Urban Cyborg

Whenever I take the bus home from work, I get the urge to doodle these urban cyborgs. This guy looks like he's in need of an upgrade...

Sketchbook Mobile app on the Galaxy Note II with a Wacom Bamboo stylus feel

With Mischief in mind...

So lately I've been messing around with a vector drawing/painting program called Mischief, and it's really interesting. Because the program is vector-based as opposed to raster, filesizes are small, and you can work within what they term an "infinite canvas". Mind you, even though the artwork is vector information, it's a proprietary technology (which is referred to as Adaptively Sampled Distance Fields a.k.a. ADF) that isn't handled the same way as Adobe Illustrator with splines and bezier curves, and as such can't output files useable by Illustrator. What you can do, however, is output layered Photoshop files at just about any size and resolution you want, up to a max width and height of 20000 pixels-- at 300dpi, that would translate to about 67 inches! I did notice that outputting a piece of art really small, say an inch high at 72dpi, introduces some odd artifacts, but I'm more likely to output a file bigger than smaller so I don't consider it an issue.

I've never really been comfortable drawing lineart with Photoshop, because I had problems with the quality of the linework. Mischief offers a freehand curve smoothing feature that takes care of that rather handily; I find that I genuinely enjoy drawing within the program, especially on a large Cintiq with multi-touch. It feels natural, it's just a really smooth experience overall.

Painting with Mischief, on the other hand, is still something that I think could use some work. The toolset is pretty barebones, and kind of reminds me of the early days of painting on the old homebrew app Colors! for DS. But I have no doubt the developers will get the program up to speed sooner than later.

Here's an attempt to create an illustration fully within Mischief:

Still a bit rough around the edges, but with a lot of potential, I'm really digging Mischief. At only $25 for both the Mac and PC version, it's definitely an affordable drawing and painting program worth checking out.

Geek Retreat ad

The latest illustration I created for Geek Bar Chicago is a promotional ad for their "Geek Retreat" food and drink special. Running Tuesday thru Friday, the specials are based on a deity each day of the week is associated with-- Ares, Odin, Thor, and Freya. The visual suggested was the gods and goddesses sitting at a table drinking and playing the card game Fluxx (with Thor being female, as a nod to the recent gender-switch of the comic book character).

Once again, I used the program Mischief to generate the lineart, since I knew it was potentially going to be printed. I tried going for a style that harkened to the heavy, chunky line of artists like Jack Kirby, Michael Avon Oeming, and Darwyn Cooke. I brought the drawing into Photoshop, opting to give each deity their own color to emphasize how each one stood for a different day and special (and also unconsciously referencing the way the gods were depicted in Disney's "Hercules" movie). I then took it into Adobe Illustrator to lay in the text:

 

I feel like this is a fairly different style for me; looking at it now I think it looks like something one might find in a storybook, which could be a useful thing to add to my tool belt.

Nerd Year's Eve ad

A new Geek Bar Chicago illustration I created was for an event entitled "Nerd Year's Eve" (tickets still available!). The project as described "should focus on dressing up in your fanciest geeky outfit possible, and the open beer, wine, and appetizers."

I drew up a thumbnail in Autodesk Sketchbook Mobile on my Galaxy Note II, depicting Elsa from Frozen sharing a toast with a Next Gen-style Klingon while Darth Vader looks on, and Batman chats it up with a lady in a Dalek dress in the background:

I took the thumbnail into Mischief, and created a clean line art version. Knowing the ad was also intended for use in printing, Mischief was perfect for the job; being vector-based, I could size the image as big as I wanted without any issues with pixellization. It's a beautiful thing.

I then took the image into Photoshop to do the coloring. I could have done it in Mischief, but the program currently lacks a lasso tool, which I usually depend on for shading (the developer said a lasso tool is in the works, so I'm looking forward to that implementation). I opted to go with a monochromatic palette for ease of rendering, since this piece required a quick turnaround time. I shaded it in grayscale, then used a gradient mask adjustment layer to colorize it.

Another fun one, with an easy-to-manage production flow.

Hogwarts Holiday Feast ad

I've been helping to create some promotional images for a local business, Geek Bar Chicago. It's a restaurant that caters to geekdom of all shapes and sizes, and I thought creating some illustrations for them would be a nice way to contribute to their cause. They've been mostly cartoony-style pieces, for use as web ads and flyers, and have been really fun to make.

My first illustration for them was an ad for their Harry Potter-themed "Hogwarts Holiday Feast" event. The visual suggested was "a single frame illustration of some wizards in Geek Bar, sipping drinks and being festive, with the event details all to the righthand side of the image." Here are some ridiculously rough thumbnail sketches I whipped up (messy, I know):

Depicting two angles of the bar, with different framing devices for the info text. The target resolution for the finished piece was supposed to be 1200x628, so I opted to go with the camera angle from the second sketch, since the focus was tighter. We chose the scrollwork as the better option for the info background.

I'd been exploring a new vector painting program called Mischief that had just recently come out with a new update, and I thought this would be a good opportunity to test it out. I used it to digitally ink the artwork on a Cintiq, and I LOVED it. I'll talk more about the app in another blog entry.

Here's the finished illustration, inked in Mischief and colored in Photoshop:

All in all, a fun way to flex my design and cartooning muscles.

Autodesk Sketchbook Mobile

Autodesk just released their latest version of Sketchbook Mobile today, and what better way to commemorate a new drawing app than with a cyborg portrait?

I really appreciate all the new additions to the program, they've genuinely elevated the utility of my Galaxy Note 2 as a portable digital sketchbook. Things like selection tools, smudge brushes, gradient fills, and guides are warmly welcomed. Unfortunately, even if you already own the previous app Sketchbook Pro, you'll have to pay to upgrade Sketchbook Mobile in order to access its full feature set. Still, it's only a few bucks... For the cost of a comic book, I can't ask for much more.

At any rate, great app, available on iOS and Android.

Motoko

As part of a development initiative, I've spent time doing tutorials and getting some coaching from Cristian Silva, a senior lead artist in one of our Australia studios. We went over the fundamentals, and he taught me some very useful Photoshop tips and tricks. It's helped tremendously with things I do on the job, and I've wanted to apply some of this new knowledge to my personal work, perhaps for a portfolio piece.

I knew Michelle Eubank-Mussoni from back in the days when I used to help staff and run anime conventions; she's a great cosplayer, with strong attention to detail and a very professional approach to costuming. I saw a pic that she posted of her dressed up as the main character from the anime/manga series "Ghost in the Shell" and thought it'd be good to use as the base for a photo illustration. I received permission to use the pic, along with a thumbs-up from the original photographer.

Motoko Kusanagi from "Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex"

From Wikipedia:

Major Motoko Kusanagi (草薙 素子 Kusanagi Motoko) is a fictional character in the Ghost in the Shell anime and manga series. She is an augmented-cybernetic human employed as the squad leader of Public Security Section 9, a fictional law-enforcement division of the real Japanese National Public Safety Commission. Being strong-willed, physically powerful, and highly intelligent, she is well known for her skills in deduction and hacking.

Source photo:

Costume and modelling by Mogchelle Cosplay. Photography by The Enthusiasts.

Photo illustration:

I "up-rezzed" the art from 72dpi to 600dpi (a bit of overkill perhaps, but I wanted the option of having something I could print big later). I had to smooth out a lot of JPEG artifacting, using two copies of the art on separate layers; the top one set to color mode, and the one underneath set to grayscale, where I could concentrate on cleaning up the art and not worry about affecting the colors. I did some editing to simplify the wrinkles in the clothing, and added rim lighting using a technique I picked up from artist Glyn Dewis on Youtube. (Being able to separate the layer styles from a layer and apply masks is a revelation.) I then did more painting on an upper layer to fix problem areas.

I was shooting for the sort of character portraiture you find in work from High 5 Games, and I like the way this photo illustration came together. I need more practice, and this is a good step towards that.

Save the Date!

My sister-in-law Alicia and her fiancé Nick had this fun comic book-inspired idea for a "Save the Date" wedding invitation, and they asked me to help illustrate it. I drew up a rough sketch, depicting the two of them as superheroes trying to "save the date" from the evil villain, on my Note II using Sketchbook Pro:

Once I got approval to proceed as well as some notes on certain things they wanted to see in the final version (something like the Hancock Building and/or Sears Tower to identify the background as the Chicago skyline, and that the hero uniforms should be primarily navy and silver to match their wedding colors), I took the illustration into Photoshop and Illustrator and got to work. Something different I did this time around was to use adjustment layers and masks to block out shadows and highlights that gave the art a cel-shading look, and then go over top in another layer to paint in halftones. It saved a lot of time when it came to trying out different color schemes on the fly, and it proved to be pretty helpful.

I feel like I found a good flow, to the point where I lost track of time, finishing the illustration at almost 2 in the morning.  Sleeplessness aside, I'm happy with how it turned out overall, and I enjoyed working on it.

Salutations Redux

Did a little touch-up on an older piece, adding a little texture, cleaning up some edges, and adjusting the levels here and there:

Before and after

It's taking a while, but I'm starting to get it...

Portraits for RedditGetsDrawn

I stumbled on the RedditGetsDrawn group not too long ago, where Reddit forum members post pictures of themselves and artists of all skill levels create interpretations in the form of sketches and paintings. I decided to participate as a way of putting my Galaxy Note II and Sketchbook Pro for Android through its paces, and explore different illustration styles. The subjects have been varied and interesting, with people sometimes requesting to be depicted in anime style, like Disney characters, or zombies and what have you. The group is very supportive, and really nice work gets posted. Here are some pieces I've done, all drawn or painted on my phone/tablet, sometimes taken into Photoshop to add texture or make slight adjustments: