Tuesday, December 28, 2010

I, Am, Return

Well well well, good evening everyone out there on the internet. I hope you all have been having a great holiday season and that you got everything you were hoping for.

Believe it or not, but I actually did a pencil on paper sketch last week but I haven't had time to scan it in. And just as I predicted the holidays have kept me rather busy. Well, the holidays and a cold moving through my household.

I could have done some sketching last night, but instead I ended up getting sucked into the book A Game of Thrones. It really is a wonderfully written tale and even though I'm still in the beginning, I feel like I've known these characters for a long time. I'm really excited to see how the story progresses.

And tonight I actually sat down with my laptop after my daughter and my mom both went to bed (we're visiting Grammie to give the GF some peace so she can kick the crud she came down with). The first sketch is of Miranda from Mass Effect 2.


Yes, I know I'm like a couple of years late to get on this bandwagon, but I just played through the downloadable demo that was released on PSN on Christmas (while I was home with some of the crud as well... Merry Christmas to me) and I'm really digging the game. I was completely not a fan of Dragon Age, so I was a little weary of Mass Effect as I figured it would play the same as DA. Needless to say that I was wrong, and thank goodness for that. I'll be picking the game up on PS3 as soon as it comes out. Maybe I should try to play through the first one in the meantime...

And my second sketch is inspired by the afore mentioned book, A Game of Thrones. This time of a weathered king with a heavy soul burdened by the weight of his position in the lands.


Hope you all enjoy, and I'll try to get some more sketching done during the rest of my vacation.

And if that doesn't happen, have a Happy New Year. Stay safe and I'll see you in 2011.

Saturday, December 18, 2010

I want to tel you something...

Well, good evening out there.

I'm sorry I didn't get my sketch posted yesterday (Friday) but I ended up having a very busy day at work. It actually went to the wee hours of the morning.

So I didn't get to my blog when I thought I would.


Anyway, here is a quick sketch of Black Cat, beckoning to our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man to come over for a... talk.

Felecia was one of my favorite Web Head 'villains'. Her romantic history with Peter/Spider-Man has always made the interactions between the to fun to read. One of my favorite stories about the two was done by writer/director Kevin Smith. The book's called Spider-Man/Black Cat: The Evil that Men Do and I'd highly advise fans of Spider-Man picking it up for a read. Good stuff.

Anyway, I have to get running as the GF and I are going to a holiday party tonight and there's still work to do.

Have a great weekend and I'll hopefully see you back here on Monday.

Disclaimer: I'm on holiday vacation starting Monday, so I may not get my sketches done on time for the rest of the year. I'll try though.

Thursday, December 16, 2010

Another step along the way

My girlfriend is pretty darn awesome.

Since I missed the last WEC fight when it was live, she put our daughter to bed so I could watch the fights. And so far they've been pretty awesome.

I also managed to get the dishes done. Do my pushups (I started the hundred pushups program again). And I'm getting my sketch posted as well.

Today I spent a little more time working on the Laurana sketch I posted earlier today. The sketch actually had me experience something I haven't had to work through in a while. Frustration. I just couldn't get her face to turn out the way I wanted it to. Each time I worked it, it seemed to get further and further away from... well, looking good. So I would delete it and start again.
And it actually showed me how powerful sketching digitally is as I could completely remove the head, leaving the layout on the layer below allowing me to come at the head fresh again. Something I wouldn't have been able to do on paper. At least, not as easily.

And I also was able to fix some serious proportion problems by using the Scale functionality in CS3. Again, this would have been a massive pain in the ass to fix using traditional media.

Anyway, I hope you like the sketch and I'll see you back here tomorrow for my last 'work day' sketch for 2010.

Ok what gives

I can't believe I haven't done a posting yet this week!

I have some sketches saved and everything, but every night when I get home I either completely forget to pull my laptop out of my bag to do the update or we are super busy.

Well to make up for that I'll be posting a few of the sketches I saved through the week.

The first is a sketch based on the anime series Gakuen Mokushiroku: High School of the Dead. For those that aren't bothered by heavy violence, zombies and excessive fan service you should check it out.
It starts out pretty awesome, with a really well done 'horror' presentation. The zombies are really threatening, and you really feel the stress of the group of kids and adults that are trying to survive the world around them turning into harbingers of death.
Then the fan service starts to play a more prominent role in the story, and actually is slowly becoming the focus of episodes while the zombies are being showed less and less frequently.
That being said, this old time anime fan is actually enjoying the series.

The second sketch is a scene from the Dragonlance series Chronicles and Dragons of the Hourglass Mage. It is of Laurana as she is being presented to Lord Ariakas in the series. I won't go into more as I would hate to spoil anything. But it was a pretty cool scene in both stories. And it's a sketch I want to work on more.

Lastly is some more work on the HSotD sketch above.

Now that my build is done burning onto my devices, I have to get to work. So I'll (hopefully) see you back here this evening for another update.

Thursday, December 9, 2010

A Skirmish in the Snow

Good evening out there in internet land.

I told you I would be back later this evening with a new sketch.

Today's sketch is inspired by the awesome looking HBO mini-series in development right now based on the George R R Martin book, A Game of Thrones.

Honestly, I wasn't aware of this book series, or the HBO mini-series before today. But the morning stand-up meeting with my dev team ended with a very excited conversation about the show and then the books when I let everyone know that I hadn't the faintest idea what they were talking about.
Needless to say, the conversation had me go to the HBO website while I was burning a new build and I was instantly anxious to see the show. It looks awesome.

And I'm hoping to get around to reading the books sometime in the near future as well. I actually have had two or three coworkers all volunteer their copies of the book for me to read. But if I do get it, I'll probably end up getting it through the Amazon Kindle app for my iPhone (since iBooks doesn't seem to have any of George R R Martin's work yet.
Which is too bad, because I like that interface better than the Kindle app's. Oh well.


Anyway, after watching the many videos on the show's website and blog, and considering the amount of environment art I've been seeing from peers online, I decided to do another sketch with an actual background.

The result of which you see here. An exchange of words between these two men resulted in a clashing of steel, that ultimately ended in death.
I hope you all dig the sketch. I had fun doing it, even though I'm still having a hard time getting pixels to behave like paints that I'm familiar with using. But you know what they say... practice makes perfect.

Go watch the videos for Game of Thrones if you haven't already. And have a great evening.

What happened to Wednesday?

Something amazing happened last night. I got home and spent some time with my daughter while the GF wiped up a tasty dinner.

We ate said delicious dinner.

I put my daughter to bed.

Then suddenly it was super late and time for us to go to bed. The time to work on my sketch just seemed to magically vanish between the two bed times. I hate it when that happens.

So I didn't get a sketch done yesterday, I'll work on a new sketch today and I promise that there will be an update later this evening.

Until then, have a great day. And watch out for those time stealing gremlins.

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

The Black Lodge

Well howdy-doo everybody.

It's time for my Tuesday update to the sketch a day. After watching the amazingly well done Dual Spires episode of Psych I found myself a little inspired by the source material/inspiration for this show.

Twin Peaks.

If you were a fan of Twin Peaks this was probably one of the best pieces of comedy you will watch on TV this year.
I can't say enough about how well it was executed. Flawless.

Anyway, I sat down to do my sketch and all I could think of was poor Laura Palmer and Detective Dale Cooper. So I started sketching, and found that I had put down a rough outline of Laura and Detective Cooper in the Black Lodge.


I think I'll probably go about finishing up the sketch tomorrow. I know, I've been doing a lot of sketch series lately. But I think I really want to see how this one looks more fleshed out.

I'm also really wanting to sit down and watch the series again. And I do have a couple weeks of vacation coming up, so it's a strong possibility to actually happen soon.

Maybe I'll see you all there. On the other side.

Monday, December 6, 2010

The Spider and the Rhino

Well, good evening everyone.

I didn't get a lot of time to work on my sketch today, and surprise, surprise. When I put the stylus to my Bamboo tablet I ended up drawing another Spider Man sketch.


This time he's battling his longtime foe, the Rhino.

I'd be lying if I said that the Spectacular Spider-Man animated series didn't have more than a small part in my recent influx of Arachnid inspired sketches.

Wel, I'm gonna call it a night right now, since the GF and I just started to watch the Twin Peaks episode of Psych.

Saturday, December 4, 2010

Peter and MJ

My daughter has recently embraced her sudden love of Spiderman. Over the last month or two, every time we are out and about and she spots anything that has ol' web head on it and she starts freaking out.
"Daddy! Iis Spiderman!"
If you're al old Spiderman geek like I am, it's one of the cutest things you'll ever hear.
And honestly, she never had a chance. She was genetically predisposed to like Spiderman. I'm her dad after all.

So to help her out with the new obsession, I acquired the first season of the recent animated series The Spectacular Spiderman. The series had all of the characters designed by one of my favorite designers, Sean "Cheeks" Galloway, so I was already curious to see the show. This was that extra bonus to get me to finally pick it up.
And I have to say, it is really good. They changed some elements of Spiderman's past just enough to make it fresh, but they managed to execute his 'witty banter' and relationship drama better than any of the other animated versions of the character I've seen yet.

Too bad it got canceled. Oh well.

Anyway, I decided to do a sketch of Peter and his gal MJ. In this sketch Peter's either getting ready to go out, with the costume under his plain clothes. Or they're just getting home from spending a Spiderman free day together.

I'll let you decide which way it actually went.

Anyway, hope you all have a good weekend, and I'll see you back here on Monday.

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

A Shifty Rat

Well, I managed to get a few minutes of sketching time in at work today.

I put down some small lines on digital paper in CS3, and those lines sort of make up a were-rat like creature.


So just now I went in and threw down some flat colors to help define it's shape and make it less boring.

Hope ya'll dig. And perhaps I'll be back tomorrow with a new sketch.

G'night.