"In the Realm of the Shadow Lords" illustration development

We're having an "Artists Among Us" gallery show at the place I work, with the theme "Retro Arcade". Here's the show description:

The idea for this show is to pull from our rich history of Bally and Williams Pinball and video arcade games. You can do an art piece on any theme that inspires you - or create a piece based on what pinball or video games mean to you! Use your creativity and do the artwork in your own personal style.

Original Joust poster illustrated by Williams Electronics artist Python Anghelo

For the subject of my art submission, I chose the classic videogame Joust. I felt like there were a conspicuous number of great elements in the game that would be fun to paint. Knights riding ostriches! Pterodactyls! Floating stone platforms! Sounds like the sort of thing you'd find on a heavy metal album cover (which is another thematic convention I drew inspiration from). The only way it could be more metal was if the ostrich shot lasers out of its eyes-- oh wait, it's been done before.

Thumbnail sketch

I kicked things off with a thumbnail sketch of the layout. I started out in Photoshop with a fairly limited color range, using Gradient masks to lay in colors from warm to cool. I already knew what my image area would be, as I had the opportunity to borrow a spare electronic lightbox from our Topbox department, and could spec things out accordingly. Since the image area was primarily horizontal and curved, it lent itself well to a panoramic-style layout.

Comprehensive rough

Working the sketch into a rough, I tried playing around with angling of elements, searching for something that felt right. It was a fairly organic process, tweaking things like scale and placement as I went along.

Rendering work-in-progress

Initially I envisioned something of a fisheye-lens view, but as the painting further developed, I found myself toning it down to emphasize the horizontal orientation. I also added some diffuse color, harmonizing it via Photo filters, and progressively tightened up the details. With this illustration, I really pushed for a higher level of polish using all the tricks and techniques I could come up with. I leveraged the use of layer styles like Inner Glow and Inner Shadow to quickly lay down lighting and shadow effects, and used Bevel and Emboss for detailing in the armor.

Special attention was paid to the flow of the overall layout, making sure there was a definite hierarchy of visual weight (through the level of texture, color intensity, and repetition), employing traditional design strategies to direct the eye. With all the things to look at, areas for the viewer's eyes to rest were also important.

Rough diagram of the intended visual rhythm

Once the art was completed, it was sent out for printing on clear film. To take advantage of the fact that the art would be lit, I asked that a sheet of special effect "sparkle" material be mounted to the 2nd surface (back) of the film substrate, with some areas masked out by a layer of screenprinted semi-opaque white ink. This enabled some of the highlights, and anywhere magma appeared, to have a prismatic glittery shine across the LED lighting. It's hard to see in photos, but in person it's an attractive look.

Sparkle material showing in the highlights and lava

I'm happy with the way the final printed piece turned out. It looks great amongst all the fantastic game homages in the show, and it's a nice way to showcase glass art. All in all, the project was an enjoyable, engaging design exercise.

Mounted backlit film

Final digital illustration

Galaxy Note 8 setup

Not too long ago I bought a slightly used Galaxy Note 8 off of eBay for surprisingly cheap, and have since been using it to do preliminary sketches and comps for my Geek Bar assignments. Combined with the Wacom Bamboo Stylus feel and an Otterbox Defender case with stand, it's a very comfortable and portable digital sketchbook setup.

The 8-inch screen offers a decent amount of real estate, most definitely when compared with the Galaxy Note 2 (which remains to be great for on-the-go sketching). The soft rubber nib on the Wacom stylus combined with the surface of the Otterbox's built-in screen protector makes for a drawing experience that feels like working with natural media; I'd say the closest analog might be felt tip markers. Good stuff, y'all.

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.

Bus sketches

It's sometimes difficult with the winter cold to sketch during a commute, but people in this season can be fun to draw, with their big poofy coats and draping scarves...

Space Miner

A new goal I've set for myself is to do more character design, so here's a grizzled old asteroid miner from the outer frontiers of space...

A lot sketchier than I've drawn in a while, but I'm having fun with it.

Ship sketches

Another pair of ship sketches, done up with ballpoint pen and a bit of gray marker...

Last night I ran across a new ballpoint pen that impressed me with its responsiveness; so much so that I went searching around the interwebz for some place to order a batch.

The Lexi 5

As it turns out, these Lexi pens originate from India; my wife Leah must have picked one up during her recent travels there. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find a place where I can procure them stateside; I've emailed the manufacturer to see if they can recommend a distributor, or if I can order from them directly.

Ballpoint

Doodling with ballpoint pen again. Feels good, man.

Oldies but goodies

I ran across some old sketchbooks from a couple years back, and it was interesting to see how much my illustration style has changed over time; I can definitely see a progression. Here are a couple pieces that I only vaguely remember drawing, but which I think are pretty nifty:

Some sort of cybernetic warrior dude, 2005

An adventurer named Annabelle whose backstory I don't quite recall, 2006

Paranoid guy, 2007

I may have to go back to drawing with a ballpoint pen, especially now that I've been working with value more and more; I remember being able to do decent gradated work with them.

Anne Bonny, Pirate

I attended the September session of Aaron Miller's Figurative Illustration Workshop last night, and the model this month was dressed as Anne Bonny, the Pirate Queen. She wore a great costume with a ton of accessories, like sashes and pistols and swords. It was an overwhelming amount of detail; seriously, I could have spent days upon days trying to capture it all. As it was, I constantly had to fight with the tendency to linger on every little area, and instead concentrate on capturing the gesture and form. Hopefully there'll be good photorefs made available so I can go back in and give the paintings some more polish.

It's been a while since I've been to one of these workshops, and it was pretty evident to me how out-of-practice I was. I definitely felt very rusty, and slow. Still, it was a nice opportunity to use Colors!3D on the 3DS XL, and for the most part it worked out fairly well... I have to adjust to the XL's larger footprint; my hand cramped a couple times while holding it. But it sure was nice being able to paint on a (relatively) bigger touchscreen.

Overall, it was a great figure drawing/painting session, as per usual.

New sketch batch

One of the things mentioned time and again in "Drawn to Life", one that's really made an impression on me, is the idea that gesture drawings are not about drawing "nouns" but about drawing "verbs". You're not just drawing a person, you're drawing an action... a person doing something, even if that something is just standing there, slouching about lazily.

As I've mentioned in my previous post, a good number of my commute sketches amount to the action "sitting down staring intently at a smartphone". I try to mix it up whenever the opportunity arises, though.

Smartphone poses

More commute sketches, this time with a theme:

It seems that people on smartphones make decent sketch models, since they tend to stay in a fixed position for a long time.

Out n' about

A smattering of sketches, mostly from my commute to work and back:

I recently picked up Walt Stanchfield's two-volume work "Drawn to Life: 20 Golden Years of Disney Master Classes" after reading about it on the Muddy Colors blog. Chock full of knowledge and great art, it's 800 pages worth of lectures on gesture drawing, storytelling, and changing the way you see. I've already read the first book cover-to-cover and just started the second, and it's genuinely been eye-opening. They can be hard to read sometimes– not because the books are poorly written, but because I find that every few pages I feel the urge to pull out my sketchbook and draw someone. Really good stuff.

Works-in-progress

Gah, I've been so busy lately... Haven't had a lot of opportunities to work on my own stuff, but I didn't want too much time to go by without posting something here.

I've been working on this piece during my daily commute, re-working an older illustration into something a little more painterly, using Colors! 3D. Unfortunately, the file seems to have gotten corrupted, so I'm not able to output it at high resolution. I might take it into Photoshop and build it up more from there:

 

I'm also doing a paintover of another previous illo, a more dimensional version of the anime-style Tachikoma. I'm working out all the shading in Colors! 3D, and then I'll take it into Photoshop for a more finished polish:

08th Div. Tactical Cyborg Ops

More exploration of Colors! 3D:

3D .MPO file

I took a pic with a 3DS camera of a sketch I had doodled in a notebook. Then I set it as a background and blocked out the silhouette and some tonal values. I mostly worked everything out on one layer, and then copied it over a couple times to add depth. I erased away from each layer whatever I didn't want to pop forward; in some cases, I tried using the eraser tool at low opacity to blend pieces into the background, with mixed results.

While the 3D is admittedly pretty gimmicky, it does have me thinking about spatial relationships, how to make stuff come forward or recede into the background, and that's cool.

Chrome Dome

I'd forgotten how fun it is doing these freeform paintings...

Sci-fi helm

I've got the digital painting urge again...

Toy Huntress

After far too long, I attended Aaron Miller's Figurative Illustration Workshop last night. This month's model was dressed up as a "Toy Huntress", adorned with the furs of plush toy animals. A neat costume, it made for an interesting and challenging figure drawing subject. We started with some quick 5-15 minute poses, which I sketched out with Sharpie pen and gray markers:

... and then moved on to longer poses, which I painted using Colors! for DS:

As always, a pleasant time. It felt good to be drawing again, I've been soooo out of practice lately.

The Sketch Challenges continue

 Here are my G+ Artist Sketch Challenge entries for the topic "Ways Penguins Fly":

The Frostfoot Flyer

Totoro & Pen Pen taking the top for a spin

I can't emphasize enough how much I'm enjoying these sketch challenges (big kudos to Carsten Bradley!), and networking via Google + in general has been, well, a plus. Being able to interact with all these great artists on there has been incredibly invigorating, and definitely gives my creativity a big ol' punch in the arm.

New sketch challenge art

The G+ Artist Sketch Challenge has been responsible for most of my personal illustration output this past week, and it's been a lot of fun.

For the fantastically absurd challenge Gargoyles in Evening Wear Dancing with Famous People born on August 25th, I submitted this comic strip:

And for today's topic 80's Movies That Should Have Happened I submitted this drawing:

30 Days done!

Here's something I did for a daily sketch challenge, the topic being "Cartoons as Sea Creatures":

My Narwhal Totoro

Here's today's entry for "Unsuccessful Monster Cereals":

Gamera Crisp Cereal-- Stays scorching hot, even in milk!

And here's a sketch I did of an old man on the bus this morning:

I was looking at my calendar and realized that today marks 30 days since I made a formal commitment to draw at least once a day for a month. My posting frequency got a bit sporadic towards the end because of a heavy workload, but I still managed to eke out stuff.

Things I learned from these 30 days:

• I should have a sketchbook on my person at all times, because opportunities to draw abound
• I missed cartooning, I plan on doing more of it
• Google Plus is a great venue for sharing art with others. Great for networking with other artists as well!
• I used to not enjoy drawing with blue pencil because I thought it was too light... Turns out not all blue pencils are the same. Col-Erase for the win!
• I need to draw and paint more (Granted, I already knew that, I just realized it's something that'll always be true)
• I'm less afraid of ditching a drawing that isn't working, and start from scratch
• I'm more open now to getting things wrong being a part of my learning process. Failure for the win!