Mike Manalac

Unfinished sketch-dump!

2012-02-16T06:25:00.001+11:00

The Paper Fox!

2012-01-20T21:17:00.001+11:00

A buddy of mine, Jeremy Kool, has started his very own interactive storybook project called 'The Paper Fox', and I'm stoked to say I've had the opportunity to help him out on such a creative idea. Here are some quick compositional thumbs I've done for the project.. more to come!

Check out the project and get behind it! The Paper Fox

Place in the sun

2011-11-17T23:11:00.001+11:00

Arty face'o'matic

2011-11-01T01:49:00.001+11:00

A post!

2011-10-03T20:47:00.001+11:00

Post this! Been a little uninspired the last few months and figured I should take a break, get into some other creative biz - like photography - and yes, even move country while I'm at it. But I'm back! And I even managed to do a little painting.

Tassie inspired

2011-01-18T01:16:00.001+11:00

This does not do the place justice at ALL.

Sketch

2011-01-12T23:47:00.001+11:00

Sketch before bed to unwind - back to work tomorrow!

Tron: Meh-gacy!

2010-12-23T01:37:00.002+11:00

It sure did look nice though!

In other news, I started a tumblr page. I know, I know - I can barely keep up with a blog, how am I going to keep this up? I figure I'll use that as more of a 'general' art blog... photos/links etc? The interwebs sure is a crazy place.

Taxiiii!

2010-12-20T01:53:00.000+11:00

I love Melbourne weather. Its the middle of December, and today it was 17* and raining. Beautiful! Keep this up and we'll have 3 winters in a row...thats right, triple freakin' winter. Bring it on.

More 'Little Red & The Wolf' stuff.

'Little Red & The Wolf'

2010-12-08T02:05:00.000+11:00

I'm not dead - its true! Its been a strange 6 months... being made redundant, my old work place shutting down - it probably wasn't the most inspirational time for me to paint anything..so, I didn't! I've since got a new job, which I'm loving, and I think its helped kick-start the ol' creativity again.

Here's a game idea i've had in my head for some time now - which really isn't all that original, more like a spin on the old fairy tale. Looking forward to exploring this more...

Change of pace

2010-07-29T00:46:00.000+10:00

So my new NEW (7-month late) new years resolution is to focus less on rendering and more on storytelling and the idea behind the picture. Here we go!

Future Africa?

2010-07-16T20:24:00.000+10:00

Another experiment starting from random shapes/colours

Quick enviros

2010-07-12T21:12:00.001+10:00

These pics were composition experiments, and also about trying to make something from a very vague thumbnail. The original thumbnails are in the top right corner.

Update: Second patch of quick experiments. I felt like using a more saturated palette this time round...dunno if that works so well. Also, the perspective for #2 is really messed up, but meh!

Enviro WIP

2010-07-02T08:54:00.000+10:00

So I've decided leaving my blog for 'finished pieces only' is kinda pointless, mostly cause I'm doing so much experimenting lately and the fact it'd take me waaayy too long to post finished work anyway.

So. Here is another work in progress. BUT. I am pretty happy with where this one is heading and am keen to finish it off. Hmmmmm

Still sketching

2010-07-01T00:02:00.000+10:00

Sketches / Work in Progress

2010-06-16T00:47:00.000+10:00

I've really changed focus the last couple of weeks with this concept business - I'm trying to experiment more with process and also focusing more heavily on characters, as well as trying to find my own 'style' again (something I've ignored for too long, I think). Here are some of my more recent attempts - a lot of unfinished work here.

Photo studies

2010-06-16T00:38:00.001+10:00

These pics were studies that were painted from photos that I didn't take - please dont sue me!
Trying to get better with my rendering technique by doing these. More to come.

Life Drawing and Figure studies

2010-06-16T00:34:00.001+10:00

Coastal Village

2010-05-24T01:41:00.000+10:00

Where I should be right now!

City Morning

2010-05-14T01:47:00.001+10:00

Mining Machine

2010-04-26T01:13:00.000+10:00

Looooong overdue update!

WOAH!

2010-03-17T20:43:00.002+11:00

No art this time, just words and a screengrab from facebook.

I found out today that I received a scholarship (50% off) in Conceptart.org's new Entertainment Design course, starting in June. Thats RIDICULOUS. I am freakin' excited!

Thanks Conceptart.org. Bring on June! Woooooo

Green room

2010-03-17T01:14:00.001+11:00

Beacon

2010-03-16T01:00:00.001+11:00

Hexagons = Sci Fi!

2010-03-11T01:17:00.003+11:00

Speedpaint, yo!

Back into the sci fi

2010-03-10T00:36:00.003+11:00

There've been a couple of game releases lately that have got me reinspired to try some sci fi enviro stuff. Its been a looong time. Hopefully a lot more to come.

Glowy bridge

2010-03-09T01:46:00.002+11:00

Another greybox paintover piece for a mate's shortfilm.

Greybox - Mathieu Walsh
Paint - Moi

Robo World 5000

2010-03-01T00:07:00.001+11:00

Semi-old work in progress

2010-02-23T01:59:00.003+11:00

Here's one I started a few months ago but never ended up finishing.
I was happy with the colour palette but not much else, so I doubt I ever will finish it.

The necessary evils.

2010-02-23T01:55:00.002+11:00

Speedies & studies.

Scribble-town

2010-02-23T01:44:00.002+11:00

I'm still really enjoying my reunion with traditional media.

Speedies

2010-02-18T00:20:00.002+11:00

I was really trying to control the brushstrokes with these and stay loose. Good fun.

Over-rendering sucks!

Sketches

2010-02-18T00:13:00.003+11:00

Pencil and paper, you have been missed!

Incredibly rusty at sketching cause I don't do it nearly as often as I should, but I'm really enjoying getting back into it. The first of many pages, hopefully.

EOW 134 - Spring arrives after endless Winter

2010-02-15T23:28:00.003+11:00

My entry for the latest Enviro of the Week on conceptart.org

The composition for this pic was a huuuuuge pain - for the longest time I had no idea what I was doing wrong and it just didn't look right.

Check out all the entries here

EOW 133 - Ancient Palace Ruins

2010-02-03T02:46:00.006+11:00

Was feeling inspired during the first class of The Art Department tonight - figured I'd start painting at 10pm. Great idea, brain!

Team CHOW

2010-02-01T20:58:00.003+11:00

Me and some friends from work decided to give the Team Chow a go. The brief was Taro cards, but the setting was left completely up to us. We settled on an idea very similar to the TV show 'Heroes' - every day people with special abilities.

Cheers to Roberto and Brandon for teaming up!

You can see our entries (together) here!
You can see all the other group's entries here!

What Robots dream of

2010-01-11T02:29:00.003+11:00

...*shrug*

Done as an entry in a monthly blog.

Speedies, studies & life drawing part deux

2010-01-11T02:21:00.003+11:00

Shiny!

2010-01-04T14:32:00.003+11:00

Under the Bridge

2009-12-24T04:55:00.002+11:00

I've been trying to loosen up a lot lately, particularly with brushwork, so this was...difficult...to say the least. Fun though! I forgot to save the first bunch of wip shots, so no workflow pic for this one :(

Pew pew

2009-12-22T05:58:00.002+11:00

My entry in this week's Environment of the Week challenge on CA.org - the topic chosen was 'War Zone'. Blehhh I think my time off has made me rusty.

Check out the entries here!

The Morrigan

2009-12-07T14:01:00.002+11:00

My entry for the latest Character of the Week comp at Conceptart.org

Check out everyone's finals here!

Le Bar of love

2009-12-02T01:36:00.002+11:00

A paintover done for a friend's animation project. Started with a greybox as a base.

Greybox - Mathieu Walsh
Paint - Moi

Station at sunset

2009-11-23T01:41:00.002+11:00

The Courtyard

2009-11-02T04:38:00.003+11:00

Someone should really clean this place up.
Not much courting going on, eh?

Flooded hall

2009-10-31T00:30:00.003+11:00

I've looked at this wayyyy too long. If you've got leaky-roof problems, you should really call the 'Seal Group'. They have got THE BEST CG talking-seal created in history, complete with the best lip sync you've ever seen - if you've seen the ad, you know the goodness that I'm talking about.

Dragons 'n shit

2009-10-29T02:59:00.002+11:00

The Dragon was by FAR the least interesting part of this pic to draw...and probably look at. Stupid dragon.

Oh by the way, this was done for a little blog that some of the guys from work have created. Check it, yo!

http://monolithart.blogspot.com/

Abandoned Factory

2009-10-28T02:17:00.003+11:00

This piece was a lot of fun - focusing on colour, texture and experimenting with workflow. Also trying to keep non-important elements loose.

Hmmm, I wonder what inspired this...?

2009-10-20T12:00:00.004+11:00

If you can guess it, Leigh Miller has agreed to pay you $5.

I'll post WIP's laters.

Bath-time at the Smith residence

2009-10-18T04:19:00.003+11:00

Studies, Speedpaints, Sketchcrawl and...Life Drawing

2009-10-18T04:14:00.002+11:00

Jungle Gym!

2009-09-06T14:03:00.002+10:00

A new post! Woah!
I've included a step by step for Mr. One22andan8th - hope this comes in handy! (nup)

3d, but not really...

2009-08-01T23:58:00.003+10:00

Woah! 3d! Just relax, folks, I'll have none of that here thanks.
A very talented artist at our company named Francois Melard created the mesh for this character and walked us through the character texturing process - I just did the painting. Thanks Francois!

Check out more of Mr. Melard's stuff here.

Ships in space

2009-07-05T23:11:00.002+10:00

I reaaally want to get better at speedpaints - this is my first personal one in a while, but I can't even really take full credit for it. I was trying (really hard!) to imitate the rendering technique of a bunch of other artists. The day I can do this all by myself I will be very happy!

Must...keep...practicing....

This took about an hour.

Struggle-town! Blog-filler ahead.

2009-06-30T23:03:00.004+10:00

I've been under the influence of severe creative block the passed month or two and it really is an annoying place to be! I draw most nights but lately it seems really difficult to finish any of the pics. Here are just a few of my many recent attempts.

In particular I know I've made a conscious decision to try some more stylized characters (ala Pixar or something similar) so maybe its just that transition that is slowing me down - I still really want to explore another style so we'll see how it goes.

I'm hoping this will spark something!

Bits and pieces

2009-05-11T00:01:00.002+10:00

Its christmas!

The first piece I did for the DSG at conceptart.org. Here's the thread:
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=157286&page=2

The second piece was from life drawing last wednesday - tried to work with just shadows and highlights instead of full colour.

Look out, Hottie coming through

2009-05-10T19:52:00.003+10:00

Some more CHOW.
The topic this time round were the characters from a comic called 'Sandman'. There were a bunch of characters to choose from - I picked one named 'Despair'. Never read the comic, but anyone who has seems to love it.

Here is her wiki description:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Despair_(DC_Comics)

Here is the conceptart.org thread with all the final entries:
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?p=2249346&posted=1

Choppin'riffic

2009-04-29T00:22:00.002+10:00

My CHOW entry for the current topic on conceptart.org

There were a bunch of us from work who entered - all our entries were brilliant! Check it out:
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?p=2234283&posted=1#post2234283

Life drawing - 22nd April 09

2009-04-22T21:43:00.001+10:00

3 x5 minutes, 3 x 10 minute and 1 x 20 minute poses.

DSG #1473 (Daily Sketch Group)

2009-04-13T23:34:00.003+10:00

A quick paint for Conceptart.org's Daily Sketch Group forum.

http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?p=2214263&posted=1#post2214263

People practice

2009-04-13T18:46:00.001+10:00

Life Drawing - 8th April 09

2009-04-08T21:03:00.002+10:00

5 minute (greyscale), 10 and 20 minute poses from life drawing class earlier tonight.

Enviro - The Towers

2009-04-06T00:46:00.003+10:00

Another speedy from tonight - felt like squeezing out another enviro before getting back to work tomorrow. The saturation is a bit crazy with this one, but I like the looseness and design overall.

...Mike...using 3d? Lies!

2009-04-04T22:56:00.004+11:00

I'm constantly giving crap to my 3d friends about how bad 3d is - that's because its TRUE (2d rules). Zbrush is an exception cause its actually good!. This is my first real go at zbrush and I have to say that I enjoyed it overall.

Time for Mike's zbrush review:

+ Modelling, carving away and painting - great fun and works as you'd expect it to.
- The menu's are infuriatingly complex. Also, sometimes the program will just do something completely random (seriously), when you are trying to do something that you thought was really straight forward.

Strange program, but I'm keen to give it more time.

Random enviro

2009-03-23T02:33:00.004+11:00

Finished this pic earlier tonight. It went through quite a few idea changes - I just tried to feel my way through this one and see where it took me.

Speedy - Thundercats

2009-03-14T02:52:00.003+11:00

'Puss in boots' is the current Character of the Week subject at Conceptart.org, and we figured that was a bit meh for the weekly friday speedpaint. Instead, we kept the cat theme and went with the Thundercats cartoon.

Here's my take on Mumm-Ra.

Life drawing is back!

2009-03-11T22:04:00.002+11:00

Here's a few sketches from today.

The first is a pic I drew in some down time at work. I'm having a hard time painting colour onto a greyscale thumb - not sure if the colour version of this works yet.

The second is some pen sketches of a life drawing model - life drawing has started up again, so expect more of these every fortnight. Huzzah!

Robots rule

2009-03-11T00:39:00.003+11:00

How can you not have fun drawing robots?
I will call this one: 'Robot Man'. Painted while watching Transformers, funnily enough.

The start of...something.

2009-03-10T00:53:00.002+11:00

Figured I'd start my own project tonight. Yup, you heard right!
I'm not even half sure where this idea is going, but isn't that how a lot of good things start?

All I know is I want to do something along the lines of Oddworld - maybe with a slightly darker tone? I had no idea where to begin so I figured a bunch of creatures that populate this place would be fun - here are the first bunch of thumbs.

I wanted these creatures to sit about halfway between comical/ridiculous and menacing/freaky. More tomorrow hopefully!

Who isn't watching the Watchmen?

2009-03-07T03:02:00.004+11:00

You know when you get that feeling that you're overdoing something but you choose to keep pressing on anyway, hoping it will turn out ok...and it doesn't? Yep, that happened tonight. Our 30 minute speedpaint today was Watchmen inspired and I figured I'd paint a stylized version of one of the characters.

I was pretty happy with that speedpaint and thought it'd be cool to do a few more. I slowly realized that was not such a good idea - each subsequent pic turned out worse and I cared less and less, focusing more on just finishing and having this colourful-rainbow-design'ish-thing to show off. The two last characters in particular were so badly rushed that I've attached only a low LOW res version of them for you to see. Everything looks better when its shrunk down!

Too much of a good thing is never actually good.

In other news, we had a 'tremor' (ie. a freakin' EARTHQUAKE) earlier tonight in Melbourne. Crazy times!

More speeeeeeed

2009-03-04T00:09:00.002+11:00

Another speedy from tonight. The (new) plan is to try and do one of these a day. I haven't been too good with sticking to any plans, so I won't get too excited just yet.

This one took about an hour.

Don't make friends with this guy

2009-03-03T00:36:00.002+11:00

A speedpaint I did at home tonight - this one took about 50 minutes.

This pic actually started off full colour and it was only right at the very end that I realized something wasn't sitting right. A few colour shifts later and - like a slap in the face - BAM!: Evil Maximus.

Before that he would've been the friendliest Samurai you ever did meet. With a sword. A bit of blood on his face... aaaand dead bodies all around him.

Speedy 27th Feb 09

2009-02-28T14:41:00.003+11:00

Another 30 minute speedpaint from friday afternoon to signal the end of another week.
The topic chosen was along the lines of 'hell creature'.

EOW 106 - 'Great Wall'

2009-02-15T19:52:00.002+11:00

The Environment piece challenge at conceptart.org this week is 'Great Wall', and I decided to give it a go. I started this piece early but somehow, even now, it still feels rushed and unfinished.

Took a lot longer that it should have and I'm not so keen on the end result - I think the composition and focus is all over the place. I'm pretty happy with the way the tree turned out though. Not sure if I'll submit it on the forums either - we'll see!

Portraits cont'd

2009-02-02T18:23:00.002+11:00

More portraits done lastnight. I'm slowly able to cram in more detail in the 30-35 minute bracket too, which is encouraging. The jaw in the last portrait was really bugging me (still is) and I changed it a few times - so that one took me a little longer.

There will be plenty more of these in the next few days/weeks probably, but I'm also getting the urge to get back into some environmental stuff soon.

Hot girls that don't look so good once I've drawn them.

2009-01-28T00:20:00.003+11:00

3 more portraits from earlier tonight - each one took 35 minutes, painting from google reference.
The first one was really bad, the second I was really happy with and the 3rd was a bit dodgy, mostly cause it lacked any definition.

Yes, they're all portraits based on great looking girls.
I'm a guy. I was in no hurry to draw crazy old men.

The first of many

2009-01-27T01:05:00.005+11:00

Here's a portrait I did earlier tonight from reference.
This took waaay too long to do and I think I know what to concentrate on next time round - work smaller, be more loose, aim for a short time frame (15-30mins each maybe?) The plan is to do a bunch of portraits, hands, feet, and poses to get better at rendering the figure - something I've been lacking in severely for far too long.

The problem with digital painting for me is that I want to do *everything* - people, environments, vehicles etc. I don't stay focused on anything for too long, probably cause I get bored of doing one thing after a while - so you'll see me jump around a lot from subject to subject.

Thank you, James Kei

2009-01-24T18:52:00.004+11:00

On recommendation from a friend, I decided to check out James Kei's 'Digital Figure Painting' tutorial from the Conceptart.org/MB website.

http://dvd.massiveblack.com/downloads.html#manchess

It was a great tutorial and he really does spell out the process he goes through in layman's terms. If digital figure painting is your thing, definitely check it out - its worth every cent of the $15USD it costs to download. Support the community that supports you artists!

Here are my results, I painted this while watching the tute, pausing it every now and again to catch up. Approx 2.5 hrs painting from google reference (cheers to whoever took the photo), good fun, and I didn't zoom in once!

Hold onto your hats, this is gonna get ugly...

2009-01-24T18:32:00.003+11:00

Here's some old OLLLDDD work from 2004.
This is also one of the first, and sadly, one of the last times I ever played with 3d. Since then I have forgotten just about everything of what I learned about using 3d programs.

At the time of these drawings/renders, I was studying animation. We had a one year group project - a 3d short film based on the designs from the matrix movies - in which every student (all 13 or 14 of us) had to pull their weight if we were to finish. Unfortunately from the get-go, there was a tiny group of us (about 4 guys) who practically did all the work. Good times!

I was the concept guy, and I was responsible for creating the characters, including the lead character - the critter you see above. It was a great lesson for me in 3d and the patience required to do it. At this time I'd also barely touched photoshop for digital painting, so most of my stuff was sketched out.

Speedy 23 Jan 09

2009-01-23T20:42:00.002+11:00

Meet Stef.
He likes music, Street Fighter and is a big fan of fruit.
I've also got a link to his photography blog in my links section.

For today's 30 minute speedpaint, we figured we'd try a portrait. This stuff is not easy, but it was fun.

Quick paint

2009-01-22T01:15:00.003+11:00

Its a lot harder keeping up with a blog when you're not on holidays, but here it is: My first post in a few weeks.

Done in about 2.5 hours, pretty happy with the simplicity of this one. I need to work on my details though - i got really lazy with the wood and the characters.

Finished Argus

2009-01-11T18:45:00.004+11:00

Here's my final for the cgtalk Steampunk comp.

The hi-res is here:
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=278&t=702606&page=1&pp=15

Not very happy with it to be honest. It feels like for all the time I put into it, it should've come along much much further than it has, which is disappointing, but it at least shows me I need to probably work quicker in getting certain things down and to really focus my efforts where they're needed.

There are a couple of other competitions me and the work guys are thinking of taking on next, so I'll have plenty of things to practice with.

Argus the Bored!

2009-01-09T02:18:00.004+11:00

These are the (rushed) options I thought of for the face of Argus. There are very subtle differences between the lot, but it could make all the difference. At the moment I'm leaning toward the variations on the bottom of the page... not entirely sure which one yet.

I was always thinking about trying to imply some sort of emotion in the 'face' of Argus. I never really wanted it to be immediately readable as having eyes and a mouth, but I thought it would be a nice touch if I could incorporate it without it looking forced or out of place. I'm not entirely sure the whole 'face' idea works, and its pretty late so I'm probably not making the best decisions, so we'll see what happens tomorrow.

Not much time left now! I'll have to settle on my choice really quick and get into the rendering this weekend.

Steampunk WIP 1

2009-01-07T01:17:00.001+11:00

Plenty of work to do and lots of late nights ahead...

Steampunk compositions

2009-01-04T16:35:00.003+11:00

I've posted some of these already, but I've also made changes to a few - these are my final steampunk compositions I'll have to choose from if I decide to take it to a final stage. #4 and #6 work the best so far in my opinion. #1 and #2 are ok, but I'll recycle them for other pieces.

The competition finishes in about a week, and it also happens to be the week work starts again, so finishing anything is a big call!

More thumbs to choose from

2009-01-04T02:31:00.004+11:00

Unlike most of my other 5 enviro attempts, I think this one works well for the Steampunk competition. There's a nice contrast and balance in the pic. There's room for more of both 'Steampunk' and 'Ancient Greece', but that can be explored later.

Over-complicating things

2009-01-03T02:53:00.004+11:00

I've realized the enviro's I've been doing the last couple of days have all been painted with the Steampunk challenge in mind, and that, for whatever reason, I've been trying to squeeze in as much information as possible.

This time round though I wanted to keep things really simple - sometimes that can be key.
Not particularly happy with this one - an important point is that I don't want Argus (the steampunk machine in the background) to look menacing or intimidating, which is difficult given his size. Its important to give him personality and a bored pose probably would've worked much better.

More exploration later.

Greece enviro

2009-01-02T03:17:00.003+11:00

Another possible composition for the Steampunk CGtalk competition.

Not sure if the composition works very well in this one - there's a big empty space on the left (could be a good thing..?) and there definitely needs to be more Steampunk about it - cogs, old machinery etc. The trick is fitting that stuff in with the Greek architecture, which is something I really want to do right. Mount Olympus sits in the distant background and the Steampunk hot air balloons make another appearance. I'm fascinated with those things, all cause of PoP. Stupid game.

I actually think the pic works quite well without all the characters and details, so who knows? This could turn into something else entirely. I very much doubt I'll use it for Steampunk though.

Enviro speedpaint

2009-01-01T23:47:00.004+11:00

Another enviro speedpaint - my first for 2009!
-2.5 hrs

Ushering in 2009

2009-01-01T11:03:00.007+11:00

Happy New Year!

2009 has finally come around. You know what that means? Tons of public holidays and the footy starts up again in a few months! woooooo

Here are a few enviro speedpaints I did yesterday, each one took about 2 hours. I think there's a really good chance these could be used for the cgtalk Steampunk challenge that I posted about a few weeks back. They definitely still need some fine tuning, but I'm really happy with both pics actually - I'm starting to find a nice balance of implied detail and refinement now.

I used photos for both of these as inspiration and so I could try manually picking colours (just from looking at the pic, not from using the eye dropper tool), so I've attached one of the photos for you to compare, too. The photo doesn't belong to me, so thankyou to whoever took it.

My resolution for 2009? More painting.

Anatomy = pain

2008-12-31T03:39:00.003+11:00

I've never been good with anatomy. So when I decided today that I'd start my own world design, I'm not sure what possessed me to begin with human characters. The pic below is the result of a lot of google research (*cough*) and a lot of time rendering. I'm fairly happy with the outcome - I think I've learned a lot from this study. Things like knees and collarbones and fingers are really tricky to do properly.

I'm basing a lot of this world design on PoP - a male and female pair for lead characters, fantastical environments, weird creatures.

And nope, the female won't be running around naked, so I'll be using this pic as a template to explore clothing options tomorrow.

Random enviro

2008-12-29T04:04:00.005+11:00

I decided I'd do a bit of painting really late tonight and this is the result. I started off with the base idea of a 'Mountain castle in the snow' - the Environment of the Week challenge at Conceptart.org - and the idea just grew from there. Not particularly happy with the idea or direction it went as it reminds me a lot of my previous post (in style and composition anyway), but I'm sorta happy with the way the colours turned out and I think the quality of the render is getting slightly better. Meh.

Less excuses, more paint

2008-12-16T00:36:00.002+11:00

I must've run out of excuses not to draw tonight, cause I chose to sit down and spend some time in photoshop. Its true what they say about a lot of creative things - that it all comes together in the last 5 minutes. I started painting with no other real clear thoughts in my head besides the fact I wanted to do an environment, and it was a muddy mess up until near the end.

I think its pretty evident I'm definitely still thinking of the art style of Prince of Persia, but thats not such a bad thing. With such high calibre art, aiming to achieve something like that can only help me learn. Being able to work on such an awesome title one day, like PoP's lucky concept artists get to do, is also plenty of incentive for me to jump right in.

Its taken ages, but I think I'm starting to get the hang of some things - A few custom brushes first of all, but more importantly: Contrast. Contrast between colour, large and small brushstrokes and soft and solid edges/brushes.

The following pic took about 45 mins, I'm really happy with it - will continue this tomorrow.

Speedpaint 12th Dec 08

2008-12-12T20:58:00.006+11:00

We had a really vague topic for the 30 minute speedy at work today - 'machines'. We've been pretty character focused with the speedpaints since we started doing them, and so decided to switch it up a bit. Today's was more about an industrial design than a character.

Anyway, I actually really like the idea behind this one. All my previous entries have been a little gun-ho and completely lacking in story, so this is a nice change of pace. I'll have to develop this one a little more sometime down the track.

Speedpaint - 5th December 2008

2008-12-07T23:55:00.002+11:00

I've pretty much fallen in love with the new Prince of Persia game, which looks absolutely incredible and plays just as well. For last friday's speedpaint we didn't choose a topic, we just spent 40 minutes painting for the heck of it. I wanted to try out some brushes, as well as experiment with a different painting style. Add that to the fact that I've thought about nothing but Prince of Persia since it came out last thursday, and this is what I came up with.

Speedpaint from 28th Nov 08

2008-12-01T01:09:00.003+11:00

This week's 30 minute speedpaint topic: Monkey Magic.

Meh.

A few things bug me about my speedies - I need to become more clear with my lines/detail (something I'm hoping my daily figure drawing will help), I probably have to start focusing my pics a bit more instead of trying to get so much info in (maybe just focus on a characters' upper half or something), and I need to stop making all of these so monochromatic... it gets boring really quickly for both you and me to look at!

Meh again.

CGtalk Steampunk challenge

2008-12-01T00:48:00.002+11:00

I'm still running off all of the motivation gained at the NZ workshop a few weeks back, which is great, so I've decided to enter the Steampunk CGtalk challenge. More info on it can be found here: http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/steampunk/

Here is my initial silhouette exploration. I chose a few from these to develop further into the thumbnail sketches on the grey page.

Life drawing 19 Nov 08

2008-11-20T23:57:00.002+11:00

My very first self-imposed life drawing class since returning from NZ, done yesterday.

I'm also here to announce that I've got a new sketchbook on Conceptart.org, too. I will probably just post any life drawing I do on the sketchbook instead of here on the blog... I think it makes more sense that way. The link is on the right of the page.

Sketches / Life Drawing NZ cont'd

2008-11-20T23:12:00.002+11:00

Here are some of the later sketches done at the NZ workshop.
Massive Black have announced their next workshop will be in Shanghai, probably next year. I'm already 99% set on going...

Sketches / Life drawing from Massive Black conference in New Zealand

2008-11-20T22:56:00.004+11:00

The New Zealand workshop was absolutely brilliant, I really could not have asked for a better experience. I learned a heckuva lot, the instructors were fantastic to watch and very helpful with all of our questions. They were all very approachable and open in the way they shared their working processes.

I've come back to Melbourne really really inspired. In particular, I think I gained a rejuvinated interest in character design, and this has a lot to do with Wes Burt and his sketchbooks. I can't even describe how good these things were... I could have stared at them for hours on end. His knowledge of anatomy was unbelievable (everything in his 3 sketchbooks were drawn from memory, no ref) and his designs and poses/weighting of figures were amazing - functional, innovative, so cleanly executed - and these were his sketchbooks!

Here's some of the sketches I did while in NZ. Since returning, I've decided to dedicate some time each day to do some sketching, in the hope of one day being able to come up with anything even half as cool as Wes Burt's work.

These sketches are from the first day or two I was in NZ. The very first pic are some sketches done on the plane ride over....so embarrassingly shit! Its been a long time since I've done any manual sketching. I'll post again showing the later sketches.