Piece of the month (wish I had more to show..)

OK so it's been a while since I've posted something up, but oh well better late then never. Recently my minds been preoccupied with other things like... job and.. I need money.. and well with the economy in the crapper right now, things couldn't be tougher.

So with that said, I'm kinda making excuses for myself but oh well, hopefully I'll hop back on the drawing train soon.

Also! My friends and I FINALLY got the books for the artbook we've been working on and they are officially now on sale! So if you'd like a book, fire me a message! but in the meantime check out our website for the book at the Tenmenhub blog site!

Small Update.. other artwork in progress

Hey guys, well small update this time! I mean.. really small.. like.. the picture you see up top is all for this time! Anyway, getting my groove back since I've been busy with life. Next update I'll have more to show, in the meantime, back to the PF! Thanks for stopping by!

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!

Layout Update and side project intro!

Ok so here's and update that was suppose to come a while ago but didn't make it because I've been working on a couple of things on the side. Lately things have been kinda busy, kind of exciting, and kinda shitty. but then again when is life ever not really full of that stuff.

Anyway, here is part 1 of the side project I'm working on. I'm making this big piece for this game Persona 4. I liked it alot, and it's become one of my favorite rpgs in recent memory other then Mass Effect. anyway I thought I'd do one character Chie and here she is.


Layer for structure n such. Probably should have posed more. I really need to pose more often.


part 2 with clothes and just to get a general idea of where everything is


and clean up! Oh boy I can't draw hands. and probably some of my anatomy needs some work but I was kinda happy with it and I wanted to keep moving with other pieces.

Number 2 is Yosuke and I started actually posing out this guy. I probably should have done more but I was also thinking of making this into a full piece with all 8 characters. So there were certain poses I wanted everyone to have and hopefully they'd compile together ok.

Posing page


My first pose was this one I went with, and I got a good way into it when I wasn't too happy with it over all anymore when I was close to done. The character himself is pretty energetic and outgoing so I didn't think this pose really showed that enough.

The second pose I ended up liking way more, now I just need to put some weapons in his hands and actually finish doing proper clean up and maybe fix some proportions.. after posting this I'm starting to see things that need fixing...

anyway, thats the short update for now. Maybe I'll try and streamline my updates so I just post the rough clean, clean, then colour. or something... I'll think about it more when the time comes ha ha ha!

Let Your Back Bone Slide

Actually it's more like I let my blog duties slide really. But none the less here I am with an update with more.. STUFF!! Yeah!

Anywho... On to da drawins



So Continuing from where I left last left off I was working on Kaneda and I can safely say that it's finally done.. sort of, at least in preliminary. I started off by taking my line clean up and well adding shadow. I'm kinda happy with the result. Also that I haven't added shadows or colours to any of my pics in a while. So it was nice to have some depth in my pieces. My friends out here have been pretty supportive in providing critiques and pointers so I'm going to continue working on this piece.



OK so heres Kaneda in colour. I tried going with a washed look at first because I wanted to look like he's reacting to an explosion of some sort. Eitherway, it was fun to get back into colour since I've had a... phobia of colour ruining my stuff. But luckily with today's modern age of digital colouring I can get over that. So while this is just a first step, I feel this is something I'll try and make a standard over time and start finishing pieces up.



OK while this isn't a great piece of work... it's my blog and I do what I want. ha ha ha! Eitherway, I still really like cars. My friends and I were discussing about how car designs these days are all shifting around so I was just drawing while talking. yeah not that great but whatever!



So I had been tuning into this show called Mad Men which is all about the 1950's and the age when the US really came into money during it's post WWII period. So I'd been listening to the soundtrack to that and some music in Bioshock (same period roughly) and decided to do a piece using the edged marker. Kind of fun and an experiment and looks sorta neat.

Well thats about it for this time. I'll try and keep things scheduled like last time and post the big thing I've been working on next time!

Stay tuned!

all 3 of you...

Good year indeed...

Well second month in and I'm a bit off from where I wanted to be in terms of progress with things but oh well. Life's been going very well so far, but February is kind of off to a rough start. Either way, here's a quick update of things I've been working on.


The last time we hit up the mall for drawing I remembered that I hadn't done backgrounds in a while. (Maybe for a good reason) I started just drawing the malls food court, sans people. I didn't really do any perspective lines so I imagine I'm off all over the place in terms of vanishing point, either way it was nice to try tackling some high detail scenery. uhh minus all the real detail that the mall had.



Back to the old pieces I had been working on, Jarrett suggested that I try revamping my old Kaneda pic that I had done a while back. So heres the original.



I sort of like the other drawings I didn't really make a layer for structure, I thought the pose was ok so I just went ahead and started with a fresh layer over top and started hacking away at it. Like the previous pictures I had to go back and reference for more details on the characters clothing, gun and battery pack for laser gun, which wasn't a belt clip but a shoulder belt slung battery.



And heres the final product with everything I could think of putting in for detail. another piece ready to colour when I have the time, once I finish up my other semi big piece I'm working involving about 8 characters or so. Fun... Either way. Just gotta keep working at it, get back on the train, and hope that my life outside of art will return to normal towards the end of the month. Hopefully...

Oldies but Goodies

And so we begin once again! Another year passes and for once I didn't make a New Years post. Oh well, It'd probably be kinda emo anyway!

So to start off, I think I have a really good feeling about this year. I don't know how to describe it... but I just feel really good about this year. And I'm determined to learn a lot and build a lot as an artist. So with that begin said, I've started going over old work I've had and I'm bringing it back to life to fix it then colour it. Now, if you don't know me personally, that alone is pretty hard for me to accomplish since I get demotivated part way through so I end up never really finishing... anything.

But this year... NO MORE!

Anyway, I'll stop talking and introduce the first piece I've been working on.


OK so I posted this last year and it was something I had done from a little while back. It's Gwendolyn from Odin Sphere. And as you can see here... disaster.. Proportions are all over the place and I clearly ran out of room on my paper.


Enter the next phase and I brought the picture into sketchbook and started resizing and cutting, moving and reorienting things around. This helped me get alot of issues cleared up and I decided to go with more realistic proportions as oppose to my really shitty ones and the ones used by the original artist and the game sprites.


Lastly, the final line cleaned up version. Now getting here was... kinda rough. First things first, I had to crack out some freaking references for this character. Discovering details I didn't know existed from looking at some of the art references for the character. I had to look at images of the figures and resin kits that existed to find that I was missing a leather skirt under what I thought was a skirt to begin with. Then to find out how much detail is on the wings on the boot section, and then the boots... well if you look at the previous one was in terms of details then you'll see what I had to add. For my first real digital clean up, I was pretty happy. Or do I have a reason to be happy? -_-;


The Second picture I thought I'd do is Aigis from Persona 3. I liked the original of this piece but after going over it I discovered that it had some issues when referencing more official art from the game. Also another annoying thing about this character.. well and the previous one, is just... retarded amounts of detail. anyway, this one is just a reference for resizing and moving stuff around.


Second one is just a semi overlay of the final. I only ended up using one layer on this but I really should have used some more. Oh well. In this one it's basically how I realigned things that should have been a certain way before and also accenting certain details like giving her defined legs as oppose to... stumps...


Final product, one really annoying thing to finish but I'm happy with the results and that it's done. the details that I remember taking the longest where probably the hips, arm and gun segments with ammo caches, shoulders. Anything that suppose to be see through grate kinda things.

Next week I'll post other pieces I've been working on redoing, and some new stuff that I started working on last minute!

It's a great start to the year, and it feels good to draw again after taking a long hiatus from it. Just gonna keep on givin 'er!

So... the years pretty much over eh?

Well, it's been since freakin APRIL since I updated my blog. Lots of things have happened and it's been a busy summer. And here we are in December. I guess one way of looking at it is that this blog reflected exactly how this year went, fast.

Anyway, heres a quick update on things for the whole under 3 people that visit this site!

OK so here's a piece I did because well I like Earthbound and I've been playing Mother 3 (North America knows it to be Earthbound 2 in the series) anyway, awesome game. I thought it deserved fan art, so there!


So since I'm done work now, me and friends I worked with go to the mall to sketch on occasion. So here are a couple of people!


During the process of drawing at the mall, my mind tends to wander alittle so I end up drawing uhh... video game stuff... which it seems like my mind is stuck in alot these days...


More mall people, I like the guy eating with his back facing me, and the girl on her cell phone. Oh and the guy that has the siren on his head is the mall security that roll around on roller blades.

Ok so lastly mall people and uhh... Chun Li.. she was at burger king..

Anyway, I swear I'm back on the train and I'm hoping I'll be updating, infact I'm going to go back and clean up some old pictures and post the progress as I go so hopefully updates... soon... yes...

payce