Invaders

Revision!

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

Sector C

Planetary Brothers

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

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

The Gate

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

Black and White

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

Christmas!!!!!!

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

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

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

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

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

Barry and Ice-bots

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

Barry's Ices

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!!!!!!!

Some updates from the matte painting front.

3D renders

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

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

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

More SketchUp fun!

Matte Painting

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"

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

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

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

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

Some more progress...

Frog Prince WIP2

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

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

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

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

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

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

Frog Prince WIP1

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!

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!

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

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

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

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

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

Speed paint :)

Master Toad

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

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

Some experimenting with brushes

Link Rework

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

Motorcade

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

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