Some new sketches =)

I did a cou­ple of sketches today, one was for a stu­dent, the other just to record the process and prac­tice some tonal work.

Enjoy!

Here is the YouTube video of the last one:

Ideation Process: Part 2

Now, up to this point, we’ve been think­ing of the sketches as a per­sonal tool, that is, an exter­nal rep­re­sen­ta­tion of a myr­iad of inter­nal ideas in an attempt to organ­ise free flow­ing thoughts into a struc­tured pat­tern for our own per­sonal use.

We have part of the design in our minds and this can often cause us to stop short of cre­at­ing sketches that mean any­thing to any­one but ourselves.

This sit­u­a­tion would be fine if the work we are doing is only for our­selves, how­ever, most often the art we doing isn’t just for fun, it’s because some­one is pay­ing us to deliver.

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Making something look good…Part 2 (Links & Resources)

Alright, thanks for com­ing back, this is the sec­ond part of the a two part blog post, the first can be found here: Mak­ing Some­thing Look Good…Part 1

As promised, here is a list of var­i­ous skills and asso­ci­ated resources that have helped me to improve my art­work over the span of 4–5 years and will prob­a­bly do the same for you.

If you have any queries, addi­tions or just want to say hi, you’re encour­aged to hit up the com­ments sec­tion of this post. I also wrote this a while ago, so if there are errors, gram­mat­i­cal or oth­er­wise let me know and I’ll edit. Remember…caring, is sharing =)

& Resources)">Read more

Making something look good…Part 1

So…how do I make some­thing look ‘good’ in art?

I have been asked this so many times that if I had 5c for every time that ques­tion was raised I’d…actually, I’d prob­a­bly only have about 35c or some­thing, so I guess that point goes out the win­dow as a valid rea­son for me writ­ing this post.

Dif­fer­ent angle then…I know that as a young artist, it was a ques­tion that per­vaded my devel­op­ing mind every time I tried to illus­trate some­thing vaguely awe­some like Venom totally kick­ing Spiderman’s skinny-gaudy-leotard-laden butt.

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So…what is a concept artist?

“I am a con­cept artist for video games…” is the answer I gen­er­ally give when asked the oblig­a­tory “So what do you do for a liv­ing?” when I meet some­one for the first time.

Other times, I will answer “I am a ven­tril­o­quist in a trav­el­ing cir­cus who uses dead ani­mals instead of wooden pup­pets to put across cau­tion­ary tales about the evils of pre­scrip­tion drugs…” if I don’t really want to talk to someone.

Assum­ing I answered con­cept artist, their eye­brows usu­ally raise as if I just told them I ride to work on a uni­corn bare­back “Hey! That sounds kinda cool!” and “My kids would LOVE you!” are typ­i­cal responses which always make think “Do you think I get to play video games all day for work!?” We really don’t, but I tell them I do any­way just to per­pet­u­ate the fan­tasy for giggles.

So then the ques­tion arises, what DO we really do?

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The only famous artists…are DEAD! (Art Shenanigans)

I come from a very tra­di­tional Asian fam­ily, you know the type, full of accoun­tants, com­puter sci­ence types (cough! cough!), psy­chol­o­gists, lawyers and the like — respectable peo­ple with respectable jobs I guess. I sup­pose I was never one to fit that mould and I think even from an early age I knew I wanted to do some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent, trou­ble was I didn’t know what that some­thing was…despite it sit­ting in front of my damn eyes since I was a kid. So here goes a bunch of child­hood memories…

I loved draw­ing! Appar­ently I started when I was around 3 years old, that’s what my Ma tells me any­way. I drew on bits of scrap paper and those hotel paper pads they have in hotel rooms, which my dad made a habit of pil­fer­ing (amongst other things, such as hotel slip­pers, tow­els and the like). My first rec­ol­lec­tion was

DEAD! (Art Shenanigans)">Read more