Working on a project right now that I think might be big. Or at least, cult-y, in an underappreciated indie band/movie/game sort of way. Some very cool guys with very interesting ideas working on it. Can’t really talk about this much, but here’s a couple of concepts for monsters that were inspired by prokaryotes (aka single celled organisms). See kids, science can be usefuel AND cool!
Eskimo + mouse equals eskimouse. Hinrik is Henry in Icelandic, which seemed fitting based on the backdrop. After 30 minutes of sketching (seen below) I spent maybe 2 hours or so in Photoshop. Can’t say much more about this except that I know Aissa will love it.
I’m lazy by nature, and so I always need a carrot at the end of a stick to keep me going and to make sure I achieve anything. When it comes to my art, that carrot is competitions like Unearthly challenge. The carrot in this case doesn’t specifically mean the prizes (because clearly I’m not going to win), but the experience and exposure that I get just from from joining. This isn’t some Pollyanna “it’s how you play the game” kind of crap, mind you. Being freelance and not being part of a larger organization, I often feel that I’m missing out on the skills one picks up in that kind of situation, and this is my way of compensating.
The theme for this year’s unearthly challenge is “end game”. As the unearthly challenge website explains it:
In Unearthly Challenge 2009, your mission is to portray End Game as a game level, game scene or event that suggests the essence of the two words – End Game. It can be a final powerful looking boss level, the aftermath of a legendary battle scene, an epic occurrence that suggests an end is coming, a stairway to an intimidating portal, a road that ends in a pit of fire, or more. How you portray End Game and how you depict an atmosphere that entices viewers to want to know more, we leave it all up to you. Remember, your final work must be clear, with no explanations required, how the scene depicts the essence of – End Game.
In the initial thumbnails (seen above) I actually ignored the theme and just played around with an idea I’ve had for a while, a makeshift raft city inspired by China Mieville’s Armada and the rafts that people macgyvered together during Ondoy and similar meteorological phenomenon. I’ve always been oddly fascinated with makeshift things, dating back to my childhood when I cobbled together a handheld fan out of a Tamiya mini 4wd chassis, a pocket knife, and some super glue. I suppose it taps into my inner efficiency freak, where I hate having anything go to waste (I have a pair of shoes that I’ve been using since the 8th grade, almost a decade and a half ago).
The second batch of thumbnails tries to address the “end game” theme a little more closely, with mixed results. The one idea I came away with was the symbol of an anchor being the main focus of the piece. In a city that is tossed about haphazardly by the currents of the sea, the Anchor represents stability, and thus a cult has been built around the worship and control of the anchor. The cult of the anchor controls the use of numerous anchors, which have been kept down ever since the city found a spot of sea with reasonable weather to live in. However in recent times another religious organization has sprung up from the ranks of the children born on the Raft: The cult of the Sail. They represent forward movement, control over one’s destiny, and the search for dry land (hello, waterworld!). I’m imagining an image depicting the final fall of the cult of the Anchor, which is somewhat difficult considering the competition allows for no human or animal bodies in the image.
While writing this, I stumbled upon the idea of a sail being unfurled, symbolically using the torn down symbol of the anchor as a mast. Lord knows whether or not I’ll have time to finish this, but I’ll certainly do my best to keep this blog updated while I’m at it.
Since I’m going to be drawing a robot frog, I thought it would be apt to look for robots based on animals. After doing a bit on research on designs from WE3 and all the way up to Voltron, I decided to take my cue from Yoji Shinkawa of Metal Gear fame. His designs are totally bad ass, and I think they’d be a good starting point for my own final design for Frobot. I definitely want to veer away from the original frobot, which looked like a frog’s head grafted onto a metal, man-like frame. I want to push the integration into the environment by having Frobot mk2 down on 4 legs.
As stated in the first Frobot post, the design has to take into account technological superiority using high-tech, industrial or futuristic design elements. So in addition to the previously mentioned artificial musculature, I’m also looking to have high powered solar panels at strategic locations around Frobot’s body, with a unique hexagonal design. I originally considered Fission technology, but that feels like a bit of a copout and doesn’t really lend itself to fun design elements on Frobot’s body. Anyway here’s what I have so far. Real work’s been keeping me busy, so hopefully I’ll have a design finalized by the deadline!
Palit is one of the largest makers and distributors of videocards worldwide, and they’ve recently launched a contest to remake their unfortunately named mascot, frobot. Since I have a bit of free time and I love using competitions as a way to force myself to both improve my art and possibly win some prizes (A free 3 day trip to Taiwan, all expenses paid and a video card or two), I’ve decided to enter the Frobot II competition! From the website:
The design of the Frobot II must convey environmental awareness through the use of a frog’s anatomy and green coloured elements as well as the technological superiority using high-tech, industrial or futuristic design elements.
Now I’ve never drawn frogs before, and I’ve tried to block out the memories of cutting open a frog during high school to learn about anatomy. So the first step for me was to do some research on frogs and do some quick sketches, basically familiarizing myself with frog anatomy and thinking about the color scheme I want to use for the final product. I found that I’m a big fan of the color schemes of the tree frogs found in the Amazon forest, so I’m leaning towards using elements of those colors for the final design. Looking at the musculature of the frogs will be also important for me, since I’m looking to replace what looks to a hydraulic system in Frobot 1 with a more flexible artificial muscle tissue (In line with conveying technological superiority). Next up, research on robots and mechs because surprisingly, I’m no good at drawing those either
I’m slowly trying to finish that Neo Shanghai Spy composition, in between work and games and crystalfuckery (those who know what I’m talking about will get a laugh out of this). I need to do more of this kind of work really, and frankly sometimes it really is fun just looking at different references and drawing them but sometimes it can get a little tedious.
So here’s a bunch of lamps that will be used to light the bar in the final artwork. I’m leaning towards the lamp with the white outline around the fake chinese symbol, but that’s actually more of a Japanese lamp. I’m also not sure i’m I’m going to make them look “cybered-up” since I am going for a futuristic-noir look. Ah, I’ll work it out eventually.
As mentioned in the last post I made the foolish decision to join a contest that was already closed. Seeing as I don’t have a lot to do these days though, I (after wasting most of the morning kibitzing and vacuuming the house) thought that I might as well finish the project if only for the experience. I’ll probably go back to the costume design at some point, but for now I decided to do some quick compositional sketches to figure out how I want to lay out my piece (ie where do I want the key elements like the woman, the bar, and the robot bartender).
Compositional sketches are also a fun way to loosen up when drawing, and you’ll notice my strokes get both looser and more confident as you move from sketch one to five. I’m leaning towards sketches 3 and 4, but feel free to leave comments on which ones you like best.
I’m throwing myself into a bit of a creative frenzy these days, partly because my big project is done and a) I’m sick of the Victorian era and b) focusing on a specific style of artwork has led to the minor deterioration of my overall competency as an artist. I just recently finished my entry for th ecomic-con contest, and while browsing the internet stumbled upon this contest at cgsociety called “Secret Agent”. At first Iwas hesitantt o join becuse the deadline was so close (September 10) and I didn’t have a proper concept but I remembered that I had painted two artworks before that could definitely used an overhaul, one of a female chinese secret agent in a qingpao and a sci fi girl with a cybernetic arm (I’d link you but I’m too lazy). It’s a good experiment in seeing how far I’ve improved as an artist, and the verdict so far is I’ve improved substantially, but I’ve still go to a long way to go.
Anyway, a big part of concept art that doesn’t get talked about a lot is that you have to design clothes for your characters. This is easy enough if you’re drawing modern characters or those that fit in a specific time period since you have easy access to reference material, but since my character is a mix of 1930s Shanghai and cybernetic future I have to find a way to mesh those two influences and make it work. It’s a lot harder to do than most people think. When it works it’s fantastic, but when it doesn’t …well, let’s jsut hope it does. Clothes design is far from my expertise, and I’m finding it especially difficult to come up with something that looks good on the female form. These are my first three attempts; standard qingpao with cybernetic arm, a more modern look with kungfu shoes, and a two piece qingpao with pearls and a princess leia-like bun. The hair on these sketches are variations on the typical 1930’s style, and in future sketches I’ll probably play around with the hairstyles some more.
…
So, I just checked out the contest website and found out that the Image entries are only till August 8th, and the Video entries are til September 10th. *facepalm*
This may be what I submit to the Comic con contest, apart from some more minor tweaking. I chose to go with a graphic designed background instead of what will probably be a more common painted/draw background to make it look more like a comic book. It ties in tot he comic con theme and…I just don’t have enough time to draw a proper background. So there.
Finally finished my first orthographic drawing ever, based on my Rodimus Prime design. The deadline for the contest is a week away and I’m starting to doubt I’ll finish it, but to have gotten this far was a good experience in and of itself, so I’m not complaining. Next up is thumbnail sketches for the final pose.
Update: Edited the face and added some wheels based on feedback from ET, to make him look more like Rodimus than Hot Rod. Also, looks like I needed to color the whole thing so I did just that and added a texture for good measure.
Been really looking forward to taking time to draw/do anything not work orIGDA related, so it was nice to draw these Rodimus Prime sketches for the comic con contest. The way things are going I kind of doubt I’ll ever be done with this, but it’s something to push me into drawing non-work related stuff at least.
One of the things I miss most about working in an office was the camaraderie that acomes from being around a group of like-minded people. It’s one of the few advantages that working in a single location has over remote working, which I’ve been doing for the past 2 years or so. Online forums are a great way of recapturing that energy, and I’ve come to love one forum in particular for my artistic learning and output: gameartisans. This particular forum hits the sweet spot between effing useless (ie deviantart) and overwhelming (conceptart.org and cgsociety). It’s a happy balance where I can meet people with a mostly similar (mostly better, some worse) skill level as me, and we can help each other get better by doing honest critiques of our work.
I’d forgotten how much fun that can be, having been dragged down by a lot of work /financial related issues and being too frightened to participate in the recently concluded Dominance War. But I logged onto gameartisans again recently and noticed they had a new comic con contest up. It’s just a little less daunting than the Dominance War and there’s a only a little over a month to get my entry in, but it’s the camaraderie and learning process that I’m craving for so I’ll give it a shot. As “real” (aka not the movie version) transformers fans might recognize, Rodimus Prime. The same Rodimus Prime that my girlfriend gave me a Revoltech action figure of. More updates on this as I finalize it, but for now I’m just enjoying drawing the random bits and pieces and familiarizing myself with robot anatomy.
Thought it might be interesting to show a background in the making. I’d gotten tired of doing interiors and more close up esteriors so to make things interesting I chose a really long view for this town scene. It’ll take a lot more effort, but it’s a lot more fun to work with, especially if I convince myself that I’m a real Victorian town planner (note to self: possible game idea? 
). Based on some reference material I decided on having the farmland in the background, the town in the middle, and the path leading to the town in the extreme foreground.
I was initially overwhelmed by how to lay out the town since I’m no good at the “drawing stuff randomly till something comes of it” school of art. My mind’s scatterbrained enough already, so I need discipline, a guideline, to steer my art in the right direction. I took a look at some layouts for old medieval towns for inspiration and found that it made more sense to me when towns were divided up into blocks. Once I decided on breaking up the town into separate blocks everything started falling into place. The chapel was at the center, and I laid out plans for parks here and there, and sections for shops as well (though they’re not labeled here you can see them next to the park in the center).
Granted, if I were a real Victorian town planner I’d probably have been fired because I laid out the blocks willy-nilly, but I guess the moral of the story is when you have a seemingly insurmountable problem, just break the problem up into sections and you’ll have a much easier time.
Busted out another quick piece today to jar me out of my creative stupor. You can only draw so many Victorian parlours and tea sets and countrysides I suppose. Continuing the robotic streak I began last week, another humanoid robot, this stime sporting some strange Renaissance gear. I think this was based on my reading up on the life and times of Nostradamus, who lived during that time period. I’ve always found it interesting to think about what future technology would look like if you applied the design philosophies of the past to them,and this is a quick way to scratch that itch. Fancied it up with some graphic designy stuff just to make it a little more presentable.
Got inspired by this dude to do a quick sketch. Too much victorian housing lately, so it’s fun to bust out on a robot that’s quite obviously got some anatomical issues.
Another piece of spell art for Spell Wars called Ghost Knight. Far from done, but I thought I’d put it up anyway. The armor is inspired by greenwich armor of the 1500s. It’s been a pleasing distraction from my ongoing project of large, detailed backgrounds. Although ironically, I chose a type of armor that has intricately detailed designs.
Artwork for a spell on spell wars called “Moment of Peace”. Spellwars is an iPhone game being developed by Ryan Stubblefield. I’ve mostly provided UI work for Spellwars, and this is my first stab at spell art.
A very quick mockup for an iPhone math application that I banged out in a ciuple of hours. The ships on top are attacking the city below, with each ship’s chape correspnding to a specific trait. Green was a normal ship, red is sleeker, hence faster , and yellow is slower and more ponderous but took two hits to finish off. The city has 3 layers of shields, which correspond to “lives”, which I thought made more sense than just having a life bar or three hearts on top of the screen. Ultimately this design was discarded, but I thought it was nice enough to put up here.
A bunch of UI elements from an iPhone game called Piecehunters and its Chinese spinoff I made for a small Singaporean studio. Not a lot to say about this really, except my favorite’s the incense holder and the little chinese lion (that’s supposed to be a stamp or seal, like for royalty).
Another image from the zombie game files. This is supposed to be used as an information sheet of sorts for theplayers to know what character they are, and what kinds of abilities they have. The best parallel in a video game would be the inventory screen. I really liked making this, especially thinking of the little add ons tot he folder, like the clipped picture of the zombie and the post-it note.
Sometimes it’s nice to bust out with something totally non-work related to recharge the creative batteries. This is a remake of an earlier landscape piece that I kind of hacked up and jigsaw-ed back together to create a more interesting look. It’s definitely not to a point where I’d say I’m proud of it, but at least I like it better than the original artwork.
Updated my portfolio a bit today, with some of the work I’ve done the past few months or so. Been a bit lazy updating it because I really don’t have time for new projects anyway, but it’s still good to refresh it every now and then. This zombies part of the update, still for the Zombie board game I’ve been working on. Had to put that on a backburner for a while to work on a larger project, but I’m still excited to see this push through sometime this year.
Been a while since I’ve had the time, energy, or inclination to paint anything other than work related stuff, so I took 15 minutes to bust this out of my system. After some initial dabs of paint it started forming into an East German looking hitman, so I went with that idea.
Bit of a teaser here, basically doing some test runs on drawing victorian era furniture. Connected to the project I may be working on soon. I say “may” because even though I’ve already received a contract, I won’t rest easy until I see some green. I’m paranoid that way, what can I say?
Yes, it is the same zombie board game. No, I’d rather not talk about it any more, mostly cause I’m lazy. I like how it came out though, so here you go.
A cover for a zombie board game. The yellow strip running diagonally from left to right contained the title, which I’ll hold off on showing for now. All I can say is that I’m really excited to be working on an indie board game. This is one of the first larger pieces I’ve had to make, both compositionally and literally, and while I think I managed to pull off the general idea, I’m certain I could have spiffied it up some more given some more time. Like a month.
A quick, lighthearted 30 minute sketch to keep from getting rusty.
To work on this game. The idea was a top-down action RPG type iphone game with the artistic direction of Field Runners. Unfortunately the company who commisioned this mockup punked me and I haven’t heard from them since.
Parallelus (click the link only if you have itunes installed) is now available on the iTunes appstore! This is another small milestone in my time as a freelance artist, my first iPhone game! Ok no more exclamation points. Instead I’ll copy and paste the wonderful and curiously well made description of the game from my contractor’s website:
Catch hearts and avoid bombs. Do you really think this task is simple?
Try it yourself in this original arcade game.
Use your reflexes and brain to complete this double task. Two hands, two brain parts, two game fields. Parallelus it!
Features:
- original concept
- immersive multi-touch control
- over 100 levels
- 3 game modes
- shiny graphics
If you like puzzle games, left/right brain mind exercises, or me, please buy this game!
It’s been about 6 months since I was forced headfirst into the world of freelance art, and a recent run-in with a bad client made me think that this would be a good time to reflect on the past half year. Before being forced to work freelance I was working on a comfy project on the Nintendo DS that promised that I would be living comfortably for the next few years once it got picked up by a publisher. Unfortunately for me and the people I was working with, the financial crisis was looming large and publishers were very hesitant about signing unproven companies and IPs (intellectual properties). Eventually my employer ran out of money, but I persisted in working for him because I really believed that the project was marketable and could lead to bigger things. It didn’t. 3 months later I came to the realization that there was no way this was going to work out, and I had to prepare myself to look for other opportunities. I didn’t want to go back to my old job as an GUI artist for an instant messaging mobile app, and interviews with some local game studios didn’t pan out, so I had only one option left: go freelance.
The Good
Your time is your own, obviously. You can take a nap anytime you want, drink anytime you want, read anytime you want, play videogames anytime you want without anyone looking over your shoulder, as long as you manage to finish your projects on time. Also, since I’m working in the Philippines, budgets that would be scoffed at in the 1st world are enough to get by on over here. The advantage is that I can undercut other artists who may want/need a larger budget for the project. In principle it’s like I’m a one-man outsourcing business.
Of course you shouldn’t aim to undercut all the time, as the idea is to get maximum money for your work/time. The more you undercut the more used to those prices your clients will be, and since we’re assuming you want to have repeat clients, it wouldn’t be good to get them too used to ridiculously low rates. It does however give 3rd world artists a little more leeway, allowing you to price low to gain experience or during a tight period, or to negotiate as high as you want when business is good. In fact, if I wasn’t currently paying 36,000 pesos a month for a condo down payment, I wouldn’t be as stressed as I am right now. As it is I’m barely making ends meet, but hopefully this situation will improve soon.
Good clients are the usually open about their budgets and willing to pay up front or on a per piece basis depending on how large the project is. Good clients should be treated like gold. Make them happy and they’ll spread the word about your services to other people who will be more inclined to hire you since they’ve talked to someone with first hand experience with you. There’s a bit of a stigma when it comes to being a freelance anything, insofar as there are no viable penalties if you choose to simply drop out of a project all of a sudden. Developers are worried about this of course, and so building a good reputation is paramount. Another great thing about freelancing is the opportunity to work with a world-spanning client list. So far I have 1 US client, 2 British clients, and a pair of Ukrainian programmers.
The Bad
With freedom comes insecurity. There’s a lot of shit being spread around by “Rich Dad” advocates that there’s no such thing as job security anymore. While in practical terms this is certainly true (as the recession has proven), psychologically the impact not having a steady monthly paycheck has on a person cannot be understated. This all depends on your psychological profile of course, and I’ve found that I’m somewhere in the middle of being a risk taker and looking for security. I like the freedom of being a freelance artist but at the same time the lack of a monthly or bi-weekly paycheck does take its toll on me every 15th and 30th of the month.
I should also mention here that anyone looking to go freelance should either have some experience behind them or a kick ass portfolio. I had a little experience behind me as a game artist, but years of being comfortable in a corporate atmosphere atrophied whatever artistic talent I had, to the point that I was producing artwork that was really quite embarrassing. Being freelance puts you in a constant situation of panic, where you feel like you need to be continually improving your skills or get left behind. This lack of security can be a boon, as I’m only realizing my true artistic potential now, and see myself improving with every piece of artwork and every satisfied client. In short, as an artist I’m better now than I’ve ever been. This constant state of panic does take its toll however, and I’m forgetting that I need to relax (I’m sure my friends will find this hilarious, but it’s true) every now and then. I find that little things stress me out, like waking up to check my mail and seeing that no new clients have emailed.
Which leads me to bad clients. I classify bad clients as clients that respond favorably to your initial email but then fail to follow up or inform you of what’s happened. Even a simple “we found a better suited artist” would suffice to inform me that my services are no longer needed and I’m free to look for new clients. This is probably the most common client I’ve had recently, with a lot of them expressing initial interest then disappearing for no valid reason. Am I asking too much? Was there a better artist offering lower rates? This kind of information would be most helpful, plskthx. The end result is that I’m firing off as many emails as possible and sorting out the scheduling mess afterward.
The Ugly
It’s hard to get a loan when you’re not employed. Hell, it’s hard to get your bank to change your place of employment since you can’t even furnish them with a certificate of employment to prove that you are working for so and so company. This may not sound like an issue right now but it will be in the future, especially if you’re looking to get a housing loan. There are other means of course, like getting a pag-ibig loan or SSS loan, but I was too lazy to keep up my payments and so that’’s not working for me too. That’s one other thing that the prospective freelancer should take note of I guess, is to make sure you make those payments. I’m still working out how to fix this part, one of the solutions I’ve thought of is starting my own company as a sole proprietorship and thus being able to list myself as “self employed”. There are negatives to this too, most of which I haven’t uncovered yet, so there’s still a long way to go for me on this end.
Ugly clients are the types that can’t make up their minds, and will try to get as much work as possible out of you to justify their expenses. They may not be bad people, but the fact is that at some point you have to decide if a project is worth the time and effort you put into it. While I definitely believe that every experience teaches you something and is therefore never wasted, you shouldn’t let yourself be punked by an ugly client. As an example, the image above may never be finished because the client, after 4 days of work and constant updates and thumbnail samples decided that the buildings looked too similar to each other, and that we’d need to do this again. What made me decide to turn my back on the project? He was paying me a measly $60 for this artwork, hardly enough for the time and stress that its creation took.
Google Sketchup is one of the most awesome things to come out of Google labs. It’s essentially a 3d modeling application that lets you build buildings, vehicles, and whatever else you have in mind. It’s supposed to be ridiculously easy to pick up and play and considering I have forgotten almost everything I learned from my brief flirtation with Maya I can attest to this. Massive Black supposedly gives Sketchup to its artists who are similarly 3D impaired and it allows them to quickly concept things like vehicles and space ships in far less time than it would take to learn a fully fledged 3D program.
I’m using Sketchup now to do some concept work for a client who wants to see some ruined cityscapes. We went through numerous thumbnails where I was painting directly onto the canvas and frankly I was getting really tired already. Then I remembered Sketchup and why I downloaded it in the first place, and within minutes I had a cityscpape thumbnails that my client approved. Thanks, Google!
So for the past month I’ve been helping out a duo of Ukrainian iPhone developers make their/our first iPhone game. I did this game on a much lower budget than I would have wanted, but I figure it’s definitely a good portfolio piece and a bonus when applying for contracts that require iPhone experience. That icon (the one with the P, I don’t really wanna mention the name of the game because I don’t know how they’d feel about that) actually may not be the final one btw, it’s just what they sent me yesterday.
This is the first time I’ve had language barriers when working with a client, and there were definitely times were I struggled to decipher their use of tense and swapping of words. I had to learn to swap words like “picture” with “image” and get around the fact that they seem to have no concept of tense (ie “made” instead of “make”). This isn’t a knock on them by any means, these are all common mistakes for anyone who didn’t grow up using English (and even with some people who did). In fact, I think their game is quite unique though definitely not something you’d play for more than five minutes. I don’t know if it’ll make them a lot of money though, but certainly it’s enough to cover the cost of hiring me. But to go back to speaking English, I’m used to discussing things with clients, clearing up matters, making suggestions on the aesthetic of a certain sprite or button, but it’s hard to do that when you’re not sure that you’re truly being understood. Eventually after a few tries I decided to give up, and I came up with a simple mantra “if what they want isn’t ridiculous or horrible, just do it.”. I also stopped making suggestions or waiting for them to make suggestions when I saw a problem, but addressed it instead and simply told them how my solution worked. The less dialogue the better.
Hopefully the game does turn out well though, cause if they make some money off of this we have a good enough relationship that I’m almost positive they’ll come back to me for more work.
The nice thing about Dystopic Landscapes is that you can easily put one together and have something nice looking without having to think too hard. You mostly need some basic composition and afterwards you can let your imagination run wild. By their nature these types of landscapes present a world that has fallen to ruin, so you’re free to go crazy with your brushstrokes and treat mistakes like crumbled cement and rubble. It’s the perfect kind of messy playground that doesn’t stress me out too much but still (hopefully) acts as good practice for more polished material. This is definitely not done yet, so expect a finished version in the weeks to come.
I’m kind of annoyed right now. So the latest mini competition for gameartisans is baby monsters, ie Paint your favorite movie monster as a baby. I don’t really have a favorite, but I thought that Davy Jones from the Pirates movies would be interesting to draw, so I settled on that. I’m actually quite pleased at how the work has turned out, and I think this is some of my most polished work so far, but I made a huge mistake while updating on gameartisans. They encourage you to post your work while it’s being done, to get critiques and whatnot and also to build up the community aspect of the site. I usually downsample to 500×500 so my images aren’t hogging bandwidth (I do the same for this blog) on the forum, but this time I forgot to undo and go back to a 1000×1000 resolution! That may not sound like much of a difference, but in general when you put up portfolio material art directors like to see more high resolution stuff, because the lower your resolution is the more artistic cheats you can get away with (which is why I thrived in mobile games for a while, where tiny pixel art hides glaring anatomical errors). I’m going to try to salvage this by upsampling to around 800×800 and polishing it a little bit (1000×1000 is a bit much, the blurriness and artifacts are intolerable), but right now I’m too annoyed to go back and work on this piece.
I talked about Rick Rocket on a post about delayed gratification a month ago, and now it’s finally been released! I was asked by my client, Troy Hepfner of My Game Company, to make some more art for the game and expand it a little, and I convinced him to give me a shot at the UI as well. I think that the game has benefited tremendously from these additions, and I’d be thrilled if you guys would check it out. Like I said before it’s not a triple A game, and it’s probably never going to be talked about in games media, but dammit I can’t help but feel proud knowing that somewhere out there, someone’s playing a game that I helped to make, and they’re loving every minute of it.
If you have young kids and you’re worried about the games they’re playing, or you’re just tired of the blood and guts in video games (Lord knows I’m not because I do love me some Left 4 Dead) do check out My Game Company, who focus on fun and friendly games for kids (and adults!) of all ages. And if you act now (ala those As seen on TV infomercials) you can buy 2 games off their site and get 1 free! My Game Company also offers games from other developers, so that’s definitely a great deal.
Made for another gameartisans mini competition, the theme this time was mimics. Mimics, in fantasy lore, are monsters that pretend to be something else then attack when the adventurer goes near them. Traditionally they have been treasure chest that attack when you try to open them, but in this case we had the freedom to create any kind of mimic we wanted. I chose a “hat mimic” that not only feeds off of it’s host, but controls it as well.
Just a quick monochrome Bruce Lee sketch. Wanted to do something that wasn’t too stressful but still kept me exercising my drawing. Here’s a cheap trick. Us e the cutout filter and you get an instant graphic artsy T-shirt design!
Well, it’s finally done, and I’ve put it up on conceptart.org to be savaged in the critique section. Which means I should probably put it up on Deviantart to soften the blow.
And for today’s “laughing so hard your stomach hurts” moment, I give you, ladies and gentlemen, VAMBIE! Brought to you by the-isb. OK so it’s less funny the more you read it, but I swear to got this caught me off guard and had me laughing my ass off for a good 5 minutes the first time I saw it.
This is one of the most intricate pieces of work I’ve done yet, and something that I’ve been attending to every now and then for the past few weeks. It’s essentially a study in composition, armor design, and texture. This is maybe halfway done. In a way it’s also been an exercise in patience. I’m learning not to rush myself and just let things take their natural course.
Not much to say this time really, as I’m just borrowing my girlfriend’s home computer to do some internetting and emailing. Still, I wanted to put something up for the new year, so here you go. Happy New Year, everyone, and thanks to everyone who wished me a Happy Birthday!
So the steampunk sleigh is almost done, and I must admit I’m quite pleased with the end result. The funny thing is that the only thign that really made me crank up the creative juices was seeing the raw creativity at work over at the gameartisans forum. For comparison, this was my first sleigh design:
I know, the evolution is astounding. Participating in forums and online competitions is the closest facsimile a freelance worker can get to the energy that exists in a room full of artists. My friends kept telling e before to post on the forums but I was always too lazy to and never quite got the point of it all. I went to forums to check out tutorials and basically once I got what I needed I abandoned them. Now I know that they’re much, much more useful than that, and in the absence of a good teacher, “hanging out” with a group of talented individuals online is the next best thing.
I love/hate the peer pressure that comes from viewing other artists’ work. On the one hand it inspires me to make my work better and forces me to churn out those creative juices, but on the other hand there’s the inescapable feeling of smallness when you gaze upon talent that’s far superior to yours. Still, at least I feel like I’m competing, and getting better, and that’s the point rally. So I dithced my old idea of just straping rockets to a sleigh and calling it “Turbo”, and decking out a whole new design, the Steampunk Sleigh. I’m quite pleased with it so far, but I’ll sleep on it and see if anyone comments on gameartisans before adding the pilot. I’m keeping one of the characters from my former post, the one witht he aviator goggles.
I’ve also cleared out my deviantart account. I’ve had a love/hate relationship with deviantart for a while, because it’s UI is just ridiculously outdated. However there’s no denying its reach, and as much as I’ll hate taking 5 minutes to upload every single artwork, I’m hopeful that in the long run it’ll help provide me with a bigger crop of possible freelance clients.
Lastly, but probaby most importantly, Movement for Good Governance, a well…movement, that my girlfriend is heavily involved with, has made the front page of the Inquirer. MGG is mostly about educating the Philippine populace years before the elections, allowing them to make better decisions come election time (I’m sure it’s about much more than that, but my tl:dr syndrome kicked in again). I’m extremely proud of her and the work that she’s done, and I can only hope that I can devote more time in my later life to activities like this, that help to make this country a better place for everyone to live in.
Most concept art is done with a more realistic, traditional style of painting, probably because games have been flogging themselves to reach realistic looking graphics for the past decade. So recently I’ve been focused much more on achieving a realistic look, studying anatomy again and really trying to get that down. The most recent contest on gameartisans had me go back to drawing something a little more cartoony and animated though, because the theme was “Turbo Sled” and I couldn’t think come up with anything “realistic” looking that wouldn’t end up really lame. So I figured it was time to have some fun with the concept, and ended up with the idea of two crazy kids – a wannabe WWII fighter pilot and and a pyromaniac – hooking up fireworks to the back of a sled and pushing themselves off a cliff or something. That would just look kind of ridiculous if drawn in a realistic manner, hence the choice of art style.
I have to say that I’m quite happy with how these character designs have turned out. It’s not obvious but the practice on “real” anatomy does help even when you start to stretch the boundaries of anatomy to reach a more caricatur-ey feel.
This is my first stab (that would have been punny if this were a sword and not an axe) at an orthographic sketch. You’d normally use these as a reference when making 3D models, for the shape, and also for the 2D textures. It was supposed to be a steampunk aztec axe, in line with my other post, but I found it hard to add any kind of steampunk element to it, aside from the odd dangling telephone wire in the back. I was initially thinking of using this as a reference for learning 3D modeling, but I think I’d better stick to something far simpler first, with less decorative elements in it.
It’s dawned on me that in nearly 3 years of making games, I have yet to see a copy of a game I worked on released (except some horrible game and watch ports and certain ABS-CBN properties that I’d rather forget) until now. Well, it’s not quite released yet, but my bit is done, and it should be rolling out before the end of the year. Sure it’s not a triple A game, but the fact that it’ll be out there for people to download and play does give me a sense of accomplishment. And it’s a new portfolio section too, so hooray!
This is for another competition, this time on cgtalk, about reimagining myths and legends in steampunk form. I’ve been very interested in drawing a character based on Aztec art, so I’m going for a steampunk El Dorado. These are just preliminary sketches of what a steampunk Aztec robot or armor might look like. Right now it looks more aztec than steampunk, so I have to figure out how to work the steampunk aspects in.
This is for another contest at gameartisans, which is becoming my most frequented site for concept art inspiration. I’m using a new workflow I’ve found which I like very much, as it allows or more speed and flexibility in coming up with concepts. It’s also the first time I’ve actually considered making a tutorial of the process, jsut because I’ve saved up a lot of the images of the work under construction.
Not quite finished yet, and I know I definitely need to study up on armor and the like, because my armor design is pretty generic looking right now.
Edit: This wsa my final entry. It’s still not perfect but it’s going as far as it’s gonna go. Some mostly cosmetic changes wth the armor, basicllay adding more detail, and totally changing the sword. Overall I’m happy, bt the quality of artists that this comp brought out makes me almost certain I’m nowhere near close to winning this.
I’ve been joining gameartisan’s contests for the past few months just to have something to focus my practice work on, and this month’s contest was jack o’ lanterns. I was initially turned off by the concept, since I wanted something that would help me in my anatomy study. But then I saw a book on Michaelangelo lying around in my room and had the idea to paint a pumpkin head on a Michaelango sculpture, then have numerous pumpkin museum goers gawking at it. My mind works in mysterious and disturbing ways, I know.
A much more refined skeletal mage. I’m still a bit nervous to submit it to the art director, so I thought I’d put it up here first. All this drawing is burning me out, so this weekend’s shanghai trip should do me some good. (But I’ll probably still be doing drawing exercises while waiting at the airport anyway).
I’ve recently been talking to the Art Director of the Warlord CCG, who was kind enough to give me an art test and a few comments on my work despite having no experience in the field.
This concept was ultimately rejected, but I thought I’d post it here anyway.
Submitted to a Wacom contest, which will hopefully win me some Wacom swag.
Just a one and a half hour painting to work out my frustrations with an employer who hasn’t gotten back to me yet.
Updated imgae.
It’s been an exhausting 4 days of drawings and revisions, but I finally came up with something I’m happy enough with to submit for an art test. This came after a ton of help from conceptart.org folks and chris, to whom I’m very grateful to.
Done in practice for crowd scenes. This was mostly to get over the fear of drawing such large, crowded scenes. It’s very unpolished right now, but think of it as a first draft. 6-7 hours over 3 days.
No updates lately, so I thought I’d show you some of what I’ve been up to. This was actually done a week or so ago. I have a hard time drawing the neck bent over like that, it feels unnatural for some reason.
Took a break from study to reward myself with a quick fantasy piece. I haven’t yet decided if I see an improvement from my earlier work, but it’s still a nice change of pace. Little less than 3 hours in photoshop?
Update: cleaned up the shading some, and added a faux background to shake things up a bit.
Took about an hour to flesh this out for a mini-contest on gameartisans for little steampunk pets. I saw a hamster on an old issue of GFW and took that as my inspiration.
So I bought the Bulletproof Monk TPB while I was in Singapore, since it was on sale for $5 and I’m a bargain bin whore. I gotta say, it’s probably one of the worst written comics I’ve ever read. Michael Avon Oeming’s art is terrific, but the writing really just smacked of Americans trying to sound mystical and Asian and shit, and the pacing was phenomenally bad. You’d literally jump from one plotline to another and sudden emotional changes were forced upon characters to fit the plot. I also partly bought it because the movie wasn’t half bad, but the storyline of this TPB had absolutely nothing to do with what eventually unfolded onscreen.
That said, I had a bit artist’s block yesterday morning, then I came to the conclusion that the first reason I watched the BPM film in the first place was the title. It’s just an ear/eye-catching title. Bulletproof Monk. How can that not be awesome? So I started to think of other words that might work work with “bulletproof”, and eventually settled on “punk”. Then the image of a punk flipping the bird with a bullet in between his teeth came to me, and there you go.
It sort of ended up looking like a vertigo comic cover, so I played with that a little bit, making the title and added the “Wertigo” logo plus the number 1 (collector’s edition!). So the lesson for today is that you shouldn’t shy away from shitty comics, because they just might inspire you.
So this is my first real artwork since I let for Singapore, and I quite like it. I used a picture from an earthquake as a reference and then just fit the huge robot and special ops guys with their tiny rifles in for a sci-fi duel. Obviously my robot design, especially in the torso area, needs a lot of work. But I think this is something that will improve over time.
OK, I think I’ve just about exhausted myself at this point. That’s all for today, folks.
1 hour rough experimenting with color and size. Obviously based on “The Iron Giant”, possibly the most underrated animated film ever.
30 minutes. Exercise in light, shadow, and…bigness.
Just a 45 minute sketch to work out my frustrations.
Inspired by an Al-Jazeera documentary on an elderly Chinese couple taking care of children left for dead on the streets of a Chinese city (I forget which) because they have birth defects.
This is only part of the piece, with the full artwork being uploaded to my unfinished portfolio.
A bit of a crapshoot composition-wise, but overall I’m happy with how this turned out.
Those who can’t sleep, draw. 40+ minutes, photoshop.
In the year 2112, The world is on the brink of destruction. The USA and the reformed USSR are on on the verge of nuclear war, and the failure of the Kyoto Protocol has submerged half of the once habitable land on Earth in seawater. Fearing for the future of mankind, the world’s greatest minds retreat to the mountaintops to build “Atlas Fortresses”, each of which is self sustaining, and contains the seeds and genes of all the world’s flora and fauna.
Need to take a break. I’ll probably finish it up tomorrow.
In an alternate timeline, Magneto takes the young Robert Drake under his wing as a lieutenant to his brotherhood of Mutants. During an epic battle between Magnet’s brotherhood and Xavier’s X-men, Charles Xavier confronts Iceman and shows him the error of Magneto’s ways. Torn between Magneto’s teachings and the truth behind Xavier’s words, Drake’s mind snaps and he concludes that the only way to end conflict in the world is for it to be in eternal stasis. His power extended by his madness, Iceman encases the world in a layer of ice, imposing a new ice age that lasts for as long as he lives.
Experimented with pure paint today. It’s not for me. I really need my line art. I may go back to this someday but right now I just like working with line art. I gave up on this after a few hours.
The space suit is based on the Estafandra Estranautica, and the gun from the Russian TP-82 space gun.
I wanted to finish this to get it out of the way and work on some new things. Definitely needs a lot more polish, the colors I chose were kind of shit, and the basic drawing has some flaws in its posture. Still, it’s time to move on. Original drawing here.
It’s surprisingly hard totrack down “The Art of” books. These are books that detail the creation of a movie or animated film, from rough sketches to polished concept art to the final cell/image. I’ve been interested with them ever since finishing “Dream Worlds” by Hans Bacher, and have been itching to get my hands on a new one to study. Fully Booked at Bonifacio High Street had a good selection of film-based “Art of” books, but I was more interested in the animated ones like the Art of Kung-Fu Panda/Wall-e/Robots/The Invincibles. I finally went home with a copy of The art and making of Star Wars: The Force unleashed, which appealed to me because a) I’m a Star Wars nerd and b) I’m looking to advance myself in the videogame industry.
So far the book’s been pretty awesome, and the amount of detail that goes into describing each concept art is mind boggling. My one complaint with Dream Worlds was that Bacher could be very vague with describing certain things, so this is definitely a plus for me. If you can get over the Hayden Christensen foreword and the ridiculously placed Trading cards (glued onto certain pages of the book), this is well worth the 1258 pesos.
There are days when I feel like the Mussolini to my more accomplished friends’ Hitler. The Pippen to their Jordan, the Daffy Duck to their Bugs Bunny. Case in point is my friend Chester Ocampo. While talking to a fellow artist friend I mentioned Chester’s name and he said something like “ah oo kilala yun!” (oh yeah, he’s well well known), and now I find out that he’s broken into the comics biz with Freedom Formula #1.
What makes Chester even more awesome is that he does no marketing of any sort. I mean, he’s not blatant about it like some other artists and media personalities are. He’s just that good. his art speaks for itself, as should any great artists’ work.
Off topic, I’ve never heard of Radical Comics before, but they have some very interesting titles. I’ll have to ask local comic shops if they stock them. I hope they do trades though, because I hate collecting singles.
I’m obviously not working very hard at these titles. 3 hours-ish Photoshop.
Not quite sure if this is ready yet, but I’m sufficiently proud of it to post it here. 4 hours-ish on photoshop.
This is the hard part, near the end. When you don’t know quite what to do to finish it off.
If you guys dig the design, please leave some comments here, and help me get this design printed!
Definitely took more time with this one, hence it looks slightly polished. Maybe one and a half hours. I’m enjoying this.
15 minutes, photoshop. This is an interesting idea that deserves more than 15 minutes, but i wanted to finish something real quick. I’m imagining a whole set of steampunk folk, like labanderos, tuberos, and barberos.
This guy’s work with logos used as design elements has inspired me to do something similar with Filipino brands. If I ever get around to it.
Spotted along the ortigas/C5 overpass.
Spotted along C5. That Nuno gets fucking everywhere.
Spotted in a parking lot near UA&P. Colors were a bit washed out for some reason, probably because of poor lighting. 4th in a series of 4.
Spotted in a parking lot near UA&P. 3rd in a series of 4.
Spotted in a parking lot near UA&P. 2nd in a series of 4.
Spotted in a parking lot near UA&P. 1st in a series of 4.
Spotted again on Amang Rodriguez. Looks like it’s a favorite spot of his.
What do you call these things anyway? Phoneboxes? Found on the same road as the multicolored Nunos.
I’m thrilled that some of the guys whose street art I’ve put up have come to the site (what’s up pilipinas street plan and the K-street crew), so I’m putting up some more today. This was found along the little side street that connects c-5 and Amang Rodriguez, taken a few days ago. It’s actually a row of three Nunos in different colors, but I couldn’t get a good enough angle to get them all in one picture.
Made for some friends, none of whom have received them yet.
This started out as me wanting to draw a round robot, in homage to GO-TO of KOTOR2. I still had a bit of time so i thought what the hell, let’s draw a robot arm in the air. Then I thought well that looks like rubbish sitting in the air, let’s attach a body and head to it. Great stuff, but now I have a half formed robot in the air and I didn’t want to finish the whole robot body so I decide the circular robot is operating on the droid, who lies on a lab table. One last issue though, the robodoc’s eye isn’t even remotely looking at the droid on the table, so I draw an extra arm and pretend he’s a medical quack that looks at robot porn while he’s operating.
Spotted under the ortigas/C5 flyover in pasig.
I wonder who could have put this in a CR in powerplant? *snicker*
Also spotted near my old office, stuck on a signpost along HV delacosta. What, do I look like a map to you?
Spotted in the area near my old office, along H.V. delacosta in Makati.
Because if this is what passes as concept “art” for a triple A title like Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War, then you (and your 5 year old kid brother) should have absolutely no problem getting a job as a concept scribbler artist in the games industry.
Or rather, me. Because I haven’t made a new t-shirt design in ages, I decided to roll one out, ninja style. Cause everybody loves ninjas right? Except pirates. Pirates hate ninjas.
Based on the 10-minute ninja sketch I did a few days ago.
Axis of Evil toys! This should come in handy whenever you feel like being stopped for questioning at major american airports. Comes with Osama bin Laden, Kim Jong-Il, the man himself, mr. George Dubya Bush, and the ghost of Saddam Hussein!
You’d have to be insane or an extremely rich left wing pseudo celebrity activist (hello, michael moore) to buy this set for 120 dollars, but they’re really cute nonetheless.
He’ll kill you in 10 minutes…or turn into a pumpkin.
He’s colored, but I have no sense of color it just looks a bit off. That belt buckle also seems off for some reason. looks too clean maybe.
This is what I do when I need to relax and draw something other than aquatic mammals.
This is after 20 odd minutes. I was wondering why it looked so soft and fuzzy, then realized I was painting with soft brushes. This is how long I haven’t been “painting” in photoshop.
After 20 to 25 minutes or so, he’s looking a lot sharper, but you can see his left arm (your right) still looks a little soft because that’s where I left off when I started getting lazy. I’ll finish him up sometime this week. This is based on concept art from the Chronicles of Riddick game, which is totally badass.
On a side note, the trade yesterday didn’t pan out as well as I’d like, with Jose Calderon and Andris Biedrins having decent games, but Brendan Haywood having a monster game after a 2 point/rebound outing. His performance this last game means guaranteed minutes in the Wizards’ next outing, but I honestly don’t know who I’d replace for him.
I’m not very good at designing armor, and his stance looks a bit stiff. Still I’m rather pleased at the progress I’ve made. I hate hands.
I need to remember volume, that shapes wrap around each other. This is the flaw of not starting from a whole and working your way to the details.
This was supposed to be for a sony blog that never materialized. Just thought I’d put it up for funsies. It’s supposed to be a hardcore metal gear fanboy. Sometimes too much detail can kill ya. That’s all really.
In homage to my FRIEND mapet’s photoblog, I present to you the saga of shyguy and bull-bull (only funny to those of a filipino persuasion).
Hi there, my name is shyguy. I live a meaningless existence in a 12th floor office somewhere in makati and sometimes when the mood is right I wonder what lies beyond the dirty window that obscures my view of the city.
Oh hello there, reflection of me. Say, I was wondering, how’s life over there? Is there really a meaning to all of this? Is life really better on the other side? Only one way to find out you say? Well, that’s true isn’t it. Well then, I’ve made up my mind. I will journey the other side…
…on my faithful steed, bull-bull! Who apparently appears out of nowhere, right beneath me. Bull-bull is a red bull. Red bulls have lots and lots of energy. Truth. He will be very useful in traveling the world beyond the window.
And so my friends, I bid you farewell. My journey begins here, and I do not know when it will end, but I’m sure I will have a wealth of experiences and stories upon my return.
MANILA (AP) — reports of a masked man astride a bull falling to their deaths in Makati city have been confirmed. Residents of Manila’s main commercial district claim they heard the sound of breaking glass before hearing a large thump similar to the sound of meat falling on the pavement. A really, really large hunk of meat.
Philippine police have no clue as to the identities of the victims, or if this was a suicide. Initial forensic analysis has yielded no clues to the identity of the fatalities, as the man riding the bull seems to have a mask that simply “won’t come off”. No identification information could be found on the man, so the police will have to resort to DNA testing.
The latest reports indicate that a bespectacled office worker was seen walking around the bodies mumbling something to himself about “going beyond the window”, but this has yet to be confirmed.
More updates on this story as new information arrives.
Well, this is for everyone who’s been asking about how to get t-shirts offa me. I recently made a t-shirt featuring the monkey character by graf artist ff, seen here:
front
front close up
back
back close up
Now I really like how the T-shirt turned out, but the catch is that it’s just a tad too big for me. It’d have been perfect during my chunkier days, but unless I start packing in the pounds again it just looks a little awkward on me. So. I’ve decided to sell it for the low,low price of 900 pesos. Ok, so it’s not THAT low, but let me explain the thought behind the 900 peso price tag before you all go apeshit on me. The basic formula is:
T-shirt = 200 pesos
materials + labor + design = 550
payment for “gorilla” design (assuming ff looks for me and asks for a royalty) = 150
Total = 900
Please consider that this shirt design was made by hand (cut it out and painted it myself and everything) andis at this point a one of a kind design. You can wear it with the utter confidence that no one else will have the same shirt as you. If that’s important to you at all. If you don’t think the price fair, but you’re interested in the shirt, let me know what you think and why you think its unfair and I’ll get back to you. inquiries can be sent to endlessthirteen@yahoo.com. FF, you can also send me threats and cease and desist letter, or we can negotiate just how much I owe you for stealing your design.
I’m also selling this Gundam shirt for 600 pesos, since I’ve used it once or twice, and it’s just too small for me.
Right.
By the way. If any of you (friends, family, passerby) think I’m crazy for selling it that high please please let me know. It’s much more useful for me to be told I’m crazy instead of you smirking and casually clicking on the “close’ button. 
See, this is what you get when you put your mp3 player to random play while on the MRT and find a depressing song with a catchy melody that just sticks in your head. The song was “You could be happy” by Snow Patrol, and this took roughly 30 minutes of thrashing about waildly on the tablet to do.
Made for when I watched the movie last Sunday. It’s my way of saying I like the original Optimus Prime, thank you very much.
Just something I’ve been working on for the past few days or so. Purely in vector. I’m thinking of doing a mini tutorial for it soon, the workflow thoughts may be of use to some people, but we’ll see. The larger image can be seen here.
This is why I love vector art. My tablet is stretched out over two monitors so its damn near impossible to sketch properly, but with just a few wild lines laid out here and there you can vector something together that looks halfway decent.
Thrashing about wildly on tablet
Looks as if someone actually put some thought into it
Just felt like doing something creative today, but not too much, so I just revamped an image from a time not too long ago that I’d rather leave in the past. Except for this drawing of course.
d’original
d’remake
I’ve missed working with vectors.
Or specifically, in the UP katipunan area. I’ve been virtually sitting on a huge pile of pictures taken on my jaunt through UP last holy week that had me taking pictures of every bit of street art I could find. Apparently there’s a nascent street art scene growing up in Manila, that’s far from being as developed as the grafitti you see in New York but light years better than the amateurish tags seen in the metro when being hiphop was still “in”. Without further ado, here are some of my favorite artworks.
FF
This dude calls himself “ff”, and has a thing for gorillas. I found it hilarious how he painted right over the mmda “art” shapes. It looks like he’s using the kind of brush you use to paint houses and diupping it liberally into a can of boysen. Good stuff. I wonder if the gorilla motif was inspired by bape?
TMTK
Not quite as pretty as the gorilla but just as consistent, TMTK favors furry pink worm/caterpillars that seemingly enter in and out of “black holes” Nest to FF, he’s probably the most prolific graf artist in the area. Looks like housepaint as well, but with a smaller brush for the fur.
Clown guy
He/she doesn’t sign his pieces, but there’s at least one graf artist out there who has a preference for clowns. Obviously he’s never wathed “it”.
Momy Nick
Momy nick likes drawing bear-like creatures. Very iconic, very t-shirt worthy (idea!). The top image looks to be spray painted on, while the bottom looks like acrylic latex (aka boysen).
ZTEG
It’s interesting that the scene’s grown enough to have its own griefers, or guys who just shit all over everyone. ZTEG makes it a point to mess with other graf artist’s artworks, or perhaps it’s a collaboration? The penis sticking out of momy nick’s bear would have me think otherwise.
Sticker Grafitti
This sticker grafitti intrigued me a lot. I’d heard a little bit about it before but I had no idea that it was already present here. It looks like he draws the circles with paint then sticks the cut-out stickers on afterwards. The watertank piece on the bottom is really quite impressive up close, though it paints over some older grafitti. On the top image, you can see more of zteg’s handiwork in the form of the blue streaks of paint.
Random stencil art
The Diceman
Hey at least someone misses him
Skulls
Mao (Zedong) is free?
If any of you out there have an interest in street art or art in general, I encourage you to take a walk around UP sometime to take some pictures. I only hope that this isn’t a fad that’s going to die down soon, as I plan on going back with a much better camera one of these days to take even more pictures.
You can check out the rest of the pictures in my Flickr account here.
This is so fucking rad. I wish I had the skillz, time, and patience to make something like this, but all I can do is drool.
It’s been a while, so I thought I’d update allayouse on what I’ve been up to the past month or so. Mostly T-shirts, but here’s a little update on an artwork that I put together for playlist Manila:
Added a few doodads like the arrows and more drawings and stuff. I should really get my ass to mag:net cafe and get this home before they decide to throw it out with the trash.
Based on the artwork I made a while back. made a scaled down version of the “machine” and the other symbols. I’m digging the color scheme on this one.
Made specifically for the recent comic-con, because my friend was gonna go dressed up as a go-bot to counter all the transformers hype. I’m not crazy enough to go to a con in costume, so I just put together this shirt. Remember, Transformers are gobots in disguise.
The idea here was mixing up pop culture references, hence the gundam zaku robot and the lyrics “domo arigato, mister roboto!”. I have a few more ideas for shirts like this, one featuring zangief with the movie title “From Russia with Love”. Can you dig it?
This shirt was born out of my experiences in Boracay, namely a drinking binge that had me yelling “BE RESPONSIBLE” while belting out bon jovi on the videoke. On the back is a quote that will forever be burned into me and my officemates’ collective psyches, when we were actually considering the implications of staying in boracay and not going back to work the next day. I said “fuck it, we’re all gonna die anyway, let’s do it!” Obviously because we were a bunch of wusses, we didn’t do it.
Lastly, in what may be a preview of things to come, the first T-shirt I’ve made for a friend of mine, neatly packaged and labeled (it’s actually a bench plastic…bag…thingie that I just spraypainted on, but it looks pretty neat, no? It’s a Sealab 2021 shirt, in case ya didn’t notice.
Finally, to everyone who’s been asking me how they can purchase a shirt, thanks for the support, and rest assured I’m trying to figure out how I can make this work. You’d definitely have to live in the Greater Metro Manila area, you have to provide your own shirt (so’s we know it fits you right) so I’d just be charging you for the design and labor.
I’ve been forcing myself to stop buying new T-shirts so I’d have to make my own, but I’m willing to set that aside for some Team Manila shirts and other knick knacks. So you can be sure I’ll be there with bells on tomorrow.
Just found it too funny to pass up. Can anyone tell me who the Bill on the bottom is?
Just pimping this T-shirt cause I thought it turned out well. Made it last Thursday and was planning to wear it to the Playlist Manila event on the 16th, except that I’ll be in bora for a company outing. You all shoud go to the event by the way, it’s sure to be a blast despite (or because of) my absence.
In film, there is a status bestowed upon movies that are brilliant but underappreciated, diamonds in the rough that you’d have to wade through piles of shitty movies in the bargain bin to get to. ICO for PS2 would probably be the best equivalent of a cult classic in video games, had its fans and subsequent success of its spiritual sequel Shadows of the collosus made sure that it would be thrust into the light of day.
Simply put, ICO is one of the most amazing videogames I have ever played. I’ve played many games in my lifetime and I say this with no qualms whatsoever. What makes this even more amazing is the fact that this game was made in 2001, a full 6 years ago, and I daresay it still holds its own against the best PS2 titles out today.
Story
The story of Ico is sparse and frankly it works to the game’s advantage. The game is cinematic in the way that Metal Gear Solid isn’t, since it doesn’t rely on cutscenes every ten minutes to move the story along. You are Ico, a boy with horns that has been sealed in a coffin alive to die, in order that the villagers may live in peace. This is the tradition that has gone on for centuries, and you are merely the latest sacrifice made. The villagers who take you to the castle even apologize, asking you not to hate them, and that they do this for the village. By sheer luck a tremor occur and allows you to escape from your tomb, then the game begins…
Graphics
There is little that hasn’t been said already, but I’ll say it again. The game’s graphics are amazing. This game is proof that proper art direction can compensate for low poly counts and weak system specs, that videogames are truly an art form. From the architechture of the castle to the reflections on the water and the slight blurry effectt that is persistent throughout the game, it’s obvious that creator Fumito Ueda has an eye for the minutest details. An experienced gamerswill notice that some of the textures look pathetically old, but that rarely detracts from the experience.
The animation in this game is superb, and sometimes I felt like I was watching an animated film instead of playing a video game. Anyone who’s played through the recent Prince of Persia trilogy must recognize that developers ubisoft took a lot of inspiration from this game, as the animations are fluid and realistic, and indeed convey a sense of emotion that few games can muster up. There’s a scene late in the game where the other main character Yorda (more on her later) has expended a lot of energy. When Ico drags her by the arms she usually manages to scamper along with you, but this time after a few steps she falters and falls to the ground. Every movement is so realistic and fluid that you almost want to ask Yorda if she’s hurt and indeed feel sorry for having dragged her too harshly.
Sparse
Sound, like dialogue in this game, is sparse but effectively used. The music that comes when shadow creatures are attacking is suitably creepy, the sound effects of torches crackling and bombs blowing up, every single sound comes into play only when neccessary, and enhances the overall feel of the games in leaps and bounds.
Gameplay
After exploring the castle for a bit, you’re introduced to the other main character, Yorda, who’s locked in a cage in the middle of a tower. After doing a bit of inspection, you find that the only way yo reach her is to jump on the cage, which sets off a sequence in which the cage falls due to the extra weight, free Yorda, then fight off a small horde of shadow creatures looking to drag Yorda into the shadows.
The simplistic gameplay of ICO has been detracted by critics, and it’s easily explained in a sentence or two. Your objective is to escape the castle with Yorda, while solving puzzles that open up new pathways and defending Yorda from shadow creatures. You have no life bar, and the game ends only if you fall too far or if Yorda is absorbed by the darkness. And that’s about it. But in the best example that good gameplay doesn’t require multiple button presses, ICO rises to the challenge of gameplay like few games have.
The cage sequence I mentioned above is only the first example of what will be a series of intuitive puzzles that do not rely on a player finding crests or keys to unlock a door. Every puzzle you go through makes absolute perfect sense, and sometimes you want to slap yourself in the head at how simple a puzzle you spent hours solving is. None of the puzzles seem contrived and while there are still crates, I guarantee that every little puzzle you get through makes absolute perfect sense, be it bombing a door open or slicing through some ropes to let down a drawbridge. The brilliance of Ico is magnified by the fact that it revolves around your going through a single castle, and going through the game you get a sense of things falling into place, like the game itself is a huge puzzle that fits the pieces together so neatly there’s a sense of wonder as you come upon the last few hours of play.
One last things bout the gameplay is that I love how the save points are spread out so that after finishing a puzzle there’s almost always a save point. With my schedule, I only allow myself an hour or two of game time at best, and it was very satisfying to be able to finish a puzzle, save, then get some sleep.
Conclusion
Ico is a game that anyone interested in videogames and making videogames should try out. Fumito Ueda is like the darker version of Shiggy that works for Nintendo, who creates games not according to what is trendy, but according to a unique personal vision, a true autuer of the videogame industry.
Now that I’ve spent my load all over ICO, do yourselves a favor an buy/borrow/steal a PS2 (theyr’e really cheap these days!) and get a copy of ICO. I guarantee it’ll be one of the best gaming experiences you’ll ever have.
So there’s this thing called Playlist Manila that geek chorus will be holding on May 16, where you get to submit playlists that’ll be judged by a panel of “celebrity” music judges and the crowd. I had this half done painting wasting away in my room, and had a sudden epiphany. It’s be perfect as a sort of entrance sign for playlist Manila, with a just a few extra elements added.
<-this was supposed to be background art for a “dictators” painting, but I felt bad that I’d cover up all the work since it looked nice. My plan was to paste pictures of dicators over the background.
First up, I needed to make a stencil for Playlist Manila and Geek chorus. I was hoping to tie in the look of the painting to the poster/flyer I made for the event, seen here. Luckily I already had a “headphones” stencil lying around, so it made the job much easier.
After a few hours of doing that, it was time to take a break, then head on to the local hardware shop t buy some spraypaint. Luckily they had a sale where each can was going for 110 pesos, so I got a good deal on “signal red” and “just plain black” paint. Now it was time to set up the stencils and start spraying.
Now that’s done, and the piece is almost finished. My coup de grace was to wheatpaste some flyers I xeroxed onto the painting, to make it look like somethign you’d see on the streets. It didn’t quite turn out like I’d hoped though.
<–Too thick.
Unfortunately, the tutorial I got from the net wasn’t very specific with the amounts needed for wheatpasting (edit: I shuld’ve scrolled down. apparently there was some really good advice being given on proper wheatpasting recipes.), so I ended up using a paste that was a bit too thick, making icky bulges pop up out of the flyers. Live and learn I suppse, at least now I know to add more water to the paste next time.
<–Tada! Le finished product.
Now my only problem is how to mount this bitch up on a wall for the event.
So on May 1 my friends and I are gonna watch Spiderman 3 in Powerplant. It’s not my theater of choice but since a lot of my friends are watching there I figured why the hell now. Big movie events excite the fanboy in me, and so to commemorate one of the best movie franchises in recent years, I made a Siderman 3 t-shirt. What’s cool (as cool as geeky can get) about the Tee is that on the front is the red “good” Spiderman logo and on the back is the black “evil symbiote badass motha” Spiderman logo.
I spent most of yesterday afternoon and evening working on this, and while I was still a bit disappointed with the results and tired from the heat (and paint fumes) I will wear this T-shirt proudly tomorrow, just as my friends will look elsewhere and pretend they do not know me.
Spiderman red
Spiderman Black
Saw this dude’s blog, then went over to this dude’s blog, and felt compelled to clonk out a sketch of my own, despite my suckiness. Done in 20 minutes on a 6×9 wacom graphire 4 and PS.
God I feel artistically inept.
I have been away for many days, mourning the cracking of the ZEN:M. NO, I lie. I was just lazy. I’m still not over it so please, be gentle and don’t ask me any questions.
But.
This Flickr page hath brough me cheer. Starcraft Origami from the kids in Korea FTW. Not that it’ll take the stench of the VT kiler out of everyont’s collective mouth, but at least this must be proof that not all those kids are bad seeds. Nobody who could make origami this beautiful could be bad, could he?
Making this painting made me realize how much i want a loft type studio where i can spend time painting. Not one of those classy pre selling kinds, but the kinds popularized in old 80s and 90s movies that looked like old abandoned warehouses.
It’s also a bitch to paint outside, even with shade, especially if its a windy day. I used to love windy days but I swear to god wind REALLY SUCKS when you’re trying to paint something. Just keeping pieces of paper or newspaper down becomes an additional burden, not to mention dust mites or bits and pieces of foliage accidentally sticking to your paint.
Having a clear cut plan is a solid idea, and one that will save you a lot of time and trouble. Even though some of the time i had to Macguyver my way through the painting had pretty general idea how I wanted it to end up and the process I was going to take to get to that end.
Don’t be afraid to experiment. This first painting was partly an experiment for me, even though I wanted to have a good finished product. I’ll take the things I learned from making this one and hopefully make use of them in my next painting, which will be a satire (I hope) on police brutality.
So, moving on from Part 1. The Acrylic Emulsion’s dried, and now I want to add I bit of color to the painting. I’d already thought of a block of green on the side, so I mixed the thalo green with the white latex paint to get a color I liked (actually I didn’t really like it, I was just impatient. Let this be a lesson to you kids, sometimes it’s worth the time it takes to get the right color). Anyhoo, I take some masking tape to mark off the areas I want to paint and to make sure that the paint doesn’t spill over (which I actually did with the white background as well, though I forgot to mention it in part 1), and proceed to paint the right 1/3 of the plywood green.
<-see the masking tape?
After the paint’s dried a bit I peel off the masking tape and let it dry outside. It’s time to make some stencils now. The idea behind the painting, simplistic as it is, was to have the machine surrounded by the elements that make up political dynasties: Murder, Marriage, Media/Celebrity, Merges/Alliances, Myth, and Money. I decided to make stencils out of these elements and spray paint them onto the plyboard. This constituted designing the images in photoshop, printing them out, then cutting out the designs. I laid out the printed design on a cutting board, overlaid it with acetate, then cut the image out (with an x-acto modeling knife) onto the acetate so it could be used more than once. This took almost an entire day to do and by the end of it my fingers hurt like hell, even with frequent movi/TV breaks/internet breaks.
After the stencils are done, I call it a night and go to bed, as it’s around 1030PM already. I wake up and set to laying out the stencils on the wood. The tools of the trade here are masking tape, newspapers, the stencils, and a can of spray paint. Use the masking tape to stick the stencils and newspapers on, making sure that the primary image is protected from random spray paint.
<–the weapon of choice for vandals worldwide
After that’s done, it’s a simple matter of spray painting over the stencils and making sure you try as much as possible not to make a mess. There are instruction on the spray can, which I totally ignore. It’s just a little ironic that the act of cutting the stencils took almost a day and the actual “painting” took maybe 5 minutes. Life’s weird that way.
<-5 minutes later…
<– Voila! but it’s not quite done yet.
At this point the painting’s pretty much finished, but I feel like it’s lacking something, si I stencil a few more “accent” images, including a stylized signature that I’ll be painting on the bottom right corner.
<–The final product
And there you go. I am now the semi-proud owner of a mixed media work that I have absolutely no idea what to do with. Tomorrow, reflections, lessons, and a sneak preview at the next painting.
This is my first attempt at a tutorial of any kind, so bear with me. Over the last holy weekend I had 5 days of vacation, so i thought that I’d put it to good use by creating a painting. I was inspired by this article on PCIJ about political dynasties, and while reading it I had the image of a political machine, literally an old clunking gears and pulleys machine clunking out winners. So I googled up old machine and found this image, which thought was perfect:
So I had my machine. But now I wanted to give it a halftone effect, just for kicks, and remembered the software called rasterbator which takes any images and converts it to a huge halftone copy spanning as many sheets of paper as you want. Just a quick plug, these rasterbator guys are AWESOME. They put together this software and are giving it out for free and all they ask is that you show them what you’ve made with it. So rad. So anyway I’ve got the idea and the image and the rasterbator download, it’s time to buy materials.
<-The rasterbated image.
Now I’m no professional artiste, and this is the first time I’ve really painted in a LONG time, so I’m trying to do everything on the cheap. First off, I need a surface to paint on. Canvas is ok, but expensive if you want the really big kind, and I wanted the really big kind. Plus, I love the texture of wood, so I went to the local hardware store and bought plywood (they come in one size 4×8 feet but I had the guy there cut it in half so I’d have two 4×4 pieces), some white latex acrylic paint, thalo green latex acrylic paint, acrytex (think of it as ink that you use to color the white latex. el cheapo), acrylic emulsion, some paintbrushes, and thinner. All in all I think I spent around 1500 pesos, which isn’t too bad.
<-the materials
Now I wanted to use an acrylic transfer effect, which simply explained is the process of transferring a photocopied image onto an acrylic latex medium. There is expensive acrylic medium specially made to do this but again I am el cheapo so i try to do it with acrylic latex paint. The gist of the process is this. Photocopy the image you want to transfer to the medium (acrylic latex paint). Paint over the image, then paste it onto the surface (the wood). Rub against the back of the iamge some so that it gets into good contact with the surface, wait for it to dry, then peel it off to see the image magically appears on the paint.
fig1.1 it’s pasted.
fig1.2 I peel it off…painfully.
Unfortunately, life’s not that easy. You literally have to rub the paper off with your fingers little by little, trying to make sure you have enough pressure to get the paper off but not so much so that the acrylic itself comes off, taking the print with it, like so:
<-FUCK!
Unfortunately, this is bound to happen, and I don’t know of any way to make sure it doesn’t. I just tell myself it adds to the “street art” effect and push on, until I get this:
<-after a hard day’s work.
The annoying thing is that no matter how hard you try, there will be little paper fabrics still sticking to the image. If you try to get them off you rub off the image itself, so you’re stuck in a lose lose situation. I found that soaking a sponge in water and scrubbing off the paper that way helps a little, but you have to be really careful you don’t fuck up huge swaths of the image. When the paper fabrics dry they take a lot of the black out of the print, so the solution I came up with is to simply paint of the image and the wood itself with a clear acrylic emulsion. The emulsion “wets” the paper strands, making the image look much darker. When it dries, it will maintain that “wet look” to a certain point, and give your wood a glossy look to it, as well as waterproofing it some. Just be careful what brushes you use, because the cheap ass brushes I used shed hair like a sick dog.
<- tada! all shiny and black!
Ok, that ends part 1 of the tutorial. I’m hungry and i’m gonna go have dinner now. part 2 tomorrow. Maybe.
Just cause I’m pretty proud of the damned comic strip.
Felt like a new header, worked on this last night and just remembered to upload it now. Comments, suggestions, or violent reactions? Not that I’ll listen to them anyway, but you know, go ahead and spit it out.
Holy shieeeeeeeeet is all I can say. That’s gotta be the coolest, geekiest lantern ever built in the history of lantern parades. Made in the Taiwanese district of Jiayi, this Gundam model’s sure to make rabid gundam fanboys wet there pants when they realize it’s built in 1:1 scale. That’s right kids, if you can find your way inside that ginormous lantern you can pretend you’re piloting your very own Gundam.
I’ve been on a stenciling rampage for the past couple of weeks, when I figured out that I fanlly have enough money to buy a decent cutting board and exacto knife. The result? A semi-decent Star Wars : Republic Commando jacket, from one of my favorite FPS’s of all time.
Still haven’t got the kinks worked out yet, but it’s semi decent, if I do say so myself. My next project? A “Heroes” themed shirt, in honor ofmy favorite Japanese time-bending nerd.
This is a case where an entry straddles the border between personal and public, so I figured I’d write the entry in my personal blog and link it up here.
Nearing completion I think, just a little more touching up and polishing. Hopefully. click on it to go to the full sized image. Um… click on the pick again after it redirects you. I’m still working out how worpress handles image uploads.
Yeah it’s going slow I know, but whattayagonna do? I’ve got the girl pretty much sketched out, I’m going for an Aprodite IX kind of look. Ok, I’m REALLY going for it.
This isn’t done by any means, but I’m hoping to finish it by next week. I’m thinking of doing a mini tutorial on how I made this as well, but that’ll have to wait. For now…robot head with empty white space to the right it is!
Sketched this cyber assassin type girl out in 2 hours on CS2, then splashed some (rather ill advised) color on her afterwards. I’m not really satisfied with it, but it was meant to keep me loose more than anything. And yeah, I have no idea how one is supposed to shade boobies. I need to start drawing women more.
Black and white
Color
I’ve finally stumbled upon my first frustration with wordpress. Apprently, you can’t assign categories to separate pages. What use is a separate page if you can’t add categories to it? It’s a small complaint, but it’s there. Maybe I’m just too OC about organizing my blog.
Anyhoo, here’s my first artwork update in more than a month. The character is loosely based on the “librarian” unit in Warhammer40k, and was done in around 10 hours using photoshop CS2.
