Tooth Workshop clipping

Here is another clipping from the book of one of the scenes that I liked in particular. The fairy has come up with an idea to try and enhance children's dreams while brainstorming in her workshop...

Town Square clipping

I need to continue to breathe life into this thing, so here is a rough clipping. The magical town square, composed of tooth shaped bricks and other whimsical dental elements, that I did up for a book I'm working on. It's seen through a window in the story, so most of the detail is focused in the foreground.

Abstract

A sketch from some more abstract stuff I want to finish and render eventually! Like the one I finished earlier this year, I prefer to draw this type of work out on paper before giving it the digital paint treatment.

More Fairy & Elf

I clipped this out of a scene in the book, should be wrapping up soon!

Wall Graphics

Some concepts for a simple wall mural design. A gym in NH, so the "Man on the mountain" was incorporated with the name. The colors were determined by an existing logo palette.

Elf and Fairy Character Designs

These are a couple rough designs for a children's book I'm currently illustrating. A sketch and an incomplete rendering that were done in Photoshop.

Super/Caricature Cars

I had done this rough Mustang sketch as a sort of job proposal for a series of caricature cars. The client didn't end up launching the project, but I actually think this is a service I will begin providing eventually. Custom designing cars in this style is popular amongst auto enthusiast and something I've always enjoyed seeing - it's fun to do as well.

Will certainly be coloring and rendering this out once I get some time.

Sam and updates

Have been extremely busy this month, so the blog has suffered a bit. Have been doing a lot of work that I don't get to share. Have also been the illustrator for many things Sahara Sam here, which accounts for some of the other stuff.

Toony Farm

Another vector illustration being used in the same project as the Jungle Monkeys. Banged this one out pretty quick as well, it's an easy style to work with.

Jungle Monkeys

Another vector illustration, done as a background for an iOS game. Sketched and painted pretty quickly in Illustrator.

Spam Sushi Can

Some commercial artwork I did for a project, the client needed an illustration of this Spam sushi-style can.

I drew this in Illustrator as they needed vector-based artwork. The more I work in Adobe Illustrator, the less I hate it. It's definitely great for creating line art, I've noticed that the brush tool works extremely well with a stylus - and they actually have some really nice brushes now. The possibility of me using it for my own personal projects grows stronger every time I'm forced to whip it out for work.

Vector Sketches

I've been doing a lot more in Illustrator, trying to produce Vector art. As far as work goes, this stuff seems to be in pretty high demand. Here are a few quick vector sketches I did for a job recently. These take around 10 minutes each - it's nice to get fast, painless, and straightforward projects sometimes!

CD Album Cover

Some illustrations I did as album cover artwork recently, the top one wraps around the outside of the case and the other is for the inside panels.

MMO/Game Map Part 2

Some more practice work, this time a quick isometric dungeon map sketch. I could add some more cool stuff to it but the well was dry and I was focusing more on some other techniques.

MMO/Game Map Illustration

I was asked to draw this as a demo/test for some game map illustration work, for a dark and gritty MMO. It was a pretty good learning experience, and something I wouldn't mind getting paid to do more of in the future.

Portraits / Avatars

Another portrait. Illustrated in Photoshop.

Red Lantern Portrait

Here's a request from someone to have their portrait done as a Red Lantern. If you aren't familiar with Red Lanterns, much like myself, apparently there is always red plasma spewing from their mouth's.

Tree Bridge Reboot

There were some things about this piece like the mountains that I just didn't think looked right before.

Flash Game Art II

Here's a follow up to the last Flash Game Art post a few weeks ago. This is the background/level and character design for a vertical platformer I worked on. The goal is to jump from drum to drum until you reach the top of the level, which gets progressively higher as you advance.

You'll notice one of the background layers (silhouette) is similar to one of the last ones - both games take place in the same world. On the top left you can see a few sky bg variants that get generated randomly level to level, along with matching rim and area lights on the crowd silhouettes. There are 3 different drum platforms - however I developed it so that the two regular drums get generated with random width sizes, within a pretty small margin (like 10-15%) so that they don't look akward nor does every one look exactly the same.

Below you can see the character design, you start off as Plain Jane, and as you advance your character slowly rocks out her gear level to level for the most part until the decking is done.

And of course, a couple of enemy designs. What kind of obstacles would you find around a drum set that constitute as enemies? Dust bunnies and flies naturally!

New Logo Illustration

A few weeks ago I posted an illustration I was working on for a logo concept. Well I developed it a lot further incorporating different elements of DJ/Production equipment into the design as you can see below. I ended up painting the piece entirely in Photoshop.

Raziel Sketch

I got a request for a Raziel and Kain sketch, and although I did it - I much preferred the Raziel character. I have never played the games and am not really familiar with the characters so I had to just roll with what I could find online.

Flash Game Art

Here is some background and level artwork for a mini side-scrolling game I worked on in Flash.
I included some breakdowns - on the left side you can see how the different repeating background layer panels are broken up for the parallax effect during gameplay.










The sidewalk platform gets randomly generated at different lengths and heights. The length chooses a random number and then uses it to pick from a random combination out of the 4 different "middle" segments, which I designed to be stitched seamlessly together regardless of how many or in which order they are used. Those get placed between the two "end" segments, the whole thing gets positioned at a random height - and like magic you are creating sidewalk platforms on the fly.

Throw in the different obstacles you see near the bottom at random and you have an on-rails side scrolling skateboard game. The character is in his standard pose below.

Logo Designs

A couple of logo designs I was working on for a DJ/Producer that I picked out of a bunch I had done. These were created in photoshop by adjusting the font and then drawing my design around it. I don't do a lot of this stuff lately, so I thought these were coming out pretty well.

Marshmont

Brad Marchand kissing the cup!

A slightly rough painting.

Tonberry sketches

I felt like sketching some quick Tonberrys.

Bloodtear Baldurf!

This is the legendary ram Bloodtear Baldurf, a rare beast from Final Fantasy XI.

Bill Clinton

A quick pen-style illustration I used for a job proposal. I chose Bill Clinton because he's recognizable and generally liked.

Illustrations for K-Rob ESPN Video

A few sketches used in a video interview with Kevin Robinson
(Pro BMX) for ESPN.com.
http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=6580701

Wacom Cintiq vs Monitor Color

It seems the common consensus is that artists out there have been frustrated by the difference in colors displayed on the Wacom Cintiq compared to a typical monitor. For me personally, at times it has been pretty frustrating - more so before I realized what was even happening.

After completing an illustration on the Cintiq, upon displaying it on a regular monitor - which is what everyone else in the world will use to see it - suddenly it seems over-saturated, and some hue's get pretty drastically altered... it's definitely not what you saw when you were coloring it on your Cintiq. There is a technical explanation, but rather than dwell on that I've proceeded over the course of time to try to develop a reasonable work around. (I will also note that color calibration devices, etc. aren't a solution. This is because the problem isn't related to any adjustable settings accessed through your monitor's interface or the Windows system controls - it's just the difference in raw technology used to display pixels on the monitors.)

Aside from all the obvious things you would jump to in order to troubleshoot the problem - such as calibrations, profiles, control panel settings, drivers, inputs and outputs, even cables...

One thing I tried was creating a series of actions recorded in photoshop, to convert the saturation, hues, and other properties in the image so that it would translate. It wasn't really feasible, if even possible, to tune a set with one single formula that could simply convert every image. Even the best conversions could never really get you completely there, especially with a flattened image.

So this is my best solution, and it has been working very well for me so far. One panel in Photoshop I never really utilized, and apparently took for granted, is the Navigator panel. By giving you a preview of your image in realtime, and allowing you to maximize it as large as you want - you can use it as a clone of your document to display on your regular monitor. Being able to see what your color will truly look like when viewed on a monitor as you are working is really the best way to manage things so you can adjust accordingly and know what to expect!

I've included an image below demonstrating the setup, and also the variation in color in a piece I'm currently working on. In this one for example - the color of my sky is completely different across the 2 screens, which dramatically changes the mood I'm going for... things like this are crucial to know ahead of time!

I've done a lot of googling and haven't seen much in the way of actual workarounds, please share if you have any of your own.

Hockey

It's Emily's dog...

A trip back in time

So I found an old artwanted account I had about 10 years ago while I was surfing community websites last night.  I had this on there, which was dated at 2002 - a window shade I had painted in acrylics of a scene from the last episode (291!) of the series in tribute to the climax of Dragon Ball Z.

Blue Bomber

Just a weird megaman born from a little doodle I did.

Qufim Island

Derby Girl 2.0

Did a revised version, wasn't a fan of the original.

Tree Bridge

I'm sick of looking at this, calling it a wrap and moving on...

Minecraft inspired concept art. I originally built a bridge similar to this and was inspired by it.

Wildcats

A commission piece I did this week for some Wrestler Wildcats. Included some coloring process...

Concept progress

I started this Minecraft influenced concept art recently. Almost done with the color version, but I had stopped in the middle to re-evaluate my values which were driving me nuts, so I had converted it to black and white.

bw frog animation

A little hand drawn piece I did in flash as the intro for a website - cleaned up the animation a bit today. 

Character Designs

Some variations of a developing character.

Prototype

Finished the abstract piece I started a while ago.

Smile

A funny bunny smile.