Sketch Dump

Hey folks,

I'm back yet again this week (what is this some parallel world where Simon posts frequently?) with some stuff. I forgot to mention how awesome NYCC was. Got to see some really awesome stuff and meet some really awesome people, including someone whom I consider one of my personal heroes, Mikey Neumann. I've applied to a few places to see if they want a piece of me, art-wise, but I've heard nothing back, yet.

Second on my list of things to say and do... DESERT BUS. Okay, so every year I get drawn into watching this charity telethon. It's for about a week straight, with a group of sketch comics playing the world's most boring video game and generally also being hilarious. They raise money for Child's Play (they've raised over a million dollars total over the last 6 years of doing this event). It's hard to describe exactly what makes Desert Bus so addictive, but it's like being part of a big happy family while you're watching it. The chat as well as the large cast of characters on screen weave a community complete with it's own lexicon of memes. Plus, you can win sweet stuff (I personally won a sweet Chrono Trigger bundle which I am awaiting with much excitement). You can check out the insanity yourself here. Desert Bus usually brings my productivity to a screeching halt, though this week it's actually been really good for my drawing, since all I seem to do is draw and watch Desert Bus. It's how I managed to do Koi Fizz in only about 2 days of on/off work. I've also, over the last month or so, done a lot of quicker stuff just for fun. Here's a bunch of that stuff...

Koi Fizz

Hey folks, It's been a while and I apologize for that. I'm a little distracted at the moment so I don't have a lot to write for the moment. I'll just drop this off. I made this as a potential alternative skin for the character, Fizz, from League of Legends. Wanted to do something dissimilar to all his current skins by doing an Asian-themed koi fish/koi dragon skin.

Time Lapse and The Lovers

First off, I forgot to post this when I actually uploaded it. I made a time lapse of twin arrow canyon. You can see at about 5:10 or 5:11 in the video, I actually fuck up and it's a mistake that I haven't corrected in the final image yet. I accidentally slice off a huge portion of the bow, which is why it's a little wimpy on the top half. I plan on correcting that soon.

            

This second item is a drawing I've been meaning to do for a while. It's a concept I've wanted to do for a long time but couldn't figure out a composition I liked. I finally settled on this one. I wanted to evoke Kinoku Y. Craft's type of floaty, surreal-feeling fantasy, within my own style. I used this piece to explore fabric and textiles in a way I hadn't thought of doing before. I hope that comes through and looks okay. Cheers.

Next weekend (Oct. 11-14) I'm headed down to New York to hit up ComicCon. I've never been to a Con before and I'm pretty pumped. Among other things (like potentially meeting Yoshitaka Amano), I plan on peddling my portfolio to companies to see if anyone may have need of a fantasy illustrator of my talents. We'll see, wish me luck.

Twin Arrow Canyon

So it's official, I've switched to PC. With that I've also upgraded to using CS6. I really like the design and feel of CS6, but I get a little annoyed with the way that the brush panels are laid out. In CS4, my Brush Presets and my brush options were part of the same panel, and I could just select which I wanted with one click. Now, my presets are all in one window, and any time I need to tweak a brush's settings, I have to open a whole new menu. I suppose it's motivation for me to have my preset panel more robust, but it's something I'm going to have to get used to, for sure.

 My new computer is really working out in terms of making art. My old Macbook Pro is now in such a state of disrepair that it will no longer start up. It's going in for repairs on Tuesday. But the beast I've build has enough RAM to run PSCS6 with tonnes of processing power to spare. So what am I doing with that? I've begun time lapsing my processes. The piece you're seeing below is the first piece I've time lapsed. You'll get to see it eventually, when I've got some decent editing software to work with. Until then...

This is a piece that came out of a doodle I did when I was visiting my family in Toronto, recently. The character is based on a character in game I ran on and off for a couple years, a gnoll by the name of "Grerr", whose ability two simultaneously shoot two arrows with a degree of proficiency was the bane of many a monster I had intended to be more challenging. Anyway, here it is. I've been really heavily influenced recently by the splash art for "League of Legends" characters so if you're familiar with that you should be able to see some of the style coming through there.

D&D Art Test: Round 2

So, back in late april/early may I did a piece that I submitted for approval to Wizards of the Coasts' D&D art test for 5th edition. Artists were given 1 of 3 briefs to work off of, and could submit to one, two or all three of them at any point. I already did #3, but I thought I'd do #1 as well, as a challenge. The challenge was, given two examples of orc-like humanoid creatures, you had to create either the tribe cook or the tribe shaman. I did the shaman, obviously. I knew there would be a lot of septum piercings and bones everywhere and I wanted to do something kind of unique, so I thought: what kind of body piercing or sacred mutilations might a really brutal tribe have. I decided, because I had already liked the concept of the mouth being sewn together, that I would also have it that shamans have double-piercings which stretch their lower eyelids by having them attached to their cheekbones. I think it turned out pretty cool. Let me know what ya' think.

Skirmish at Dawn

Here's a little piece I've been working on and off for the last little while. Working night shift is not quite as good for my drawing habits as I had hoped it might be. Anyway, this is a piece based off of Naomi Novik's universe in her series of books under the Temeraire title. The series is a historical fantasy set during the Napoleonic war, only there are air forces which employ the service of dragons. It's an awesome series, if fantasy is your thing you should check it out. I didn't want to descend to heavily into the realm of fan art, so none of the actual characters from the books are featured in the piece. The dragon in the forefront is a breed known as the "Yellow Reaper", other than that, it's meant to be rather vague what breeds of dragon are in the background, or even which are English or French. I had a lot of fun with this piece, but it's gotten tiring to work on, so I'm taking a break from it, for a little while. Enjoy...

Summoning

Here my latest piece, I did just for fun. Went all the way from a doodle in my sketchbook to this piece. It's likely I'll go back in and fix the background, which is a little wonky and muddy at the moment, but I'm reasonably happy with the character and the root-beast.