A Lot Can Happen

When I first got this blog, I was very excited about it. I tried to post something every few days to really get my creative side going. But then life strikes and I start feeling the major levels of distraction seep in. Well, I’m back and I have new stuff to put up here.

First of all, here’s a shot of a bunch of little miniatures I recently painted. I’ll take some closer shots soon, when I get around to setting up a nice display.

These are from a GREAT little game called Nexus Ops which I might say is one of my favorites. It feels, in theme, very similar to StarCraft. But its a board game in which players represent corporations strip mining an alien world of its valuable resource (rubium) with the help of “enlisted” indigenous species. I love the game but the unpainted pieces are difficult to look at, due to their slightly transparent nature, which makes them look more like gummy snacks then usable playing pieces. I intend to paint all the rest of the pieces, right now I only have the blue guys done.

At work I often have little flashes of inspiration. I don’t know exactly how this character came to me, but I’ve had an idea for a while to make a board game that feels either like some sort of futuristic sport or like an old SNES game. So this guy might be the main character in a game of this nature. Just a concept sketch really, touched up in photoshop.

This is a storyboard sketched by Jon Schaferkotter for his next film. I might be helping my taking his sketches and sprucing them up with my tablet, doing some inking and color in Photoshop, Flash, and Corel Painter. Heres my first attempt:

Not too shabby. I’d like to experiment more to get a better look with my drawing / coloring. I cruise around on Deviant Art and stuff and see such amazing work. If I could be half as good as some of the artists out there, I’d be happy. Still lots to learn.

Gub Village 2

This here is three layers of a composite for some animation using Anime Studio. Drawn using Flash, colored in Photoshop and then brought into Anime Studio for animating the layers and eventually adding some Gubs… still debating whether to work on this in After Effects or not. Since this process takes such a long time and I never have lots of time, I might go take the faster route and use Anime Studio. The only problem there is losing some of the finer control that After Effects offers (I’m a big fan of using the blurring effects to fake depth of field, for example).

I’ve been studying the works of Jeff Smith in the complete collection of BONE comics. I love the artwork so much, and since Gubs take place in the wild I get some great benefit by studying Jeff Smith’s amazing woodland drawings. The perspective, the leaves and branches, the grass are all so great.

Gub Village

This image may be used as part of an upcoming animation project. I am pretty excited to be learning a new program which deals with animation called Anime Studio. Anyone interested in creating animations should check it out. I’m sure you could replicate Anime Studio’s features in Flash, but with Anime Studio you can work SO much faster. Bone rigging and camera controls are really a time saver. I’m working with an artist/animator at the moment who has been creating some pretty cool stuff in Flash. Hopefully by figuring out Anime Studio a bit more we can really kick out some more cool stuff.

I drew this little village in Flash then colored in Photoshop.

Surge!

Concept artwork for another board game. This is a classic theme of space soldiers vs. aliens, with a bit of a twist. I halted this once I found out about Space Hulk and went out and bought a copy. Since Surge is very different from Space Hulk, I plan to pick this design up again and complete it. Has a lot of potential.

GUBS Story Book

So a lot of people who are fans of the GUBS card game I published have asked me, “So, what’s the story behind GUBS?” Well, I decided to go about telling that story. I haven’t decided if its to be some kind of comic or graphic novel or what, but here are the first bits of artwork from that story. These were done in Painter.

Scare Crow

This was created all in photoshop using my tablet. I wanted to give the pumpkin head an odd look to make it look very creepy, but I didn’t quite get the effect I was going for. Still, I like the colors.