Out of the archives again

2010 has been a wild ride so far and with any luck I'll have some good new stuff to show soon, but in the meantime, here's an older work from an online game. No masterpiece to be sure, but at least it was quick and painless

and the rough

update: so I had a question on my reference procedure, so I thought I'd take a minute to go over my process. Thanks to google and other image searches, finding the reference you need is mostly a matter of how good your vocabulary is.

For example for the interior details, I knew the style of house I wanted, but you can't exactly do a search for "cool old stone house with a window". So you have to be tricky. First I tried 'fireplace' and 'hearth' and 'mantleplace' and similar terms because these houses always had these things. I then tried looking at old english pubs, which generally have the same kind of construction, but they were usually filled with people, or too fancy. It's funny, but you just never know what words will get you what you're looking for, so it's a bit of an art to keep coming up with different words that will trigger new images.After more strike outs, I found the magic words: 'slave quarters'. Alot of historical museums have empty rooms set up with period detail, and the construction and details were close enough that I could use alot of what I found.

 Once I have all my material, what I find important to do is to put it all together on one sheet so I can see everything at once:

 

So there's some things in there for detail reference, light reference, palette reference, and human reference. I try to keep everything fairly equal in size otherwise I end up ignoring the smaller images and over emphasizing the big ones. ( in this case I broke that rule because of the importance of getting the interior correct.

 So, all in all I'd say it was a couple hours for reference mining and maybe just under a couple days ( including feedback turnaround time ) to complete the image. 

 

Into the Vault

So as more of the work I'm taking on is under stricter NDAs, I'm heading to the vault today to find some stuff that hasn't been shown before.

So this piece started life as a project pitch image, done fairly hastily for the purpose. Then a few months ago during a lull in my work I pulled this out and worked up some of the elements I was never happy with and pulled together the background a bit better. So, give it a few more years and maybe I'll fix some more stuff and I'll finally have something.

 On an unrelated note, as professional work takes up more of my time, it gets harder to find time for personal work, so I have to make a conscious effort to make room in the schedule for it. So here's my list of priority works that I'd like to get to this year:

- more zombie related work
- a 40's pulp cover piece with dames and whatnot
- a follow up to the whale sub piece that follows the continuing zany adventures of the whale sub
- something giant robot related

That's all I got for now, but I'm open to suggestions if anyone's got any bright ideas.

New Year, New Stuff

So in the name of progress, I've finally gotten myself a new wacom tablet, finally retiring my trusty old 6x8 which I've had for about 8 years. In it's place, I've gotten a shiny new intuos 4 tablet in a large size:

It's pretty nice with a cool display and customizable stuff and even an assortment of nibs to give different feels across the surface of the tablet. It also can be flipped to accommodate south paws, which is much appreciated.

 Of course, getting a new wacom always takes a bit of time to get used to, so whenever I've gotten new ones at work, I usually open up a new doc and doodle away a bit to get the feel right. So that's what I did today and in the interest of ringing in the new year, I'm posting it here for your viewing pleasure:

Now, you may be asking yourself: " Is this a picture of Chewbacca puking on Charles Darwin?"

Let me assure you that is exactly what that is.

Year 1

Exactly one year ago, my employment at a small game studio in the bay area ended after 8 years.

My time there was invaluable in my early development as an artist, but you can only trade progress for security for so long before it takes it's toll on you. After awhile, the niche you carve out for yourself becomes your cage, and you become frozen in place in exchange for a weekly check, fresh organic fruits in the lunchroom, and a generous discount at participating bay area YMCAs.

In January of this year, I began a strange journey in the land of the freelance illustrator. After years of meetings, spreadsheets, and progress reports being my primary concern, illustration seemed like a foreign place. Now it's December and well over 100  works later, here I am. And, minus much work which was either redundant, in progress, or under NDAs, here is what  I did:

I tried to keep things in chronological order but about halfway through it became a free for all. Much thanks goes out to the clients who were able to help me grow in this new year, and thanks to anyone who might have taken the time to drop by my blog along the way.
I’m looking forward to year 2.

-j

Lighting Studies

So I was rooting around for something to put up and I found this little study I'd done several months ago for practice. It's not gonna set the world on fire but I think I got some nice time of day feel out of  these.

 So in the process of digging around, I came across all the work I'd done this year. Now a couple weeks ago, a friend happened to ask how many pieces I'd done this year, and I realized that I had no idea, but  I guessed that about 50 was a reasonable number. As it turns out it was alot more than that, and it was quite a shock to see it all together. It's been a heck of a journey for me this year and to be able to look back on it all at once is quite an experience. So, for my final post of the year, I'll be putting  it all together in one image for my readers ( if any ) and for posterity.

Stay tuned and check back soon for some montagey goodness.

As promised

Our 26th president never looked so good...

On another note, sorry about the lack of updates but I'm in too-many clients-at-once-madness right now. Hopefully some better and more frequent updates are to follow if I don't fall over in the next 2 weeks.

Decisions...

Since alot of the stuff I'm doing is under wraps for awhile, I'm going through some stuff that I did earlier in the year which I never got to show. So I narrowed it down to this piece ( a portrait of Maddox as Moses ) or a illustration of Teddy Roosevelt in spandex underpants.

 After much deliberation I settled on this piece because I feel that the Roosevelt piece needs more of a write up than I'm able to give at this time, and I don't want to compromise the dignity of the image.

So anyways, here's Maddox as Moses, complete with in progess work ( Courtesy Maddox and Alphabet of Manliness extended Edition) .

Freelancer's Guide part 2: Deadlines

The Second Rule of Freelancing: The best jobs will almost kill you, but you'll be glad you took them.

 At some point every freelancer will get the call: I need these 10 things in 10 hours. Yes, I know it's impossible so here's some extra money.

 I always dread these, but a small part of me is excited at the challenge, followed a few hours later by the part of me that wants to punch myself for always taking these jobs. It's amazing what some crushing pressure can do to your work. To that end, here's some 1 hour pieces done under just those conditions..not masterpieces by any means but not too bad all things considered ( All work courtesy In Character Games ).

This may be the best crazy guy expression I've ever done.

Fully half the hour on this piece was spent lovingly detailing the star wars blanket. I think this one may be my favorite.

Not sure how good of a shield my monitor would make, but it works for this guy.

 

 Car Salesman, Zombie Killer, Bad Ass

good ol containment suits- no face to draw...

OK at this point my hand was cramping up so I used a previous sketch of the background.

Man that brought up a bunch of painful memories..you know what, I'm never doing this again!

Swingsetasauras at Sunset

 

Sometimes, I guess there just isn't a whole lot to say. Hopefully the illustration does the talking.

I hope he catches whatever he's hunting.

The Freelancer's Guide, part 1

Freelancing is an interesting exercise in controlled chaos. If you ask me it's a miracle that anything ever gets done on a freelance basis, but that's a subject for another day. The subject today is the First Rule of Freelancing, and that is: whichever idea you like the least is the one the one the client will pick. Consider this set of sketches that I did for In Character Games for the game After the Dead which you can play on facebook here.

These sketches are listed in the order I did them. Now when I'm doing sketches unless I know exactly what I want, my first idea is usually not my best, but I throw it in anyways. Personally, I think sketches 2-5 each bring a unique idea and mood to the narrative of the game which was related to me. I felt the first was a bit flat somehow, which of course guarantees that it's the one the client picked, which is what happened.
   Fortunately, the axillary to rule 1 is that you can always make it better, and fortunately the client knew what he wanted for the most part. So with a little back and forth, we managed to find a way to achieve all of our goals which resulted in the follow piece:

and thus all was well in the land of the zombies.