Big Ol Update n Stuff!

Hey everybody! (once again referring to the 4 people that browse my blog site)

So the big news is that I've been working on an art book with some friends and it's been a pretty cool and very educational experience doing it. I sort of assumed the role of being schedule guy and "accountant" for the group on top of working on pieces for it. It's been a long time coming, but I think we're finally close to finishing it! Which is why I'm saying it now since last time it seemed like it was still a ways off.

Anyway first things first. Here are some roughs and concepts I did for the book. I'm not going to post up the finals because... it'll be in the book...

Anyway... TO THE ART WORK!

Cover Concepts

So well based on this first picture it's pretty obvious whats inside the book. When we started we had gone through several different ideas for the cover and several different styles. This was one of my draft contributions. I sorta liked the ninja posing on the pirates shoulder even though he looks like he's taking a crap hahaha!

Version 2 I was trying to make it a little more dynamic. The logos I suggested and actually made to print, but the actual drawings were different from the ones posted above. Also I just realized but if someone was going to pick this kinda book up just for art, I can assume that some people would actually be offended that there is a zombie/person getting decapitated on the front cover. Either way, both roughs and both designs scrapped but it was still fun.

The silhouette ended up being what we would go with in the end. I drafted this (and about 13 other versions and variations) for the front cover but it made it on the back cover so I was pretty happy. The colour pallet ended up changing in the end, but I just worked with what we had drafted originally. The decision to go with silhouettes as oppose to having artwork is that we realized that from all the artist contributing we had a HUGE variety of styles in the book. So this ended up being the most non favoratisim cover style we decided on.

Piece One

This is my draft page for the ideas I was thinking about. At the time when we started I was playing a lot of Fallout 3. So originally I had thought of doing some 1950's style advertising posters. Only thing was that I wanted to make one poster template that I'd do 3 versions of with Pirates, Ninjas, and Zombies. But the more I thought about it, it sounded like a really REALLY time consuming task (tonnes of ad reference for accuracy etc.). I mean... yeah, you could sight laziness as the culprit. At the same time I also had to contribute 2 pages. So on a tight time budget, was it wasn't in the cards. The idea in the bottom left ended up something like what the final would be based on.

Concept 2 was to just make a bunch of short panel comics originally dealing with a Pirate, Ninja and Zombie parents and children. It was sounding like fun, but at the same time I was also behind with my progress on this due to life stuff and procrastination. Also because I started to notice that people were doing full pieces instead of small comics. So this, and a couple other ideas got scrapped but again still fun doing them.

This was my draft for what would be my final piece. This is just the roughed out version so there are 6 or 7 different save versions plus countless layers for clean up, lots of details and colour and some re-composition. I think the final product turned out well. But man o man, I really need to explore colour more. The next book I'll definitely invest more time into colour to really help my pieces pop more. Also work on posing a do more posing drafts.

Piece Two

So yeah this is the kinda stuff I should have been doing more of forrr... mmost of my drawings to this point to make sure my stuff wasn't so stiff. Eitherway, the second piece was a PAIN to get into. After finishing the first one I just didn't really know what to do for the second, so 2 weeks from deadline I started drafting this. Inspiration came from the fact that some people were doing some really nice serious pieces. At this point I'll note that I also started reading "The Walking Dead", which is a pretty awesome comic book and I highly recommend it! I already had one semi light hearted piece with kids. So I ended up wanting to do a piece that really challenged me more and had lots of detail. I really started to realize that one of my strengths lies in details.

So several versions and revisions later I got the base for the 2 main characters down. I was working with forced perspective and this was one of my early drafts for making the female ninja character. She went through about 4 different styles before arriving at the final. I was working up until morning on one of the drafts and I was so tired that I unintentionally made it look like Kasumi from the Dead or Alive game series. Anyway, at this point, I started thinking about what was going to go around them. But then it dawned.. I wanted bodies. And lots of them to sort of fill the space.

So once again, SEVERAL versions later after revisions and finally finalizing the look of the female ninja and the pirate, I set out to do the horde. So, uh yeah this was... a lot of work. Originally since they have blades I wanted to put some hacked up bodies on the ground. Only problem was that as I started drawing the bodies cut in half I wanted to add all the detail for accuracy sake, so I researched dead bodies and dismembered stuff and well.. lets just say it looked gory. Just... crazy gory. Needless to say after running it by a couple of people, I scrapped it post haste, took a long shower and started on this one which ended up being way tamer.

And the other stuff!

OK so after everything was said and done I just wanted to goof around a bit so I played some SF III (yeah that's right... 3, hate all you want but I actually like it better then 4) and then got some ideas. top left was the original pose for it. I think it worked alright as a sillhoette but stiff overall in pose and impact. Bottom left ended up being the exaggerated but definitely way more weight and impact which I thank Ragnar for helping me bat around ideas and do kung fu in my living room at 4am. Bottom right ended up being a crazy angle of the one on the left. I'll clean these ones up because I feel like doing more of these "vs" pieces.

One thing that Ragnar helped setup for me in sketchbook is the custom brushes, and I ended up using custom brush to get the right effect for blood in piece two of the book. But as I sat down and sort of fooled around with it I ended up having alot of fun with it. It has a very guash/chinese calligraphy brush feel to it so I started running with it.


Uhh yeah.. hahaha.. well, it started out with the bamboo then the chinese zodiac animals then I thought well if I'm making it this asian I better trying drawing some old guy with a fuu man chu and to help everything along write "STEREOTYPES" in an asian stereotypical font.
To keep things rolling with stereotypes I started drawing an asian woman that quickly just turned into Chun Li. I kinda liked this one. and I know people say you shouldn't really be happy with your own drawings.. but.. well I still kinda like it so.. yeah!
I thought Chun Li looked ronrey so I put Cammy next to her who happens to also look asian. I didn't mind the shading I put on Chun Li but the pink highlights I'm still not sure I like them. On Cammy at least it sort of defines certain details.

ANYWAY, first! Congrats if you've read up to here! I realize I write alot. Secondly... This blog is now, for the most part, completely caught up with most of my recent drawings!

.... shit I gotta draw more...

I'll try and update in the next 2 weeks as I'll be revamping my 3 year old portfolio.

In the meantime! I updated my portfolio blog with my new demo reel I just finished which you can check out here!

Anyway, thanks for checking my stuff out! Leave comments critiques whatever I'm open to suggestions etc.!

Artwork, Layout Update Again BIG UPDATE!

OK so heres the update to finish up all the P4 Fan work I've been doing. Finally got around to it because I finally got around to actually FINISHING the freakin game! Anyway, same format as last time, it's a big post of sorts... but! Next time I'll be updating the the project I've been working on with friends and hopefully I'll have a new link to post up to our site where we'll be selling the book n stuff!

Anyway heres the "new stuff" (it's actually been done for a couple of months so I figured I'd stagger my posts so it looks like I'm doing something hahaha!)
So first piece is this character Rise, I played around with how I was going to put her on the page hence the posing roughs. In the game shes more of an information character (provides enemy stats etc. So she doesn't really fight. Hence no weapon.

Final product I decided to go with this pose. I was also thinking about how I was going to comp everything together in the end. This isn't quite done because I kind of need to have her holding on to her glasses. oh and the arrow is suppose to be pointing to her chicken legs I need to thicken up abit.

This was my rough for Yukiko.. ugh looking back at her anatomy there are things I can fix up here and her pose might be abit stiff but I tried pushing it abit. no it's stiff... Anyway I find I end up doing nekkid posing then just add details afterwards.

And heres the clean up, still have some things to fix though. Lines are too thick in certain areas which make it stand out compared to the other ones when comp'd together. And she has a couple of spare hands on the side since I was debating what I was going to do with her hand not holding the fan. Hair also needs to be cleaned up... at some point.

Naoto was easier to come up with a pose because I thought about what pose I'd give her ahead of time and sort of charged at it. I think this one was actually the fastest one I did next to the main character.

Here's the clean up but again it's not done completely. The gun is suppose to have a line coming from the handle (Japanese cops have a string on their gun that attaches to their holsters) and she's missing her glasses as well. I should probably also draw through to the feet but then again they're going to get cut off anyway.


This is the Main Character. For this one I also had the idea in mind before I started so I just dove at it. The rough really isn't too much different from this version. Except again missing glasses.
Kanji (above) was also suppose to be easy because I had a pose in mind I wanted to run with in terms of how it would work with comp. However I ended up trying out another pose which turned out to be the one above. In the end I didn't like how it turned out. The angle and the top torso didn't make much sense and I started cheating hard with the jacket to try and make the pose work but it didn't pan out, so I went back and did it over. But I liked the head so I kept that.

So yeah the last one I liked alot better, the top torso seemed to read better and I didn't cheat with the coat to hide details. Also incase your wondering. His weapon is a folding chair. Thats right.

Last of the single characters is Teddie. I did a couple of funny drafts for him but I ended up liking this one the best. Kinda cute character making a stupid face then suddenly RAZOR SHARP CLAWS. I wasn't a huge fan of his design but he was pretty fun to draw.



And Heres the final comp'd together! I was originally going to wait to put it all together once I was finished colouring them but this was pretty helpful since I needed to know how everyone was going to sit on the final piece. Also to double check my line work and proportions. Things turned out... ok but some character sizing is abit off so I might have to play around with their placement. And putting all these guys together chugged my computer down hard (think hi-res images... 8 layers of them...)

Anyway this side thing was pretty fun to do, I still need to finish it, but it was a good experience in doing clothing folds and trying to get suttle structure down. Albeit stiff structure. But hey always something to work on right?

Anyway next update look forward to news about the side project I've been working on and hopefully a site to plug for the blog as well!