Princess Mononoke

Done for a competition hosted by Bobby Chiu and Pixar's Dice Tsutsumi! Had fun with this one, some of the challenges was in getting the poses down and render the lighting. Ive still got some way to go with both these aspects but every painting is another step in the right direction! So onwards to more painting!
Lately I have been really enjoying my work a lot more. I think it finally sunk in that Im in a games studio doing what I love as a profession. I really enjoy working with other artists here and have our discussions on arty topics. Collaborating within a team is also great fun when we bounce ideas about and be involved in other areas other than concept art too. I am delighted that we are sharing ideas and encouraging one another and everyone getting excited together. I actually cant wait to go back to work on Monday :P
In other news... My friend and colleague Martin Johnson has released his new website here. Check it out. He is a great artist to have in our team. He has been feeding me anatomy knowledge for some time which is why you saw my recent updates with anatomy studies. I probably wont upload much more of them since they are kinda boring to look at. I dont want to fill the place with the same stuff :P So there should be some more interesting things to look at in the coming updates!

Lets draw baby!

More studies mixed in with some drawings from my head. Wow anatomy can get a bit addictive when you get into it :P Still not quite there yet but that is why I do these studies :D Putting time and effort into bettering yourself is well worth it and the results can be you landing that dream job and lifestyle you wanted so isn't that reason enough to go mental and study your craft like a nutter?

Exploration

Some more figure drawings to push my anatomy forward. Mostly from imagination with a few referenced pieces.

Go Go Logo

Another 2d artist activity at Blitz Games. This time we had this random shape we had to manipulate into a logo design. This was a tough challenge and until I finally got the idea I ended up using I was really struggling :P I decided to try use the geometric shapes this offered and initially extended the lines to try create an impression of three dimensional space and essentially create a cube I can chisel into (thinking of the N64 and Gamecube logos). I made up a random company name to go with the letters that came out of the logo and then started playing with how they are arranged together. Since this was an exercise I tried to come up with a more adventurous layout than the standard ones.
Its about this time that students are graduating from university and are released into the big wide world. Its usually this time that the post education period of looking for work and constant rejections occur. Ive been through my fair share and I just wanted to share a few thoughts.
Do not be content to stay at your current level! Dont wait and hope that someone will just give you your dream job, you must earn such luxury. The creative industry is mega competitive but those who are daring and willing to put the work in to achieve their dream are the ones who will succeed. I took comfort in these times in the knowledge that no matter what happens and how long it takes I will keep drawing and painting and because of that I will keep progressing and eventually get to where I want to be. Dont be discouraged by failure. I failed before and I am happy I did, it taught me an important lesson to never be complacent. From then on I focused on improving myself and the best way I knew how to was to practice a lot. I pretended to be working full time whilst I was unemployed and worked from 9-5 (and often overtime :P) on my own artwork. That was my tip-top secret... to consistently practice a lot. It was not an overnight thing, it took dedication. I worked this way for 5 months before I was good enough to be land that cool job and all the struggle and hardship has been 100% worth it. Often I chat with my colleagues on what a living this is but we never say how 'lucky' we are because we all know what we had to go through to get there. It is time and effort in abundance. Now its your turn to do the same :)

Bodies

Some drawings from today. Still trying to learn anatomy :P Thankfully I have some awesome colleagues who are well informed on this subject and have given me some pointers which has been very helpful. Trying to just copy from anatomy books helped me with rhythm but I needed something more to inform me of the forms I was looking at and it was a benefit to be told what each muscles do and how they operate. Slowly getting better! Lets keep it up!
Ive also been looking at some of my old drawings from 6 years ago when I was still in high school. Let me tell you.... they sucked ASS! Its comforting to look back on where you came from and where you want to be. 4 years ago I didnt even paint digitally and back then seeing any ole digital art blew my mind and I couldnt imagine how I could paint like that. But with practice you can achieve anything. That is why I am continuing my own practice outside of work. My goal is to make the same advancements in the next 4 years as the previous ones so why wait? What better time to do it than now?
Inspiration: Keith Thompson - Recently been thinking about design and this guy is very good in that department. Imaginative concepts accompanied by descriptions creates a sense of worldliness to his work. Kris Kuksi - Superb designs! Something for me to aspire towards!

Walk! Dont Run

The above pieces are tracing exercises. Its an exercise Ive been reading about and decided to put to the test. The trick is not to 'copy' but to analyze and draw! I found this helpful to recognize and hopefully memorize forms on the body and to make a decision on what to keep in and what to keep out of a drawing. Having a photograph to trace from was usefull because I saw all the details in the form that might have been tempting to throw in but looking over other high quality drawings I saw that they didnt construct themselves that way so I started doing these to help me make a better judgment on what to describe and how to describe them. I have looked at my own shortcuts in drawing a form and rather than accepting it as something that just worked I questioned if it was accurate. My goal with these is to eventually be able to use the exercise to help me to draw (not trace) over the reference and then upon removing the guideline reference, hopefully have a drawing that does not look traced but stands alone as a good drawing. This I think is a stepping stone for me to the next level. More to come

Some drawings from my head (mixed in with a few referenced drawings) to put into practice ideas achieved from studies. Mixing studies and application will test how much I have taken in and my ability to transfer studies into concepts. More to come :D

And finally... A study of Charles Gibson's girl figures. I have studied his drawings before whilst at university and have since adopted his method of describing the bottom of the nose with that thick 'v' shape but I started questioning the accuracy I used it and so I went back to the original to inform myself further.
In other news... Work is going very well. I am pretty damn excited and enjoying my experience. Sometimes you can get tunnel visioned and forget the awesome situation you are in! I am enjoying working with other ambitious artists and talking to them is refreshing as we all share a common interest, belief and background. I also got to see today one of my environment concepts in game! It looked great even though there was no textures applied yet. It was a bit weird to see my painting in 3d and interactive. It is a tiny bit frustrating that I cant say anything else thats been very exciting to me. But maybe in a couple years time you will know about it and by then it would be old news to me lol.

Lion Guard wip

Heres a wip im working on and might not get to work too much on this week (have to pack up and move house :P) so I'll post up a wip. This might be good for people to see as you can probably decipher some of my techniques and process in this. Sometimes I might crop out elements from a previous painting and use as a base to work on top of. Thats also how the head came about, it was a photo of a stone lion that I cropped and made a crude montage to paint over. This is one of many different approaches I have been using and is something that I find useful to save time when it comes to concept art for a deadline. Recently I had to paint 4 characters in 4 days at work and so I have been looking into ways to quicken my process. Towards the end of this wip I found the image to be quite desaturated and so I added some overlay colours and you can see the hallmarks of overlay layers involved. Hopefully by the end it will be less blatant ;)
In future Im not entirely sure what kind of updates you will see. I am tempted to just do concept artwork and explore some neat designs but I have also been neglecting my studies quite a bit so that needs to be addressed. Ive been reading some anatomy workshops but I might have to put more consistent practice into that.
And some inspiration (its been a while since I last posted these): Jeff Simpson - very nice styled art. Red Bear Dead - an artist's personal project thats gathered a lot of interest.

Akumazine!!!!

For the Super Street Zine blog.
Ive taken some time to look through some of my old work currently in my portfolio. Its been about 7 months since I started working at Blitz and since then I havent always had as much time to do my own work to a 100% finish like I was able to do when I was fresh out of university. But this was kinda the first time I took a good look at whats in my folio since then and Im quite pleased to find that I can see looooaaaadssss of crud and areas I could improve on and I find it an encouraging sign rather than a negative thing. Ive recently hit one of those walls when I doubt myself and feel a bit frustrated with my art but looking at my old stuff gave me a bit of encouragement since I feel I can do better now. Sooooo lets hope there are more improvements along the way!

Parr-ty Time!

Just wanted to drop a few links here for you to check out. Ive been bugging my tutor (who recently just retired) Peter Parr to set up a blog or website and it looks like its finally worked! In response to some incessant demanding he sent me this link: (Click here to Parr-ty!)
The site is new and is in need of more uploads so we just need to keep pestering him about it. Hes got tons more great work that we cant see on the site yet so Im gonna link to another place where you can see his work: Here!
Also a lil plug for myself hehe :P You can now pre-order Expose 8 and preview it here. I had a look in there and was very impressed with the work that was on show. So much so that I was thinking to myself "How the heck did I get in this?!?!? Im not nearly as good as these guys!" Then when I got to my page I was even more shocked! In the category I was in (Abstract and Design) I received an Excellence award!!!! Really dont know how that happened! I only hope I can improve and eventually merit such an accolade more convincingly. Back on the road of self discovery!

Chun Li

For the Super Street Zine blog.

Art Blitz

Ever month the 2d artists at Blitz meet up to talk about our craft. A topic of discussion is prepared beforehand and for the up coming one we were tasked to take a shape (the second image) and work with it to create an image. This finished piece will be presented to everyone and we will talk about it and the process and thoughts behind them.
This has been a challenge to find an image out of but I eventually got there. I decided on a cartoony stylization to go with the nature of the shape which is unrealistic. So the shape dictated the style for me and for some reason I had this idea of having fabric cutouts representing the finish. Its a fun lil experiment. A lot of times I try to put a new spin on my work and tackle it with a different approach to keep things fresh and make sure I dont fall too early into one method of working. The guys I work with are great with sharing techniques and I hope to mix up and add their techniques to my own Jeet Kune Do style! :D


Here is a work in progress piece I am working on for the Super Street Zine blog. I met ex-Gobelins student and Despicable Me animator Michael Crouzat during the Annecy animation festival and was invited to take part in the Street Fighter tribute blog he runs. Check it out, theres loads of great art involved!

Bulgaria Trip

Hey hey! Sorry for the lack of updates. Been taking quite a few holidays. First been away for a week in Annecy and then now Ive just got back from a week in Bulgaria. This weekend Im going to Bournemouth for the alumni reunion. And also Im trying to sort out a new place live so theres been plenty of distractions but I hope to sort it all out soon so I can get back to drawing and painting :D
Heres some drawings of Bulgaria. I felt out of practice in drawing in location. Im ashamed to say that I have been neglecting observational drawings for a while and it dented my confidence when I tried to get back into it but now I feel I have regained my confidence back. Its all mental! I dont believe you can get worse in art. You always have the same knowledge and know how but theres something mental that puts you in a bad patch and make you overthink and fear what you are doing. But with practice you can prove those doubts wrong!

Drawn

Back from Annecy! It was brilliant!!!!!! Was very inspiring and great to meet old friends and new ones. Got some drawing signatures off some big name artists, the one Im most pleased with collecting is Mamoru Hosoda (director of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time and Summer Wars). I was amazed by a lot of the art there and decided to go back to basics and work on my drawings. So here are some studies, well they werent completely studies... I used Bernini's sculptures as reference and some areas I tried to rely on myself to recreate. More to come.

Kung Fu Romance - Heroes

The main characters of the Immovable Fist sect who are led by Master Chiu and have earned their famous reputation through Sing Chow for his ability to use the legendary Six Paths of Buddha Palms and protect his village from bully pugilists and corrupt ministers.

The Queen Cantabile

This is a new ChoW piece.... number 200! The topic is Monarch of Music. My direction I was to make it appear somehow a bit related to the courtier I painted for ChoW199 and try to emphasis the royal look about this character. The idea behind this piece is that she is a conductor and with the wave of her baton she can animate and bring to life objects which then forms into her throne and originally some inanimate royal subjects were to be involved (but that got too complicated :P).
I am pleased to have completed this image. At first it was a massive struggle. Sometimes I can have a clear idea of what the painting is going to look like but other times I will be a bit clueless and in this case I was painting as I went. I got the designs for the character in my head but not the illustration... no ideas on the colours, background or lighting and it made this a big battle to paint. At times I was so lost that I considered giving up on this one, the deadline was looming and I was still progressing slowly and spending toooooooo much time and getting no where with this and also got quite ill inbetween! Then with one week left to go I took the plunge and gave this another go and tried a different direction. It meant a lot more work to suddenly change the style but in the end I feel the journey was well worth it! I was doubting myself, thinking Im not consistent enough but I feel triumphant having fought my doubts away!
Other news: Blitz Games has been featured on CGSociety here. For those eagle eyed ones, you might spot me in there somewhere :P Also Annecy is coming very soon and then after that theres another festival Im going to in Bulgaria where my grad film Kung Fu Romance will be screened. So I will be away for quite a while but of course I'll update when Im back!

NOTE: Place holder image. Painting close to completion.
EDIT: Completed. Now off to Annecy!