Digital Paintery

Mer-guy

I did a few new things on this one. First, I thought it would be really cool if I put some caustic lighting effects on the bust, then while I was painting the arm, I thought it would be cool if he had scaly, iridescent skin, which meant that I was now working with a full spectrum of color, rather than the analogous desaturated color schemes that I'm used to using.

This is what happens when I'm trying to be like Jordu Schell.

Why they really died off

Lack of cuddling skills. For those of you familiar with the procreative process, you will agree that snuggling is a very important part of it. Sorry, Rex.

Pugs are strange creatures

Sam Nielson's blog has a couple of posts dedicated to pugs, and it seems like I keep seeing them all over the internet. I decided that I should try my hand at all the pugginess, and that my mom needed to have this on her fridge.

stuff I've done lately

another redo

Fat and Goofy: The Secret to Artistic Happiness

For all you true believers who might be interested in learning what my process for digital painting is like, here's a quicky on one of two approaches that I usually take. This approach is remarkably similar to Adam Ford's.

Step 1: Draw something. I'm using the fine point pen from Corel Painter 9 for this drawing, but I'm pretty sure there are other brushes better suited for sketching; I just haven't found any yet.

Step 2: Base colors. Here's where you nail down your silhouette. Keep it all one color, because if you want to change the skin color later on (which I did), all you'll have to do is experiment around with the paint bucket tool until you find the skin tone that's right for you.

Step 3: on a soft light layer, I put a desaturated green on his beard growth area, yellow across the forehead, and a rosy pink color on his cheeks, which I really wanted to play up on this one.

Step 4: on a multiply layer, I put down a light yellow color everywhere I wanted to show direct sunlight. By the time this step is over, the image should be able to read well even after you take away the lines.

Step 5: Another screen layer with a desaturated cyan midtone. After I finished this, I took the opacity of the layer down to 37% or so so that the ambient lighting wouldn't be overpowering.

Step 6: slap in some occlusion shadows on a multiply layer. For this, I painted using a straight black but set the the opacity of my brush really low, about 10%.

This is what it looks like when I put all the layers together. After this point, I flattened the image and worked out some things like soft and hard edges, subsurface scattering along the core shadows and in the ear, and then I decided that he needed freckles.

redesigning the Manos characters

Attempting to Impress Employers

The Master is Ready for his Closeup

The Master Would Approve: Manos Character Sheets

I love terrible movies, and the most terrible movie of all is "Manos" The Hands of Fate. IMDB rated #1 worst movie of all time, I highly suggest looking it up on wikipedia for some guaranteed lulz. After watching the MST3k version of this movie one too many times, I started to think "if this movie had a plot, what would it be?" and then "how would I turn it into a freakishly sweet video game?"
I've got a gigantic portfolio review coming up on Thursday, Nov. 19, so I decided that in order to beef up my portfolio in the next month, I'll be doing all the concept art for this game during the next month. Also, my apologies to any fans of the film upset by the absence of Torgo. I promise that he's on the way later.

Yarr!!!

Sometimes I just can't contain my excitement.

Making stuff again.

Here's a painting based off a doodle I did while at work. Enjoy.

Floating Cat Heads Looking Down From Heaven

Half of what I do for a living at the moment is inventing creative ways of selling seeds via series of themed gardens, such as the musical instruments garden, the superheroes garden, or in today's example, the pet memorial garden. My instructions for this one was to to make a kitty looking down from Heaven. I immediately conjured up the most efficient method: Ceiling Cat.

My boss takes one look at it and says, "What the [obscenity] is this!? Did Heaven open its zipper or something?"
Yeah, that one didn't fly too well. Apparently, fissures in the sky weren't going to cut it, so I went to work making the best-looking cat looking down from Heaven my Photoshop skills could muster. My boss and I agreed that it would just be more effective to do a bunch of cats sitting on clouds, but I decided that since I already had a disembodied cat head floating in the clouds, there was only one logical way to proceed with the situation.
From there, I decided that this idea was worth puting more time and effort into. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Apocalypse Cat.

Pew Pew.

What Furries ought to be.

when I first heard someone use the term "furries," this was the mental image I got, a meep from the original Quest for Glory. Unfortunately, it turns out that furries aren't creatures that live underneath rocks and give you magic scrolls and clumps of their hair upon request. They are something far more sinister.

A Tribute to the Internet: Mark Gormley

Little known fact: The guy's legal name is actually Vendetta Jones, he just uses the stage name Mark Gormley because it's the only name as intense as he is.

Also, sometimes a painting looks awesome halfway through.

A Redneck Zombie and His Dog.

This one took quite a bit longer than I expected it to, and I think I might need to get it critiqued and then rework it.
Also, I have a header for the blog. Let me know what you think of it.

Ever notice how you never see fat centaurs?

For all you true believers, here is the rare opportunity of seeing a fat centaur, complete with whirly pop, cookie, and combover. Also, a background. such a feat has not been attempted since Worm Tail.

Brother Wright

The High Councilor from my current singles ward probably has one of the coolest faces ever. I draw him pretty much at least twice every Sunday, and I don't think that he has any idea that I stare at him half of the time I'm in sacrament meeting.
Anyhoo, I saw an awesome painting on the Avalanche software blog that I wanted to emulate, so I borrowed the lighting scheme, color palette, and shape making from http://avalanchesoftware.blogspot.com/2009/03/last-magi.html
On a related note, if anyone can tell me how to do the hyperlink text, please let me know. Every time I try, it fails semi miserably.

Update: scanned in drawings of brother Wright from sketch book, for all you true believers.