Bendragon Art

Forest Mother

2012-01-13T10:56:00.002Z

Something in a cutout style. The process was actually quite similar, I mashed together some old paintings to create a texture. This was then just cut and pasted together to create the foliage and then I saw a figure in the chaos and this is where I took it.

Happy New Year

2012-01-13T01:20:00.002Z

Hello blog people! Its a new year and Im excited with what the future holds xD So lets kick things off with a painting. As you might have noticed with my recent posts, I have been in an environment mood. I have found that science fiction is a subject that is a little lacking in my folio so I will be looking to address that. Its a continuous effort to better ourselves!!!!!!

Invaders

2011-12-17T00:55:00.001Z

Revision!

2011-12-15T12:07:00.001Z

Slight change of angle. Previous one was too straight-on as a colleague pointed out.

Sector C

2011-12-14T13:44:00.000Z

Planetary Brothers

2011-12-14T00:50:00.002Z

Something quick and fun. The siblings Earth and Kepler off to school together... or should I say... universe-ity? Ey? Ey? *tumbleweed*

Matte Painting - City

2011-12-09T17:15:00.002Z

Quite enjoying doing these matte paintings. Maybe more to come then!

The Gate

2011-12-06T13:56:00.001Z

Boo! Now that Skyward Sword is completed, its back to some much needed updating!

Black and White

2011-12-01T17:01:00.002Z

Quick sketches whilst waiting for feedback. Originally started out as some test for some of my brushes.

Christmas!!!!!!

2011-11-30T14:18:00.003Z

A little early for this buuuuuuuuut I wanted to wish the readers on here a Merry Christmas!!!!!
This was fun to make. I have been looking into artwork made for animation a bit recently which influenced the look of this piece. Before starting this I was wondering how I wanted the rendering to be done, whether to let the drawing do the work or the painting. In the end I decided to keep a prominent drawing and so the paint work would have to sit back a bit, so the form and contrasts are a little more washed out. Trying to go for a tight render with all that outline from the drawing will conflict with the form you try to convey with painting so I let that stay simple here.
You may have wondered where I have been with the updates... well one of the excuses is the new Zelda game, Skyward Sword! Its an early Christmas present hehe and its been fantastic so far! I feel like a little boy again :P

Left Handed

2011-11-08T01:01:00.006Z

Left handed drawing done for the AIB Jumble blog. Started off in the program 'Alchemy' before tidying it up in Photoshop with the lasso and gradient tools. Rather than fight the messy nature of drawing with the wrong hand I decided to go for a technique that would be all about the chaotic shapes.

Siren

2011-11-07T21:33:00.002Z

Today I have been off sick... damn rainy days during Bonfire night! But I tried to keep myself productive and entertained whilst on the mend. Again I have been experimenting with a different style. I have been surrounding myself with concept art and digital paintings that I have slightly gone tired of the same techniques and subjects, or I just need to take a break and refresh myself. That led me to looking into other creative avenues for my art. I have been looking into illustrations more these days and recently the work of McBess has had an impact on me. You can probably see his influence in this piece. There is something pleasing about these character's proportions and wavy limbs. They borrow a look from rubber hose animation but add something different to it that makes it a little bit eerie. Coupling our nostalgia for old cartoons with surrealism sure does make a juxtaposition that sticks with us. McBess' evolved rubber hose animation style is one reason why I think artist studies are useful. You copy someone else's style, take whats useful and discard what is not and make it your own.
Oh and I just want to dedicate this piece to my buddy Luis Migel who is all the way in Portugal far from his art buddies but is still keeping up his practices and kicking ass! Thanks for kicking me up the ass too and pestering me to post something. It worked \m/
Annnd in other news... I have been selected into my forth Ballistic Publishing book. This time I will be in the d'Artiste book series. This volume is 'fashion design' which will feature that painting I did with the lady dressed like a bird. If I was allowed to design clothes for people to wear thats what Id do :P

Current WIP

2011-10-27T14:09:00.001+01:00

Been working on this on and off but I thought I'd show what I have been doing since it has been a while since I finished any of my personal pieces.

Favelados

2011-10-14T00:07:00.002+01:00

Another grad film remake. This time its Favelados which I worked on during my first year of university. Ah memories :)

Barry and Ice-bots

2011-10-12T23:42:00.001+01:00

Some characters to go with the van in the previous post. Redesigned from my freind's film Barry's Ices.

Barry's Ices

2011-10-12T00:11:00.003+01:00

Sorry sorry sorry sorry!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I know I've been away and haven't updated in ages. I have been moving house and also been slacking a bit too I have to admit. But lets try this again shall we?

Here is something for the AIB Jumble blog. It is my take on my friend's grad film "Barry's Ices" as the topic is to return to our old grad films. But I have already done a number of versions of my grad film and have looked into those themes a lot already that I want to leave it for a bit and do something different.

Oh, and a few work news.... Check out this new trailer for the Puss In Boots game that Blitz Games have been cooking up. It looks good!

Also on November, my first game will be published in the shape of Michael Phelps: Push the Limit. But the big exciting news Im afraid I cant say :( You will have to wait till this time next year...

Matte Painteeeeeeeerrrrrrr!!!!!!!

2011-08-29T23:57:00.001+01:00

Some updates from the matte painting front.

3D renders

2011-08-29T23:54:00.002+01:00

Some renders I forgot to upload. Old models I made a few weeks ago but with some new renderings using VRay.

Oh and a little bit of news for you... I will be featured in Ballistic Publishing's next book Exotique 7. So keep an eye out for it's release hehe /PLUG

Sculptris Doodles

2011-08-16T21:28:00.002+01:00

Here is a head sculpt I did in Sculptris that I then took into Photoshop to render up. You can probably see some difference in proportion when it gets painted. I will need to be more precise with the tools in Sculptris but that will come over time with experience I am sure :)

Mechabeast

2011-08-16T00:38:00.003+01:00

Enemy bio-mechanical weapon! I enjoyed playing around with these big shapes to construct a pleasing silhouette. The aim here was to make a design that felt new and try veer away from a generic sci-fi look.

Spider Submarine

2011-08-11T16:58:00.004+01:00

More SketchUp fun!

Matte Painting

2011-08-09T23:14:00.003+01:00

Something I haven't posted a lot of is matte painting. I have done my fair share of photo manipulation at work when we pitch games that utilizes photos. So here you go with some matte painting XD

"I hate humans"

2011-08-08T00:17:00.002+01:00

I have been in quite an experimental mood of late playing with SketchUp, custom tools and alpha channels and now I decided to go back to some weird abstract paintings.

Tank Paintover

2011-08-07T19:30:00.002+01:00

From the SketchUp model we get a paintover! The model was rendered out as linework and then as a multiply layer in Photoshop. The rest is simply a paint job.

SketchUp Tank

2011-08-07T01:34:00.002+01:00

I have been looking into SketchUp more recently and thinking of how I can utilize this software in my concept work. I modeled these with reference to a model I downloaded, broke down and reverse engineered. After I saw what components made up the tank I had a go at constructing one myself. Later on I will do a painting from the SketchUp model and guide you through the process.

The Frog Prince

2011-08-03T23:40:00.002+01:00

It is complete :) There was a lot of change in direction when I was trying to balance details with space. I started out painting the water and got some nice details down but then after a while I thought it was fighting with the figure for attention and ultimately repainted most of background. Recently I have been experimenting with different techniques and am pretty excited about them. I have been trying to incorporate custom shapes into my work more and I also have some new discoveries in SketchUp. I will post more about them later.

Frog Prince WIP3

2011-07-28T23:44:00.000+01:00

Some more progress...

Frog Prince WIP2

2011-07-25T00:36:00.002+01:00

I haven't spent much time on this piece since the last update but theres been some changes involved so I thought I would keep this place updated with how this is going. I softened some of the texture of the water and added some lily elements in there to keep the space from being too empty and it also provides some nice colour variation. I can use the lilies to echo the red-ish colours of the girl's garment all over the composition so it doesn't look too odd that she is the only warm colour in the painting. But looking at it now, I think some of the value of the lilies as they drift off into the distance is too strong and dont sit well in the environment. More tinkering on the way then...

Techscape

2011-07-24T01:14:00.002+01:00

Today's lil painting combining some of the tricks I have learnt recently that makes use of custom shapes, photo textures and the lighten or darken layer blend option. Quick and dirty so you can look forward to more shortly :)

Lab

2011-07-21T22:52:00.003+01:00

Again, I have been experimenting some more and from my laboratory I produced this! Last night I read up on Sparth's custom shape technique and was very intrigued by his approach. When I get more comfortable with it I will talk more in detail about this approach.

Oh and I am again tempted to render this out a bit more :P We will see if I get round to it or start something new...

Robotiqz

2011-07-20T00:47:00.002+01:00

I haven't drawn a robot in a while so why not give it a go? I think I will work into this one some more but for now... have a good night everybody XD

EDIT: Some colours added...

Street Punk

2011-07-17T23:11:00.003+01:00

I like to keep experimenting with a new approach to my artwork and they often yield some decent results that you can keep in your arsenal. Here I had an idea to mix more photo textures in the process. This is the more generic design that I will use as a base for other iterations which I will show when I get round to it :) I would have liked to work on this more but was away for the weekend just when I was feeling creative hehe.

Studies

2011-07-15T01:20:00.001+01:00

I like anatomy, you like anatomy, we all like anatomy... (studies from photo and books)

Frog Prince WIP1

2011-07-14T01:18:00.002+01:00

Work in progress shot of a painting I am working on for the Bobby Chiu and CGHub contest where the brief is to retell a fairytale with a new spin. I thought about which fable to go with for some time and decided on the frog prince story, reasons being it offered interaction between multiple characters and a mix of human and creature designs. I know I have done ancient asia themed pieces a number of times before but I jumped on the idea when I thought of showing the prince as an overgrown Chinese money frog. More steps to follow and some earlier phases maybe...

Er... Onimitsu again, everybody!

2011-07-13T19:46:00.002+01:00

Ok ok so there were some problems that stood out to me, I just cant leave these things alone sometimes :P Most noticeably the background changed because the character was getting lost in it, there was too much detail and the values clashed with the figure. here I tried adding more depth, dropped in some textures before painting over them again.

Lunch Time!

2011-07-13T01:24:00.002+01:00

Ah I might as well post this too... something cooked up during lunch. Was referencing a photo of a road loosely and used some photo bushes for textures.

Onimitsu

2011-07-12T23:16:00.002+01:00

Hey folks! Well its been on hold and kept in storage for such a long time but I dug the old Yoshimitsu redesign painting I left unfinished and attacked it with a brush! I think I learned a few things from this piece, it was good to move away from this painting for a while and come back with eyes and mind refreshed.

Interior

2011-07-03T19:26:00.004+01:00

Welcome to my room... ok I made that up! I have been experimenting a bit here with incorporating photos into my work and also keep the painted elements on a par with the detail level. Enjoy the rest of the day :D

Photo Manipulating Creature Concept

2011-06-23T19:39:00.005+01:00

Since I haven't posted much of these kind of concept art on my blog I though I'd shed some light on how this creature came into existence! Something you probably did not know is that I had made a previous attempt at showing off this technique but failed because I was too eager to dive in and get working that I didnt even have an idea what it was that I was concepting. So that was quickly thrown to the bin and I did a quick drawing to give myself a direction. Most of the time its important to plan what it is you are working on, it will save a lot of stress and brain power on the long run :P The only exception to planning is speedpainting where you set out to discover the piece as you go along which I think makes it harder to pull off than people think (maybe I will talk more about speedpainting in a future update).

With the drawing giving us a plan I start gathering some photo textures and cut and pasted them together to make a texture base. I was looking for textures that has a flat lighting so that I can control it later. I used the warp transform to shape the textures to follow the contours of the creature's form and to make some monstrous deformation as seen on the head piece. A lot of the textures had to be desaturated and colour balanced to give all these different cut outs unity. There was hardly any painting done at this stage but you can see a few form shadows I couldn't help but drop in, but nothing huge.

Once that is done I flatten it down to one layer and set it to 'overlay' blend mode. I then add a new layer below it and paint the lighting in, adding shadows and a tiny bit of highlight (dont go too crazy with the strength of these or they will look really fake). Its easier to make a mask around the creature so you can paint freely at this stage.

With all that done I then flatten the image down begin to paint on top of the image. This is where I will fix oddities in the photo comp like where there are odd transitions and if I just want to change something completely like the mouth piece. I added some red patches around the body using a 'hard light' layer to echo the reds on the head, again this is to ensure there is a unity to the design so that you dont look at head and think it doesn't belong to this creature.

Zoanoid

2011-06-23T01:05:00.003+01:00

Trying out a new technique using lots of photographs knitted together to make a texture base then set it to an overlay layer and painted the lighting on the layer under it. Then I collapsed it all and painted over the top. Quite a handy trick for quick concepts.

Towers

2011-06-17T14:06:00.001+01:00

Speed paint :)

Master Toad

2011-06-16T22:52:00.003+01:00

Hey folks! I saw Kung Fu Panda 2 the other day and felt inspired to do my take on a potential bad guy character. I was telling my friends how I liked that the villain in the new film was not an obvious animal choice. In the first one you had an intimidating beast but in the new film the baddie is a peacock but somehow I think it works. The peacock at first might look harmless and physically incapable of challenging Po but he is always out there diligently trying to kill him which makes feel a bit psychotic for placing his mission to defeat our hero ahead of his own capability to match him. From a talk with my friends I suggested trying to come up with another enemy lined to grapple with Po. I wanted to go with another animal that naturally doesnt fit the bill of being a bad guy and is rooted in Chinese tradition too. I had a Chinese figurine of a three-legged frog on my desk which gave me this idea. There are elements of a kirin with its head design and piercings that echo the rings on the 9 ringed broadsword. One of the difficulty with this character design was working around the toad's sunken head. It would have been preferable to give the head a clear silhouette which can help the character emote but I tried to work round this and frame the head as much as I can.

Last week I was at the Annecy animation festival. It was my 5th year in a row there! As always I loved being there and meeting people with a common interest and ambition. One of these days I shall have to learn the language since I frequent France so much! Will next year be a 6th year in a row?

Dust City

2011-05-31T19:24:00.002+01:00

Some more speedpainting. Ive been working on a few speedpaints lately but some of them I think I managed to either overwork or jumped in without any idea of what I want to do which meant it turned out below what I wanted. But these crap pieces were essential in reminding myself to not over complicate things and this turned out better because of that lil lesson. More to come :)

Speedy Speed Boy

2011-05-29T22:20:00.001+01:00

Some experimenting with brushes

Link Rework

2011-05-22T01:41:00.001+01:00

Reworked this old piece and added a background to it as well as some rim light diluting :D

Motorcade

2011-05-21T20:04:00.003+01:00

An album cover commissioned by my friend's band Motorcade. Happy listening :)

Oh.... and if you are up for some drawing and socializing with fellow artists from around the country we have organized a sketch meet in Oxford on June 18th. Its a nice and friendly event for professionals, students and enthusiasts alike. Theres been a lot of turn out over the years and a lot of network and friends made so its worth a look in. For more details follow this link.

Shadow

2011-05-17T20:15:00.002+01:00

A sketch I did this lunch break, worked up a bit more afterwards. More quick ones to follow. Time to step it up!

Speed Paint Landscape

2011-05-16T01:00:00.002+01:00

Heeeellllllllllloooooo folks! Its been a while, had a couple weeks holiday traveling around Hong Kong and China and Im back filled with some inspiration. To make up for my lack of posts here I quickly painted this in one sitting (took about 2 hours). Plans for the future: get more paintings uploaded gawddammit!!!!!!!!! Stay tuned!

Get the Gist - Studies after Erik Gist

2011-04-14T21:53:00.006+01:00

Gotta keep up with the studies my friends :) Ive been pointed to some of the drawings of Erik Gist and felt they had a lot of quality in them that I would like to capture myself. Sooo I did some studies to investigate what I like about the way he interprets his figures hoping to add what ever I liked to my own method of drawing. This is like Jeet Kune Do in the concept that you try out different styles and techniques and absorb what is useful, add it to yourself and discarding what is not useful. My tutors and education encouraged me and my classmates to study other artists and I share that opinion that it is a great way to learn to draw.

We all have a arsenal of shapes in our memory to call upon to construct our artwork (a visual library). And the more we observe and use reference the informed our visual vocabulary will be. I don't believe we are a lesser artist if we do use reference and have to observe nature first because those observations will be with you all the time and stored in your head ready to be used for the next drawing you make. The less informed you are in your drawing the more you make assumptions of what something looks like (which makes us liars :P). Do not worry that reference will be a clutch to you, it will be a clutch if you let it dictate you rather than use it as... well... reference... a guideline. Just look at the artist Gil Elfgren's reference shots compared to his paintings. After lots of observation maybe you will find your drawings from memory without reference will get a boost. Let the reference inform you but not control you :)

Funny enough... when I was thinking about this post there were other blog posts talking about the same thing but they probably said it better than me so here are the links: Learning to Draw (Art Center) and Muddy Colors. Oh and a friend pointed me to this site full of arty podcasts: Paper Wings Podcast. I havent gotten round to giving it a listen myself but I thought I share this as I am sure it will be interesting to kind of people who visit here hehe. One final thing. I thought I'd start sharing with you the artist or influences of the day like I used to way back. For today I looked at Erik Gist's work of course and also those of Charles Gibson. He is another person I did some studies of (back in my first and second year of university) and I liked the way he draws noses which I have adopted myself :P

Life Drawings

2011-04-11T23:38:00.002+01:00

Since its been a while and feeling a bit empty in here I scanned in a few of the last pages of my life drawing sketchbook. I looked through the rest of the book to find something to scan but since they are all old drawings I kinda hate seeing them now hehe. There is still a few things (OK, actually there are loads) I need to work on like line quality (stop with the indecisive and harsh lines already!), and conveying depth a lot better too (tonal weight from foreground to background and line weight). There will be more slow updates as I am off on a few holidays the coming few months.

Strange Sumo

2011-04-02T22:43:00.003+01:00

A lil mess about :P Thought about expanding my creativity a bit more and look outside drawing and painting my usual thing. I had an idea to take photographs and paint in something odd in there. The original photograph is not owned by me.

Yoshimitsu WIP #3

2011-03-31T00:16:00.004+01:00

Some colours applied. Should have kept working on the grayscale but I got a lil bored so I jumped a step forward. Im most likely going to work up the values more.

Yoshimitsu WIP #2 - Onimitsu

2011-03-30T00:56:00.002+01:00

More work on the demon samurai Onimitsu!!!!!! The first pic is what I had yesterday before I showed it to some of my work colleagues. It was pointed out that the pose was way too stiff for their liking and so I tried to correct that. Despite some of the progress in the previous drawing sometimes you just have to scrap it if it means getting a better result :D

Skelanimals in the Office

2011-03-23T22:09:00.002Z

Just got these keychains delivered recently for that old painting I did that came runner up in one of the Sketchoholics contest. I think I might take a lil snap shot of what my work desk is like if people want to see more of it. Maybe I'll show off my set up at home too if it wasnt such a mess harhar.

Drawing in Photoshop

2011-03-23T21:19:00.006Z

I wanted to show how I draw on Photoshop for a while and since the Shiek drawing got some good feedback I decided to use this one as an example. Here we goooo....

1,2,3) I often start out with some gestural thumbnails. Forget about anatomy for a slight moment and just concentrate on the pose, the energy and the action. This stage is all about getting an interesting feeling and direction to build on top of so it is quite an important stage as it dictates your whole drawing. It is the quickest phase but one of the most important in the planning. I opted for thumbnail #3 at the end. I think the raised arm across the body had a lot of authority to it especially with the head tilted down but with eyes looking up. The legs I wanted to be posed in a dynamic way as if the character is hanging in mid air which helps to show her attitude as an agile ninja. 4) As I said before, drawing alternates between gesture to structure to gesture to structure etc. With the foundation set I try to add some structure back into the gestural movement. In other words I start to build the anatomy into the gesture. 5) With the structure down I add the gesture back into it. It is easy to make something look stiff when you put anatomy into something so this part is about editing what part of the anatomy to show and what not to and also to add some movement into the forms (get some curves and striaghts in where the form turns etc). 6) Now I start the drawing that will appear on the surface. The construction is all but done. I start to think about the costume sitting on the character. 7) The legs was bugging me for a long time and I decided to explore alternatives to it so I turned to the quick way of solving a problem.... thumbnails! I felt the upper and lower body didnt look like the same pose as if they were both cropped together from two separate ones. 8) With the legs decided I draw back in the anatomy and the gesture. I also tilted her shoulders the other way to balance the pose. Generally the shoulders and pelvis tilt the opposite directions to counterbalance each other, however the character is hanging in the air so that law doesnt necessarily apply. 9) Some slight tinkering with the legs. It had too many straight edges and needed simplifying more. Also I toned down the exaggerated obliques that dangles off the illiac crest (pelvis) 10) Back to drawing the surface again. This isnt quite finished yet but the process from here on is a repeat of the ones I already listed so you should get an idea of how I draw now.

NOTE: Ah almost forgot to mention. Whilst I was drawing this I had an anatomy book by my side if I needed to check up on how muscles are bundled together in the legs and arms. I also had an anatomy manikin by my desk to reference so dont feel like you should do this without reference. It can be easily ignored but it is one of my secrets to improving. You constantly have to call upon what you know already (your visual library) but if you havent observed enough then your visual library will be thin and you will have little knowledge of shapes to call upon. Using reference helps me to observe and so I will always be discovering some new shapes rather than guessing.

Oh and one final thing.... I found this on the internet and thought it was spot on and wanted to share it here. Another thing I wanted to post about is why I draw. I have a job already but I still draw in my own time. I want to try explain it one day... Have fun doing what you love, friends!

Yoshimitsu WIP #1

2011-03-23T00:45:00.003Z

A few of my colleagues are entering a cg competition on Polycount to redesign a character from a fighting game. The community is primarily a 3d one but I felt too excited by all the talks of what each of us were going to do that I had to go do my own version and not feel so left out :P I picked Yoshimitsu from the Tekken series to redesign. I have also shortlisted Hsien-Ko from Darkstalkers and V-13 from Blazblue to do but I might also work on those when this one is finished.

My direction with this version of Yoshimitsu is to reinvent him as an oni but suited up in samurai gear. So the human proportion was ditched for more of an ogre build, looking back at this now I think a part of that is lost under the armor so I will have to tinker with this some more. I elongated the torso and arms to try give it a bulky upper body though it might need to be pushed some more and I think adding more hair/ mane will help and perhaps a little tail too. Also I did plan to add a flaming circle emblem behind his head quite like ones you would find from an oriental statue of a deity.

Link Progress

2011-03-22T00:41:00.003Z

Its been a while since Ive done some tutorials and shared some information. Lets take a look at the Legend of Zelda painting. I saved a few steps so that i could go back to them but towards the end I worked on the same file so there is a sudden jump in the rendering. I usually save new files for big changes and usually these happen near the start, the reason the last parts jump in rendering is because a lot of the problems are already solved in the beginning so that I feel confident enough to just work in one file. Here we go...

1) Started off with some thumbnails, focusing on silhouette with some slight suggestion of what the details could be. 2) With the thumbnail chosen I began drawing the proper piece. But I am not liking it very much, the face is bad and the chest is flat. 3) So I lowered the opacity of the drawing and began to draw over it on a new layer. I threw on some hints of value help me keep an eye on the silhouette. 4) Drawing done! Now I have a stronger direction of what to do. With the anatomy put down that is one less to think about. The design is mostly solved in the drawing which is yet another thing I can worry less about. The lighting is suggested here with some basic values. when I colour a grayscale I dont bother to get tight with the black and white values as they will eventually be changed by the colouring layers anyway. From experience I tend to find it best to keep the value drawing low in contrast and leave yourself room to change the contrast later. Layers like overlay and multiply can push your contrast way over the top if you go too far. 5) My prime colouring layer is the 'hard light' layer. I just find it works for me when I have a low contrast grayscale drawing. The colour added in this step is all done on the 'hard light' layer. 6) Now I am pushing the contrast some more. I use multiply layers for shadows and overlays for highlights. The overlay layer also lets me add in some colour variety and noises to make things a little more interesting to look at. Since I worked on a low contrast grayscale, I now have the room to control my values. I have lost control of values in my early works and its a lesson Ive learned so now I am always aware and trying to be deliberate with how strong my darks and lights are. Leave nothing to chance or coincidence! Be deliberate! 7) Just continuing the previous steps into the areas I didnt colour yet. Now I flatten the layers down and work on the image on normal layers. Be aware that using overlays and all the other layers to colour an image doesnt give you a realistic light and colour look. I use this colouring grayscale method as a starting point rather than an end. So once your foundations are set, flatten it and paint on it like its a normal canvas. 8) Most of the problems are solved, the blue print is layed out. Now comes the some what tedious and long rendering process. Just paint out the forms, paint the forms of spheres, cylinders and cubes where the forms resemble those shapes. I add a strong rim light to pop the character some more. And went into the levels tab to up the contrast. 9) Again with the same old rendering. No fancy tricks. Just a round brush. A few texture overlays for the shield metal finish and colour dodge layers to the jewels glow. I used the lasso a few times to paint freely whilst keeping a solid silhouette (example in the sword). Since the layer is all flat I cut the character out of the background with the eraser to keep the edges sharp and clean. Shadow done with a single soft brush stamp mark that I skew and transform into place. But dont just leave it like that! Work into it somewhat to knit it into the character. There are darker regions where the light can not reach under his boots etc. 10) Finishing up the last few unrendered parts. Added some text and logo to accompany the piece. Finishing touches often involve applying a smart sharpen filter.

Tutorial done! This method is helpful for me because it helps me work in stages. Generally its best to work in these steps: Drawing > Value > Colour > Detail. Thinking about all of those at once is too much for me at times so this is why I find this working method useful. I have been using it recently at work and have been pleased with the results. Take the heat off your brain and break down the steps.

Legend of Zelda: Link

2011-03-17T23:50:00.007Z

It is told in legend that whenever evil threatens the land of Hyrule a hero is chosen by the Goddesses to protect it. A hero has appeared throughout many generations to answer to the threat and it has been custom to clad the hero in the green and don the name Link.

This Link is an orphan of Hylian blood raised in the forest by the Great Deku Tree after his dying mother delivered him there from a burning Hyrule. But the boy was destined to leave the forest one day and fulfill his place as a knight of Hyrule. When Ganondorf broke into the Sacred Realms to take the Triforce for himself, it split into three pieces and Link was imbued with the power of one of the Triforce fragment: the Triforce of Courage. With that power he is the one person able to wield the Master Sword, the blade of evil's bane said to be crafted by ancient sages to hold the power to repel evil and is the only known weapon that can defeat Ganon and return peace to the land.

Link: Wip #3

2011-03-10T09:59:00.003Z

Its been a while. Heres some small progress. Just got to render everything out which is the long and probably a bit tedious part since most of the problem solving is done already. And also a sneak peak at another character redesign from the same series. Wanted to get some more dynamic poses in my work (something Im lacking I think) and this particular character was idea for one. The way I start a sketch is to block in a pose in a gestural way and then work the structure (anatomy) back into it. I might do a walkthrough on how I draw in Photoshop one time.

Link: Wip #2

2011-02-17T23:25:00.002Z

A little update on where I am up to. Added some base colours via hard light layer. I prefer using this for base colours over a colour layer and I keep the black and white values pretty low in contrast because these next few steps will shoot them up anyway and you dont want to overkill it. Used a multiply layer and some cool colours to punch out more shadows and did the reverse for the highlights, using hot colours in an overlay layer to pick out lighter areas. A full tutorial will come after the painting is completed.

Marvel Vs Capcom 3 is out tomorrow... updates might suffer :P

Link: Wip #1 - He come to town!

2011-02-16T16:51:00.004Z

A wip of what Ive been working on. I think my previous wip is abandoned again :P But Ive been meaning to continue some of the projects Ive got brewing in my head so now heres something to show for it.

WIPs from the Void!

2011-02-09T23:28:00.002Z

I have quite a few work in progress pieces that never see the light of day. Sometimes when Im not feeling motivated about a piece they end up being dumped into a folder with the odd chance that I might someday return to it and continue painting it or even take a new direction. Here is an example Im working on. The left image is something I cooked up a couple months ago but lost interest in. For some reason I thought back to it and looking at it now I see the flat on perspective wasnt grabbing me as well as the blank background. That leads me to take on a new direction you see on the right. Still very much a wip so lets see where we get to next...

Draws

2011-02-09T17:36:00.004Z

A few studies. Anatomy sketches after Michael Hampton and some expression studies after Jin Kim. Btw if you havent seen Tangled yet I strongly suggest you go right NOW! Loved the film, it felt like a good old Disney animation which is long overdue. Go animation!!!!! Great to see another Pixar film nominated for Best Picture award at the Oscars too. Looks like people are taking the medium seriously now and not just exclusively for children.

CNY

2011-02-03T20:09:00.000Z

Happy New Year!

WiP: All Our Battles 2

2011-01-25T19:54:00.004Z

Still not quite finished update. Im afraid there was a stoppage at the last hurdle of this piece... I got distracted *cough*Mass Effect 2*cough*

Well anyway, this is something I envisioned when I listened to Europa by Globus. I wanted something fairly epic in scale and heroic like a scene of a rally cry. I am a big fan of using up-shots to enhance the epic feel, like you are mere mortals looking up at these towering figures. I kept enlarging the size of the flag too, a small one felt out of place in the scale I was trying to convey so it kept being sized up. Ive included a second song too! Consider it the after theme for the painting. Its Proud Nation by Immediate Music (the same people as Globus).

Ive also attached a few progress shots to show you. I started with big shapes and then gradually narrowed down into smaller details. Think of it like sculpting, you need to chip away the big shapes before you go into the finer points, you dont jump in and chisel the nose of a figure do you? I also keep the values quite close together, I plan to add the darkest darks and lightest lights towards the end committing early is a bit of a trap as it gives you less control of where the best place to use light and darks. Also overlays and other blending layers alter your values anyway so I try to be loose with the grayscale and think of it as a base for me to build on top of later. The colouring via the blending options are just to block in colour with hints at what the lighting is doing, its just easier for me to think about things one at a time, then I flatten the painting down and paint on top of it normally.

Oh and another thing... If you are an animation student at the Arts University College at Bournemouth check out this new blog Geoff King set up AUCB Animation. It is a good opportunity to get some critique and feedback from the alumni crew. If you are a student I think you should take advantage of this opportunity. Cheers :D

WiP: All Our Battles

2011-01-20T23:57:00.005Z

A wip of what Ive been cooking for the AIB Jumble. Still some more painting to be done on this. I was inspired by Kekai Kotaki's work for this piece and started off in grayscale adding colour by overlay and hard light layers. For more tips on how to colour up a grayscale image check out the idrawgirls blog. I also planned the compotition of this image as if it was a book cover illustration. More details on this piece when its done...

In other news... my Sketchoholic picture below finished runner up! I hope I can do one better next time :D Taking lil steps forward! And the next day I was quite surprised to find myself listed on Parka Blog's Art Blogs of Note. Its all quite flattering stuff but a part of me feels unworthy hahaha. I still feel I have more to offer and developing to do, theres no room for complacency. Since I first started drawing seriously I thought to myself that as long as I am improving and making some progress Im heading in the right direction because I knew that I would not quit drawing and painting... EVER! So lets keep pushing ourselves and appreciate the progress we are making :)

Skelanimal Class

2011-01-17T01:59:00.006Z

New painting for a Sketchoholic competition hosted by Mitchell Bernal (creator of Skelanimals and visual development artist at Walt Disney Animation Studio). Ive recently been hooked on artwork done for animation which is probably evident in my recent work. Im a greedy person! I dont like to just do one style, I want to try all sorts of ways to express my creativity. More to come for sure!

EDIT: Please welcome the new addition to the concept art team here at Blitz Games Studio... Marco Caradonna!

Lady in Red

2011-01-09T23:56:00.003Z

First post of the new year! This is something done for the AIB Jumble blog. It is based on a random shape given to us to manipulate. I used this opportunity to experiment with a style, its a nice break for me as I normally aim for a realistic look.

Hope everyone had a good Christmas and looking forward to an even better New Year full of creative energy!!!!!! More updates to come... I need to up my productivity :P

In other news: check out this blog Muddy Colors for lots of good art talk and advice from some of the leading sci-fi and fantasy illustrators.

Oh yeah... and this now means I have been at Blitz Games Studio for a year :D

Christmas Wishes

2010-12-20T23:42:00.001Z

Merry Christmas Everyone!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ayayayayay!!!! Ive been pretty ill recently, all this cold weather and snow is probably to blame. Anyhoo Im feeling better now so lets go enjoy the snoooooow!!!!!! ^_^

I Have The Poweeeeeeerrrrrr

2010-12-13T00:35:00.002Z

For the AIB Jumble blog. Buuuut unfinished!!!!!!! :'( I have actually had one of those moments where Ive been looking at this for too long, without a clear direction of what I wanted to do with the colours and messed around with it too much that I lost some of the motivation for this one. Soooo the plan is to just leave this by the side for a while, let it rest and come back to it fresh in a future date. Painting and drawing isnt always second nature to me, there is still a lot of struggle and problem solving for every piece. I believe its like this for a lot of artists even well established ones too so dont feel bad for hitting one of these snags. We just need to keep ploughing forward, people may not see the amount of effort in clearing the snowy path but they will see the finished result of the clear pavement! ;)

Tips n Tricks #10: Radial GaGa!

2010-12-13T00:24:00.002Z

You know, its been a while! I almost forgot about this little section of my blog and hearing some positive feedbacks about this reminded me to keep it up. If you have something you would like me to try explain do ask away!

Anyway, this is quite a simple trick. Im sure a lot of people may know this already but I didnt until recently :P I was trying to make a motion blur at work one time and wasnt very successful so I asked a colleague to help me out and he showed me how to use a radial blur to add motion blurs. Simply copy the whole image (ctrl+shift+C to copy all layers) and then apply a radial blur filter via the topbar Filter>Blur>Radial Blur. A window will open up where you can pick the center of where you want the circular motion to originate from. This might take a few trials and error to get it to look correct but once it does, just erase away parts of the blur to reveal the original image underneath it.

Special Delivery

2010-12-06T23:24:00.008Z

Just got this delivered today. Ballistic Publishing Exotique 6 showcases this year's selection of digital character art from both 2d and 3d. Again, I want to thank Paul Hellard and his team at Ballistic Publishing for selecting my work a second time. I hope I can build on this and reach greater heights.

This is the page Im featured on. My painting is the one on the right.

So here are the two Ballistic books I have found myself in. Its quite an odd feeling, hasn't really sunken in yet I dont think. Again, I remember where I came from (learning to paint and facing many failures and struggles) so Im determined to keep that going and I hope you all too XD

Robo Santa progress shots

2010-12-05T00:15:00.004Z

A friend of mine requested for a lil tutorial for the Santa piece. And when you ask, you receive :D

So first off I started out with some thumbnails. It is very easy to underestimate how much you can solve with thumbnails. It is a quick way to design and see what works and what doesnt without investing too much into the final piece and then finding these issues. One I found a design I like I enlarged the thumbnail and drew over the top of it.

In stage 2 I simple coloured the drawing in. I used a round brush with spacing set to 20% with size jitter and opacity set to pen pressure. I didnt want to go for a fully rendered painting look but let the drawing do most of the work and have loose paint work done. So I didnt mind having some patches where areas are not fully coloured in, almost like they are just washes of colour but I did add a few tones in there to slightly help sell the form. The green pattern in the background is a stamp brush that made that diagonal slash which I then ran through a halftone filter to get the spots.

Theeeeen I grabbed a photo of some watercolour washes from the internet and put it over the top of the image as an overlay layer. I lowered the saturation of this texture as not to affect the existing colours too much. And I altered the levels to make sure the contrast is lower and wouldn't affect the ones I established too. And voila! Done and done! :)

By the Power of Grayskull!!!!!!

2010-11-30T22:59:00.005Z

Heres a work in progress shot of my current painting for the AIBJumble blog. The theme is 80s cartoon and if you cant guess which one this is..... for shame! There was quite a wide selection of great cartoons to select from, it got me in the mood to go through some of those 80s cartoon intros. C'mon, just check these out: Theme 1, theme 2, theme 3 and theme 4.

Anyway for this image I went for the iconic He-man pose with some Frazetta influences. Its that old fantasy composition of a heroic character posing atop a pinnacle. Originally I was going to keep a plain sky as the background but thought I could create more drama with the castle Grayskull looming over the character. The two towers on either side makes for a good framing device too. I took care to try keep a flowing composition, keeping most of the diagonals following one path so its not too hectic. You can probably see it in how the spine of the cat flows into the left edge of the rock and the tail leading you back upwards along the tower with the right tower continues back down the cat's spine. Adding a mist of atmospheric perspective between most of my elements is a way of separating them to enhance readability (always think of that 'initial read'). If the values of the castle were as strong as the character they will fight for attention (contrast in details (economy) and values). Even the cat's body behind the hero will have some atmospheric perspective to cut him out from the hero's silhouette. A problem I faced was the cat's head, it is close to the edge of the painting and his body is facing outwards and if his head followed that direction then the viewer could be lead out of the painting by his gaze. My solution was to turn his head inwards some more and keep his eyes looking in. There you go! Some of the inner workings of this painting thus far. I think we should end with THIS!

Christmas Card For All!

2010-11-28T22:27:00.002Z

Its just around the corner folks so here is a Christmas card to all the lovely people visiting my blog. Hope you guys have a gooood festive one! Maybe you'll get a present just like this robot Santa! Aha!

Some Studies

2010-11-25T22:50:00.003Z

Been into traditional art recently after walking around an art gallery back home in Manchester when I went to visit some old friends. One of the paintings I saw in Manchester was by Edmund Blair Leighton and his work was so good I felt compelled to do a study of one of them. The other painting is by William Bouguereau. A few of my colleagues undertook the task too and we were all perplexed by how subtle his colour choices and forms are. Well, back to the drawing board :P
Ive included some progress shots. As well as informing others its also good for me to see too so I can reassess my methods in future :P
My first step is to block out the image, I want to be accurate with the foundation and placements but not so much in the colour yet. That comes later when Im comfortable with the drawing stage. In the last step I fiddled around with the proportions after reviewing the image with the original some more.

Lickitung again

2010-11-23T22:59:00.003Z

Had a lil bit of a repaint :P

Study

2010-11-22T16:50:00.001Z

A study Ive started ages ago and forgot about. Just finished it off. I think its after Andrew Loomis but dont hold me to that :P

A Call To Arms

2010-11-19T18:36:00.003Z

A warning to the people... This is WAR!

Dominance War V is approaching and the preliminaries has already begun with the real war closing in. It is time to take sides in this epic art challenge! I'll be taking up arms and flying the colours of CGHub. A few of my colleagues will be fighting too so we hope to meet you on the battle field!

EDIT: Hmmmm theres been some recent politics lately involving the challenge. We'll see what happens...

Pokemon Lickitung

2010-11-19T01:48:00.003Z

Pokemon!!!!!!!!!! Redesign for a CGHub contest.
Lickkkkkkkkiiiiiiitung!!!!!!

Some Naked People (and some naked people with clothes)!

2010-11-17T23:16:00.004Z

Well I havent scanned pages from my sketchbook in a while so heres a lil update on whats been going on there. These are pages from my doodling sketchbook (where I put studies and idea sketches, havent tried an actual drawing in a while). I thought it would be interesting to see, I dont always try to make a pretty picture, the aim is to study and learn so you might find a lot of unfinished sketches or where I just isolate an arm I am interested in. If you see upside down drawings that is because I dont like drawing close the the edge of the page with the ring binds on my right hand side.

Some life drawings from my life drawing sketchbook. My goals in life drawing changes, I always try to make the most of my classes and learn something new so I often come in to class with a slight plan. For example, since Im a concept artist and I often have to reconstruct the figure from my imagination, sometimes in life class I might try to look at the model fewer times and look at my drawing more. Or I might stay on the construction of the figure throughout the pose as its a weakness of mine. Sometimes I might just draw one part of the figure I want to study, if there is an angle of the head or if the arm is raised in a position that I am not too familiar with and havent seen many times before then I'll just draw that over and over (especially if the rest of the pose is ordinary, screw always trying to complete a drawing, this is what I call studying). Buuuut having said all that I have just selected the drawings that is more refined lol :P
One time it was a suggested theme to draw with out left hand. Bah! Im not a great fan of that, I understand that it helps you to properly observe instead of guessing but I prefer to measure with plum lines. That is imagining a vertical (or horizontal) line across the angle you are observing, use that imagined right angle to 'flatten' the form when you observe. Decide what that angle and line is before committing it to paper. Then check it again on the model and adjust if necessary. Be comparative with different elements of the body and how they relate positionally to each other. This should be initially laid in the construction (gestural) stage and then when you come to build on the gestures, use measured angles to add in structure.

Hope that gives a lil insight into how I treat life classes and my idea of the difference between drawing and sketching.

Animated Walk

2010-11-17T14:51:00.003Z

Click to play!

Sorry for the lack of updates. Ive been slightly ill and a tad bit lacking in inspiration lately :( Buuuut just to fill in the void I thought I'd at least post up this random walk cycle :P Feeling a bit nostalgic about my old animation course especially after watching the showreels again hahaha.
Annnd Ive been receiving a few fan mails lately (thanks guys! ^_^) its cool to hear your stories and Im glad people like whats going on here. Do feel free to drop me a line with questions or if you just wanna say 'Hi'!

Colour Study

2010-11-09T00:41:00.002Z

I need to do more studies! So I delved into my art folder and to find a painting to copy from and decided this one was good for studying skin tone colours. Im afraid I dont know who the original artist :( More to come

Ghostly Passion

2010-11-06T19:33:00.002Z

Done for the next Sketchoholic competition hosted by Daniela Strijleva. The topic was 'Ghost' and I tried to do something with a different feel to my usual work. The temptation was there to create a gruesome monster but I thought Id try depicting something more atmospheric and softer.
Oh... check out the Epose 8 artist profiles, you might find a familiar face there :P

Its A Me Ben Ho

2010-11-02T00:34:00.004Z

It was International Self Portrait Day and tons of artists around the world drew and painted their creative lil faces! Ive been playing football so maybe thats why I look tired... or maybe its because Im thinking "it doesnt look like me!" :P

Happy Halloween!

2010-10-31T23:55:00.002Z

Happy Halloween! Hope you all didnt get too drunk! This is me with my costume.... nah I actually just had some crappy face paint on :P

Landscape Study

2010-10-28T17:30:00.005+01:00

Study from photo reference. No colour picking, trying to judge the colours myself. I also wanted to observe clouds more.

Banishment of Beauty

2010-10-27T23:05:00.004+01:00

This has been passed around the net on other artist blogs and just in case you missed it Im dropping it here too. Very intriguing documentary and it made me take a step back and look at my own work. Worth a watch :)

Bull Mask

2010-10-21T01:34:00.006+01:00

Something that came from an experiment. Been doing some quick texture abstracts as warm ups and I saw a face in one of the paintings and decided to run with it and flesh it out. It was fun to try a new approach, its the kind of thinking that created the old Fish Deity painting that got me into Expose 8. I was thinking of doing another piece styled like that since it got me some success in being published. Its not my bread and butter style of work but its nice to explore new territories and it has an exciting feel to it when you are discovering the painting as you go along.

Colourful XD

2010-10-17T18:51:00.002+01:00

Spur of the moment watercolour! Suddenly felt like painting with watercolours and to do something a bit whimsical. Colours are enhanced and texture paper added digitally.

More Skethbook Pages

2010-10-17T18:37:00.003+01:00

Havent updated in a while with proper artwork so I thought Id scan some pages in to show you what Ive been doing. I used to be precious about my sketchbooks trying to make each page a pleasing drawing all the time but Im realizing that a sketchbook for me is about making mistakes, learning and experimenting. Its not about making a pretty picture, thats for when I deliberately want to do that. Crammed in these pages are studies from anatomy books, studies of other artists and some of my unreferenced drawings to practice how much I memorized from the studies. There are more pages but these are the ones that looks less like a mess.
All drawn with a leaky ballpoint pen :P I like the marks made by a damaged pen. Some of my anatomy studies are concentrated on one aspect like the hand or the shoulder and peck muscles. Just like in animation, I find it easier to think about one thing at a time.

Expose 8

2010-10-13T22:14:00.003+01:00

Hey guys! Look what got delivered to the office today! Waaaaaahhhhhhhh!!!!! Its Ballistic Publishing's Expose 8!!!!! Heres a photo of the cover and the page Im on. A bit bizarre to be next to Andrew Jones there, I remember reading magazines about him, wouldnt have thought Id be opposite his work in a book! He was also someone I looked at whilst creating this artwork so I guess we've come full circle :P It brightened up my already bright day :D
Cheers again to the Ballistic Publishing team! Its an honor! *salute*

EDIT: Special thanks to all my friends and peers who have been a great support :D

Kung Fu Romance - Animation

2010-10-09T20:21:00.002+01:00

Here it is! The grad film I made with Tunde Jaji and Keith Rowsell for our final year on the Animation Production course at the Arts Institute at Bournemouth (now the Arts College University at Bournemouth). Hope you enjoy the show!

Hooray for random updates!

2010-10-09T20:11:00.002+01:00

Been looking at the Toy Story 3 art book and felt compelled to paint something in the style they did their colour scripts.

More anatomy studies here. The bottom ones are from my head trying to apply what Ive been studying. One of the things Ive learned is to work the figure in stages from gesture to structure and back to gesture again, then structure once more and its a repeat of this process jumping between the two all the time to get the best of both worlds. That is fluidity and movement of gestures and the solid foundation of structures.

Exile of Hell

2010-10-03T20:13:00.003+01:00

A demon spat out of hell into the mortal world for his allegiance to a usurped demon lord and is now bound within the walls of a human body.

Tips n Tricks #9: Stamp Brush

2010-10-02T02:05:00.002+01:00

Its been a while since I dropped some tips here so lets sort that out. Theres so much to learn in art and its fantastic that we have something like the internet that makes it easier for us to share ideas and help each other to learn. I am always keen to teach and help out where I could because many kind people helped me out and they told me how they were helped by others too so its almost like passing the mantle. Since we are all learning here and always on that road to become the best artist you can be, lets all take up that mantle now and I hope you all learn something and talk to your mates about it so that we can teach each other!
So this time round we have..... stamp brushes!!!!! This is a photoshop brush of a silhouette that you dont paint with but you use to just stamp one single mark on. So here I have a tree brush that I clicked once on the page to make the silhouette, I have it on its own layer and lock it's transparency so that I can paint freely inside it without breaking the shape. And thats as complicated as it gets! In step 3 I actually added a light haze behind the tree to punch out the contrast otherwise it would be lost in the background because of its dark on dark values. Give it a try! Stamp brushes are great for reoccurring objects like plants, buildings or any other objects you can find.

Exile wip

2010-09-29T23:05:00.002+01:00

More progress. Taking my dear time I know :p
I thought the limited colour made it a little boring especially since I love colours (you'll rarely see me do a dull atmosphere) so I tried to think of ways to add variety there. I hanged parts of his clothing's colours as well as tinting the fog behind him and on his skin too. The values were tricky to workout, this is a dark valued character on a dark background but the haze and backlighting could punch him out and some light valued skin and shirt can help bring in the contrast around the focal areas.

Drill drill drill

2010-09-29T22:38:00.003+01:00

Some recent sketchbook pages. Life drawings at the top and the rest are anatomy studies. Going through Michael Hampton's Figure Drawing: Design and Invention book so far its looking ace! Also watched Peter Han's CGMW class recently. Brilliant lecture methinks. Its also been a while since I did some proper life drawing (not since my university days... sorry Parr shifu). My first session was absolute crap, surves me right for neglecting it. My confidence was gone and each mark has full of hesitation and assumption (inaccurate marks were made cause I was eager but did not observe clear enough). But I did better this week and enjoyed the class. More to come...

WIP-e-hey!

2010-09-26T21:43:00.003+01:00

A wip of something Im working on and some stages to my last painting. Though it needs to be repainted hehe, I feel I can take it a step higher.

Influences

2010-09-25T01:59:00.018+01:00

This is something thats been spreading around DeviantArt and I thought I'd make my attempt at listing my influences. In no particular order:
Bobby Chiu - For his influential positive mentality and desire to teach others. Has made a huge impact on the way I work mentally.
Craig Mullins - The grand daddy of digital painting! His work never fails to amaze me what you can do with digital paints. A master of the medium.
John Singer Sargent - Legendary traditional painter. His use of strong colours and ability to punch out forms makes his figures particularly stand out to me.
Mythology - Grew up loving these and has ever since kept my imagination running wild.
Studio Ghibli - Poetry in motion! Visually beautiful and great story telling and strong likeable, unconventional characters. Also highlights some of the beauty of nature and little things.
Studio 4C - A studio making high quality and very stylish films. Refreshing to see how they experiment with style and still maintain their high standards.
Jana Schirmer - Fantastic artist who's knowledge of lighting and colour really shows out in superb rendered paintings.
Jason Chan - One of the first digital painters I encountered when I first picked up a Wacom. Since then Ive been admiring his work and imagined if I can ever reach his level.
Marko Djurdjevic - Another awesome artist whom I followed when I set off on my journey. His intense rendered drawings, dynamic poses and lighting stands out to me most.
Asia - Ive been surrounded by Asia all my life but it still feels slightly alien to me being raised in the Western world. The culture, folklore, landscape, architecture, tradition, everything about Asia inspires me. I cant even begin to discuss it for fears of flooding the place :P
Martial Arts - Something Ive been interested in a long time not just for the physical aspects but also the philosophy and folklore. Maybe you can tell in some of my work!
Evangelion - My favorite anime series for its concept, intensity and for the characters who are all humans with their own problems and weakness. Underneath the cool action packed robot fights is a honest story about character.
Zelda - The game that made me obsessed about games! Many fan art followed and my own expanded universe.
Final Fantasy - Not an avid fan of the games but one for their crazy designs, worlds and epic scale.
Lord of the Rings - The film that moved my career path! The cinema experience left me stunned, the DVDs made me realize there are artists creating the assets, the artbooks inspired me to rediscover my love for drawing monsters, the books itself kept me imagining.
Pixar - The perfect company not only in the animation industry but in everything I believe. An environment where art rules art and art is what drives the productions I hear is something extremely rare and something to desire.
William Bouguereau - Masterful MASTERFUL painter. His treatment of flesh amazes me especially when they are subtly ambient lit. If ever you feel like you are great at art, this guy will smack you down :P
John Howe - Childhood art hero of mine. His illustration of Smaug the dragon made me pick up the Hobbit book and thus plunged me deeper into my fascination in folklore and legend.
Paper Blue - Unfortunately I dont know this guy's real name but you can still admire his art!
His Dark Materials - An epic story that left me staying up pass 3am in mornings reading slowly, savoring each page. Whilst reading the books years ago I hoped for a movie adaption that I would be able to work on :D And No! I didnt cry after finishing the books! Not at all!
Claire Wendling - Great drawings!
Animation - After studying animation I have a soft spot for the medium and a greater respect for it. Seeing the animation process gives me nostalgia.
Min Yum - Another artist I followed when I started out in digital painting.
Jon Foster - Makes me want to do book covers hehe.
Stephen Chow - Grew up watching his films. His influence can probably be found in my grad film.
Jean Gerome - The painter I kept coming back to near the beginning of my studies.
Jaime Jones - Ludicrously skilled artist! And so young too hehe!
Football - Hehe a fun entry! Id like to carry over the energy and adrenaline of the sport to my art.
The Hungry Caterpillar - As my tutor said to class before... This guy should be our role model! The hunger for knowledge and hunger to grow should never be satisfied!
Life - The best artist! All the answers lies here and practicing art can make you more aware and grateful for the little things that makes life beautiful :D