Tablet FTW

Recently I purchased a new tablet because I heard about a nice little app called Procreate.

Unfortunately I had to purchase an iPad 4 because it was only available in iOS.

You see, I would have much rather gotten an android tablet, such as the Nexus 10, if only because I've already invested in quite a few Android apps.  I also like that there is quite a bit more freedom in Android.

The iPad does have a really good contrast ratio though and that makes it good for this sort of thing. Though not nearly as good as a decently calibrated monitor.

At first I was worried that I wouldn't make much use of it, but fortunately, I now think it was one of the best purchases I've made in a long time.


Because now I can draw anywhere, and draw the way I want to!

Here are some quick sketches done to get a sense of the whole thing.


I did use some other apps as well.  I find that I prefer roughing things out in Brushes or Sketchbook Mobile. So I have been using those apps a lot too.

2013 - This Time I'm Going To Do It My Way

That was a bit of a lengthy holiday I just had. It's now a new year and I am very hungry to get back at this art thing, and especially Who Needs the Moon.

For quite some time now I have been working pretty exclusively with MyPaint. However, I have been looking at the work of others and wondering how to achieve some of the things that they have done.  There are limitations to what the MyPaint brushes can do at this point.

MyPaint is amazing, but it does lack a lot of the functionality of Photoshop.  But then I did recall that I was using the Gimp for image based brushes before I moved on to MyPaint.  So I started fooling again with the Gimp's painting features, which by the way, would be a hell of a lot better if the application recognized my Monoprice tablet.

I was thinking of book cover concepts and came up with this.

And here are the results, after brainstorming the forested world of Duskland. Where some day my character Lampy will adventure in.

I hope you like it.  Happy New Year.

Spread the Open Source Love

Here is a screenshot of blender in action with work created by me.

So it's come to my attention that I should probably let people know what apps I use.
If you happened upon this blog, you might be under the impression that I use expensive software to get this done. Maybe you think, he should have!

I used to, when I worked for other people. And I imagine, should I get hired on full time again, I'll be using it again.

But it doesn't need to be that way.

I currently work with open source software.

All 3D work I do is done in the amazing program provided by the Blender Foundation.

BLENDER



All digital paint work I do is done with the awesome, MyPaint.

MyPaint



All image manipulation work I do is currently done using the GIMP. It needs help to get to the next version!

GIMP



All virtual lighttable work I do, is currently done using Darktable.

DARKTABLE



Video Editing is done using Kdenlive.

KDENLIVE



Openshot looks promising though.

OPENSHOT

And yeah. I work in a free operating system environment.

UBUNTU

But there are other nice looking linux distros out there that are starting to catch my eye.


Alchemy

Harmony

great sketching tools. Which you may already know about.

Lampy Illustration

In a world of darkness and lost souls, everyone wants to steal another being's light.

Posing test

Learning to RIG better

I'm in the process of once again switching directions.

The comic is on hold. But not indefinitely. As I've gotten again familiar with the science of rigging a character and familiarizing myself with Blender's animation tools I've become more interested in turning the comic into an animated work.

That being said I still want to work on it in comic form. It's something that I just NEED to do.

The story needs to be improved anyways.

So for now, it's all about Lampy and his encounter with this big dumb schmuck.

Sketch 6

start of a storyboard

Background Painting

This is a fairly quick background painting, for my toony short. The buildings are almost placeholder because I may want more details as I zoom in.



I'm trying to figure out what process I'll be going through in order to complete my short. I am also trying to figure out how I will be working on things in the future. It looks as though a good mix of 3d and 2d is a great way to work on things when you work alone.