Digital Painting Studies

I have been finding it hard to motivate myself so I wagered a canned drink to get my work done tonight, competition is also a good motivator so I may as well throw in a mini risk/reward structure for an extra motivating push for both me and my peers. The work I've fallen into doing in the past week is more a study of me practicing this digital painting craze with my new wacom cintiq. I practice by drawing beautiful women and pin ups (Holly Valance and Chisato Morishita being the most recent), it's a very productive form of calming my nerves but not as addicting as sweets and cigarettes I guess.

 

I like how quick and precise using photoshop for painting is, the digital practice lends itself well for idea and concept communication, as a sole work of art to be valued on it's own not so much but as a design process for a product that needs instant travel and communication I would say there is something valuable with this method.

VideoGame Development = Amazing

Having recently took a break from the usual stuff I had friends over for the weekend to play some early 90's videogames. It was really just my attempt to show them things that I couldn't years ago as a kid. They were impressed with the level of ideas and creativity the old games had over over today's releases which do not have the technological limits that were on game creators back then. I think this stems from a complete beleif I have in that limitation does force us to be creative.

Above: A game that has more going in it for the first 5 minutes

than modern games today have per hour of theirs.

Some may not know this but I originally planned to take a game design course before I went on to do Illustration at Stockport instead. The reason I opted out of this is because I knew my path to this sort of dream job lies elsewhere, I am in my heart an artist so that's why I am an illustrator, illustrators can do many things and I can think of some such as Yoji Shinkawa, Ayame Kojima and the creator of Tomb Raider's Lara Croft  (Toby Gard) along with Kev Crossley (who I interviewed in a previous post, herehttp://artofjimfitton.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/kev-crossley-interview.html). These are all illustrators who have helped in the art direction and iconic visuals of the videogames they worked on.

Also a thing to note is how these things have their own visual language, look at Scott Pilgrim vs. The World to see how videogame tropes come into movies (aswell as comic book tropes).

So after a gaming session with friends I tried to list and research nearby game developer companies/studios in my hometown of Manchester, UK. I could only think of 4 and the closest of them I can get to by a bus ride is the indie company 'SmashMouth Games' http://www.smashmouthgames.com/Webpages/Home/Home.html. It's a company that has been successful for developing games for the Android platform and education for future game developer employees. I'm gonna be keeping my eye on how these companies grow or diminish in the chances of gaining a career opportunity. In the meantime I gotta get back to my illustration work!

Below: This visually strong and beautiful videogame dominated my childhood.

Animating an Image

It's been a hectic week as I've buried my head in my work, from the recent Age UK (Dialouge ignites Change) project I've chosen to do a continuation on that brief where this time I'm animating the image that I made for it. Because the original image was not planned to be animated at first and since I lost the work files I've had to redraw and paint the image so that the background acts as a matte painting for key frames and cel layers to go on top, in essance I've divided the original picture into layers so that they can move freely.

I recently bought myself a wacom cintiq pen tablet and display to help me work a little more precise and efficient, ideal for doing hand drawn animation and I gotta say it's comfy to work with. With this I've drawn the character and key frames quicker than if I were to scan, clean and trace.

Things that are to be animated have been redrawn and although they aren't perfect to the detail of the still image I've worked from they are more clean, bright and fluid looking. This will be my first animation so I hope to show it off before Easter and to a nice quality that reflects my skill level with the new software and techniques I'm using. The new software I'm using is Adobe After Effects which can make for some amazing results. My classmates tend to go for a puppet like animation where as they set a program to move the segments, it's a neat way of getting to grips with the software but I'm trying to avoid that. Hand drawn animation has a warmth to it and that's what I want to see, it's what I bought a cintiq for.

Starting the Big Sleep

Before I came up with a look to be reviewed by my tutors I made a catalog of what I call "thumbnails" a term for short rough sketches made to communicate ideas to work on. I did this because I wanted to avoid making the mistake of doing an illustration with a hefty amount of effort and work only to slap on text that didn't gel well with the illustration. So as you can see both the text and images are made togeather so to fit eachother. Elements such as texture and gradation are relegated to be worked in at a later time since I draw and paint very much like sculpture at times.

Each Thumbnail was voted on by those closest to me, then I uploaded the chosen few to facebook so to gather more opinions and feedback, The final thumbnail (or rough) was a response to people from facebook and made by merging the best traits of what people seemed to favour.

"Private Research" (a.k.a going for a coffee with a friend)

Oh hell, I forgot about the blog since I buried myself in the projects. My status report today is gonna be simple in order to have more quantity of future posts. Anyways I recently went out and did some first hand research for Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep book cover competition. The best place to learn how to make something is to observe it, so I went straight to Waterstone's book shop and WHSmith to see the books there and observe their designs so that my design can be responsive to these designs and basically fit in context as both a product and an impressionable image. If I create a cover that looks anything like the ones that are currently used for Mercedes Lackey's work then I'll be happy.

I also forgot my memory card so it was just pure luck that my friend was there to take phone-photos and email me them. (To me a phone should be just a phone but now I'm beginning to see the benefits of a good quality camera phone). I really like these Charles Brokaw books with illuminated and glowing text, it suits the theme I'm going for.

...To be continued!

Respect the Arts

I recently found out about youtuber artist Stephen Silver and his motivational/advice videos. The guy's words are gold and for me it gives me confidence for the future. I myself know how it feels like to have someone come up to me and ask for me to spend my time and talent as if I can dispense pretty pictures on the fly for them but now I realise how important being an illustrator is, there are charities and people whose causes I believe in and would gladly do them the favour of putting my time, effort and thought to them or donate my art willingly but when people start to assume things of me is when when things get disrespectful. I as like many others need to eat and if people want me to service them proffesionally then they better damn well expect to treat me as a proffesional.

I know people will do their best to get anything free and artists should not feel any pressure towards the demands of a client but if for a second I feel like I won't be rewarded in my work for others then I won't do it out of respect of my time and the client's time. Anyone who would call themself a "starving artist" please listen to Stephen, respect yourself and the artist community. Also remember that free exposure and payed for work are two different things, anyone who denies this are most likely exploiting you.

Design In Context

For my Design in Context Brief I’ve chosen to design a Book cover and since it’s a fictional book that was a trendsetter for noir styled crime I’ve been researching for a sense of place. The People, Places the pre-conceived notions all around the book are what I need to envision since I want to create a fresh looking and new design for the cover. So that means no looking at the movie adaption, posters or other covers it has.

I made myself a list of rules in response to some research on existing book covers and figured out what makes a book cover suitable in design and in comparison to other books, my design needs to conform to these simple rules:

1.)    To be eye catching! (good colours, maybe sensual imagery)

2.)    Avoid Portraiture if possible! (never just slap someone’s face on the cover)

3.)    Illustrate and reflect the themes of the Book. (Metaphor is the go to option, brownie points if it’s a scene or object from the book that has this)

4.)    Convey tone, feeling and atmosphere of the story or its genre

I even bought the Mammoth Book of Crime Comics, edited by Paul Gravett.  It contains a strip titled Secret Agent X written by Dashiel Hammet during the 1930’s, he can be seen as a pioneer of the hard-boiled detective meets femme fatale genre along with his contemporary, Raymond Chandler.

Another thing I’ve looked at it is the original Batman comics of 1939 and I noticed yesterday there was a CSI episode called Rashomama from series 6 I believe. That involves characters telling their version of the same crime story from a personal perspective akin to the Kurosawa’s Rashomon movie, one of the stories had a stylised sepia tone, almost black and white but the red from blood stains, wine and lipstick although dark stood out like a scene from Schindler’s list.