Some Old Work Back Online

The following work below was once shown online at my old site.  I abandoned the old school method of paying for a url, when I realized I was making little to no money and the blog sites were a good alternative.

I felt I needed to post some of the better work that used to be shown there.

Experiments in Design and Composition

So I am fooling around with design and composition. At the very least I am trying to wrap my head around it better.

For some reason I seem to be up against a brick wall with the Lampy short, and so I've been working on other things as an escape from the circles in my thought process.

I just can't seem to make up my mind on where to take it. I could just go ahead and create a silly action short that consists of a fight between Lampy and Bubba, but I don't feel that I would be very faithful to the world that I am trying to create for them, and I doubt anyone would even take notice.

There is a deeper experience to Lampy that I would like to bring out. It's not immediately apparent on the surface, but I think that it is worth striving towards.

As for the werewolf graphic novel(OH! hoity toity), I think these little exercises will help get me into a frame of mind over time to help me tackle that story better too.

These following two images are poster doodles. I was just blocking out strokes on the computer - hoping something interesting would pop out that I could pounce on and take somewhere.

This is what came about of that. I didn't bother with any kind of standardized poster size. Maybe these look more like old book covers. At least that is what I am starting to see while posting this.

These two "thumbnails", or at least what started out as thumbnails, were me working through the FPS ideas that have been floating around in my head for some time.

Again not really trying to do accomplish anything except rip something creative out of my head.

I stuck with gray scale in these images because I didn't really want the hassle of trying to figure out colours. To be honest I think my eye for colour can be somewhat lacking, so this was really an exercise in composition, dramatic tone and narrative.

These were all done using the super awesome, free and open source painting program called MyPaint.

Who Needs Posters

The comic book isn't dead.

However, my ideas concerning the story and anti-hero have changed.

The more I've thought about the protagonist, the more I've altered him in my mind, and I'm starting to get a clearer picture of who he is and what would make him tick.

If the kids let me, I plan on sketching things out even more.

 So... I worked on some poster ideas to get things going a few days back. I wanted something graphic and reminiscent of an older era of design.

Parental Leave

This is my best work.

While I'm not busy with them (which is usually never), I'm trying to squeeze in some time to draw something, anything really. Although I haven't found the time to do much at all. Usually, I'm exhausted and not quite feeling all that creative in the evenings when I am a little more free. During the day however my brain does wander from time to time and the stories in my mind get better and better. Here are some 30 minute sketches that I threw together in MyPaint, with maybe a little post here and there in the GIMP. The main focus was just colour and light.

Even More

This is an image dump of 3d work that I've created for personal projects over the last little while.

Another Image Dump

This is an image dump of comic related artwork that I've created for personal projects over the last little while.

Image Dump

Website is gone. Why pay money for hosting when there is so many great - and free - alternatives.  Sure I lost all contacts and any traffic ( if any ) that my website had generated, but this is better in the long run.

I NEED the next Half Life Installment

In the meantime I have played and finished the game again, including episode 2. I didn't really care for episode 1 at the time. But maybe this is a good time to revisit it and see if I was wrong about it.
I've played some good mods too.

http://www.moddb.com/mods/research-and-development




http://www.moddb.com/mods/mission-improbable

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.

The Power of Good Colour Choices

I feel it might be re-hashing a whole lot of stuff that other poeple have gone on and on about over the years.

They've talked about the importance of colour and I have ignored the advice every time.

Recently though I smartened up.

I was going through Nick Cross' Blog reading about his process after watching his fantastic short - Pig Farmer

The Pig Farmer from Nick Cross on Vimeo.

He mentions to, "Never underestimate the value of using gray." It finally got me thinking hard about how I paint and use colour.

So I created a palette with a whole lot of grey values, and threw in more saturated versions and other tones.



It has made a world of difference. Until you start working with greys, you don't realize how colourful they can actually be. What's more, when you add a more saturated value over top, you can start to play light more easily, direct the eye better, make your image more dynamic and create interest.

I, personally feel that it has made a big difference in my paintings already. As I become more comfortable it, I can only get better at it.

Lampy Illustration

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

Fate of the World

Below is just a selection of the achievements I created for Red Redemption's Fate of the World.  Overall I am very happy with the way they turned out. They were created efficiently and quickly with MyPaint, and later cropped and some post work done with the GIMP.

I had the opportunity last week to work on 20 achievements for the up and coming game "Fate of the World". Prior to getting the work, I didn't know all that much about the title.

After getting some descriptions for the achievements and learning a bit more information on what the game is about, I am now very intrigued.

It's due out next month. So keep your eye on it.

Fate of the World

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.

Sketch 3 & 4

Guess this is more difficult to keep updating than I thought.

This is for a short film I am working on.



My 22 month old son and I did this one together.