Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Take Cover +

So for those who don't already know, I'm currently fulfilling a contract position at Activision's new studio, Sledgehammer Games. The studio is mostly made up of the core team that made last year's Dead Space (360, PS3, PC). It's been a really fun time so far. Everyone seems extremely talented and knowledgeable there. :]

I've also spent the past few weeks working on some stuff for Fantasy Flight Games. And finally, I've volunteered to create an original piece for the Beautiful/Grim art group/show.

As you all can see, I've been pretty tied down. But with the holidays right around the corner, I'm hoping I'll be able to spend some time working on some new ideas I've been thinking about.

Until then, here's a new one from me. I really took my time with this piece. I've been on and off it for a month, I think. I know I could have taken it a lot further, but I'm ready to move on.

Sunday, December 6, 2009

Busy

Sorry about the lack of updates recently. I've been pretty busy recently. Expect a bit of a blurb about what I've been up to in the next few days.

I hope everyone had a nice and pleasant Thanksgiving! It's getting to be incredibly cold out here in the Bay Area. Maybe it's because I'm still fresh from coming back from Florida, but I don't ever remember it ever getting this cold in San Jose/Santa Clara, but still, I really enjoy the winter-time and especially the holidays. But one thing about the holidays that bugs me a bit is that I never get around to making Christmas cards. I either get too lazy or busy, but regardless I never get around to doing it. I've had the pleasure of receiving cards from fellow art comrades/friends for Christmas and I always feel bad that I never get around to returning the favor. At the very least, I'll try to post a Christmas card-ish image here sometime soon.

Expect some art soon! :]

Sunday, November 22, 2009

Tilt

Kind of a long speedy. I wanted to try using softer lights in this one and also play with the composition a bit. This wouldn't work too well as a typical illustration, compositionally-speaking, but I kind of like what I achieved. I think I accidentally channeled a bit of Tom Scholes into this one. DAMMIT, I hate that guy! :p

tilt

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Ghost in the Shell Skin Study: FINAL

This was a really fun assignment and one of the rare occasions where I revisit something. Usually once I move onto something else, I won't come back to the previous assignment unless it's something I'm obligated to complete. There was about a week long absence from this piece simply because I had to take care of some other work. But I'm glad I did! I spent a little bit of time applying some of the things I learned from my Bouguereau study. I really wish I started the Boug study before I started this.

Anyways, I <3 Ghost in the Shell! Next time I do some fanart for GitS, I'll be sure to make it a bit more interesting that 3 heads. :p

 

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Bouguereau Study

I've been wanting to do a master painting study for a while (last time I did one was back in art school), so fortunately, Mister Jaime Jones was doing one the other night and passed on the reference image he was working off of. His came out awesome! Mine, not so much. Still, I learned a lot from it. Bouguereau is a freaking genius and I have a must greater appreciation towards his work now. I think the hardest part about doing this was trying to minimize the use of my techniques or style and just trying to study and apply what Boug was trying to do. Anyhow, I'll definitely try to do some more of these more often!

bougstudy

Friday, November 13, 2009

+Aramaki (part 2)

Been a bit busy, but I'll be wrapping up the GitS stuff this weekend, I think. Here's a bit of an update.

aramaki_2

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

+Chief Aramaki

Here's a bit of an update. Could've posted this last night, but I spent most of the day playing Modern Warfare 2, so I was kind of pooped! :p

I decided on going with Chief Aramaki, simply because his skin is pretty different from Motoko and Batou's. Motoko's all about beauty and youth, Batou's skin represents hard edges and a bit more dullness (though I'm still trying to strikes a balance between this and the idea of artificial skin), and Chief Aramaki's skin represents a much more matte like quality and less vibrant colors. If Batou wasn't my favorite character in GitS, I'd probably have chosen someone who had actual eyes, so that I could show the same sort of range of age degradation as I'm trying to do with human flesh. But I'm still having a lot of fun with this! :D

Still a WIP. Hoping to finish it all up tonight.

c_aramaki

Monday, November 9, 2009

+Batou

Here's an update (slight update to Motoko). Batou's my favorite character, hands down. He's just plain cool. He doesn't need to be handsome or in his mid-20's to be a badass. He just needs to be a badass! I loved how ruthless he was in the GitS movies. I really liked how callous and emotionless he was during most of Innocence. He's just plain cool. :D

But anyways, I wanted Batou's skin to obviously not be as smooth as the younger Motoko, but a bit more worn and less resilient to represent his age. But I also wanted to give it a bit of an artificial/slightly plastic feel to it. Just to show how artificial his body is (I'm assuming his flesh is artificial, since he's supposed to be heavily cyborg'd :p )

motoko_batou

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Motoko

There's three things that I've been wanting to do lately. 1. I've been trying to practice rendering flesh. 2. I've been wanting to paint a female character again, since I don't do that often enough. And 3. I've been meaning to do a tribute/fanart piece for Ghost in the Shell (I'm a huge fan!). So I'm in the process of remedying these 3 things by doing portrait pieces of the 3 characters from the series- Motoko/Major, Batou, and either Chief Aramaki/Ishikawa/Togusa. Still undecided on the last one, since I like all their characters.

Here's Motoko (still got some clean up I'd like to do)

motoko_portrait

Monday, November 2, 2009

Crazy

Taking a bit of a break from environments and will be trying to do some characters and creatures the next few days.

So here's a quick little sketchy-man! I did some more stuff, which I'll get around to posting eventually :p

crazy

Friday, October 30, 2009

The Melt (thumbs)

I forgot to post these along with the final. Just some variations/ideation sketches for finding the composition and color scheme. I mostly went for 7, but obviously some things changed along the way. I widened the image out and I tried to make the image more colorful (mostly because of the fact that the palette in most of the thumbnails were very similar to my "Dear Friends" piece).

londonthumbs

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Bridges + Aftermath

Two speedies from today..err..yesterday?

bridges

aftermath

Probably going to try to take Aftermath to finish sometime over the weekend or next week. :)

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Farewell + Creek

"Creek" started off as a really promising speedpainting, but unfortunately I gave myself too much time to work on it and I ended up having to do my best to salvage what I could. I'm not THAT pleased with it. So, I learned my lesson- I really should limit myself and I should save copies.

creek

"Farewell" is based on my lesson learned. I spent about 1.5 hours on this one and I'm far more satisfied with the results. Much more simpler and tells a bit of a story.

farewell

Monday, October 26, 2009

The Melt

I haven't spent this much time on one image for quite a while. Granted, there were some things I had to take care of like settling in to Cali and meeting up with some people, but it still felt like an eternity since I've finished an image. A big reason why this one took so long was that I spent a couple of days working on a different version and ended up scrapping it completely. It was way too boring and I think I knew it from the get go, but didn't fess up to it until later.

Anyways, I'm back on the train, and hoping to get some more work done this week. I really want to dive in and try new things. Looking forward to sharing some of those things with you all. :]

the_melt

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Book

The book I made a few weeks back arrived a while ago. I was a bit busy unpacking, so I couldn't really find the time to take some pics of it till now. A lot of the dark images came out WAY too dark and some of the small text is TOO small. Definitely going to have to make some changes before I print my next set. It was still really cool being able to see a collection of my work in print form!

Untitled-1

Untitled-21

Untitled-18

Untitled-17

Untitled-15

Untitled-10

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Bloodcougher

Another creature. Sorry for the unoriginal name :p

bloodcougher

And here's an early sketch. Obviously, some parts have changed since.

creaturewip

Friday, October 9, 2009

Spleyes!

I like his name because it sounds like "SURPRISE!" :p

spleyes

Big trip back to the Bay Area tomorrow. Seeya, Gainesville/Florida!

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Travel

This one kind of reminds me of some of my older work from a few years back.

travel

Thursday, October 1, 2009

Book Preview

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Monday, September 28, 2009

GORE - Guy and Detached

Here's the last two of my GORE pieces. I had a bunch of fun working on both! I'd like to do a more fantasy version sometime. And yes, yes, yes..I have a thing for cybernetic prosthetic arms! I think that's why I want to try doing a fantasy version of the character and idea of the GORE pieces. Trying to come up with a fantasy-based or even a steampunk based prosthetic arm is very enticing!

gore_guy

gore_detached_clean

Here's a mock up of what this scene might look like "in-game" (if it was a game!).

gore_detached_mock

The next few weeks might be a bit slow. I'll be moving to the Bay Area next Saturday in hopes of finding some work. If anyone wants to meet up to draw and stuff, let me know! Hopefully I'll find a nice figure drawing workshop to attend. :]

Monday, September 21, 2009

GORE - Split + Step-By-Step

Hopefully none of you will think any less of me when I say this, but I've always been a fan of violent action-y stuff. Like a lot of people around my age, I grew up playing games like Mortal Kombat, Doom, Quake, and other games that I was probably too young to play. They were entertaining in ways I never thought I should be entertained by. But regardless, it'd be impossible for me to deny that those kinds of games inspired me a lot. With games like God of War 3, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, and Dante's Inferno on the horizon, I felt it was about time I made a piece that would serve as a tribute to hardcore action games.

gore_split

And here's a quick "step-by-step" tutorial.

gore_split_tut

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Thieves

Here's a piece I did for a friend's short film. It's just a blue sky idea based on the story outline I was given. T'was fun! :)

thieves

Figure Drawing Doodles Sketches

I recently was told about a figure drawing workshop available in the Gainesville area, so me and some of my buddies went to check it out last Wednesday. It's a really small venue, but it's enough. Three hours for $6 isn't too bad and the people there are friendly enough. Unfortunately there weren't any easels or horses. Hopefully I'll drop by a couple more times, as it was pretty refreshing drawing people from life (it's been a while, and I'm very rusty).

figdrawing_sept_1

(I made a few extremely minor line tweaks in Photoshop and I tweaked the contrast level of the scan. Oh and of course I pieced the drawings together in PS.)

Monday, September 14, 2009

Alien Class

It's funny, this originally started off as a design for an alien centaur. I wanted to create sort of an alien counterpart to the fabled creature, but after showing it to some friends and getting giggles and teehee's across the board, I decided on ditching the centaur idea. But that's ok, because I had a fun time designing this guy and I had even more fun creating different outfits for it. It's like playing Dress-Up, but for male 20-somethings with creepy thingies. :p

From L to R: head study, warrior class, peasant class, priest/political figure class

alien_class

Then last version of the abandoned alien-centaur

aliencentaur_wip

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Summer: 21 (+)

Yesterday, I asked myself  (out of boredom, mind you) "how much work have I done during summer/since I left Ignition?", so I thought it'd be fun to provide some statistics. All speedpaintings and scans of drawings are excluded from the final count.

Total Individual Pieces of Art: 21
Sci-Fi Related Pieces of Art: 11
Fantasy Related Pieces of Art:  10

Environments: 7 (6 Fantasy, 1 Sci-Fi)
Characters: 4 (1 Fantasy, 3 Sci-Fi)
Tech: 7 (2 Mechs/Robots, 2 Vehicles, 3 Guns)
Illos: 2 (2 Fantasy)
Creatures: 1 (currently working on another one right now)
NDA Related: 8 (not factored into the final count)

It's definitely been a productive season for me and I've got a good batch of ideas for this coming fall. Hopefully I'll be able to balance out all the categories as it seems like it's often either heavy on the sci-fi or heavy on the fantasy. I am itching to work on some fantasy weapons. Maybe a crossbow of sorts or something steampunk-ish. Same goes with vehicles. Here's to the fall! :)

Monday, September 7, 2009

Monster Store Sale

I felt like doing a moody interior environment. I had fun thinking of some props and some unique materials for the floor/walls. I might try to put together a legend that points out what's what, but hopefully you all get the gist of things.

monsterstoresale

Here's the same image but without the scale dwarf and human figures:

monsterstoresaleempty

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Ruined Ruins

I've been re-watching Lost the past week or so ( seasons 1-4 are on hulu ), so I wanted to do something jungle-y. I also wanted to try doing an image that wasn't as epically-scaled as most of my other environments.

ruined

Friday, August 28, 2009

Dear Friends

A color experiment I've been dabbling with. Really wanted to try using a different palette this time. The title of the image is taken from the Final Fantasy V OST's. I really love that album not only because of it's title, but because of it's cover , which I think is a beautiful depiction of playing an old school Final Fantasy game (I keep thinking of the player and it's party traversing across the world map whenever I see this album cover).

dearfriends

Monday, August 24, 2009

RED Mech

I've stayed up for about 20 hours straight dealing with stuff and putting aside some time to complete this mech design. It's 2pm now, so I'll edit this post with some notes after I wake up!

red_mech

The original sketch.

red_mech_sketch

Saturday, August 22, 2009

Centurion

Here's a character I just wrapped up. He was originally extrapolated from the buggy I posted last week (he's the scale/thumbnail man standing beside it). I was quite inspired by District 9 last week, so don't be surprised to see some District 9-ish tidbits in him. I've been itching to design a bearded and slightly older-than-usual character, so I'm glad I got this one out of the way. Beards are dope. :p Now that I look at it, this guy shares a similar color scheme to Gordon Freeman from the Half-Life series.

centurion



And here's an early (sloooppyyy) digital sketch of the Centurion that was used as a base.

centurion_prog1

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Living Ceiling

I've been a bit busier than usual the past week. One of my friends hooked me up with some work for White Wolf, so I've been dividing my day up by spending half my day on the freelance work and the other half working on my portfolio (well, I've been focusing on one particular image for my portfolio the past few days). Things will pick up soon enough! Here's the new portfolio piece.

livingceiling_env

And here's an early sketch. I was about 60% done with the image at this point.

livingceiling_env_early

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Summoner

I wanted to try adding in a new character this time around.  Trying to get better at creating female characters. I had fun working on this one, though, since the character archetype gave me the chance to go crazy with her design.

summoner

Expect a new environment or creature soon!

Sunday, August 9, 2009

Jackalope DRT

Felt like the R-Bike wasn't enough since it was a simple profile, so I felt like doing a 3/4 view of a different type of vehicle. I didn't want to do a concept car of the future, so I decided on doing a car you'd find in a post-apocalyptic world a la Mad Max. The orange stripes are an homage to the mech in District 9 (looking forward to watching that this week!). I dug up a lot of pictures of dune buggies. Those things are awesome! I wish I bothered to add in some other things, but then I think it'd look too much like a real-world dune buggy.

jackalope_drt

Thursday, August 6, 2009

GUNS! x 3! = GUNS!3x!

I haven't done any weapons in a while so I was excited to work on these. At first I was going to only do one (the hard edged gun), but I decided on creating a few more hoping it'd give me a chance to play with around with some shapes.

PS- I had fun with the (toxic) bubble gun! :p

gunsss

Now I'm ready to start working on a vehicle (3 or 4 wheel vehicle). Yay!

EDIT: Sorry, forgot to mention that the idea/inspiration to create some guns came looking at Josh Kao's recent post on his blog! Good stuff, Josh!