Speedpainting 01, 10_16_14 - snail on mushroom

I am trying to make 1 speedpainting a day when i get home from work.  I am not a good painter and want to be better.

Fight or Run Comic

 An exercise from my Sequential Art class that turned out well.

Vintage Cartoon Backgrounds: How To

I grew up watching Bugs Bunny, Daffy and Donald Duck, Tom and Jerry, and all the old great cartoons that they won't put on TV anymore because of cats chasing mouses with shotguns.  I loved the look of these old cartoons, particularly the sort of graphic style they had in the title cards and background work.  Maurice Noble is incredible in his sense of composition and rendering.

I wanted to try to achieve this older style look and found a way that's not bad.  I'll update as I improve it. 

I took a sample of the texture of one of those old paintings in photoshop, and made it a pattern preset, after turning it greyscale.  Then I filled the entire scene with the pattern, and set it to color dodge in the blend mode.  It achieves the look pretty convincingly, and only lightens values and colors a little.

Glass Coffin Illustration

This project was to choose a lesser known story and do illustrations of three key points in the tale.  I choose "The Glass Coffin" by the Brothers Grimm.  The basic story is of a kingdom ruled by a prince and princess who have everything taken from them by a shape-changing Sorceror who lusted after the princess.  He turned the prince into a stag, shrink the castle, its town and all its subjects, and imprisoned them in a glass coffin, as well as the princess, whom he placed under a sleeping spell as vengeance for refusing his advances.



This image is the confrontation between the prince as a stag and the sorceror as a bull.

Finished image.  I'm happy with this.  I'm also out of time.  If I can get to the out of time point and actually be happy with something, then that's terrific!

 Color blocking

Value Blocking

Final Sketch as starting point for painting

On Creative Process

I was just thinking about explaining why things work in a concept and how I tend to go too far thinking about that sort of thing.  I get stuck explaining why something's sensible, or worrying about "why is this designed that way?  That doesn't make any sense.  No reasonable person would ever design something like this."

For instance, in this image from "the Skillful Huntsman", I first thought, why would they have a crap-load of little balloons like that?  Why not have a couple giant envelopes like an airship?  Why tether them that way with blankets strapped over them?"

An answer came quickly as soon as I asked this to myself.  In this world, it is difficult to manufacture the envelopes for the balloons, so they make them smallish and can only make them one at a time.

There's plenty of room for "yes but--"ing this.  Yes but they could have several plants to manufacture them.  Yes but, they could wait and manufacture one big one.  Yes but--  And then you don't get anywhere.

My point is, a simple answer thought of quickly is often good enough.  Often our gut reactions are the best and truest, many times yielding good results.  Over-thinking and ignoring the impulsive, feeling side of our creative selves can slow things down and get in the way.

I

Art301 - Concept Art - SciFi Project - Human Prop - Ark Power Core

This is a rough value study of the concept for the Power Core of the Ark.  In the story that Eddie Smith gave us, the Ark that the human faction built was based on stolen or found alien technology.  I chose to fit it into the aggressor's design aesthetic.

Art301 - Concept Art - SciFi Project - Alien Aggressor - Ships

Fighter concepts for the aggressor race in Ark of Solaris.  I wanted to keep the idea of organic shapes, and radial and spiral patterns, since the aliens are octopus-snails.  The theme of calciferous shells and bio-organic shapes is a recurring theme for this race's concepts.  The spiral arms of the fighter spin as it flies and it fires its guns in a helix pattern.

Bomber ship thumbs and feeling out how the arms of this ship move and curve through space