Gauthier Arcade Edition

Just a quick post of a custom vinyl toy thingy i painted up recently...these cool little guys are called 'supa coin op bros' , google them for some awesome custom jobs that put mine to shame....but this was great fun, a leaving gift for my good friend Captain jacques Gauthier , who has taught me many new skills of the pencil variety over the last 3 years at ea....cheers for that buddy! me can draw betterer now! ...well, a little :)

nUDE

Ho-Ho-Howdy! This is the last of the pictures from my life drawing this year....it's been fantastic getting back into it, was a really great course and I'll hopefully go back to it next year, although not immediately. Need to put some more time into astrofunk and other me stuff, aah how I'll miss the nudity :) Gonna try to get a couple more blog posts up before the end of 2008, so stay tuned and keep sketching!

oPPOSING fORCES

Hola!
Been a while, but thought I'd drop in some work I did recently for an SF4 competition....don't imagine this entry will get anywhere, as there are some fantastic pieces I'm up against, but it was great fun getting down to drawing the street fighter cast, and knowing it was for the comp really pushed me to put the extra time in, so I'm pretty pleased with the end result.
I wanted my image to immediately say 'SF4' as a pose to 'that could be any street fighter game', which is why i focussed on Seth, the new Boss in the latest game. It's interesting looking back at my early work on this, and realising how weak some of it was, I really enjoy seeing the progression....infact I want to add a quick video to this post of the progression of the final piece, coz that alone went through a number of changes. In the end I settled on the hexagons inspired by Seths background stage floor design, and used them as an easy way to show every fighter. So there all in there I think! If i have missed one, don't tell me ;)

mAG bLAG

Just a quick shout to mention that the new 'Official Nintendo Magazine' has a cool 6 page feature on the making of ZUBO - and I was lucky enough to have some of my work featured. As someone who used to devour these magazines as a kid this gets me kinda excited, so forgive me for shouting about it :)
I used to love looking at the artwork for the latest mario game, copying drawings of final fight characters, doodling evil megaman bots, or creating my own street fighting dudes. For me, checking out some new artwork for a game was more exciting than a new screenshot, probably still is.. :) Anyway, the sketches shown are from some of the move storyboards i produced, so i might get afew more of these up here soon. Adios!

Life Drawing Portrait

We got the chance to spend the whole of last weeks session on a portrait, so I thought I'd take the chance to try out my new set of coloured pencils ( cheers Captain Dearsley ) . It was great fun, spent just under an hour on line work getting a likeness, then went crazy with the colour, layering it up for about another hour, so this is about 2 hours work. Anyways, seems like all i post is life drawing these days, hopefully get something more exciting up here soon!

quickstyle

couple of quick little paint jobs....didn't have much time on either of these, but wanted to get some painting done, so sat down with a glass of whiskey and the wacom pad. good times :) gonna try to get into something bit more meaty in the next few days, but was good fun just stayin loose and crazy with these 2, basically starting with silhouettes and working into those. Hoping to get an enviroment piece up next, probably involving some more hot monster action :) see ya then!

Round 2 ....and 3

More nudity - this covers the last two weeks of life drawing, did the pastel piece this evening, and last week was a mixture of shorter poses. Great to get some practice at colour studies, looking forwards to maybe trying out some painting next.

Ray

Woo!! Zubo is here at last, so I thought I'd share a little of my work from this awesome project. I mainly worked on storyboarding the battle moves for the game, but this cool little guy Ray was one of the few characters that I got to concept myself. He was the last to join Team Alien, and the storyboard shows his unique battle move. I had a fantastic time working on this game, and it's great to finally be able to play it myself! It's out now on DS, so go grab a copy! You can check out more about the game at the official site here

ZUBO.ea.com

Return to Nakedness

Started a new life drawing class last night, good to get back to it...been a good few months since my last class, so felt tough at first, but soon got going, and was really enjoying it by the end. The tutor kept all the poses pretty short just to warm us up, so all of these were about 12 mins. Looking forwards to trying some longer poses and diferent mediums....oh, and finding out whether u gain any new drawing skills upon hitting your thirties....although it's more likely i've lost some, much like my hair :)

Lady time

Word of the week in sketchclub was 'Vixen' ...thanks Chris :)
Had fun doing this one, good to get back to studying the old female anatomy books. From the sketches you can see she was a bit more tooled up at one point, all samurai sword and grenades, but thought that was a bit cliched, so tried to simplify and make more fun. So the pet gimp came into things, and the hair colour is inspired by vixen - female fox. Anyways, great fun, enjoy.

Smiley

Just a quick portrait, pencil drawing then straight into photoshop....was looking at some russian research for my knight ideas, and came across an old black n white photo of an interesting lookin fellow...based the drawing on his worn face. Added a couple of features like the scar and pinbadge to give a little more interest. Good fun, now it's on to the next sketchclub word.....

101 - Thai Pad Doodles

..and a 47 - crispy duck pancakes :)

just a quick sketch dump - i love doodling little characters and nonsense, and love checking out other peoples random scribbles. So that's why I'm dumping this lot here. Some of these are things I'd like to develop...others definitely not :)

The Dark Knight 100!

100TH POST! HOLEY MOLEY!!!

ok..not THE dark knight, but a knight who is pretty dark :) This is my piece for the sketchclub theme 'knight' that i started with sketches in last post. I think it's turned out ok, what I am pleased with is that working on this has kicked off alot of ideas around the same theme....so i really want to develop this character, put more design work into his outfit, and i have afew ideas for other characters in the same world...so expect more Knight action very soon.
NEW BLOG ALERT! :)
- Us sketchclub guys decided to stick all our artistic endeavors in one place, so we now have a group blog - The Uncanny Sketchmen ( catchy eh ) ...you'll see the link over on the right, check it out, what i always love is how you get such a variety of results from the same start point.

Anyways...I am actuall gonna go straight back to painting some more! hmm..what to paint...maybe captain fuzzball...maybe knight...we'll see!

Sketch time

Just a quick update...wanted to put up the rough work and pencil line for Biker...originally i sketched out roughs of a huge fat guy skidding on his lil' bike, or a gang of big burly guys on their choppers...but that might've been too much work :)

Also, the second page are roughs for the next sketch club theme 'KNIGHT'...these are just my roughs, I'm working on a final line art at the moment, so that should be up maybe at the weekend. And yes there is more comic stuff coming sometime soon, probably 'Fuzzball' in flavour :)

Sketch Clubtastic - Biker

Howdy folks! the sketch club word of the week was 'Biker', so here's my effort. I sorta knew right away i wanted to draw a fat guy, and the cute tattoos kinda came from just wanting to get some more contrast in the idea and image, something a little more unusual. Then i gave him the chopper coz well...choppers rock, my dad has one back home and i take it out for a spin whenever i'm back there, it's awesome. Anyways, pretty pleased with how this guy turned out, I'll get the preliminary sketches and linework up tomorrow after i get some stuff scanned. Big thanks to the sketch club boys for all the feedback, check out their links on the right for their quality artwork.

Digital Cowboy

Started doodling at the weekend, trying to draw one thing, and ended up drawing something completely diferent - this guy. The head sketch at the top right of the pencils page is how he started, and he slowly developed into this crazy dude, with Pixel Pistols and funky shades :)
Pretty pleased with how he's turned out, I was goin with the word 'GunSlinger' in my head, but knew that i didn't want it to be your traditional cowboy. Oh, and thanks to Annes and Jacques for their feedback whilst workin on this, always useful. Anyways, time to start another drawin now! good times ahoy!

Post It!

Just a real quick character sketch, didn't spend too long on this, but wanted to draw an average person rather than design a character like a soldier or monster....so based this on a guy at work, dunno if he's happy about that or not :) Anyways, he loves his post it notes, hence the wall of blue behind him. Got some more stuff coming soon, including new comic style action.

day 3 - FLyIN' mONStuR

So if the soldier aint climbing over big monsters what else are they upto? Well...I supppose they could grapple onto one of these wierd things, use them as a way to get from place to place....or just take a ride for fun :)
Really enjoyed these 3 pieces in this theme so far, think that each piece is an improvement on the last....for this one I was lookin at stuff like Walrus's and Coral for reference ideas on the flying creature, and u might just spot some little star fish attached to it's body. Don't think there'll be anything else this week, maybe a small real quick piece like a soldier helmet detail....but back next week! Let me know what u think of these 3 and have a good one!

day 2 - mON-StUR

ok, so today i thought 'what the heck are these soldiers doing? ....well turns out their climbing buildings then trying to get onto one of these crazy things...been lookin at some wierd mole and turtle claw reference recently, so that's kinda inspired bits of it....anyways, had fun doin this, probs won't get sumthin up tomorrow, but maybe day after along same theme. I like the idea of tryin to grapple onto something that isn't stationary in a game, could be fun....

1-a-day - GO!

Howdy....I thought this week i might try to get a picture on my blog everyday....well, atleast for the first 4 days before i get busy at the weekend with other stuff, but anyways, I'm gonna try to keep the ideas within the same theme / world, so I've gone with this soldier guy to start with. This kinda character pops up a heck of alot in video games, and i always think it must be tough to come up with a new lookin variant on the future soldier idea. Luckily this kinda quick painting means i dont have to go too indepth into the design, but I'm quite pleased with his initial visor design and the guns. All good practice, and enjoying just painting. Anyways, tomorrow night look for something else from this world.....maybe something ....monstrous maybe :) Sleep times beckon!

Bonus Stage

After taking my little thundercat themed break, I got back to finishing my SF4 piece, and here it is. I certainly need more practise in the painting department, so this was a good exercise, and I'm quite pleased witht the result. But i need to get alot more digital painting done, get better and quicker, so expect more of this stuff soon hopefully. Anyways, streetfighter rocks, enjoy!

Thundercats

Ok , so I know I'm in the middle of a Street fighter painting....but i started doodling my faovurite thundercat on the train back home, and couldn't stop! :) I did get the sf pic almost finished, so it will probably go up tonight or tomorrow, but for now here's what i've been upto for most of my day....aah, sweet drawing days.

This drawing is for a couple of people - firstly me, I love Thundercats, and it's about time i did a colour piece of one of those cool cats.....and secondly for my little bro, who is also a big fan, particularly of this guy. Hope u like it big guy! ( aint it a pain when you're little brother is bigger than u ) :)

Anyway, this was mega fun, hope all u cat fans out there enjoy it! HOOOO!!!

Street Fighter Train-ing

HADOKEN! Woo! I'm back up in the amazing capital city of Edinburgh, and on the way up here i thought I'd keep myself busy by doing a quick painting on the train. Seen as I'm looking forwards to playing Street Fighter 4 next weekend in London, I thought I'd pick from the roster of awesome sf characters....the two i've picked are gonna be console exclusives in sf4, Dan and Fei Long. I quickly mocked up the colour / composition test, then spent an hour fleshing out the line work and blocking in base colour. I should get the next part done on the train back on monday, and want to spend about another hour or so adding some tone n stuff with the paint. Anyways, really enjoyed this, hope u all likes...finished version in a couple of days!

Oldman Batman

Not just any oldman....Gary Oldman! :) sorry, i am a Dad, my jokes are only gettting worse, and they were never that good in the first place.

Fancied getting a portrait sketch done last night, and since I'm mega hyped about the new Batman Movie, I thought I'd pick a character from the Dark Knight. Always been a big fan of Gary Oldman, so decided to go with Jim Gordon. Really enjoyed scribbling away at this, and just generally want to get a greater variety of drawing done, so it was a nice change, and next I'm gonna aim for something similar but then digitally paint it up. Anyways, I wanna see Batman related pics on all the blogs i visit, so get drawing!!! :)

ASTROFUNK 2

OK here goes...this is the first look at Astrofunk issue 2, and about time u might well say :)
Right now it's going really well, I'm enjoying scribbling away in sketch pad and roughing out the last of the pages that aren't yet there...then there's the fun of cleanup on the ol' lightbox....then the joys of photoshop. I'm finding it pretty easy to get inspired to draw these days, reading so many fantastic comics...Lenil francis Yu on Secret Invasion, and Oliver Copiel on Thor are constantly blowin my mind, and it's amazing to see Joe Mad back on Ultimates, plus I'm mega lookin forwards to the new Sharknife Double Z by mr.Reyyy. So big thanks to all of them and everyone else whose amazing artwork inspires me to keep the pencil going.....

I don't have any finished pages to show just yet, but right now i wanna wet your appetite with a breakdown of 2 pages from the new issue.....these show the process i go through before taking the page into photoshop to colour it up. Some roughs can be really messy, so the biggest amount of work at this stage is getting that to a cohesive pencil that i can easily clean up. So check out the pages and let me know what u think....personally i feel it's gonna be better than issue 1 in every way, but that's just me :)

As for what else i can say about issue 2.....well, there's more main story, covering 32 pages compared to 26 in the first issue.....and Captain Fuzzball is back, with a 7 page story that ties in to the main story arc, so that's been cool doodling his lil' fuzzy bits :)

So that's me for now...will be back very soon with some doodles of new characters and stuff, thanks again to everyone who has picked up issue 1 and for all the awesome comments. Comics Rock, and drawing them is sketchtastic!!

DEADHEAD!

yO! Just a quick drop in with a couple bits of news....

Astrofunk is now on Sale in the fine city of Edinburgh, so any scots who want to check it out on the shelves then get down to DeadHead Comics. You can find it on CandleMaker row, just down from GreyFriars Bobby and the museum, and it's got loadsa great titles so check it out.

Second bit o' news - Astrofunk is now on Facebook. Yup, there's now a fan page for my little comic, where u can check out loadsa pics and cool stuff. So get over there now for astrogoodness!

Astrofunk on Facebook

Other than that, thought I'd better include some artwork with the post, so here's the first full colour picture of Captain Fuzzball, which was for a stand at the London Expo.

Issue 2 is going really well at the moment, so there's gonna be some preview pages up very shortly, look forwards to hearing what folks think. Until then, have a good one!

Howdy! Just a quick post to mention a couple of games announced recently. I've been lucky enough to work on some fantastic titles over the past year at EA, and i can finally let u know about another two of them. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, and Hasbro Family Game Night. Both were amazing to work on, and challenging in diferent ways, so really looking forwards to these coming out. If u wanna read more about the games then check out the links below. Adios!

HALF BLOOD PRINCE


HASBRO FAMILY GAME NIGHT

Convention sketches, ended up giving a couple away to awesome customers, thanks again!

hOLEY mOLEY! i am knackered! Sellin you're comic is more tiring than i imagined :) Been at the London expo all weekend, had a great time, met lots of awesome folks, thanks to everyone who popped over and said HOWDY, and an even bigger thanks to everyone who picked up the comic. or a badge pack, or tees, all muchos thanks! Got some great feedback and awesome comments from peeps, and I was especially chuffed to get the "hey, reminds me of jet set radio" nod, made my day :) even one guy who didn't pick it up coz it was "too cartoon network" i took as a pretty big complement :) Now it's on with issue 2, got some good rough work done today at the con for some pages, plus i got a bunch of sketches done over the weekend that i'll post tomorrow, but for now sleep beckons, so thanks again to everyone for an awesome weekend! gidnight!

LONDON MOVIE & COMIC EXPO

howdys! This weekend is the London Movie and Comic Expo at the Excel centre in London. Astrofunk is gonna be there selling issue 1, plus the brand spanking new Tshirts and some sweet little Badge packs i just got sorted. So look forwards to seeing folks there, and here's some info on the event. Over and out!

http://www.londonexpo.com/index.shtml

So that was Bristol! My almost first convention went pretty well, even though me and some other guys were slotted into a side room as late applicants it was still cool to be there and meet lotsa cool comic fans and talented creative style folk, plus just checkin out the other stands was useful, so hopefully my next con will have an even better stand with lots of cool stuff! and it's not far away, more details in my next post tomorrow. But for now here's some pics from bristol, some sketches i got dun inbetween chatting to folks, possibly for a 'villains' style poster to mirror the heroes version i already have. Back reel soon!