Live from Quebec!

Lot's of traveling the past week... Finally arrived in Quebec to start my new job with Activision/Beenox. So excited! XD

I've been meaning to get better at composition, color and light. Also, I want to be more honest in my illustrations, and speak of that which I know. In that vein, I've been doing little sketches in my sketchbook, which I then turn into sort of color-key-level-paintings which take about a couple of hours. They're real fun! :D

The last friends I met in Sweden before leaving. It's a delight and a privilege to hang out with two such skilled, beautiful, fun and kind people! I don't do them justice.


Here are their stuff, please check 'em out! :D
http://vixiearts.blogspot.se/
http://www.dincomic.com/

On the train to pick up some important papers...

Last night at my dad's place. Couldn't ask for a better father :)

@Starbucks in Quebec!


Lot's of love ya'll!

Inspired by THU

THU (Trojan Horse was a Unicorn) was an amazing workshop I attended in Troia, outside of Lissabon in Portugal. Had a chance to re-unite with people I love and care about as well as make new friends! Big shout out to the organizers, and be sure to check it out next year.

I was encouraged by some really awesome Pixar/Ex-Pixar dudes to further explore color-keys. So I'm trying to do a few quicker paintings inspired by the people I met and feelings I had, focusing on more cinematic composition, shapes and light. 

Inspired by a really sweet street-musician in Lissabon whose performance on this cheap toy-like instrument was very endearing, and someone else.


Me after 2 hours of sleep at the airport. So long!

 

Awesome Street-dancer. Always a delight to see masterful performances by poppers ;) And there were cats.


Oh, before doing these in color, I tried applying what I learned from the 3-value studies from last time.


Daily dose of HipHop, yeah ;)

Three Values

Back in June I attended a workshop with the great Nathan Fowkes. One of the exercises he advised if one wants to improve at composition and light, was to take screengrabs from movies and try to break them down into three values. Also checked out Eytan Zana's lovely gumroad-tutorial on graphic composition. It's great. Well, I want to not suck at composition, so here are some attempts at improving. Also aiming to reduce the shape-complexity and introduce subtle shape-stylization. Hmm, it's interesting to blend together the strong shapes of light and shadow, with the local values I'm assigning to the compositional elements themselves. Never thought of it like that before, I usually keep local values and light separated. If you know the movies you get a cookie ;)

Frolic and play :)



Hip-Hop, it really is the best music-genre ;P Word, lot's of love ya'll ;)

Practice

District 9 is one of the best movies I've seen. In addition to having a great story, driving home an important message, it's a visual milestone, raising and setting the bar for a lot of contemporary sci-fi design. Here's a feeble attempt at internalizing some of those shapes. I think I should use other, less bristled & painterly, brushes and more selections and gradients when doing hard-surface-stuff.



A lovely lady, as per usual. Attaching some notes on the light and colors which I'm observing.



Here's a study of a sculpt from Skylanders Swap Force. Actually, seeing this post @ Z-Brush-central is mainly what attracted me to Beenox/Activision. Knowing that they were in possession of such skill and taste, and the lure of somehow being part of that, was extremely seductive.



Finally, it might be a lil' while (about a month) before I have a new update. I'm leaving for the Trojan Horse Workshop in Portugal next week, and straight after that I'm taking the flight to Canada. I know from experience that moving takes time, energy and effort, and I might be pre-occupied with finding an apartment and making new friends etc. So, I'll be back ;P
 

Music for the people! Word.

Some Paint

 Threw down some colors on them there portraits! Pretty good practice, may do more. Got some great feedback over at polycount.com, the world's best community for artists in the gaming-industry (imo). 

Light-, color- and stroke-practice.


More from the Sartorialist blog!



Up-beat electronic music. :D

Post-Apocalypse Cartoon

I've been deeply immersed in the post-apocalyptic world of Wasteland. So much fun to design cartoony characters in a relatively dark and gritty setting.

Wrote a story for these dudes, but I can't write, so I deleted it. There. Cole Westwood is my favorite :)

I guess you'll just have to figure out the story with your imagination ;)

Repost, but with the visual template...



Silhouette-check! Are they varied and easily distinguishable from each other? Is the overall shape-language consistent?



I figured I'd attach some of the really rough sketches I do before making the actual drawing. Don't usually show this :) I like to have a clear vision in my head of where I'm going before I invest in a proper lineart, and doing rough sketches is one of the tools.

Photostudies! Shape, shape, shape and shape. I don't know if this is the right way to think, but I'm testing it out.



Mooooaaarrr studies!!! I just lost interest once I reached the face, so meh.



OOooohoho, have I got some treats for you today! :)