HAPPY 2011!!!!!!!

WHOOOO Its a newww yeaaarr I hope everyone had a great time!
I had a very simple New Years with my family and cousins etc. Not complaining at all. Thought I would ring in the new year with some new artwork! :O :)

The Protector


Slytherin Steals

Merry Christmas to all!

Merry Christmas!



From Crispy the Sandman!

This was also my submission for Art Order's Holiday Challenge. They have not yet posted all the entrants as yet. I'm hoping that it gets picked as one of the winners.

The Holiday Challenge

My submission was featured!
The ArtOrder is a blog for illustrators to share ideas, ask for help, receive feedback and enter competitions. I've recently entered my first competition on that blog (The Holiday Challenge) and they have featured my submission in their latest blog update. The Holiday Challenge is to illustrate a spoof of a famous Christmas character, so for example Santa or Rudolf. I chose Frosty the Snowman, and I made him more...Islander friendly. I called him Crispy the Sandman. You can view it here:

http://artorder.blogspot.com/

The Deathly Hallows

So I just came back from the latest Harry Potter movie, annnd I was blown away lol. Ok I'm just gonna be up front and honest here, I read these books aaaageess ago, annd yeah I dont remember all the fine tune details the sequencing of events blah blah blah, and I damn well didnt Re-read the books before the movie, soo I can never really be disappointed that the "movie didn't live up to the books" because frankly I only remember the jist of the books and the movie is really supposed to just be based on the books, so, basically, I can enjoy the story twice. Enjoyed it once with the books, now again with the movies. I mean I have some freinds who read the book right before the movie so they can see if the movie got EVERYTHING in the book....I personally think thats DUMB but ANYway. Yeah. I'm a big fan of this last one. Story was great, the actors were great, and the cinematography.... oh...ah...mm... (changes pants) Yeah loved all the shots. Anyways soo Spoiler Alert i THINK :/

My 3 favourite things of the movie... The way they did the story about the "Deathly Hallows" AWESOME animation. The way we kinda go to see how Emma watson would look like naked hahaha lol. Pretty awesome. annd well the final final scene in the movie. I'm a big fan of that also.

Soo without further ado. Quick speed painting I did when I came home.

The Deathly Hallows



Annd cue Process....

One


Two


Three


Four


Five


Six


Seven


Eight


Nine

Lara Croft

Well, its Christmas break and I'm NOT working on anything work related. So its been a really good time for me to work on me and practice my craft and process on personal projects just for me. So this would be my first Illustration just for me for the break. :)

Lara Croft
I also have process work for this to help me remember what I do basically. Especially with this one, it was alot of trial and error, and just responding to what I see and the things I do while I'm working.

Photo Reference

So yes. This is me. I use myself for my photo references mostly. Pretty much because I know exactly what I want, I'm very responsive, open to ideas and follow instructions to a tee. Very goofy, and no I do not feel weird doing a pose that will be making a female character do in my artwork.

Initial sketch

This is very rough and sketchy, I do this on a separate layer, following my reference. This is done very scratchy and quick to just get the figure down, the pose, the attitude etc.

Tighter Lines

This is just me refining the sketchy lines that I laid down on the first layer. I lower the opacity on the scratchy lines so they are verrry faint, then I do these on top of them in a fresh layer.

Tighter Lines 2

Same process as before, on a separate layer I just focus more on details, so in this case clothes

Base Tones in Grayscale

I fill my background with Gray. Then I Tone the environment with a textured brush very loosely. In this case its a cave, so its going to be very dark. Then I just color my entire figure in a middle gray in a separate layer. I always do a middle gray because its much easier to add in darks and lights than if you were starting off with white or black.

Value Render

This is the part of the painting that most people will argue is the most important part of the process. You just basically lay down the values in terms of light and dark in a grayscale. Helps organize the painting in terms of composition

Overlay Layer

Flat red overlay layer. (I chose red because of the flare) Then I add in whites using the flare as the main light source.

Color Burn

Using another layer set to Color Burn, I wash in natural colors (Skin tone for skin, brown for shirt) This gives richness to the piece by keeping the effect of the red overlay layer.

Smoothing out

This is where the piece really starts to look finished. I do this on a separate layer in case I screw up. Basically, after the color burn stage, I have all the colors I want to use in the piece, down. So its just a matter of using the eye dropper tool, selecting and painting over and over till all the colors blend nicely.

Special Effects

This is just really focusing on the smoke. Using a custom texture brush I just brush that stuff in, pretty much unplanned honestly, just kinda went with it see what looks good. I did take a quick glance at a reference to see how much smoke and stuff is generated by a hand flare, but thats about it honestly.

Touch Ups

These are just little tweeks to the piece. I adjust the color balance on an adjustments layer, made the highlights redder and added a slight green atmospheric tone in the shadows.

The Open Window

So for my Editorial Illustration I had to do three illustrations for a short story of my choosing. I chose the story "The Open Window" written by Saki. It was quite an interesting piece and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. In my comp sketches however my professor informed me that my drawings were not historically correct in sync with the story hahah Soooo he put me on to this short film that was based on the story for reference. It captured the essence of the story quite well I think, you can take a look at it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBXb-8YoR0E

I had alot of fun working on these pieces. I applied what I learnt in my electronic illustration class with the Zombie painting to this assignment. He outlined where each piece will be if it were featured in a magazine so I was dealing with:
1. Table of contents image full color small scale
2. Story image full page full color
3. Story image small scale in grayscale

This is the Table of contents image. Basically sets the mood of the story without really giving away any characters or plot.


This is the full page image to go along with the story. From here on these images will only really make sense if you've read the story or seen the short film I posted.


This is the small scale grayscale image, basically its the last moment in the story.


Just for kicks and giggles This was my reference pic for the Grayscale image lol :p

Zombies

Well, Finals are over, Fall Quarter is over. I'm back home at the moment, I went to Miami after school for a highly anticipated, relaxing, de-stressing mini vacation, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself... :B
Last post had 3 pieces in the works, finished 2 of them for finals plus 2 more not previewed, also for finals... I know right? The anticipation is blowing my mind as well (I like to pretend I have a throve of fans just thirsting for my updates)
ANYway. Yeah these are the zombies. This was my final for my electronic illustration class, and I have process work! :D For the assignment we just basically had to do a painting digitally, with our own image in it, soo it could of been a self portrait or something like this. So yeah I'm totally on a "Walking Dead" and "Left 4 Dead" hype at the moment, or at the moment this piece was done, so yeah I thought what would it be like to be in a zombie apocalypse at SCAD. haha

Oh I've also started labeling my work so the people who take my images off my blog (dare to dream) will always know where they found it :)

This would be the final.


And cue process work...

Its always good to start off thinking just in terms of value and value contrast, so I started with a grey background, added a gradient to represent my sky. In this case I knew exactly where my scene was going to be set, so I went ahead and roughed it all out. (Its the roof of my illustration building haha)


Then I just build up the background, adding shadows and little bits of detail. Nothing too embellished as I'm still setting up value, the detail is just so things make sense to me.


Then after fleshing out the background I just sort of sketch in the figures, very rough, just to plan out where I want everyone, and how it would look compositionally


Well its around this time where I actually get reference. I actually went up on the roof did the poses etc. Found out the correct size relationships of the characters the proportions all that good stuff. So I refine my sketch based on the first rough.


This is where the fun starts. Fleshing out the figures. Yours truly in the front, and the others were modeled from two of my friends except the guy on the ladder, I didnt bother with him because we don't see enough of his face for it to matter. I should of explained this earlier, I think I said it in a previous post, but I like doing backgrounds first completely before attacking figures. Pretty much for the same reason I eat my french fries first before the burger, I like to leave the best and most enjoyable part for last. Also, If I eat my burger first I might be too full to finish my fries.... hope you get the metaphor here...


Now Color. This part was pretty tricky for me, because up until this moment I had been appreciating it in grayscale. So needless to say my first dash of color was a bit strong. A bit too cheerful for a zombie apocalypse I would think...


So I muted the colors a bit, especially the background because it popped too much, and distracted from the foreground. Basically I had all my colors and Im just scuplting my focal point, at this juncture. Manipulating color value and the intensity of each to pull your eye where I want it.

Projects in Progress

Just some stuff I'm working on at the moment, pretty happy with how they're all looking so far, thought I'd share em with you.

Story Time with Sam and Uncle Gottfried

This is a caricature I did for my editorial illustration class. We were supposed to take two celebrities we would hardly see together, put them together, and have them do something ordinary or everyday. The goal would be the contrast would create humor.

This is my initial thumbnail sketch



Cleaned up lines on photoshop



This was done in a combination of traditional paint media and digital media. I used CF Payne's painting technique. There's pretty much everything in this piece, acrylic, watercolors, oils, colored pencils, and digital for touch ups.



Incase you didn't get it from the title or the illustration I chose Samuel L. Jackson and comedian, Gilbert Gottfried.

Carrie

Here's another piece I did, I had to redesign a book cover using collage techniques. I chose Stephen King's Carrie.

This was the final one I decided on.



These were the other versions I did that for different reasons didn't work. Just to show you how my ideas evolved working through the compositional elements of this piece.

Mock Up 1:

Doesn't work: Digital hand drawn text doesn't work well for the piece. A bit to linear. Composition lacking. Also Stephen King's name is too small.

Mock Up 2:

This one works better than the first. Turned the whole composition. Diagonals are more interesting to look at. Thats the good thing. Interesting elements, but they aren't working well together as yet. Text and image aren't interacting enough. Also while, it is bigger than the first, Stephen King's name could be bigger.

Mock Up 3:

This is close but no cigar yet. Stephen King's name is perfect. Changing the title's color to red, I thought would help link the blood in the image to the text, to make the text better interact with the illustration, it did to an extent, could still be better though, like I said close but no cigar. Further playing around with the composition would resolve the issue.

Final:

I decided to move the author's name to the top and the title at the bottom to see if this would make any difference, and I was quite happy with what happened. I chose this one as the final because I found the text interacted perfectly with the illustration. While I originally wanted "Carrie" to look like it was written on the notebook paper, I found in changing the text color to red, it would work equally well as if it were written in the blood on the floor. Also, moving "Stephen King" to the top produced a happy accident, in that the "G" engages the blood period (pun intended) much better than the title word "Carrie" did.

At School (The Jogger)

Phew. Well Midterms are over, and halloween is approaching, can't wait! Also new a new AMC series is coming out called The Walking Dead, as I'm currently into anything that involves shooting zombies at the moment I will be watching this show religiously.
Anyway, Yeah I've been neglecting this blog... I need to post more regularly... this is all my new work I've done at school for midterms, I'm gonna be uploading the documented process as well Piece by piece as the process takes a while. Hope you enjoy. :)

Original Pencil work



Then I scan that and idividually ink each object in a seperate layer



Then I place them where I want, and erase the excess lines, giving me my final line work



Color (I do not have a set process for my colors as yet)