


I haven't tested maps other than a diffuse yet, though. I really want to play with self-illumination and animated textures.


I also have recently obtained some new watercolor pencils, which I love since you can get such nice results with so little mess. I wanted to test them out, so I jumped on the Arkaz IRC room and took the first suggestion I got: Narcissa, an NPC vampire from the game.


The anatomy is horrible and there's a lot I should have done differently (the color scheme, least of all...), but overall I'm pleased. I learned a lot about my tools doing this, and that was the point. :) Looking forward to using them again.

Miranda for Wiki

I finished a picture I was doing today and figured I would post my process here. This was done specifically for Andy's wiki page for Arkaz.

Thumbnail:

Sketch:

Inked lines:

Final:


The lines are done traditionally, ink on bristol paper. I spent so much time getting her legs right that her hand was very wrong initially. I ended up using tracing paper to fix her hand, then I scanned and composited it in Photoshop, then did the colors in Photoshop, because I've misplaced my watercolor pencils.

I'm happy with it for now. I really enjoy doing this style of art.

Wild Career Change

Not that wild.

Following an enlightening conversation with someone at a DigiPen alum meet, I suddenly realized that all that level design stuff I was doing for fun is something I could do for a job. Crazy!!

I'm working on fixing up my site, but in the meantime I really wanted to get something up here!

These are some areas I made for Arkaz, the NWN1 server I work on, in the Aurora toolset. It's a little old but we still have a lot of dedicated players.



These ones are from Neverwinter Nights 2 and were made for ID Tech as my demo project.




These are some screencaps of the project I'm working on right now. This is the Dragon Age toolset, which is probably both the BEST and most difficult tileset I've used so far. It has 3Ds Max-style rotation and that makes me soooo nerdily happy.




The tower is constructed from a lot of pieces of things that I'm pretty sure aren't supposed to be tower-parts. There's loads of bugs with the level but I'm working on it. I have a story planned based on tarot, should be interesting.

I've been doing this for ages and felt it was "cheating" to use a toolset so I never posted anything about it.

New Header

I did this instead of sleeping! :D Have a close up.


Would you believe I've been wanting to draw that picture since about seventh grade? Yeah.

Andy Costume Update

I think this is the version I'm going to start working from. I'm not sure if I'll keep the blue. The character is meant to have rather drab robes. However, I'm happy with the overall design.

Hopefully the next post will be a WIP low-poly model. :)

Andy Thumbs

Did a couple more this morning based on critique I received. We're heading off to the ribbon-cutting ceremony at DigiPen now, I'll keep working on it when i get back.

New Project

Hello, sketchblog!

I am beginning a new project today, with the intention of reaching a few different goals.

It'll likely be much more realistic than a lot of my work has been in the past. It's been interesting so far, but I feel bad using this much photo reference.

I'm using Andy for this, half because I know the character like the back of my hand, and half because there's a new Neverwinter coming out and I thought it would be fun to translate a character from NWN1 into current gen graphics.

Here's the first four of my thumbnails for her costume.

So far I like the "pirate" one best but I'm not sure about the boots. I want something that looks roughly like what she wears in NWN1, but past that I'm unsure.

She has the skeletal arm, a set of distinctive bracers called "Evershade" (I only drew one in the thumbs though), and supposedly, really great legs. If I can get something that showcases those things while still keeping the resemblance, I will be really happy.

EDIT: After some initial critique, I've altered her proportions slightly:

Legs a bit longer, head a bit larger.

Fairytale

Finished! Just for fun, check out the sketch that got me to paint this:

Haha!

Zach, Andy, and other mythological creatures

Forgot to update!!

I completed my contract work for BrandX Games and they have given me permission to post the final two images! This is "3D Concept art" for an unreleased and unannounced game.



The project was a little rushed, but I think it came out very well for the amount of time I had. I also taught myself ZBrush for this project, and while I'm still fairly new to the program, it's SUPER FUN to model with it and I look forward to doing more ZBrush work!

However, right now I'm trying to get this painting finished!

I think I'm getting close to "finished" but there's a lot of untouched areas here still-- check out Andy's white blob of a spellbook! I also checked my sketch and realized I read some of my lines wrong and gave Zach a huge butt, so I might try to fix that too.

Progress

I can't believe I forgot to put this here!



I applied some critique from some other artists, particularly on minor tweaks to the anatomy, and I'm working on detailing and better defining the forms now.

My current project for BrandX is due to be finished on Monday, though, so I'm a little busy with that and can't work on this right now. I'll hopefully get some time to finish this up next week. :)

Fairytale Colors - From Scratch

So, remember this?

I took another look at it today and all I could think was, "wow, this looks awful." So, I ditched everything but my linework and started over completely on the colors. I entirely threw out what I was trying to do and worked differently, and I think it's a better painting for it. Here's what I have so far:

I think it has more life this way. Obviously it'll require a lot of work still, that's very roughed in, I just wanted to get the colors and lighting right off the bat. I also threw it into greyscale to see how it looked, and I'm much, much, much more happy with how my eyes flow along it now.

I'm excited about this, because I had gotten stuck and stopped working on it entirely. I'm really happy to get it going again. :)

progress and lost lighting

This might have been slightly ambitious given the amount of available time I have right now. Anyway, I've finally got Zach's face to a level where I don't cringe to look at him, I've put in the base of a sword and some placeholder lightning. I had some blue light on them from the placeholder lightning, but accidentally closed the file without saving it, so that will have to be redone. I've also adjusted the seams on Andy's robe in the sketch so that it actually makes sense... might seem like a small tweak, but it was driving me insane.

I think their hair will stay as-is until I get the clothes to a more complete level, since I'll probably end up with some flyaway strands on the clothing and I think it will be more efficient just to do that once.


Here's what it looked like with the blue lighting I lost. The previous picture is more recent and has some tweaks to Zach's face to make him look a little better.

Andy & Zachary WIP

I've posted some art of Andy/Miranda before, but it's all been little sketches. Well, recently I liked one of them enough to clean up.

The anatomy is entirely horrible here, but I liked the pose, so I scanned it in.


Here's the reference I'm working off of, by the way. Neverwinter Nights, quite old game, but still very good.


After a lot of sketching and redoing and moving things around, here's what I've got so far! The image got flipped since Zach's right handed and Andy's left hand is important, I'm not sure what I was thinking doing it the other way to begin with. The lines are more of a guide, I plan to remove them in the end. Oh, and I had no reference of Zach's sword, so I put off drawing it. I have some reference now, so that will probably be in the next version.


This is a better idea of what it'll look like in the end. :D She looks like a Disney character to me, but I'm cool with that.

Rriilp Update

So, remember that water creature painting I was doing? When the computer crashed, I misplaced him deep inside my reference folder. I found him yesterday! Obviously, still a WIP, but this version looks a little better than the last one I posted.


I'm tempted to redo his feet, and I'm beginning to believe he needs more jewelry. Opinions?

Andy Rough & Flying Saucer

So, since last time I posted, I had a major computer crash. I'm posting from a new desktop now, because my laptop will no longer even turn on. I've recovered all my data, thankfully, and the new setup is quite a bit nicer! I'm looking forward to having Photoshop again.

In the meantime, I've just been doodling a lot at work. I'll scan some more later, but I wanted to show my favourite at the moment:

This is Miranda Rose, a character I've been playing on a Neverwinter Nights game. This is just a doodle that I coloured up with col-erase, but I'm pleased with the composition, so I think I might make a redo my first Photoshop project with the new computer!

I've also been commissioned with my good friend Bryanna to do some advertising animations for a local pizza place. I'll post what I can for that here, in the meantime, check out Flying Saucer.