RAB PRINTS

Howdy folks!  You can grab some of my prints from my online store at the link above,  like my recent Force Awakens Fan Art!

Howdy folks....finally got my fan art finished for The Force Awakens.  Less than a year to go now, man I cannot wait.  It was an amazing feeling getting to draw Luke Skywalker again, alongside cool new characters,  looking forwards to seeing more and trying to resist the spoilers!! 

Chrimbo

Hope u all had a good one folks....now onto 2015!

Howdy folks

Here's a piece based on a bunch of new characters I've been doodling recently....I got the chance to sit and scribble some comic ideas, and it seems like they mostly centered around skateboarding rollerblading colourful characters, so I decided to paint these guys up. Whether I get the chance to do any actual comic pages - well hopefully 2 or 3 at least - maybe that's a good way to do it, aim ..low  :)

I guess it's partly my own way of trying to create something similar to a jet set radio sequel....man i loved that game....the closest at the moment game wise looks like the wicked 'Sunset Overdrive', looking forwards to that.

Found the original sketch, which is actually a little older, some of them have changed but not that much....

Now this is out the door I've got a fantasy character that will be up in a couple days, then it's onto some Gumroad tutorials, do some environment practice, which I shall present to you lovely people soon...ish!

STAR WARS DAY!

May the 4th be with you!

I've been celebrating it mostly this evening, sitting drawing and listening to John Williams.  Oh, and a little Kevin Kiner, he had some great moments on Clone Wars.  Anyways, cannot wait for Rebels,  if u haven't seen the new trailer already then go check it out now!  It's gonna keep me ticking over until episode 7 arrives.....so I fully expect to be drawing Luke Skywalker in his new costume in a years time for the next StarWars day. How awesome is that gonna be....I mean, when I think about how exciting the build up was for Phantom Menace...the Vanity Fair issue with the fantastic photoshoot, the first teaser, the midnight launch of the toys....to go through all that again, but with kids, it's gonna be amazing.  Geeking out already.

Anyways...here's my StarWars day pic of Kanan,  and also a pic I worked up recently for my tumblr, but neglected the old blog here. I do apologise.

Until next time...Fly Casual!

I'm back , ready for Round 2!  God I've missed u all  :)

Sorry folks, this post has been a long time coming.  So what have I been up to?

These days I'm Freelance,  which has been pretty cool so far, working with a variety of talented people on lots of diferent projects.  Some of these I can't share with u on here quite as of yet ( classified Top Gun style ) but some of them I'll put up in the next month or so as I try and actually get back to blogging regularly!

But I'll ease you in for now with some Astrofunk work....I don't really think I'll do another one, but for a little while recently I was looking at re-designing some of the characters, basically doing things...betterer.  So I've got a different take onthe story which would be fun to do, but not sure if I'll ever do it.  I've got two other comic ideas I'd love to at least get past scribble stage, so will focus on those for now.  

Anyways, here's some of what I was toying with on Astrofunk Zero as I called it ( only slightly catchier than Astrofunk:Redemption Legends Turbo X )  For your eyes only.  Coz I'll probably never make it !  :)

I will be back in the next couple of days, I promise Internet!

"YOU HAVE BECOME A RIVAL!"

My latest print 'Battle of the Sith' is up now at my new print store.

As usual it's printed on beautiful Giclee paper, and at 10" x 30" ultra panoramic it looks supercool.

Limited to just 50 copies, each hand signed and numbered.

Grab it here! - RAB PRINTS

This scene from the series just blew my mind.  I loved getting the timeto draw these guys in a style more reminiscent of the original clone wars animation - simplifying Mandalore for the background was a lot of fun.

Loved the Clone Wars - was gutted when it finished, but man what a way to finish, absolutely stunning. Can't wait to see what those guys cook up with their new show Rebels!

Next up? - well, I would love to do a Return of the Jedi print in the style of my untouchables piece...if i can find the time, maybe!

RAB PRINTS

Got my new print site up and running, and it's got my brand new Untouchables print up there - 'The Strength of the Righteous'

You can also still pick up prints of my Ripley trilogy and Bond portraits, along with other fun stuff.

RAB PRINTS

I created this piece for the 'I love you man' show at The Bottleneck Gallery in Brooklyn.  It wasn't a quick piece to put together, but I loved pouring the hours in - it's an absolute gem of a classic movie, full of fantastic contrasts, great performances, an amazing script, and a phenomenal score from Morricone, which I had on the headphones a lot whilst drawing.  If for some crazy reason you haven't seen the movie  - I highly recommend it.

Hopefully I get the chance to do a few more similar pieces soon,  there will certainly be some new stuff up on the site very soon.  

Next up should be 'Battle of the Sith' - couple more tweaks to do before it's done, but I'll be back in a couple days with that.

RAB PRINTS

JUST A QUICK HEADS UP - MY PRINT SHOP SITE RAB PRINTS IS CLOSED AT THE MOMENT, AS I'M OFF ON SABBATICAL.  SO IF ANYONE OUT THERE IS LOOKING TO BUY BOND, RIPLEY OR ANY OTHER PRINTS, YOU CAN EITHER DROP ME AN EMAIL AT  ROSS@ROSSBURT.COM  OR WAIT UNTIL I RE-OPEN THE STORE IN SEPTEMBER.

Also just realised I never posted these Skyfall sketches on my blog!  Just too many places to post these days with Deviant art, tumblr....gotta get more organised! I'm a massive culprit of Blog neglect!

Mega Excited to hear Sam Mendes is back for Bond 24. Plus there's the new William Boyd Bond novel in September - good time to be a 007 fan!

I've also got a bunch of new stuff over on my portfolio site - quite a mixture of work  - some Vector work from my time on The Sims Social facebook game, as well as a bunch of new character concepts and ideas - here's a preview of a couple, check out the rest here - 

WWW.ROSSBURT.COM

Also got a couple of new pieces almost finished, which if I'm lucky I might get up here in the next day or two!  Back soon!  

Back at last !   Loved season 3 of The Walking Dead, and had an awesome time drawing up these guys...started with a sketch of The Governor,  which I then played with making into a composition involving michone and Rick, and grew from there -  I'll put up a working GIF showing all the various stages in another post.  Anyways, hope u dig it,   Can't wait for season 4 of this!

You can pick up the print at my shop site -  RAB PRINTS


Been neglecting this blogsite bigtime -  it's fair to say I've been spending more time with my other mistress of internet art - the sexy Tumblr.  She's so ....easy  :)

Just launched a website where you can buy prints of some of my recent work

RAB PRINTS

...which includes this set of 6 Bond Prints I've just recently finished

Kinda got Bond fever at the moment - can't wait for SKYFALL!
Although I did enjoy watching Prometheus on blu ray  - could be tempted to add a Noomi Rapace flavoured pinup to my Ripley prints....maybe

Been neglecting this blog a bit sorry,  spending too much time with my mistress Tumblr :)   I'll try to make it up to u!

Felt Tips!

 Went into town at the weekend and picked up a few bits of
stationary which is always mega exciting - new sketchpad, a few felt tip
pens, pencils n stuff - so I've been doing some traditional computer free sketching this weekend, results so far u can see here.  Not sure who's next on the list - maybe Andrew Garfield, I need to catch Spiderman this week, would be cool to draw him and Emma Stone.  Although I have tickets for The Prestige tomorrow night for BFI london's Nolan season, so might just draw Bowies crazy magician dude instead!  And yeah that's meant to be Batgirl...I know she's probably a read head right now but....well, i think she was blonde at some point.

although that is definitely NOT based on Alicia silverstone :)

ASTROFUNKIN'

..well kinda.  Been doing the odd Astrofunk scribble here and there, playing with re-working a few elements - tweaking character designs, maybe do a new logo,  and definitely push the style into a diferent direction.  So this is just a first attempt, in no way final, but might be close to where I end up.  Anyways, having fun drawing some of the characters again, hopefully get some new pages done soon.

Prometheus has landed...

UPDATE! - 23/05 - I realised when looking through my files that somehow I'd lost some of the colour in the poster when making final tweaks, specifically the Blues, so I've updated the main image below  

This started out as a doodle whilst on holiday....as u may have noticed I do enjoy scribbling the odd movie pinup here or there, I love figuring out the composition and sketching the actors....this started as just an attempt at a landscape style pinup...and I think since I'd been reading Empires prometheus articles that week, the first thing that came out was the space jockey - and suddenly I was like 'oh that could work really well as the main shape in the background.  The rest was basically poses from within the magazine, but trying to go for the feeling of exploring, discovering, using the starmap dude from the trailer.  I think the most exciting thing about this film is the unknown - will it be as awesome as we all hope?  What will they find out there?  How does it actually connect to Alien.  It's only a few weeks away now, and I cannot wait.

Anyways, hope u like this one.  Not sure what's up next, probably some sketch book scribbles I've been scanning in, rough stuff.  Back soon with that!

RAB

RIPLEY TRILOGY

Howdy folks!  Finally fnished my Ripley Trilogy.  After finishing ALIENS I decided to go back and slightly tweak the first two, hence the posting of the new versions here.   Mainly Alien 3, tweaked her face and hair a little, and alligned text and boring stuff like that!  Decided to drop Newt out of this new one, keep the focus on Sigourney, plus it meant I could make use of the tracking device.  Pleased with how this one turned out, maybe the best of the likenesses.  Now I'm working on a Prometheus pinup...should be done in a couple of days, so back in a week or so with that!

Warrior Block-IN

This guy started with the sketch on the far left whilst on the train home the other night...thought I'd show the progression so far, spent a couple of hours tidying it up, then I always block in the basic shape so I can mask off the character and get down to blocking in different material types - I'm not too worried about specific colours at this stage, they will probably change a bit, but it identifies which areas are metals, leathers, wood etc, and allows me to easily select them so they can then get diferent treatments, be it texture overlays or custom brushes or whatever, that helps them read as their diferent material types.  

Aliens pinup is very close to being finished, but ....well, the final stretch is the longest!

The Bitch is Back...

...second of my Ripley pin-ups - Currently sketching up the Aliens version, complete with Newt,  and have started thinking about how to do Resurrection also, which I really need to re-watch, been a while. 

Worked out the colour schemes for each poster so they should sit together eventually, been having a lot of fun with these.  Plus all the new Prometheus trailers around right now have me mega excited about anything Aliens esque!  

ps - anyone else read the Dropship Aliens Fanzine in the 90s?   I used to love the fan comic strips and stories, kept me going whilst waiting on this third movie! 

Photoshop LineArt

Howdy!


Finally put together the tutorial I mentioned a few posts ago

Separating Line Art in Photoshop


-  it's pretty old skool now,  but it still works really well, and is still the best method I've seen ( other than obviously drawing straight in with yer wacom or cintique! )   But once u do this a couple of times it's easy and quick, so thanks to Pete Clark for teaching me this in College all those years ago!!

ALIEN

Started a little Ripley doodle on my Cintique lunch break the other day, and it somehow turned into this ....gonna do some tweaks to my previous Aliens pinup, very slight, and the Alien 3 pinup is also underway. 


Although i am distracted right now by the Jet Set Radio graffiti contest!

The Dark Knight Rises

Finally finished my Dark Knight Rises Pin-up.  Had the day off today, so used the afternoon to really focus on knuckling down with the final touches.  It's the little tweaks and mistakes u notice at the end that just prolong finishing, but it's always worth just getting through them rather than rushing it. 


Got a bunch of stuff to draw next, so I'll be back very soon!

Ross

At last we will have Revenge...

Turmoil has engulfed the Galactic Republic!  

The poster for the new 3D re-release of The Phantom Menace is 

a disappointing photo montage that doesn't come close to the 

quality of the Struzan original release, and leaves fans everywhere 

feeling like a Tortured Gonk Droid.  But some artists take this as a 

challenge  - to face up to the evil photo poster empire and

rebel with their own doodles.....

ok enough from me.  I doodled this a month or so ago after seeing 
the weak poster for the 3D re-release.  So I sketched up this composition,
looking to emphasise the 3D feeling with the lightsabers, and focus more on integral characters and situations...I love the idea of Qui Gonn and Anakin in Silhouette by the light of the Slave Houses, ships actually coming out at ya...but I doubt I'll get the time to properly work this up.  We'll see....


..maybe once I've taken my son to see the movie ( can't wait ) then I'll be juiced up to
draw this.


Anyway, here's the original amazing Struzan and the new one.  oh man.

Colouring in the Batman Pin-up right now too, but it's..time consuming!  Back to it!

The Tumbler...

does it come in black?  :)


any excuse for a Batman reference!


I  just setup a Tumblr account - seems like a cool way to keep track of artists u like and get your work out there and exposed ( oo-er )  a little more, plus it's simple and quick to use, so check it out here if u like


ME TUMBLIN'


In other news...I have finally finished the pencils for my DKR pinup, here's a peek before I properly scan it in and think about colour.  I'll put the full size Lineart up probably shortly.  

oh yeah - and I was passed this link the other day to an awesome custom brush preset, plus other goodies - highly recommended for getting a pencil feel in photoshop - check it out

STUMPY PENCIL

Back soon!

Dark Doodles

Trying to put together a proper movie poster pinup thing for Dark Knight rises, which is great fun - a chance to draw Bane, Bruce, and Gary Oldman again.  nice.  But, still working stuff out, so i thought i'd just stick some of my sketches up whilst i work through compositions and stuff.  Gonna go stare at my new Drew Struzan Ouevre book for inspiration - awesome book, possibly my best xmas pressie! cheers bro'!  Then, some more sketching whilst re-watching season1 of walking dead, waiting for season 2 to start up again.  sweet.

In a half shell, they're the heroes 4

In this day and age who could ask for more

The crime wave is high, with muggings mysterious

All police and detectives are serious....

and I'm not even googling the song words.  Yup, I can remember almost all the lines to Turtle Power.  And a lot of the lines to other cheese tastic tracks on the movie album '9.95 by Spunkadelic' anyone?  

Turtles was bloomin' awesome, constantly introducing u to crazy new characters, wierd mutants and fantastic action figures.  It also introduced me to american comics, so I've got a lot to thank the turtles for.  I managed to find the new IDW comic books in scotland over christmas, and so these doodles were what i got up to inbetween festive actives and catchin up with buddies.  Finally got them scanned in, and thought I'd throw a dash of colour, specifically on Slash - he was one of my favourite characters, basically a bad ninja turtle.  They kinda did a screwed up version of him in the second movie, but the action figure ROCKED!

anyways, back with more batman ( yes more ) in a day or so...just the doodles mind, this bat-pin up is takin ages~!

have a good one!

Cowabunga!

Dark Knight Rises

When Gotham is in Ashes....you have my permission to die!


So I'm just a little bit excited about the new Batman movie.  A teeny tiny bit.  But I realised I haven't drawn all that much batman, so thought I should rectify the situation...I also got to watch the 6 min prologue introducing Bane in the imax recently, which rocked, and got my pencils intching to draw Bats all the more...


one of the coolest moments in the teaser trailer is at the end when u see Batman backing off Bane in some kind of fisticuffs, with guys surrounding them in some industrial looking place...so I was going for that kinda thing.  
I'd like to do something else with both Bane and the Bat but we'll see.....


This was pretty much the last thing I did in 2011 ( although I do have a couple other half finished pics )  so I'm looking forwards to doing my first proper piece of finished 2012 artwork very soon.  New signatures are always exciting! 

Hope you are all suitabley stuffed after xmas...I got into the new IDW Ninja Turtles comics during my holidays, and have been doodling the heroes in a half shell a little, so maybe I'll stick a pizza flavoured pin-up on the blog soon.  Man I loved turtles back in the day.  COWABUNGA!

ps...I just updated the image with a tweaked version, couple of things weren't right.

Wacom Inkling Review

Howdy folks


Now this is not something I usually do, a lil' ol review on the site, but felt compelled to share my experience of this new device afte reading some crazy reviews that I feel completely misinform other artists out there.  


Sooo..


The 'Wacom Inkling'  is a new device made by - yup - Wacom.  You probably saw the youtube video a few months back, which was quickly shared between most artists I know and rapidly shared over the internet like a skateboarding dog singing don't stop believin.....the video was full of magic, wonder and promise.  Ooooh....aaah. check it out here....


Wacom Inkling Trailer

Basically, the device allows you to attach a small device to your sketchpad and draw with it's specific pen which will capture every line so u can easily usb the artwork into your computer and thus cutout the need to go and scan every page of your sketchbook.  What also looked exciting was that your captured artwork could be imported as Vectors, and potentially tweaked in Illustrator and give u sweet crisp artwork.


So when I got the chance to try one of these new gadgets out at my new job, I thought 'heck yeah!'  


Skip to the end - Massive Dissapointment.


I attached the wireless device to my A4 sketchbook, and tried it in a few diferent ways - one the train whilst commuting, scribbling ideas was my first test - that didn't go to well, so I thought 'give it another chance'.  So last night I got it all set up at home, comfy seat at the table, and used it to clean up a rough on my layout pad. The pen has a sensor light that should flash as you use it if it's picking up the signal ok, so I kept checking that this was working fine, and was concious of being careful and neat.  But when I imported the images this morning - bad dates Indy.  Bad dates.


Here's the comparison pics - on the left is the scanned artwork, the right is the Inklings...'interpretation'.  

You can see that although sometimes it's not too far wrong the fact that it's not right just isn't good enough.  And as for vectors - well when we tried to use this function it gave the image so many points in Illustrator that any manipulation would be a nightmare, plus it wasn't exactly the smoothest result.  You'd still be much better tracing the artwork in Illustrator itself.


On the plus side...it does bring artwork into Photoshop on a seperate layer from the background, and u can use even more layers within the picture itself by hitting a button whilst u draw - but again, this is mute if the drawing isn't gonna come through correctly anyway. Plus I'm gonna stick up a tutorial very shortly on an easy technique for seperating out your line art in Photoshop.


So in summary my main problem is this - when I want to take my artwork into Photoshop or Illustrator or whatever and give it the digital treatment - or just have the image on my computer - I want it to be pretty much perfect.  And that's what any old scanner out there will do.  For not too much cash either.
It doesn't matter how much time this might save you by cutting out scanning - if the image doesn't match up there's literally no point whatsoever.  Plus you're restricted to using the Biro pen thing that comes with the device.  Which is ok, the pen feels quite nice, a little thick, but good if u like drawing with biro pens....but not all the time.


My advice to any artists out there thinking of picking this up - DON'T.  


Go get a scanner for half the price, and draw with whatever medium you like - your favourite pens, pencils, potato shapes....go nuts.  Or save the money towards a Wacom pad/Intuous drawing tablet thing and draw with the light pen.  Or...if you're feeling flush, get a nice Cintique!   


Just don't waste your time or money with an Inkling.  


Oooft.  I've never written so much!


Next week  - a thesis on why The Dark Knight is the best film of the last gazillion years.


Not really.


But it is.


Cheers!


Ross ( I'm not wearing hockey pads )
I'm not wearing hockey pads

F R O Z E N

Yo!  Still waiting to hear a release date for the second Birdsong Anthology wherein this short story is gonna appear, so in the meantime I thought I'd stick it up here so if u really wanna u can give it a read. This was a pretty rapid project, probably 2 to 3 weeks from conception to completion, some late nights but good fun - coz drawing comics is always AWESOME! :)

  Lemme know whatchya think...

Got a bit of a back log of stuff to post at the moment, so will be back mega soon, probably Saturday! 

Ross

ps - here's some makin' of doodles. :)

Nov Scribbles

Howdy

Bunch of sketchbook stuff this time - the Fuzzball scribbles I'd mentioned previously,  I think of these as sort of jumping on points for developing little stories  - very tempted by an idea around the middle sketch entitled 'Captain Fuzzball and the Slugpits of Saturn'.  But we'll see how that goes...

Other page is just a bunch of doodles recently , was working on some kind of barbarian monster slayer, but it needs some refinement,  not sure if it will go any further.  

    Right now I'm deep in Illustrator, trying to get to grips with it before I start my new job.  More on that soon....

Adios!

Getting around to pushing forwards with the other 2 pin-ups in my Alien Trilogy lineup ( forget ressurection..it's ok but....well maybe ....lets just see if I get 3 done first )  .....anyway, finally got a composition I'm pretty happy with for this pin-up based on my favourite of the saga, the original masterpiece A L I E N.  The main idea that was always part of the design was using the reflective Alien skull to depict Ripley in her cryo sleep pod....I thought that worked really well,  it was just figuring out the stuff around that.  In the end what I've focussed on is the horror side of things - the chest burster scene is one of the most iconic moments not just in this movie but in cinematic history, so it seems only right that it splatters across the design.  I also like the way the blood can maybe look kinda face-hugger esque, might need to tweak that on the final version to get it reading right, but it's got potential. So I'm gonna be working this up over the next month, stay tuned for the final piece. 
I've also started sketching on the alien3 pin-up  - it's awesome fun drawing a cartoony bald Ripley, but I need to figure out some stronger composition ideas and hooks,  so maybe I'll stick on the Blu-Ray version for the first time ( just picked up the Anthology recently, nice ) , which should give me some ideas.  

And yeah, that finished Zombie Strong is almost done.  

Almost  :)

Howdy - back again with some quick thumbnail sketches.  Good to get stuck into some more environment painting, so this is stage 1.  Gonna take a couple of this and develop into a more finished concept.  Good fun doodling these little things....not sure which are jumping out at me xfactor style to make it into the next round....the shantytown towers with the snake creatures wrapped around them are probably high on the list...I do like the weirdnes of the onyx spike thing protruding from the crack in the earth......we'll see!  Vote in the comments!  :) 

..i really should've numbered these.  screw it, I'll go update the concept now, and u won't even know the diference, cozI'll switch the picture before I post it!  haha!  I don't even know why I'm telling u this!  

Zombie concept is almost done, back real soon with that

Ross

Found some doodles in a sektchbook the other day, thought I'd work them up a little - so based on the big guy at the top left I gave him a less cartoony head, and expanded out the body, to draw this tough guy Zombie boss character thing. Working up a painted concept for the next post.  Plus I'll post some fuzzball doodles soon I promise! 

Gang Boss

Howdy!

  So back in the days not so long ago when I was thinking of doing some more Astrofunk,  this guy was potentially some kind of Rival Gang leader that would give Sol a few problems.  I'm a bit busy to be drawing the actual comic strip itself right now,  but I wanted to explore more digital painting processes, so this guy is unusual for me in that there's no pencil used in the process anywhere.  I imagine this guy to be some kind of street graffiti punk that maybe follows Sol into space, but ends up getting all kitted up in this crazy armour to kick Sols ass.  But that might never happen :)  

Was scribbling fuzzball last night, will post some in a couple of days,  great fun.

Adios!

Ross

Couch Kid

Back!

Ok, I'll try to get back to some more regular posting on this ol' here blog thing.  Starting with this little guy!  Basically he's just a bunch of couch scribbles and thoughts,  and then some photoshop bits n bobs.  But I like where some of them are going , so will hopefully from this initial ideas pool take one or two of them further into development.  I'm also itchin' to draw some more Captain Fuzzball, but we'll see how that pans out.  Gotta get my comedy head on for that guy!

 -Got more to post, so back tomorrow!

Ross