Tuesday 27 November 2012

Time to paint Windrunner! Not everyone hates gingers...

Every girl in Dota 2 has breasts that are too big. I feel inadequate, I have a similar body to Windrunner but no bewbies. The downside to loosing weight I suppose. S:

So I'm going to make her's a little smaller maybe. Ill see it goes.

Edit: Here's the first grey wip! 



Thursday 22 November 2012

Disgruntled Orc Nanna Colours

Just doing some warm up colouring before I get working on a clients brief.

“Believe me, the other orcs are more effort than the small tusks!”

Tuesday 20 November 2012

Reblog of Resources - Gurney Journey: DreamWorks' Animation Resources

Gurney Journey: DreamWorks' Animation Resources: DreamWorks Animation has a comprehensive in-house training program which provides a lot of resources for their artists. They provide every...

Sunday 11 November 2012

Some unused concepts

Here are some concepts that aren’t being used for something I’m working on. Unfinished environment scene.


Friday 9 November 2012

Shorthand Human Anatomy Gestures Guide

 Hey Peeps! I was practising some anatomy and just realised I've been using a systematic approach to guidelines and anatomy. So here's a page on some small tips and the steps that I go through. 

Next up: More in depth detail on transferring 2D shapes into 3D forms.





Thursday 8 November 2012

Ios development assets





Geo hero

This was a game I worked on commissioned by Sea Shepherd to support the whales! I was the only artist on the project and was responsible for all the graphics except the No Prisoners and Sea Shepherd logos. The game is currently available in the app store!


Toop&Toop

This was an application commissioned by Toop&Toop while I was working at a company called NoPrisoners. It’s an application for people in australia to help locate housing to rent and buy.

Monday 5 November 2012

Disgruntled Orc Nanna



Here’s the grey version of my disgruntled orc nanna. 


“Believe me, the other orcs are more effort than the small tusks!”



Sunday 4 November 2012

Improvement in painting


This is for all those people who are feeling frustrated about improvement in their painting skill.

During periods of frustration it means that your actual technical skill is lower than your ability to see. We’ve all been there, looking at one of your favourite artists and seeing the paint strokes and knowing why they’re sitting there… so you you try that on your piece, but it doesn’t turn out quite the same.

This is when the practice-practice-practice up the technical skill mountain comes into play, you keep trying and and failing until you get what you’re missing and your technical skill meets your ability to see.

This is where things get interesting, it’s quite rewarding figuring out what it was that was holding you back, learning that new thing to take you to the next step, we feel proud! We’ve accomplished! Our perceived technical skill is now higher than our actual technical skill and and our ability to see. At these times you wont feel frustrated.

And the more times you go through this process the quality of your work will improve overtime!

Keep patient, keep vigilant, learn the things that you hate (or find hard) and you can’t do anything but improve.



Wednesday 31 October 2012

Some card designs and a rough spaceship scene

So here's some card design templates I designed that I was thinking of using as my new business card or something neat like that. :D Don't steal and claim as your own please, If you want the design just contact me! :)


And here's the beginning of a space shuttle scene. There is going to be death. P:


Got a job, got another job? Oh and some resources!

So in my previous post I mentioned that I lost employment with PopSci, but gained employment with a TCG company called Legacy. Then a week after working for these guys I get a call from a previous employer with some work.

Gah, life of the artist! Starving for 6 months busy for 2 months. I'm not really complaining now I've got something else constructive to work towards, yay lets kick woe in the butt!

And here's some fantabulous resources, a complete 3D reference library of the human body.

If you'd like to get the full version, I think you all know how to google. ;)

Here's a list of websites that have resources and tutorials on them, I've posted them in order I use the most often.


Paul Richards Thumbwar, save these make them your desktop slideshow!

I have about 5,000 other artist images that rotate on my desktop every minute. When I'm stuck I minimise and stare at my screen and have a break for 5 mins taking in everything relevant to what I'm doing from the art that's passing by my eyes. And when these thumbwar images come up it's like a little check list to see what I'm forgetting. 




A general tutorial covering everything from

Line Art, Studies, Terminology, Seeing, Shadows, Hues, Skin Tones, Colour Identity, Colour relativity.

Separated tutorials going more in depth (mostly about light)

Including light direction, natural light, artificial and indoor light. Also tutorials on perspective, one point, two point and three point.

Photoshop short cuts and more ways to observe your studies

These tutorials are by Henning Ludvigsen, an artist and art director for several game publishing companies, such as Games Workshop, Fantasy Flight Games and Edios. And even publishing tutorials in imagineFX magazine.

His tutorials cover topics such as, painting glass, distortion and refraction, painting glow effects, painting puddles, icicles, oily wet skin, materials, beards, volumetric light and even gold.

Super detailed break down of composition

23 glorious pages all about composition!



Tuesday 16 October 2012

Lost a job, gained a job.

So an interesting couple of weeks, things usually move pretty slowly for me. But in this time I've lost my job at Popular Science, the whole Australian contract was lost, pretty sucky. But on the positive side I've also gained employment for a Trading Card Game called Legacy. I'm starting today! I'm super excited and I hope I can work up to the standards that they want. 

Keeping it positive and moving forward!

More progress soon!

Friday 5 October 2012

Tidehunter Dota2 Fan art - just like a watermelon but fleshy part 2

Here's  an update on the grey values and I fixed up the bones a bit, thanks to Scroop for the advice! :D


And here's a rough layout of the colours, garishly bright at the moment! I might tone back the colour and work on highlighting the important areas, Still look needs to look more watermelonly too. 



More updates soon. :) I was thinking I might even try making a wallpaper? 

Tidehunter - just like a watermelon but fleshy...

So I over heard some of my friends on skype talk about how Tidehunter looks like a watermelon, so I'm starting a piece entitled the anatomy of Tidehunter featuring his fleshy watermelon innards and showing his skin in a similar way to the rind of the melon. Still working on the bones, then more muscle detail and meloness, then colour!




Tuesday 25 September 2012

Popular Science - An ai controlled sentry, gone wrong!

Here's the recent image I did for Popular Science magazine. I learnt a lot during the process of this one, like taking an image too far in one direction before showing the client. Regardless, I really like how the alternate piece came out, we ended up using this instead of a scene, sometimes simple works best. 

Here's are some close up shots of the metal. Also here's a good tutorial on how to think about painting metal and it's attributes (tip 15 - Reflective Metal the easy way).


Sunday 23 September 2012

A Tiger bomb!

Here's somethingI forgot to upload yesterday, a colour work in progress for the previous sketch tiger bomb. :D I wad reading the dota 2 comic (Jim Murray <3) and the colouring has inspired me to step it up a knotch! I really need to focus more on contrast and eye line more. Things are getting a little bland and samey.


Also here's the comparison of those two pieces for the Draw this again contest. :D
2004 (17) - 2012 (24)


Wednesday 19 September 2012

Draw this again! - Oh Green World update

Here's another progress shot of my piece for the Draw this again contest, previous progress shots can be found here and here. :D It's due on the 30th, anything I should change or anything look out of place? Still tweaking things untill it's done!


Tuesday 18 September 2012

Quube TwoDee - a 2D platform game in a 3D shifting world, with physics!

A few years ago some friends and I decided to make an indie games company, Universal Chicken (origins of our company name can be seen here) here's one of the games that we submitted to an Avcon in previous years. 

The game is a 2D platformer in a 3D environment with physics puzzles and it feels a little like running around the face of a rubiks cube made of fruit. Pip takes the role of the main character and will jump push and fall his way through the puzzles. Also featuring a multiplayer version!

In game screen-shots and some assets.


Pip Logo


Pip rough character preliminary sketches


Pip jumping and running animation sheets


How to play sheet


Win lose assets

...Pip with lazer eyes for no particular reason...


Title screen background


And some cubes to cut out and make. :D


It was a great project to work on, the programmers game me a lot of freedom and great feedback! After Avcon we found out that there was another game called Quube so not sure about if were continuing this project or not. But i'll just leave this stuff here and maybe we'll pick it back up again. :D

Monday 17 September 2012

A coloured squid face and some examples for clients

Today I was browsing the internets for artists and I came along the a few of the artists for Fantasy Flight board games, since its a career path that seems along my lines of work I'm taking a leaf from their book and practising some things that may suit those themes. Oh and here's a bunch of tutorials by Henning Ludvigsen! It includes the technique I used here which was painting wet tentacles. 



Sunday 16 September 2012

15-Sep - Squidz rough greys

Quick greys and some new techniques learned during the night, I'm trying to incorporated more of my line style into my colouring work. These grey are just a rough mostly, just to get initial lighting. I'll run s second pass over it tomorrow and see if I can do some kewl squid/octopus textured skin. :D



Tuesday 11 September 2012

Draw This Again - 10Sep progress

Progress for tonight. Oh the trees. I'm glad I did the hard part first...


Sunday 9 September 2012

Draw this again...nights work preview

So here's the little bit that I'm happy with so far, as I'm going through this process I've learnt I don't really know how to draw trees still...


Draw this again contest


Deviantart are currently holding a competition where they're asking for artists to take a previous piece of art and redo it with their current skills. To see how much you've learned and to see what you need to improve on in future work. I've been posting on deviantart since I was a wee teenager, I've chosen a piece and here's some of the progress I've made. 

Here's the original meme


...and here's the piece I did 7 years ago when I was 17. S:

I chose this one because I remember going out side of my comfort zone and learning new things. Also I remember wanting a sense of wonder so I'm going to try and keep and feeling in the new version.


And here's some of the sketches and preliminary value and colour tests for the new piece, to interpret this older piece I've had to use some creative license to make up for my younger selfs lack of understanding of perspective, compositions, anatomy and well most things.

Thursday 6 September 2012

Chimp in a tank, Universal Chicken mascot and some board game themed sketches...

Chimp in a tank is what happens when you have a household of programmers and an artist. Chimp in a tank is mostly verbal ideas and some written down mechanics, so it's hard to show what's going on. So here's some chimpy-themed sketches instead.


So it was late and I was sitting at the table doodling, Universal Chicken doesn't necessarily need a mascot but here's one anyways. The whole shape of the little guy is based off of the logos egg/bird combo.


And here's an assortment of sketches that I drew while gaming and the like. From top downwards: zombies? the some whacky chihuahua and cattle hanging out and lastly a sketch of the abbot from Citadels, cool game that one. The art dramatically jumps up in quality from the first set.