Thoolie

Here's a Halloween appropriate monster... some offshoot of H.P. Lovecraft's big'un. It seems I'm having fun with the monster stuff lately.

Tentacled Stranger

More experimentation. This time something rougher and a bit more haphazard... tying in a bit to a creepy Halloween thematic.

"Don' know where that masked tentacled stranger dun came from... but he sat inna corner of the bar, mindin' his own business..."

Iron Giant Commemorative

(click on the thumbnail pics to see larger versions)

Here's the piece I put together for the Labyrinth's ambitious Iron Giant Project. Have you submitted your Iron Giant-inspired art yet?

I can't believe it's been 10 years since the film was released. I remember exactly where I was when I went to see it in theatres and the effect it had on me was substantial. The quality of the animation, direction, pacing, characters, emotion... it has it all.

This piece is all digital, done on the Cintiq. Here's the process steps:
Step 1: Brainstormed the composition in Photoshop with this ultra loose blue line sketch. Normally I mess around more with multiple ideas but this piece was pretty solidly in my head, so it came together quickly.

Step 2: Looked up actual ref of the Giant to make sure my construction/proportion was accurate and then revised it in Photoshop on a new layer. Took a broader brush and laid down some rough environment planes and ideas for composition.

Step 3: Digitally inked the piece in Manga Studio Ex. From there I exported the vector solid line art as a 600 dpi TIF and laid in the subdued tones in Photoshop.

Cintiq Sketching #2

More cintiq inking, this one over top of a monster sketch I did a couple weeks ago at a Toronto Drink & Draw get together.

I've never felt confident dropping blacks on my traditionally inked pieces, so having the ability to try an area and then wipe it out if it doesn't work is exciting. Strangely, even though I had the ability to back things up, I barely used it... just knowing it's there gave me confidence to place the black areas better.

Here's the original rough sketch:


I have a few other monster sketches from that night, so I may ink more of them soon. This was a fun exercise.

Cintiq Sketching #1

I know it's been quite a while since I've posted up any artwork. Job(s) have been really busy and I've been juggling all kinds of crazy stuff.

I finally bought a new tablet. My old one, an original Intuos, started dying after 9 faithful years of service. So, I finally retired it and took a dive into the Cintiq 12WX to go along with my new desktop machine. It's taken me a few days to get the hang of it, but now I'm starting to feel comfortable and am enjoying the new challenge.

Here's a little doodle I digitally inked up as a way to practice working with the new tablet. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. The freedom of inking with confidence and no mess with the saving grace of an undo option is quite amazing.

Here's the original rough sketch:


And a zoom in on some detail of the little astronaut:

Zork- Pirates VS Ninjas

Here's a brand new pair of designs for the Legends of Zork video game.

Jolt/Activision contacted me about doing up some limited edition 'costumes' for players to buy, this time focusing on the age-old rivalry of Pirates VS Ninjas. Here are the male & female costumes. They're available in the game under Perks.

Colours on these two were done by UDON wonder-colorist Espen Grundetjern. He was staying at my place for a week before moving to British Columbia and offered to pitch in on the project. Awesome stuff.





And yes, the male pirate has a bottle of "Yo, Ho, Ho" brand rum. Corny, I know. :)

Zork- Male Hero 7- Celebrity

Jolt has started incorporating the newest round of artwork our team created into Legends of Zork, along with a slew of content updates, guilds, bases and full blown quests. I'm impressed with the evolution of the game and the commitment they have to adding content.

So... now taking the hero past his dragon slaying phase is the 'Celebrity'. Yes, that is a hellhound he has on a leash there.