Okay. It's been five years. A lot has happened. The links that I used to display my work have gone dead. I'm gonna have to see if I can dig those old files up to replace all the broken links. Joy.
So, what have I been doing for the past five years? I don't even know where to begin. I did a few odd jobs for a while, and then I left the business to run a treats shop (we were pretty damn good - maintained a 4.5-star rating the entire time)... Then personal tragedy struck. Then, I had to close the treats shop. I've been mostly focused on 2D since, but I've been getting back into 3D Work.
This one was done some 3 years ago to get accustomed to Substance Painter (and I swear I have some more recent stuff, so bear with me).
More recently (like, close to the end of last year recently), I've started getting back into sculpting with some stylized head studies. This was a speed sculpt that went a little too long:
And that was based off of this concept: I'd really like to do more with this character one day. Another stylized head study sculpt this one was improvised.
Still trying to figure out how to sculpt good, simple, stylized fur.
I did this bust for a buddy's birthday:
Over the past couple of years, I've also been developing my own Tactical Fighting Card Game called "Girls with Icky Things." The testing demo is currently playable if you own Tabletop Playground. https://bit.ly/GwITDemo I'll be going over more of that in future posts - as I had to make the table, card holders, all of the card art, instructions... Pretty much everything except for the environment, dice, card models, menus and cursors.
Y'know, I've come to realize that there might be some value in sharing a bit more of the journey I've been through in the past several years. While I was restoring all the broken pictures in this thread, I started comparing them to the work I'd done recently, and surmised that I have actually improved somewhat. I've really been focused on design.
Some time ago, I reached a certain amount of followers on twitter, and decided to draw this:
The characters should seem familiar to anyone who has seen the beginning of this thread.The project gained a name, and I even took some time to further redesign the characters...
I'd say that the biggest change over the years is that I've embraced exaggeration to an almost absurd degree. I'd really like to continue with this project, but I have to finish my current project first. One thing I've also been working on over the years is focusing on one thing at a time.
Oh! Also, something a bit more recent...
I competed in the Street Fighter Costume Design Contest this past summer/fall. I only ever managed to make it to sixth place, sadly.
Some time ago (about 1.5 years, I think), I made some thumbnails for the villain of my current project (Girls with Icky Things): The Spirit of the Earth. There were some things I liked in the thumbnails, but I still had a few issues. About a year ago, I wound up making a Girls with Icky Things image featuring all the characters to celebrate a milestone on Twitter. Her design wasn't locked down, but I had to put her into the image, so I rolled with what I had, and winged it a bit... When I finished drawing her back then, I was like, "She looks like she belongs in a 90's comic book." The quiet part of that sentiment was "and not in a good way." There were ideas I liked, and some things that I just couldn't make sense of. One of the things I couldn't make sense of was the chest-region. The plate, in my mind, was supposed to be cooled igneous rock from her lava hair (which somehow kept her boobs pressed together *shrug*), and somehow that led into a cascading waterfall that formed the dress... And by this point, I've been trying to get away from the high slit dresses (just a little).
Since I made that drawing, I'd been trying to puzzle her design together in the back of my mind.
'Couldn't sleep a couple of nights ago, and wound up reworking/refining the design, because it still bothered me, and this is the result: I thought back to the basic idea of the character. Humans had been gone for a long time, she just barely managed to heal up from the damage they caused to her/the planet, humans start showing back up, and now she's pissed. There's a bit more to her story than that, but those are the basic beats. To that end, I decided that the three earthen limbs should be prosthetic, and she should be covered in scars. To see the scars, i decided to do away with the chest piece. Instead of the fixation on using the falling water as a dress, I used it as a cloak. I was a little iffy on the bit-covering choice, but I think the asymmetry of it helps.
There are a couple of things that need to be ironed out, but I think I'm getting close to what I want to say with the character's design.
A buddy had a birthday not long ago, so I sculpted a bust of one of his characters. This year, I'm trying to sculpt my pals' characters for their birthdays -- just to let 'em know people think of 'em.
Logo design work for my card game Girls with icky Things.
Let's take it from the top:
The initial logo design went through quite a bit of iteration. Started with selecting a font, then an arrangement of the words, then figuring out what kind of imagery I wanted behind the words.
I wound up with Logo A. And while Logo A got me to move on and further develop the project, in the back of my mind, I was trying to come up with something better, and came up with Logo B. In a Twitter poll months ago, Logo A (60%) wound up narrowly beating Logo B (40%). It just occurred to me last night to attempt combining the best of both, hence Logo C. Of course, I'd need to know how the logos would look on the back of the cards. For the next week, I'll have a poll up on Twitter (You can vote here). I'd really like to get this logo finalized. I'll see which one people like best, hope that doesn't differ too much from which one I like best, and make a decision that I hope doesn't tick anybody off too much.
It's been a while, but not years. And that's what counts... Kinda. Maybe. Lemme just make with the art. So, I worked up all of those thumbs into actiony illustrations that I intend to use to promote muh card game. It took A WHILE. With those done, lately, I've started trying to get back into painting with direct color as opposed to using gradient maps and correction layers and the like because they can crash my computer. Also, I wanna enter the Pokemon Card Illustration contest, so I need to be in tip-top form.
A life drawing teacher referred to returning to old methods/techniques as "going home." So, in teaching myself to paint again, I've started the journey home.
Wait. There was work I'd done that I forgot about. It's a long-ish story that started with me wanting to enter a contest on Pixiv for waifu design. I didn't read the fine print, so I just started thumbnailing immediately, and came up with these:
Shortly after I finished these thumbs, I read the fine print and discovered that the contest wasn't even gonna be judged and that the winners were gonna be decided by random draw. What's the point of an art contest that's won by random draw? So I didn't enter. But there was a problem: I really liked these thumbnails. So I decided to work them all up anyway. And, as a result, I also wound up making a GDD around what I imagined by looking at the thumbs. . . It's weird, man.
I imagine them as a coven of related battle mages that turns into and operates like a pack of wolves. I really want to make models of these characters (and it probably wouldn't be that tough, considering that they all have the same body type...), but first, I've gotta finish what's already on my plate.
Couple of landscapes I painted because I needed card art, and because I've been trying to get back into painting with direct color lately (as opposed to using adjustment layers out the wazoo). I needed the card art because it came to my attention that all of the environments of the game were either hostile (which was most of them) or overly helpful. I set out to change the fact that there weren't really any neutral areas in which players could have an honest match if they so desired.
I thought about the area that the Spirit of the Earth (the villain of Girls with Icky Things) would inhabit. The wider area of her domain would be the Expanse of Eden: an eerily idyllic place in which she flexes her control of nature by producing sights that are physically impossible -- like that giant mass of land balancing on a single spire above a shallow lake fed by a nearby waterfall - the surface of said lake being unaffected by multiple waterfalls hitting it directly. I envision her making a throne of the World Tree growing on that giant floating (?) Island and holding some semblance of a court there.
Expanded on the character designs of those small character silhouettes in that last environment piece. These still need some refinement, but I like the direction they're headed.
Replies
https://sketchfab.com/models/0c0aa28ccc9847f795ed88c88eacf10a
I'm having a tough time getting the sketchfab embedder to work, folks. It'll take a bit of time.
So, what have I been doing for the past five years? I don't even know where to begin. I did a few odd jobs for a while, and then I left the business to run a treats shop (we were pretty damn good - maintained a 4.5-star rating the entire time)... Then personal tragedy struck. Then, I had to close the treats shop. I've been mostly focused on 2D since, but I've been getting back into 3D Work.
This one was done some 3 years ago to get accustomed to Substance Painter (and I swear I have some more recent stuff, so bear with me).
model
The concept is here:
More recently (like, close to the end of last year recently), I've started getting back into sculpting with some stylized head studies. This was a speed sculpt that went a little too long:
And that was based off of this concept:
I'd really like to do more with this character one day.
Another stylized head study sculpt this one was improvised.
Still trying to figure out how to sculpt good, simple, stylized fur.
I did this bust for a buddy's birthday:
Over the past couple of years, I've also been developing my own Tactical Fighting Card Game called "Girls with Icky Things." The testing demo is currently playable if you own Tabletop Playground. https://bit.ly/GwITDemo I'll be going over more of that in future posts - as I had to make the table, card holders, all of the card art, instructions... Pretty much everything except for the environment, dice, card models, menus and cursors.
Some time ago, I reached a certain amount of followers on twitter, and decided to draw this:
The characters should seem familiar to anyone who has seen the beginning of this thread.The project gained a name, and I even took some time to further redesign the characters...
I'd say that the biggest change over the years is that I've embraced exaggeration to an almost absurd degree. I'd really like to continue with this project, but I have to finish my current project first. One thing I've also been working on over the years is focusing on one thing at a time.
Oh! Also, something a bit more recent...
I competed in the Street Fighter Costume Design Contest this past summer/fall. I only ever managed to make it to sixth place, sadly.
There were some things I liked in the thumbnails, but I still had a few issues. About a year ago, I wound up making a Girls with Icky Things image featuring all the characters to celebrate a milestone on Twitter. Her design wasn't locked down, but I had to put her into the image, so I rolled with what I had, and winged it a bit...
When I finished drawing her back then, I was like, "She looks like she belongs in a 90's comic book." The quiet part of that sentiment was "and not in a good way." There were ideas I liked, and some things that I just couldn't make sense of. One of the things I couldn't make sense of was the chest-region. The plate, in my mind, was supposed to be cooled igneous rock from her lava hair (which somehow kept her boobs pressed together *shrug*), and somehow that led into a cascading waterfall that formed the dress... And by this point, I've been trying to get away from the high slit dresses (just a little).
Since I made that drawing, I'd been trying to puzzle her design together in the back of my mind.
'Couldn't sleep a couple of nights ago, and wound up reworking/refining the design, because it still bothered me, and this is the result:
I thought back to the basic idea of the character. Humans had been gone for a long time, she just barely managed to heal up from the damage they caused to her/the planet, humans start showing back up, and now she's pissed. There's a bit more to her story than that, but those are the basic beats. To that end, I decided that the three earthen limbs should be prosthetic, and she should be covered in scars. To see the scars, i decided to do away with the chest piece. Instead of the fixation on using the falling water as a dress, I used it as a cloak. I was a little iffy on the bit-covering choice, but I think the asymmetry of it helps.
There are a couple of things that need to be ironed out, but I think I'm getting close to what I want to say with the character's design.
Let's take it from the top:
The initial logo design went through quite a bit of iteration. Started with selecting a font, then an arrangement of the words, then figuring out what kind of imagery I wanted behind the words.
I wound up with Logo A. And while Logo A got me to move on and further develop the project, in the back of my mind, I was trying to come up with something better, and came up with Logo B. In a Twitter poll months ago, Logo A (60%) wound up narrowly beating Logo B (40%). It just occurred to me last night to attempt combining the best of both, hence Logo C.
Of course, I'd need to know how the logos would look on the back of the cards.
For the next week, I'll have a poll up on Twitter (You can vote here). I'd really like to get this logo finalized. I'll see which one people like best, hope that doesn't differ too much from which one I like best, and make a decision that I hope doesn't tick anybody off too much.
Started from these thumbnails:
With those done, lately, I've started trying to get back into painting with direct color as opposed to using gradient maps and correction layers and the like because they can crash my computer. Also, I wanna enter the Pokemon Card Illustration contest, so I need to be in tip-top form.
A life drawing teacher referred to returning to old methods/techniques as "going home." So, in teaching myself to paint again, I've started the journey home.
Shortly after I finished these thumbs, I read the fine print and discovered that the contest wasn't even gonna be judged and that the winners were gonna be decided by random draw. What's the point of an art contest that's won by random draw? So I didn't enter. But there was a problem: I really liked these thumbnails. So I decided to work them all up anyway. And, as a result, I also wound up making a GDD around what I imagined by looking at the thumbs. . . It's weird, man.
I imagine them as a coven of related battle mages that turns into and operates like a pack of wolves. I really want to make models of these characters (and it probably wouldn't be that tough, considering that they all have the same body type...), but first, I've gotta finish what's already on my plate.
Couple of landscapes I painted because I needed card art, and because I've been trying to get back into painting with direct color lately (as opposed to using adjustment layers out the wazoo).
I needed the card art because it came to my attention that all of the environments of the game were either hostile (which was most of them) or overly helpful. I set out to change the fact that there weren't really any neutral areas in which players could have an honest match if they so desired.
I thought about the area that the Spirit of the Earth (the villain of Girls with Icky Things) would inhabit. The wider area of her domain would be the Expanse of Eden: an eerily idyllic place in which she flexes her control of nature by producing sights that are physically impossible -- like that giant mass of land balancing on a single spire above a shallow lake fed by a nearby waterfall - the surface of said lake being unaffected by multiple waterfalls hitting it directly. I envision her making a throne of the World Tree growing on that giant floating (?) Island and holding some semblance of a court there.
Expanded on the character designs of those small character silhouettes in that last environment piece. These still need some refinement, but I like the direction they're headed.
Worked up a random sketch. I have no idea who this woman is or what she does. Gearing up for character design commissions...