Megan's Endless Fall

So I held a little mini competition on my facebook, and the winner gota free illustration of whatever they wanted. My friend Megan won and wanted me to illustrate her in the game Portal in the middle of "the endless fall."

I was kinda nervous because I had never done a commission like this before, and although I wasn't getting paid for it, it was still supposed to be a "prize" lol so It would of been pretty embarrassing if it came out like crap. All in all though I think it came out pretty good, and she liked it alot and allowed it to grace her profile pic on facebook lol. So maybe I'll be open to commissions in the future :)

:D

Not much to say bout these really... Experimenting with a new way of coloring that my professor showed the class one day. Changed up a little of the finishings to make it my own, but yeah Im pretty happy with how the final results look :)

A Day at the Beach

(Bromance)

First update for the Summer (and in a while)

These are just some quick warm up sketches that I did while at work not working, that I took to finish on a lark, I had no intention of finishing them when I started haha.







This one actually started off as a cover design for a judiciary annual report, however my boss didn't like showing the full butler, so the idea was scrapped. I personally really liked how the butler looked, so I decided to recycle it. :p

First Post of the First 2011 school term

Phew, well I've reeeally gotten into all my classes this term, I think its gonna be a great 10 weeks... I'm currently enrolled in Illustration for Concept Art, Vector Ilustration and Survey of Illustration, and I already I have work to show off :)


A Trinidadian Legend

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.

New Page in progress

Well, the next image is underway, this one has been driving me nuts. I couldn't figure out a good composition for this scene, but I think this one will do. Im planning to be more in depth with my step by step process, so for this one I'm gonna try to be more thorough.


These are my first sketches, two different angles of the same image, again not really that detailed, its more of a general "mapping out" I haven't included the figures for simplicity's sake. Basically whats going to be going on here is they have hit a reef or a rock, and the boat is sinking, so they are basically shipwrecked on this atoll.


This is a little more fleshed out line plan, I've included the figures in their general stance. I have the father upset about the sinking boat while his wife consoles him and the two children on the right awaiting instructions on what to do next.


This would be my color plan for this image.

More to come, I'm really not in the mood to work on this anymore for today. Taking a break and will tackle the rest of this image tomorrow.

On the Boat

Alright today I finished the second illustration, which isnt exactly page 2, I'm not really illustrating in order of events so here we go.


So yes, as per my imaginary contract I made with my viewers here's the work in progress.


Initial Sketch

Yeah so I realise this is a terrible first sketch lol, this is seriously the "meat and potatoes" of this image, (if I submitted this for one of my classes I probably would of gotten zero points for it lol) we have a big triangle that represents the boat and the 2 kids, then two versions of the beginnings of the mother, with a rejected thumbnail for a head where I finally decided to put her. Sometimes this is how the ideas come lol, all mixed up in a scrappy page you don't think will work, but by the time your brain starts working you can envision the rest perfectly so there's no more need for pencil and paper, just scan and go with it...and thats exactly what I did.

Neatened lines in blue via photoshop

Added in seagulls, finalized the location of mommy, Added in a neat cool awesome flying fish in the immediate foreground SHITYEAH!

So Yes, at this point im feeling rreeeeally reeeeally good about myself, took a break to play some team fortress 2 and go to sleep.



Hahaha ok Back to work. So yes, step three was the color and light layout splotches.

So I realise I didn't really indicate a light source in this stage, that was because I figured "Hey they're outside, light is everywhere right? WRONG...well kinda, yes theres light everywhere but the sun is always in a specific location and that influences the shadows. So realising this I just worked in the sun source in after I did these color splotches. I always work back to front therefore the sky and the sea were done first, so it was an easy fix. I'll show more detail on that in my next update.

Then the final

Bye Pets

Ok the first page is finished. Really happy with how this came out!





This is the work in progress


This is my initial sketch/ thumbnail


Then I take that small sketch, blow it up on photoshop, and do a bigger rendering of it in blue, with more detail and cleaner line work. (The cat was done in red because it overlapped the old woman and if it were in blue it would of confused me greatly when I went into color mode lol)


Then I zoom out all the way from the image and do a color mock up test. Just with splotches in the general area, so I can get a feel for where all the colors are gonna be, and where my light source is coming from. It also helps me get started by having big splotches of paint and i just mix and manipulate, workng big to small. (beats the overwhelming feeling of empty space)


*Yeah I removed the table and vase from the final because I didn't want them anymore lol


And there you have it. Just further adding subtracting and finessing and before I know it I end up with my final