deviantART: gallery:inkthinker/24053589

Draw the Line

Sat, 18 Feb 2006 02:18:08 PST

Tweaked the version in my Scraps, flipped it, added tone, gave it a better title.

I kinda wonder about my work when I make so many changes digitally that the end result is significantly different from the original. I made a lot of adjustments to her posture and dimensions...

Anyhow, I'd still refer to this as Traditional, even with all the Digital elements (the tone, the tweaks). And hey, now you can definitely tell that she's wearing pants.

Let's see now... red and no.2 pencil on sketchpaper, Photoshop tone and composition, resolution 400dpi at about 5.75x7 inches. Est. total time about 3 hours.

New thumbnail sketchbook

Sun, 08 May 2005 00:33:47 PDT

A gift from the boss, it measures about 4.5 inches by 3.5 inches. The paper stock is quite heavy, which makes it good for ink, and it has an elastic band that holds it shut. It's really portable and ideal for small thumbnail sketches.

I've become a real fan of small thumbnails before going into larger illustrations, because a little thumbnail makes it easier to spot flaws in composition and layout. Anatomy errors are easier to spot, and you can rough in ideas without wasting too much time before being able to see if it's a good concept or not. since I've been doing so many more doodles like this, you can expect to see more of them from me (though unless they're really good, they'll remain in the Scraps).

Bibliotech - The Girl

Tue, 31 May 2005 04:19:50 PDT

Animation or comics, if I had my way I'd draw this stuff all day long.

Part of the long-ongoing Bibliotech project. She has no name... I've tried several over the years, but none have fit just right.

Feel free to suggest one. Don't be tweaked if it's not right. I've been trying to come up with the right name for years, now.

-EDIT NOTES-

original image: 5x7
this composition: 6x10

I'm glad to see that reads as a sword and not as a lamp or signpost or something. It's a Machina Knight blade, and not meant for mere humans to sling around. Of course, she be no "mere" human. But it's generally handled by something about 10-12 feet tall.

No names ring a bell... I can't reveal much about the character, because there's a lot she doesn't know. She's superhumanly strong and fast, but that's just a trait, not the subject of the story. The story is about her and the next character I'll throw up, their relationship past and future, and the world they live in.

Of course, there's lots of fighting and some giant steampunk armor and swords and guns and barfights and monsters crwling up from lost cities underground, because... well, I like a good romance, but I like a good fight, too.

Uber Thumb Dump

Fri, 22 Jul 2005 01:53:11 PDT

Thumbnails by the dozens!

If you look closely, there's a bit of a ruler at the top that I often use as a spacer when scanning. Usually I crop it out, but this time I left it in specifically to show the relative size of the sketches. While these are cut and pasted into a collage from about two dozen pages in my notebook and thumbnail sketchbook, I didn't resize any of them... they're all in equal relative size, and depending on your monitor and screen resolution they may even be close to actual size.

I'm nutty for thumbnails this year... these date from about three months ago to as recently as last night. The lines running through some of them are because they're from my story notebook rather than a sketchbook. The leaping spear-guy next to the ruler takes up about the entire page in my thumbnail book, which gives you some idea of how small it is... the tiny size keeps me drawing small.

Thumbnails are super useful for planning out things before you get hip-deep into a larger effort. I use 'em a lot lately to play out ideas and plan out animation (like that fighting move there, which extends another half-dozen moves past the point shown...). They can also save you a world of trouble when it comes to doing larger, clean and finished artwork

Ironically, thumbnails help you focus on the bigger picture by forcing you to concentrate on the image as a whole rather than getting bogged up in the details. You can always resketch a thumb later into a larger sketch (as done with the guy on the horse), which you can then blow up digitally and use as the basis for a clean, finished illustration.

Plus... there's just something I like about a little sketch. I dunno... you tell me.

Duellist armor design - WIP

Mon, 15 Aug 2005 02:05:24 PDT

Pencil sketch, 'bout 80% done I think. I plan to do a front sketch as well. I'm trying to make the armor look somewhat realistic and practical but also flexible and articulated. The metallurgical skill of the armorer is such that these metals are light but very tough. The armor does take some time to put on and settle, but it can be done by one person alone (though it goes faster and is more secure with a little help). Her baton is a symbol of status as well as a practical mace. Her kit contains a few practical items such as a scroll case, whetstones, oils and cloths, a small flask suitable for a swig of healing juice or good whiskey, and a few random pouches for various bits and pieces. The rest of her supplies would probably be carried on a pack animal...

Need a helmet design that I like. Still mulling over that one...

The sketches at the bottom are the thumbnails for this design. All relative sizes are unchanged, so you can see how I started with a tiny doodle and I'm refining that further. Let me know if there's something criminal I'm missing in her anatomy, proportionate or otherwise. I know she's a bit skinny, espescially in the legs, but I don't think it's too much. The ruler on the side is used to keep items square while moving them out to the center of the scanbed, but I left it in here so you can see the actual size of the art. Time so far: approx. 45 minutes-1 hour.

I hate watermarks, but I think it may be practical to give them consideration, even on crappy doodles like this. I will try to keep them unobtrusive if I can, though, as self-defeating as that may be.

Heavy Hammer redux

Mon, 22 Aug 2005 02:32:59 PDT

Just doodling around tonight. I'm about to clean out my gallery in a few days, cutting it down possibly by half or more. I really want to clean out some of the old stuff...

At any rate, I really liked this design I did a couple years ago [link] which was part of my first dump of illustrations when I joined DA. And while I dig the design, I can't say the illustration really stands up to my personal standards on a couple levels. So you might also consider this a little comparison of skill/style between now and then.

I wouldn't call this a great illustration, but it could work as a single panel in a page, perhaps. Pencil on Bristol, 9x12, total time about 1 hour.

Thumb_collage_01

Fri, 16 Sep 2005 03:06:55 PDT

I got a new thumbnail book... I actually filled the old one up.

I left that very top one nearly untouched from the scan. I think it's interesting that this new thumb book has very warm-toned paper as opposed to the other one, which scanned almost blue it was so cool. This newer one I got is supposed to be very high-quality, "Moleskine" is the brand name...

At any rate, I added the highlights to her hair and arm, and that's about it. All the other thumbs here came from this book or the last pages of the previous one, or from doodles scraped together from here and there.

Piratical

Thu, 03 Nov 2005 03:11:12 PST

Got a new sketchbook the other day... this one is different than any other I've used because it's formatted horizontally, with the binding along the short edge of the 8x11 page. The paper's got a slightly rougher tooth than I realized, which I'm moderately annoyed by if only because it devours pencil lead and makes it a serious pain to keep a fine line, but I got the book for nothin' so I'm not really complaining.

At any rate, I think that having the book encourage wide rather than tall design might be a good thing. After all, TVs are wide... computer screens are wide... I wonder why not very many artists choose to do a webcomic at the 4:3 aspect rather than the 3:5, except that perhaps they're always thinking ahead to the print edition. Then again, there's no rule that says a trade paperback of webcomics has to follow the usual conventions... they just do that for ease of shelving.

Yes, yes, fanservice. Oooooooooo..

I think she'd look mighty fine in painted colours, but who's got the time?

Watchman's Armor

Fri, 04 Nov 2005 02:42:02 PST

Or maybe Infantry armor... I kinda like the knee-length half-skirt of scale plate, a legion of these guys with tower shields walking in formation would be a fearsome threat on the field, assuming they don't all die of heatstroke. >_<

Yeah, I do assume that in whatever fantasy world I work in, metallurgy has progressed to the point that cheap, strong and incredibly light metals are easily forged. The problem there is that you really ought to think about how that affects the rest of the world, things like industry and mining and construction of buildings and tools... it can get out of hand pretty easily.

Or you can just ignore it all and have fun.

These are from my thumbnail book, so they're actually about 3 inches tall or wide, depending on the page orientation. I really like the warm color that the Moleskine pages scan with... it's really not that sort of tan color when it's in your hands, more of an eggshell white. But I'm not complaining at all...

Alleyway - Clean Pencils

Fri, 11 Nov 2005 19:47:55 PST

Okaaaayyy... this is pretty much stage one of the clean pencils for this shot... For fun I plan to now mutilate this by playing about with pencil shading, so I scanned this up at a nice high resolution to preseve it. There's a few minor edits and some major cleanup that was done digitally, but otherwise this is all no.2 pencil on Canson sketchbook paper, used a couple different erasers (kneaded to lighten, Magic Rub to obliterate as best I could, and a Papermate Eraser stick for little detail bits. Just the same, this paper soaks up the lead and won't let it go, so it's hard to really erase anything... on the up side, I think that's really going to add to the texture when I shade with pencils.

There's some pretty major changes since the last WIP version, and you can check that out here >>> [link] <<< (also I go on for a bit about the odachi, the oversized swords of Japan, which is pretty interesting stuff... to me, anyway). And if you're wondering what happened to all that red (the original sketch was done in red, and you can check that out here [link]), well, that's the reason I draw in red in the first place.

Since I scan everything through Photoshop, I can use a Hue/Saturation shift to strip out the red... in fact, ALL the color, without harming the pencil lines. You do this by going into the H/S Adjustment dialogue under Image>Adjust>Hue/Saturation (or Ctrl+U) and changing the channel from "Master" (dropdown menu near the top) to, in this case, "Red". You then rack the Saturation down to the bottom and the Brightness all the way up to remove every bit of the color Red from every pixel of the image. The same can be done for all the RGB channels as well as all the CMY channels, leaving only the color Black. There's a ton of mischief one can get into with the Adjust H/S tool, but I'll let you fiddle with that on your own.

I've got the first weekend off in a month, so I'll either spend it all drawing, or not drawing at all (since I've been drawing like mad to get that Spike commercial out). In the meantime, feel free to crit it as you like. If you want to ink or color it, go ahead, but remember to credit it, and don't change the line art (and send me a Note when you post it). I'll probably post a little detail collage too, later on.

Mantis Kick - unused rough

Tue, 13 Jun 2006 13:02:36 PDT

Unused rough from a series of commissioned illustrations for a publisher. I had to illustrate a character performing a "mantis-style kick". Wasn't until after I drew this rough out that I went and reread and realised it was supposed to be two specific characters, so I had to completely redraw it.

The second one (the proper one) has a better position for his "mantis hands" anyhow. And I think this leg is a little too hyperextended for the publisher's taste, though not for my own. But I do like parts of the costume here, and I think the action goes POW well enough.

Mass Doodle Dump II

Sat, 17 Jun 2006 03:27:57 PDT

Now with 300% more sexy ninjas!!

Bunch of stuff, fairly random, some of it's even work-related.

OLD WORK - Boom Bombs

Wed, 23 Aug 2006 01:55:02 PDT

Another something from waaaay back in the archives, pulled from one of my old sketchbooks and gussied up with what's becoming a somewhat routine texture and line effect.

There's just something I love about the classic iron-ball-with-sputtering-fuse grenade, and it didn't take much to come up with an excuse to explore the design further. Basically the Boom Bomb is a sphere about the size of a softball with a ring at the top... yank the ring, which pulls the fuse out, and when it snaps off it ignites the fuse. You could adjust the time by having various lengths of fuse drawn out before you snap off the ring.

I'm still really fond of this design, and always looking for a good excuse to employ it again. I'm sure something will come up soon.

Pencil on smooth paper, digital texture and color adjustment through Photoshop, ©1998 which is... man, that's gettin' back there.

Mass Doodle Dump III

Sun, 24 Sep 2006 05:24:38 PDT

A collection of sketches that have floated to the surface. The ones at the top of the page there must be 5-6 years old, 'cause I haven't taken a course they'd apply to in at least that long. The doodles probably explain why I don't remember any of that stuff, though... I wasn't really paying attention.

The rest are from scattered projects that stretch over the last few months. All pencil over various types of paper.

Ronin Punk sketch

Sat, 28 Oct 2006 01:24:54 PDT

Anyone else remember 40-inch cuffs? I don't think anyone wears 'em now, but they were all the shit ten years ago. Anyhow, I got to thinking about hakama pants and the off-shoulder kimono style and this drawing I did a decade back and sketched this out in Manga Studio.

And for fun I dropped a little touch of tone action on it, too. I like the overall look, so I'll probably do something like this again if I get a chance.

Machina Knight sketch

Tue, 21 Oct 2003 02:07:38 PDT

I found a few sketches I had forgotten about when I originally designed these iron knights. This is a layout of how the pilot sits in the harness. I've made some adjustments to the design, but it's largely still the same.

Original MK sketch.

Tue, 21 Oct 2003 02:10:21 PDT

This was the first sketch of the Knight armor that I was actually happy with. I've made changes to the design over time (and will continue to do so, since I'm a big fan of variation), but it's mostly the same. That's still one of my favorite head designs.

Librarian

Tue, 21 Oct 2003 02:22:18 PDT

This is one of those characters that fell by the wayside. I love her design, but I'm not satisfied with any way to put her in the story. I know who she is, I know what the book is all about and why it's so freaking big... I'm just not sure if this character is really neccessary right now.

Her face looks a lot like one of the characters owned by HTF... I was drawing model sheets for that project when I designed the Librarian here, and so maybe I feel a bit like she's not all mine anyhow. Too much mental runoff from other people's characters.

City at the Edge of the World

Wed, 22 Oct 2003 17:53:52 PDT

This was the original concept for the City at the Edge of the World, part of the ongoing Fantasy Universe Compiled Killer Unnamed Project... I actually just replaced this city concept with a new one that I haven't illustrated yet, but which I like even more. A lot of elements of this initial sketch are still things I want to use, though, such as the prison that hangs over empty space, or the forest of massive beams that support the Lip, a part of the City that hangs out over the edge and where the all the nasty, scummy characters hang out (so of course, that's where we want to go, right? ) I'm fond of the winding avenues and fountains that supply the city water as a design aesthetic, and little open plazas contrasting with cramped, canyon-like alleys between tall buildings.

Crossboom? Boombow?

Thu, 08 Jan 2004 17:45:48 PST

This is a couple of sketches of one of the characters that appears in the short story... he carries a huge crossbow which actually fires explosive shells instead of long, arrow-like bolts, like a grenade launcher. The arms of the crossbow propel the hammer forward so that it strikes the cartridge and ignites the explosive, sending a shell out which then explodes with fiery concussive force. The weapon can hold up to 6 shells at once (yeah, I need to extend the length of the barrel to accomodate this... I haven't done a mechanical drawing of it yet, so the scale is still a bit wonky) and the person weilding it often wears the armored skirt you see here, with 12 pouches that each carry 6 shells, for a total of 72 shells. In addition he carries various tools and replacement parts in pouches along his belt and in his pack, and is capable of manufacturing his own less-powerful (but still very effective) solid-state or scattershot rounds if he re-uses the casings.

The crossbow must be re-armed after every shot, by placing a foot in the stirrup and hauling back on both arms that extend from the sides of the hammer, just behind the cord, until they lock into place. The draw is heavy, but much less than a regular crossbow, and a skilled user can fire and reload very rapidly. Each shell is loaded into a sleeve beneath the barrel of the weapon like a shotgun, and cocking the bow ejects the old casing and loads a new shell.

Bombs go boom

Fri, 09 Jan 2004 17:51:04 PST

This is an old design I actually made up years ago for a more light-hearted silly series that I thought up back when I was still drawing the kid's magazine Club Z!. I like the whole fuse-ring setup that I designed here, 'cause it lets me have those silly black bombs from the cartoons, complete with fizzy fuse on a string, but I can also make it self-contained, self-lighting and portable. You pull hard on the string and when it snaps at the end, it lights the fuse. I'm thinking of a more advanced model that allows you to shorten the fuse by twisting the base, so that you can change the timing.

***

On the character design here... I've been a big fan of designs like Kishimoto's or Nomura's (Naruto or Final Fantasy) in which modern and medieval elements are blended together in different ways. Kishimoto's ninja wear heavy hoodies, padded jackets and kevlar fabric, but wield swords and knives and shuriken. Nomura's characters are much the same, and in addition have various technologically advanced items like machine guns and airships.

I'm still debating on how much of the " modern" I want to include with the " fantasy", but those are indeed headphones that this cat is wearing. I like the idea of a character who listens to loud rock or metal while he lays waste with his big-ass sword.

Moving action in the world

Fri, 09 Jan 2004 18:13:24 PST

That's part of a line from a bunch of Lupin III novelties (Let's moving action in the world! And catch you, Lupin!!) that hang in the bathroom at HTF Studios.

These are a couple of action thumbs from scenes that I'm putting into the Bibliotech short... they are NOT meant to be concurrent and this is not a page... but I thought they went well together and didn't want to clutter up my gallery any more that it is already. These images will eventually (probably) be added to the layout on their respective pages though, so I'll do the finished pencils over these. I like the motion in 'em, but I'm still having a time with sound effects. Whaddya think of her slide sound effect and how it lays out on the page?

That is, by the way, the same cat who is tossing a bomb on another sketch page, now getting shot to fuck-all by the newly discovered Potemkin House. I'm so rough on my "actors"...

Horous (Garuda?)

Fri, 16 Jan 2004 12:32:49 PST

Another name that I plan to change, I think... everyone who does bird-men tends to go for the Egyptian mythology link, and I don't want to necessarily do that... so I'll have to do a little research and think of something else.

In the meantime, these guys are wicked fighters. Their bones are hollow and they have extremely powerful leg and chest muscles, allowing them to leap high and perform powerful kicks (I like the idea that they would use a capoeriera-style of fighting using lots of claw strikes and vicious, acrobatic kicks), or strike with lightning speed. They are very intelligent, but they cannot speak any language that humans would recognize... there are ways to communicate with them, but like most creatures on The Wall they have an ingrained hostility towards humanity. Their culture is rich but mysterious.

--EDIT--

A friend over at PencilJack hooked me up with some Incan mythology for the Garuda, a creature with golden skin, the head of an eagle and the body of a man. It could work... whaddya think?

More fragments

Thu, 08 Apr 2004 02:05:21 PDT

Just more bits and pieces from here and there. Not in any particular order.

Bibliotech batch

Thu, 02 Sep 2004 17:11:15 PDT

A bunch of sketchbook stuff for Bibliotech. Character costume design, accessory designs, etc.

I'm getting closer to the aesthetic I'm searching for, a blend of modern urban fashion and fantasy elements. Just because you live in a world of primitive steampunk technology and magic doesn't mean you can't have an advanced textile manufacturing industry, right? Yeah... just ask Kishimoto.

The belt design goes along with the premise that most people in the City wear something like this, sort of like a purse that you wear around your waist, festooned with pouches and pockets and so on to carry various sundry items from personal toiletries to eating utensils to money and valuables to tools and the accesories needed to maintain them (for instance, if you carry a knife you may also carry oil for the blade and a whetstone).

Enjoy! Feel free to crit as you like.

Too Retro

Mon, 13 Sep 2004 21:55:06 PDT

That's what the boss told me when I handed him this quick rough of a vehicle, part of a series of designs which I'm having fun with if only because I'm not being told to restrain my style so much. I often have to do that when working on studio contracts which usually involve someone else's character designs and so forth, or a desired aesthetic on the part of the client which is rarely in line with my private work... this time, though, what they want and what I want to do are practically convergent, which is pretty cool. Only problem... I keep coming up with stuff that I like so much that I don't want to give it away!! Ohh, irony!!

Lucky for me, I like retro designs, so this is going right back in my book of "stuff to use later".

Shadow blocking

Tue, 19 Oct 2004 21:47:40 PDT

Essentially, I've become quite obsessed with adding a little light and shadow to some things... these are a couple of pages from the sketchbook as I practiced blocking out shadow shapes on these characters, designed (as most things are, when I don't have any other direction) for Bibliotech.

I've gotted a lot of positive response to the knife dude, so I expect he's a lock for use at some point... but the cat in the hat looks a bit too much like the bounty hunter that cut down Hugo in the second volume (or episode, if all you've seen is the anime) of Battle Angel Alita. Too bad...

Some angles are a bitch

Tue, 19 Oct 2004 21:53:49 PDT

They are, too... it was years, YEARS, before I ever properly drew a human face from a low angle, looking up. Something about not being able to really define the jaw line and trying to draw nostrils, lips, eyes and so forth from below just kicked my ass. Only recently have I been able to do it somewhat consistently, and that's because I've been doing a lot of shape blocking and then adding layers and layers, and erasing and erasing and doing it all over again when I screw up.

Christ, what a bitch.

I write little notes to myself, sometimes... it helps when I think I've come up with something profound that I'll want to remember, or whenever I'm sketching while in a condition not conducive to memory retention. I hope it doesn't make me sound like an ass...

I edited the naughty words out for those who are faint-of-heart... I expect my prediliction for verbal self-abuse is mentally unhealthy.

Oh, I almost forgot... the clip in the center is from an unrelated project at the studio, and that piece was rejected before I even got past the clean sketch phase, so I slapped it on a blank spot here.

Ogre

Fri, 19 Nov 2004 20:28:22 PST

It's an ogre of my own design... sort of a blend of elephant and man. It occurs to me, at this late date no less, that if his nostrils meet his lips, then how does he breathe with his mouth closed?

Perhaps he doesn't...

Do you think this level of pencil finish stands on it's own? Are these pencils "finished" enough, or do I need to keep working at it?

-EDIT-

Sorry, I realized that I meant for this monster to labeled as an ogre, not a troll. For all the difference that makes... >_<

Rapiers v.2

Mon, 29 Nov 2004 01:48:17 PST

Same character as before, just a bit of changes here and there. Much more pleased with this one... I finally caved and installed my scanner and tablet on Rebecca's computer (it seems as though my own system is going to be down for a while still), so maybe I'll be able to take things a little farther now... I'd like to take this one to color, but I wonder if I ought not buckle down and put a good background on this, if I can.

S'hard to tell here, I think, but she's wearing a long sleeve shirt with no midriff. Tres sexxayyy... rrowr.

I'm thinking a ribbed cloth, to define those curves, but that's a texture for colors to define.

Heavy Case

Tue, 30 Nov 2004 02:24:39 PST

I burned quite a bit of time on this tonight... I'm fighting a hacking deep-lung cough and should be asleep, but for whatever reason I just kept pencilling, going over and over it, adding details and strengthening lines here and there, tapping spots with the eraser and shading in others...

With such an ungodly mishmash of anachronistic designs, the end result is either my favorite costume to date, or the worst thing I've ever created. Still can't tell which. >_<

Anyhoodle, this character goes with the rapier girl, sort of. The engraving on his handplate is a bit of a tribute to Kishimoto-sensei and the affect he's had on my design sense.

What's he got in the case? What do you think he's got in there...?

Monocycle

Tue, 30 Nov 2004 02:38:03 PST

Doodled this beastie while watching Monster Nation, where they actually built a sort of rough version of this in a single day out of a bunch of wheels, some metal pipe and a little scooter engine. I've seen designs like this a lot in sci-fi illustration (Toriyama featured them in a couple of great images), but I had no idea that people actually tried to build these things... the balance issues alone would seem to be tremendous, not to mention steering or stopping the damn thing!

Nevertheless... check it out: [link]

That V8 version that Kerry McLean built is funky-cool. All hail the awesomely impractical Monowheel!!

Iron Nut Mace

Sun, 06 Feb 2005 23:48:12 PST

Technically more of an Iron Nut Morning Star, this concept came to me from playing with this goofy-ass toy of R²'s... she picked it up someplace a few years ago, it's a sort of spiked ball made of jelly plastic with a blinking core in the center and a tether made of the same flexible jelly shit with a loop... kinda like a yo-yo. It's plenty of fun to sling around wildly, letting the tether extend to about 4 feet, and it's pretty resilient.

So I got the idea that the nut of the Ironwood tree (pulling this outta my ass here) are these spikey jobbers with a very dense, solid core that's suspended in a liquid sap. You drill a little brass ring crowned with a sawtooth bit into the spot where the stem breaks from the tree, leaving a soft area in the hard exterior. The nut is soft enough to carve with a very sharp knife when it's fresh, but hardens to an almost metallic density after only a few days (why it does this I have no idea just now... but I'm certain there's a perfectly natural, sensible reason for it that is essential somehow to its role as a seed). The ring is drawn out, extending a long, rubbery booger to the nut that will tighten and solidify as the nut dries, becoming a tough, rubbery tether that can stretch to several feet in length, but snaps back to it's dried length with great force. The nut might easily weigh up to 5 pounds and measures about 1.5-2" across.

The Iron Nut Mace is swung expertly by certain well-trained practitioners in dazzling displays of lighting-fast whipping extensions and spins, incorporating flips and kicks into a violent whirlwind ballet. It takes much skill and time to learn how to use one of these weapons, and only the best will leave the nut with it's needle-sharp spikes intact, making it a very dangerous weapon to anyone within reach.

* * *

Not too shabby, hm? Could work for any number of races or classes in game terms. There's a guy who works the Ren Fairs down here, I see him every year, who goes by the name of "Manolete", and his whole act is this stage show with heavy steel balls on about a 3-foot cord that he spins and swings around in a series of dance-like patterns, knocking feathers out of people's mouths and striking the boards beneath his feet with a loud crack. It's pretty easy to see how those balls could crack more than wood. More inspiration for something like this can be found in Filipino weapons that evolved into modern-day Yo-Yos, and martial arts forms involving the chain.

I think I might submit it to Kenzer.

Dragon sketches

Tue, 08 Feb 2005 02:30:58 PST

Dragons...

I likes dragons, but I get kinda particular about 'em when I have creative control over their design. For one, I never liked the whole six-limbed dragon thing. I mean, I can get behind it if we're going way over into "high fantasy", but then the perverse in me starts dropping other six-limbed creatures into the mix.

It's bad enough trying to conceptualize any sort of reasonable aerodynamic bullshit for a flying long-necked lizard to begin with, but designing a ribcage for one with two additional forelimbs... and speaking of the wings, that's another pet peeve of mine: people who can't draw bat-wings. For the love of lead, it's not that damn hard to look at a picture is it? A bat's wings are actually really easy to understand... they're just an arm and a hand with long, tretched fingers, and webbing that runs the length between the fingertips. Soooo easy.

But every so often I see someone draw the wing like a ladder with one side missing, or an old Fokker wing that curves. I just don't get it...

I don't like my dragons to talk, either. They're not wise, they're cunning. I likes 'em as vicious, nasty predators with nature's flamethrower up their throats. Reign of Fire might've been plotted like rice paper but it did present some intelligent biology for dragons, and for the most part I liked it. Most of the design concepts had been touched on by fiction writers before, but they really sold the design visually.

They're not the first to suggest that dragonfire is produced by different chemicals being sprayed out from glands that ignite when mixed together with oxygen, but it was probably the first really well done visual example of the concept so it's hard not to feel somehow reminiscent of that general design. For those unfamiliar, the creature somehow extracts various chemicals from its digestion into glands (in this design, as in others, those glands exist in the throat just behind the jaw) that can be contracted with great force, spewing pressurized liquids that blend together and ignite upon contact with air to form a napalm flamethrower. It's supposed that the fire can create risers of hot air to aid the creatures gliding flight (it sounds nice)

...or for some reason these dragons like their dinner really well done.

* * *

I've bounced back and forth on including these things in Bibliotech with the wavering notion that they migrate seasonally along the length of the wall, presenting a periodical danger of a ton of pebbly-leather-skinned, foot-long-fanged, flaming-vomit- spraying, razor-taloned carnivorous Death From Above. Plus in dragon season you'd totally have to watch out for giant dragon guano falling unexpectedly from the sky... worse than blue ice.

But I'm not sure that Dragons aren't too much of a traditional fantasy mainstay, and Btech is not traditional fantasy... and it's not as though I couldn't just save it for some other comic or animation project.

Anyhoodle, pencil on Bristol. The tone change next to the wing is from where I was too damn lazy to stitch this together sweetly. I might try and hunt down a good brush-stroke font and write some notational nonsense, and then shift the tones to give it that quick-n-sleazy parchment codex look, bump it up to Full Deviation... any suggestions for a good TrueType fantasy script font?

Dueling Armor

Mon, 22 Aug 2005 00:11:59 PDT

I'm so lazy. Nothing new, just a new composition. I like it.

Alleyway - Dirty Pencils

Sat, 12 Nov 2005 02:13:37 PST

Bunch of edits, not the least of which is the design on her tunic/robe/dress/skirt/whatever... Added detail here and there, plus all that pencil shading. This is probably about as far as I'll take this for now... it'd look tight in color though, no?

8x10, no.2 pencil on Canson sketchpaper, kneaded and solid erasers, Ticonderoga red checking pencil, triangle and ruler. That's all she wrote...

-EDIT-

What do you think of it when it's flipped? I kinda like better this way, it's been pointed out to me that your eye flows better across the page this way, lamp to sword to guy to sword to girl down sheathe to final guy, and the flag (which really isn't supposed to be so prominent a feature, I shoulda blocked something into the foreground, like leaves or something, to obscure it more) is less obtrusive. I think for now, I'm keeping it like this.

-NOTES-

- The shaded areas represent, if not black, at least "areas of deep shadow", keeping in mind that my sense of lighting is deeply flawed because I'm still making baby steps with it. So yeah, multiple light sources, right?

- That thing in the upper corner has been, at various points: a streetlamp, a heatlamp, a moisture collector, a moisture distributor, an electrical transformer and a "cool-looking thing to hang from a pole". If it gets your imagination rolling, then it works.

- And just 'cause people still mention that big frickin sword: [link] to the whole thing on the odachi, the big damn swords of Japanese history.

- If you want to color it up, go ahead... send me a Note when you do, and I'll link it here:

First up: [link]

Reilly over at Penciljack did this really kickass monotone pass over it: >>> [link] <<<

Another: [link]

And [link] by

[link] by

[link] by

[link] by

There's like a bunch more, I've not been good about adding every version to this list unless requested.

Thanks for polishing up my scribbles!

If you don't want me to link it, then tell me so, and I won't, but let me check it out anyway... I get all fuzzy inside when I feel like I contributed somehow.

Sharp Edges

Tue, 04 Nov 2003 15:17:04 PST

Ummm... I dunno. I like to mix genres up, play with ideas. Plus I can always use the practice drawing attractive pin-up-girl-type art. I was going for something with a lot of attitude and character, a design that I could use for a fighting game or a comics project or anything else that comes up. It's just practice, really... but I feel like I'm getting closer to something I can be satisfied with. Not that I ever really expect THAT to happen...

I'm working all large again... I need to cave in and go buy a pack of Bristol that's bigger than 14x17, 'cause this whole "taping extra bits to the sides" dealie is just no good.

The Gutter

Mon, 01 Nov 2004 13:59:27 PST

The Gutter exists in perpetual shadow and fog, thin alleyways at the bottom of man-made canyons, below the criss-crossed bridges and balconies of those blessed with higher status. Down here life is harsh, sharp and short for anyone without the strength or skills to survive these predatory pathways. At the very bottom of the gently sloping streets lies The Lip, that roughshod extension of ramshackle structures that leans out over the infinite cloud-filled depths, below the City and stretching out to the horizons past The Wall...

More of Bibliotech, inked 100% digitally in Comic Studio.

-EDIT 013009-

Wow, it got a DD! It's so oooold.

I think this might be the first thing I ever inked completely in Comic Studio. It would have been on that old Graphire 4x5 I started with, too. It was (and I suppose still is) an early image in a sadly aborted story I thought I knew how to write before I actually tried to sit down and write it, and it all went thbbbt. SO in the meantime Bibliotech represents a collection of concept illustrations that I'm totally sure I'll pick up again if I can ever wrap my head around the idea of thematic character plotting. Or when I give up and just blow out a portfolio of random imagery.

As if the internet didn't have enough of those.

I still like this image. I'm pretty sure I could do a better job if I did it again, and I probably will.

Machina Cutaway

Sun, 19 Oct 2003 17:30:37 PDT

Inks for a print created for independant promotional material. Ink on Bristol, actual size 14"x21".

-EDIT-112206-
As with the color version, I went ahead and reloaded the image with a larger version. The days of 800x600 resolutions are safely past, I believe.

Old work, no longer in the "official portfolio", but still a piece of which I am fond, warts and all. These days I think I have sense to make the composition more engaging, as well as a slightly improved grasp on anatomy.

If you want to take a swing at it with color, go ahead. Just let me know about it.

Big Sword

Sun, 19 Oct 2003 20:12:34 PDT

I like a lot of the design I built, but I totally forgot his neck.

Oops.

Or maybe he just has a very high collar. It's all bunched up because of the position of his shoulders! Right! Yeah...

Big Strapping Coat

Tue, 21 Oct 2003 02:17:26 PDT

The designs I've been showing that are fantasy-related are usually part of this ongoing unnamed fantasy project that's been simmering slowly in mental gumbo for years now... I keep coming up with a lot of elements I want to write about, but the actual STORY is still coming to me. I have a lot of fun just designing anyhow, and thinking of reasons to wedge this idea or that idea into some sort of coherent universe.

This girl appears again and again, but I'm still not sure who she is... it still needs time to cook.

Like the coat? The straps on the arms actually serve a purpose by allowing you to open the sleeves up and free the arms from the heavy fabric. I think it looks pretty cool, but the buckles need to be replaced with snaps for a more practical, believeable design.

Machina Cutaway - Full Color

Thu, 23 Oct 2003 15:24:46 PDT

-EDIT-112206-

Pouring through the old bottom Layer of my DA Gallery, and was a little bothered by how small a version this is... I've been used to 1280 for so long that 500px wide is pretty itty-bitty to me, now. So I went and hunted up the old workfile for this and saved a version at 1000 wide. Other than that, and the addition of the chop, I didn't change a thing.

Though I must admit, the temptation to make a tweak here and there is pretty strong... her anatomy is kinda embaressingly off, the composition is boring, and I was still quavering in mortal fear of backgrounds... but what the hell, it's still mine, warts and all. I can't go trying to edit all my old stuff, pretending I didn't make mistakes and so forth, and I take a little comfort in remembering that it IS old work, now, and basically out of the "official portfolio".

If nothing else, this also represents when I first fell in love with the power of the digital environment. Old bastard that I am (at 30), I'm still always a little starstruck by the simple "Undo" function. You kids *geezer voice*... you kids don't know what it was like when messing up meant REAL trouble.

It's only been 4 years since I started working with tablets, but now I can't hardly imagine doing it any other way.

-END EDIT-

Well... there it is. This is the first finished version of the image I've been painting all week. I say the 'first' version because I can still continue to make a number of changes at any time to the PSD and make a version which would look very different, even down to the line art, simply by turning off and on Layers or making Hue/Saturation Adjustments to various Layers. This, more than anything, is why I love Photoshop. You don't like her pink hair (thanks to Ozzyopolis)? Nooo problem, I can make it any color you can think of, and a few more besides. Black armor not working for you? I can change that in a matter of seconds. I've got a variant sword tip (you can see the orginal in the inks), a series of glows in the spine of the machine, and even several of the shadows are all on Layers that can be adjusted or removed.

Man, that's pretty freaking cool. Welcome to the new era of illustration (well, okay, none of this is really THAT new, Photoshop has been around for a decade). A mere 20 years ago no illustrator would even dream of having the levels of control that we can achieve so easily now. Imagine what we'll be able to do in another 20 years! Boggles the mind...

Yeah, all you longtime PS painters are yawning. This is old news to you, I'm sure. For that matter it's old news to me, since I've been puttering around with PS since v.4, but I never stop being pleased about it...

Anyhow, a few specifics:

Illustration time- est. 4 hours
Total coloring time- est. 15 hours
File dimensions, full size- 20x30 at 300dpi
Document size, closed- 287113 Kb (287 Megs)
Document size, open- 206M/935.9M
Number of Layers- 31

I'm sure I'm being clunky about my use of Photoshop, so any suggestions on what I can do to keep these big files from getting even bigger are always welcome. If you have any suggestions regarding color, texture or FX, feel free to add 'em in. I might even try 'em out.

Potemkin House

Thu, 08 Jan 2004 16:56:09 PST

So apparently there was this dude name Grigory Potemkin, who was a lover of Catherine the Great of Russia. And legend has it that this guy built these elaborate facades over the poverty-stricken villages along the rivers of Russia so that when Catherine would tour her country, she'd be fooled into thinking that the people were happy and prosperous. So we get the term "Potemkin Village", which means something that looks to be worth more than it is.

True story.

In this case, I adapted the term and used it for this critter here.

A Potemkin House (switching over to my own hallucenations now) begins as a sort of big-ass semi-self-mobile mechanical Faberge Egg-looking thing, which is created (laid) by a mature one of these beasties. They find an abandoned structure like this little house here, and they begin to scavenge metal and so on and build up on themselves until they fill the structure. At this point they become mobile (the chicken legs are inspired by another fairy-tale icon that I picked up somewhere, of houses that walk about on chicken legs... I think it's part of the Baba Yaga mythos, but I'm not sure, and if anyone cares to enlighten me, I'd appreciate it) and then find another abandoned structure which they can lay their eggs near. If there are no other structures nearby or they lack the resources to continue growing, then they settle into a "sleep" which lasts indefinitely unless they are disturbed.

The machine is semi-sentient (about as smart as a bird) and has a variety of weapons both scavenged and self-built (like the water-cooled automechanical cannons and the artillery piece), and are fairly rare. They mostly inhabit old abandonded settlements in the older, lost parts of The Wall where they can find appropriate shells. Like most of the machina which inhabits The Wall, they only attack in self-defense unless there are humans involved, in which case they often wait in ambush and then leave no survivors.

Gunslinger

Wed, 14 Apr 2004 01:12:41 PDT

I like the design, but it's not quite there yet...

Thumbs Up

Thu, 20 May 2004 00:41:55 PDT

I got a bunch of requests from people to color this, and so I thought I'd set up the larger version I gave to the folks at PencilJack. Plus, I'm really trying hard to update at least once a week.

But it's okay if you think I'm a cheap bastard for recycling this pic as a new deviation again.

The Smoker

Tue, 13 Jul 2004 19:06:42 PDT

Btech character that I was screwing about with. The pipes are made of heavy metal, and I liked the idea that he could snap the pipes closed, and then beat the shit out of people with them like they were a couple of ball-peen hammers.

In this day and age, though, can you still have a character that smokes? Even Wolverine put out his cigars... Nick Fury gave up the stogies... I don't even think J.J.J still smokes. If I used this character in a popular medium, I'd catch flak for sure.

And a fighting character who's always chimneying... he'd have lung problems, which would affect his athleticism, right? I try to keep it somewhat real... but I just liked the idea of those pipes spinning around in his fingers, trailing smoke and smackin' down fools.

What's he smokin' there? Ask me no questions, and I'll tell you no lies.

Long Chopper

Tue, 19 Oct 2004 22:02:03 PDT

Bit of conceptual design for Bibliotech . On the Wall it's sometimes necessary to travel long distances along "roads", which are really just cleared and relatively flat, wide paths surfaced by the same hard stone that the Wall is composed of. Really, just an excuse to put my characters on cool vehicles for some road warrior action at some point. I don't plan to take this particular illustration any farther at this point, so I'm tossing it with my "clean and finished design sketches".

Everything I know about motorcycles pretty much came from watching American Chopper and so on, which means, of course, that I know fuck-all. I am, however aware of a couple things: I have no idea how the engine really works or should look (gosh, maybe I should use some reference!! What a concept!! >_< ), and those long-ass forks are really impractical, no matter how cool I think they look.

Feel free to rip me on the design, add any suggestions or tips about motorcycles, and let me know what you think.