2/27/15 - Bastion paint!

It's up and ready to go:

I still want to do another detail pass as it's still kind of off - I want to do another attempt at better imitating the style as this isn't nearly sufficient. Nevertheless, I think it turned out okay. Still got ways to go but it's a start.

Until tomorrow!

2/26/15 - Destiny Titan

I drew up my Titan from Destiny:

Somewhat of a speedpainting, again these are warmups of sorts. Made some embellishments so he's not the default and made him closer to Kopaka from Bionicle, who I had in mind while creating him.

Sadly no creative writing or Bastion today - I have the file saved and ready but it's pdf, which I can't upload here. So, that'll have to wait a little longer. Sorry!

Till tomorrow!

2/25/15 - RSE Ending

Not much today. I'm tired. Busy. Sorry bout that. It's really late. I did a quick fanart of the original Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald for a sketch to warmup, so here goes:

Pretty simple and straightforward.

Looking forward, I'm thinking of integrating some of the poetry/creative writing I do into this blog as well. I'm taking a class in it right now and am considering practicing further. I might prompt myself with the poem/story, then attempt to illustrate a component of it. Sounds like a fun warmup. Will try it out for a week or so.

Also, I'm going to be delayed on the Bastion paint for a little while, sorry. I need to get the file on this computer to touch it up a bit more before publishing it.

So that's all for today. I'll be back tomorrow!

2/24/15 - Bastion Finished!

I finished the painting (well, I have to turn it in so I'm calling it 'finished' but I'd like to do more work), That said, I don't have the file here yet, so I'm gonna save this post here for tomorrow, when I'll have it all done. I'll edit it back in then. That took up all of my time today, so I don't have a warmup. I did that as a physical drawing and I don't have effective tools to scan it in.

So, sadly, no pic yet, but it'll be up tomorrow. See you then!

2/23/15 - Garden

Geez I'm late and for all the different reasons this time. I've been doing too much painting and not enough posting! So here's a warmup:

The theme was garden, so I went with something whimsical. I just realized I still have my palette in the top right corner, whoops! Forgot to take that out. Well, it's still good.

I'm almost done with the Bastion paint so that should be coming soon too, Till tomorrow (hopefully)!

2/21/15 - Arwing

I made an Arwing!

The date is old on this, but the exercise is similar to what I'm doing now. Today was a busy day so there was no warmup either. I almost burned the apartment down!

But I didn't, so that's cool. Anyway, have an Arwing redesign:

Until tomorrow!

2/20/15 - Changing things (again)

I'm still trying to find a good format for this blog. I'm not too comfortable posting all these WIP images as many of them get left behind, and I'd like to increase the quality of postings (and my practice) instead of just trying to pump out something to see each day. Part of my new practice philosophy entails not worrying so much about the time a piece takes to make. Forcing myself to do daily updates or daily finished pieces would go against that. That said, I do want to put something here everyday and I want it to be worthwhile. So I'm going to change things up.

I'll post a warmup painting/sketch here each day. If I have a finished piece or something I'd like to show, I'll post it on days where something goes wrong and I can't post a normal sketch, or I'll post both. This way, the piece I post here will be smaller - something designed to be done quickly as a warmup or short study. It'll look better than the WIP stuff here, but won't be grand in scale.

So that's my plan. Unfortunately, I didn't do a warmup today and it's too late for me to dive back in to painting. I actually don't do warmups, but I guess I should start and now's a good a time as any. So starting tomorrow, I'll be doing that instead. Till then!

2/19/15 - Perspective Before

So I'm redoing perspective practice as part of my revisiting the fundamentals. I'm not satisfied with my stuff yet, but hopefully I'll have one by tomorrow. For comparison, I've got an old one I did just about last year:

It was a perspective somewhat-reimagining of a Pokemon Lab I did as part of a project. never got finished but I did the basic work here. And as you can see, there's much to fix, namely accuracy and line weight in addition to simply better technique. Pretty much everything needs to be fixed.

And hopefully, I'll have such a fix by tomorrow!

2/18/15 - Story Progress

So I picked the Bastion one and started work on it. This is as far as I got today:

Not really much else to say. I've been pretty busy lately so I haven't been as wordy. I'm going to be putting out more stuff soon so hopefully it means more finished stuff and more to talk about.

Till tomorrow!

2/17/15 - Phone Test 2

So I'm on my phone for this one again. I want to test the quality further, so here's a crosshatched animal combo:

Aaaaand its sideways. Welp, I'll be back on later to fix it up. Till tomorrow!

2/16/15 - Story Thumbs

Yikes! I'm a little bit late, I was quite busy this afternoon, but I've got thumbnail sketches for my next assignment done: It's for a scene from a book/game/movie. Like the other thumbs, they don't look like much, but this blog is more about process and progress so I figure it's appropriate to post them here until I get into a solid posting routine:

Again, here I'm mainly looking for good compositions. I did a bunch of different scenes from a bunch of different stories, but I have no preference to a particular story - just a good composition. So out of this I picked three and now I'm working on rough sketches for those three. I'm probably going to end up with either the fourth one on the first row or the second one on the third row.

Well, that's it for now. I'll have more and prettier stuff coming soon, promise! And I'll be back tomorrow!

2/15/15 - Seraph Process

Still doing thumbs and other stuff for other projects so today I have a progress update on Seraph. I'll put up the last two images I had:

The Linework

Rough Color

And here's where I ended up so far:

I want to get back to some of the confidence in the linework, so that's something I'll be fixing up. I actually have very little practice with rendering, so that's something I'm going to probably take my time with and try to get good at now. As a result, this might take a while. I'll post other stuff in the meantime.

So that's it for today. I'll be back tomorrow!

2/14/15 - Cubone Sketch

I found this sitting in my daily folder and thought it to be more interesting than anything else I had planned to post today, so here you go:

Some old Cubone fanart I did a while back. Everything else I have now is in varying states of unfinished so this is probably more interesting even though it isn't really related to what I've been working on. I'll probably have a process piece of Seraph again tomorrow or thumbnails for a new school project. Well, that's it for today. I'll be back tomorrow!

2/13/15 - Seraph Revisited

So I realized that I need to actually, you know, finish pieces too. So I went back and dug up the Seraph piece I posted much earlier and laid out colors and values. So far I'm pretty happy with the color palette. There are some anatomy/perspective fixes I want to make but I'll be adjusting that as I make the transition out of the linework. So here's what I've got after dabbling with colors:

I'm also working on a few other school projects and another self project, so I'll probably be posting some of those and some progress on this intermittently for the next few days. That's it for today, hope it's interesting, and I'll be back tomorrow!

2/12/15 - Robo Test

So, today's pic was part of a test. I was having a bit of artist block so I resorted to doing silhouettes with a color accent to try and find something I liked. In the end I chose this one:

And turned it into this:

Some sort of mech trooper dude I suppose. I was trying out a new way to assign values to different surfaces. Obviously some parts got more attention then others but the test served its purpose and so that's where I'll leave it.

Well, that's it for today. Hope it was interesting, and I'll be back tomorrow!

2/11/15 - New York Part 2

So I turned in this as the first draft of the New York scene:

Sadly not all that much has changed, most of it was finishing windows and changing some of the gradients around. I'm moreso posting this for reference later when I come back with a second pass and add color and probably some degree of detail to the central building.

I have a new assignment which actually involves digital painting, so I'm really looking forward to that! I'll be posting thumbnails and process over the next week or two, so there's that. In the meantime, I'm still focusing on mastering fundamentals so I've started with cast shadows and I'm still working on getting them as accurate as possible before moving on.

So, with that said, I'll be back tomorrow!

2/10/15 - River Sanctuary

I missed a day... :(

Damn. I had the tab open but I got sidetracked and forgot to post. Well, I'll put it up today then.

This one is my least favorite of the three, and also the least developed, but I'll post it anyway. I think it's a good example of progress I've made, though. The more recent piece I posted before:

Was done in a similar amount of time and does a better job establishing space with a similar concept.

I find it kind of interesting to look back at some of these and see some of the changes I've made over time. Hopefully changes for the better.

Well, that's it for today, and I'm really sorry I missed yesterday...I'll be back tomorrow!

2/8/15 - Dark Town Place

Yeah, I dunno what to call this. It was obviously a foreboding theme of sorts. I tried to make a red/purple town work and I think the mood came out okay.

I really think this fundamentals practice is going to pay off. Sometime soon I'll probably do a sci-fi helmet as a test once I've finished (and at least become proficient at) the material in the first few chapters of this book. It shouldn't be long.

So, that's all for today. Again, I'll be back tomorrow!

2/7/15 - Ice Caves

I found a couple of landscapes I did as part of the game project! These were mostly color and theme tests - I gave myself a few words for each one and attempted to create a piece using two colors that also abides by that theme. Unfortunately, I didn't save the words I used so I don't remember the boundaries, but I do have the pieces. So, here's one:

I relied heavily on atmospheric perspective here to create a misty feel in this cave and also keep the focus in the foreground on the terrain structure. This was more of a mood piece as I was trying to establish the general theme of each area as well as possible ideas for ground terrain. The game was a top-down strategy game at last check, so focus was on making interesting ground structure for players to work with.

And with that, I'll be back tomorrow!

2/6/15 - Perspective Testing

So I'm working on the book now, and while this is an older piece I thought it relevant:

It was a perspective test. I'm reviewing my fundamentals now and trying to iron out any kinks in perspective and line weight before moving on. So this was a post-apoc room I drafted up for part of an assignment - something of a planning room meets alchemy lab in a post apoc world. I had a lot of things going on with this. My design philosophy is a little different now.

Well, that's all for today. I'm going to take as long as I need to fix these fundamentals but hopefully I'll have something fun to show within the next week. I'll be back tomorrow!

2/5/15 - New York!

So as I'm working on this book, I'll be posting other stuff, as I said yesterday. So this is my WIP for a Digital Illustration project:

It's something different, seeing as this is an Illustrator project instead of Photoshop, but I thought it would still be interesting. I'm trying to imitate the Art Deco style to an extent while also giving it some of my own influence. The perspective is off a little and so are the windows, but I plan on emphasizing it and playing that up as part of the design. The original used perspective grids but after messing up a bit I decided to push it in that direction instead. It simply looked more interesting. I want to add color at some point but the project is B/W.

So that's today's piece. Other than that, not much interesting to report. I'll be back tomorrow!

2/4/15 - Changing Gears

So I did some work on the environment from yesterday. I was rather busy with schoolwork, so the changes weren't huge but here you go:

I realized that I have serious difficulty with rendering the piece, and this isn't something exclusive to my environments. I have a few books to help me figure this problem out, so I think I'm going to be shifting gears a bit to work on my fundamentals with more basic exercises until I'm happy with the results.

While I'm doing that, I'll probably try to upload more schoolwork, seeing as exercises aren't going to look particularly interesting. So that's the plan for the next week or two. I'll be back again tomorrow!

2/3/15 - Colorful Take Two

So, after yesterday I decided that while I liked the concept, I needed to overhaul the sketch. So I drew this on top of it:

And for comparison, yesterday's:

I'm much happier with today's piece. I tried a completely different approach and stuck with pretty much entirely flat brushes relying on my own ability and an 80% opacity to create my shapes. Obviously, there's still much more to do if I want to finish the piece, but I think this new thumbnail is a much better take on the concept and conveys color much better. I think that's a good day of improvement, and here's hoping tomorrow offers the same leap!

2/2/15 - Colorful Enviornment

So, today I'm back on the environment track. I blocked out this one in a bit of time, and I want to come back and refine it some more over the next few days. Some of the next posts might be updates.

I want to invest a little more in this one since I have a good idea of where I want it to go, but right now I'm having trouble getting there. So this is what I have today. My goal was to make an environment that had much more color, seeing as most of my previous environments were fairly monochromatic

There are a couple of things I want to work on for the next few days. I want to make it feel less flat; right now the layers of depth are very separated and I want to work to resolve this and make the atmosphereic depth feel much more gradual. I also want to fix the composition a bit, in that the values are bother me right now - there's too much in the middle and nothing is popping out due to poor contrast. In addition, I'm having trouble making it feel 'real'. I think a lot of this has to do with establishing different values to different surfaces to indicate form changes and cast shadows better. With this in mind, I'll move forward and see if I can fix this image up.

And hopefully, I'll have those changes tomorrow!

2/1/15 - Ship Thumbs

Phone upload again today, so enviros are gonna be on hold for a day. So instead I havrle a quick pic of some ship thumbnails I did the other day. Its not much special, but hopefully I'll be doing something with them in the future.

Sorry for the quick update, but it was a busy day. I'll be back tomorrow!