Sharks and ladies

Oh man, recently I went with some friends to Dr. Sketchy's! Careful of that link, it's not... entirely safe for work. It's basically a place where artists can go and draw models that are far more interesting than the ones you typically get in school. It was actually the first time I've drawn a human from life in like... five years, so I was incredibly rusty, but I enjoyed myself.

These were my two favorites from the evening. I purposely went with a cartoonier style with these two pics, because the model was so cute and her outfits really seemed to lend themselves well to it.



... Yeah, I have nothing to say about that face to the left. I'm not sure what's going on there and I'm the one that drew it.



I do really want to go back to Dr. Sketchy's, but the problem is that it's always on a Monday night, when I typically want to get to bed early for the next day's work, and I live a good solid hour from Baltimore, driving.

Also, I am a tiny little suburbanite and Baltimore at night scares me a bit. Even when I went there with a group of friends, it was pretty scary. Then when we left Dr. Sketchy's, there was a POOL OF BLOOD on the sidewalk.

...

Seriously. A pool of blood. That area of Baltimore is supposed to be fairly safe, and a friend of mine who lives there said that sort of thing never happens. (I would sincerely hope not.) It makes me wish there was a similar sort of life drawing gathering in my area.

In less bloodied news, another friend of mine has been toiling away on a screenplay that he hopes to see animated on TV one day. It's an impressive bit of work, do go see it.

I'm really fond of the character named Naur, and did a fast concept for him:



On the right you can see what kinds of sharks and shapes I was generally thinking about, along with what I remembered of the character's reclusive personality and what would be appropriate for a simplified 2D character design that would not make the animator's wrists fall off in the deepest grips of carpal tunnel. I admit that it was my own wrists that I was thinking of, because some other friends of mine (I swear I am not trying to make myself sound popular) want to get started on animating it ourselves, even roughly. I partially want to do it to keep my hand in with 2D animation, since I've only done 3D lately, and partially because I really do hope he can pitch this to a network one day.

More art to come soon, I've been in a doodly mood lately.

Aw, my poor neglected blog, c'mere for a hug.

Been working on a lot of stuff lately, but I can't post any of it until I get the OK. In the meantime, here's some character concepts for an MMO we're working on called Bamboo Bunch! It's for the young ones, so don't expect 25 man raids.


This is the redesigned player avatar fairy. Concept is me, colors are Helen Zhang.

Initially my first attempt at redesigning the fairy was pretty generic, more of the "girl with wings on" stuff you see like, everywhere. I did kind of like that I was angling for her dress to look as if it were made of flower petals, along with this larger petal on the back that was reminiscent of a bustle, like on Victorian-era dresses that make you look as if you've got a huge perky bottom. So when it was back to the drawing board, I kept that petal's overall shape, but made it into the two halves of a ladybug's shell. I put the antennae on her as a sort of lark at first, but it actually turned out to work pretty well, as larkish ideas sometimes do, as it gave her a kind of cute insect-ish look. The fairies in Bamboo Bunch are also avid gardeners, and gardens love their bugs.

P.S. The ladybug shells are harvested only from ladybugs that have died of natural causes.


Aaaand this is what she looks like in the game! Mostly. The hair's painted on because she was modeled bald so that we can have hair customization options, and at the time this screenshot was taken, none of the hairs were modeled yet. Oh, and in the final version, she does have her pretty sparkly wings. 3D model by Tommy Truong, textures are all Helen Zhang.

We also have a development blog over here with more neat stuff we've been adding to the game. Go check it out, it'll tickle us.

Day ... what is it now, 5?

Whoops, forgetting to post things here! This one is actually two days old.



Hmm... think I'm less fond of this one than the others. It's a Peugeot 207, and I have no idea how they drive, but I want that car just because it's so gosh darn cute.

I'm working on some character designs for a Flash animation I want to do. Gotta remember to speedpaint -and- design!

I think snails are awesome.

You know what's hard to paint? ROCKS.

I should possibly work on rocks tomorrow. With the way I handled working on plants, don't be surprised if I end up posting a picture of a quarry.

Day 3

This was another two-dayer. That's me in a cafe in London, having my first English breakfast.

I know it's very unfinished, but man, my own face is freaking me out! In the actual photo I'm making this very intense stare and it's giving me the willies. I wouldn't be having this problem if I wasn't looking at the camera.

It's my "don't interrupt me for a photo when I'm eating" face.

Edit: Whoa, this looks completely different on a better monitor. For one, that bus is totally eye searing.

This thing again

OH I BET YOU THOUGHT I FORGOT. You thought so, didn't you? Oooooh, you can stuff it!



Actually I was working on this one for two nights. (I've never really used Painter before, and I was fighting it the whole way.) This is from a photo I took in Monet's Garden over in Giverny, since I was feeling guilty about painting other people's photos yesterday.

Remember how I complained about being horrible at plants? Well I'm still horrible! When I did the Kodkod, I said to myself "I'm gonna just paint a freaking tree tomorrow." And then I decided to paint Monet's Garden, which isn't so much a freaking tree as a wall of freaking trees.

It's a beautiful location though. http://giverny.org/gardens/

So here's a thing.

It occurred to me that I don't paint enough. I'm trying this thing someone suggested to me, which is finding a photo on Google Image Search, and then painting from it (also from life). I'm seeing how long I can stick to this, but I want to try to do this for the rest of April at the VERY least.

Tonight's result (click for full size, though it's small anyway):



The Kodkod is the smallest cat in the Americas, apparently. It's very cute. It had a (VERY CUTE) segment on Planet Earth where it ate moths. Watch and groan at David Attenborough's puns!



I think tomorrow's subject will be a tree... I'm not great at painting masses of leaves!