Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Best of E3



Rift Planes of Telara is featured by the New York Times as one of the Best Games of E3. Very cool! The show went pretty well for Trion with Rift and End of Nations getting some great attention. Also featured is Dead Space 2 which several of my friends over at EA are working on. Awesome guys, keep up the hard work! (I have so say as a side note that the Deus Ex trailer is one of the coolest things I've seen in a while...)

Here are some concepts that appear in the character "Calling" section of the website. The bird woman is an illustration I did using a very similar loose concept that Justin Sweet did for Trion as reference and the two males are original concepts for NPCs.


The screenshot is of the Defiant faction leader Asha Catari who I did the concept for. She was realized in reality at E3 as a booth babe.

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Final Thought Policeman Portrait


Here's my final treatment on the thought policeman portrait. I'm making some headway with my projects now (I finally FINALLY wrote a first draft of one of the stories I'm working on!) It's great to be productive!

Saturday, June 19, 2010

Progress...



It's slooooow going, but I'm making a bit of headway on the seasons project. I'm into my reference now and I'm finally getting re-inspired. Here's a study of a twisted root tree on the path up to Vernal Falls in Yosemite.

Thursday, June 10, 2010

More iPhone Painting, Reference Gathering



I just went on a trip with my wife and my in-laws to Yosemite last weekend. I love the regenerative power of the place, and by the end of two days there I was refreshed, inspired and ready to get cracking on some work. My Spring season painting stalled out because thematically it seemed sort of like a tired idea to me. Not that I don't want to do the seasonal paintings! I just find that since I do fantasy at work all day, I would like to do something a bit different for myself. I just dove into the Ken Burns documentaries about America's national parks, and that rekindled some old ideas. I'm going to merge them into the season idea, and I think I will have something a bit more interesting.

While in Yosemite I attempted to do an iphone painting on the top of Vernal Falls, one of my favorite places. I could barely see the colors right, even in the shade of a tree...come on Apple, make a strongly contrasting screen with good color that works in the sun! I beat myself up a bit for not just doing a quick watercolor but unfortunately there was only about 10-15 minutes to spare up there so I tried to really quickly knock it out.

The result was poor, but it pushed me to work more in the small format. I actually found that after several more paintings with a few different programs, the Sketchbook Mobile program is actually the best for the super quick mobile phone paintings. The interface seemed slow and unresponsive at first (hence my use of the Brushes app) but it grew on me and now I really like what it can do. Definitely a handy tool on the go. This is a quick one of my wife and my cat Charlie.

Wednesday, June 02, 2010

Playing Around



I really tried to resist the temptation to use my iphone as a painting tool because I figured, hey, if I'm going to paint from life, why not paint with traditional materials? After all, I use digital tools all day at work and the chance to use the traditional mediums I love is something I try to always take advantage of.

I broke down today though and downloaded the "Brushes" app made famous by the New Yorker Magazine cover illustrations. I thought of using the Skechbook Pro tool, but I found Brushes to be the most intuitive and most painting-like. This is a mundane shot of one of my bookshelves, my acrylic tray, and an old water container done with my finger. I think a stylus is a must. I'm still getting the hang of the thing, but it's fun (maybe too fun...)