Dana Scully Illustration

 

Sonic Illustration - Sonic CD Inspired.

 

Steve Jobs Illustration

 

Snail Mail Illustration

 

(V&A) Parallel Worlds: A New Videogame Design Conference

The V&A has been my first port of call on almost every London trip since moving to Essex. So I got pretty darn excited when this appeared on my Twitter feed:

Wonderful artwork by Sophia Foster-Dimino

I'd excitedly made trips to the V&A in recent months for various exhibitions on things like shoes and underwear, so when I saw this one I grabbed a ticket straight away.

Obviously, the V&A doing a video games conference is fantastic news for people who care about the cultural identity of games, but when I saw just how incredibly diverse, interesting, and impressive the line-up of speakers were, I felt especially enthused purchasing my ticket.

The V&A's curator of Video Games, and organiser of this event deserves untold amounts of praise for arranging these speakers (as do her helpers for making the whole thing run super smoothly).

To be honest, I was already sold on this when I saw that Tale of Tales were going to be speaking at this event. I'd recently backed their kickstarter campaign Cathedral in the Clouds so it would've been cool to chat to them about that and about VR in general. I didn't manage to catch them, unfortunately, but I still got loads from their talk, which had this awesome early-internet aesthetic throughout. It was basically everything I dreamed a Tale of Tales talk would feel like.

It did begin to feel a bit tailor-made for me at this point. As someone fascinated by history, near-future stuff, art, and Tale of Tales, the line-up basically following that trajectory meant I was almost scared to blink incase I missed something. I originally intended to sketch away whilst the talks were on, but I found it impossible to not focus on the speakers. So that's a good sign.

Apex content from Meg Jayanth

The general ethos of the event was exactly as I'd hoped it be. None of the talks pretended as though games, as with all media, exist in isolation from wider culture, society, and politics. It helped that the people saying these things also were the people who had made great games. Not that I think you have to have made great games to form opinions on them, but it's always welcome physical proof that all these nice things that are being said about the eccentricity and meaningfulness of creating games actually mean something. And we can all strive to make great things with these inclusive, expansive and esoteric values on our sleeve.

I really hope the V&A continues to nurture their game curation and exhibition. It would be great to continue on the theme of inclusion by bringing in other exciting voices who lie on the fringes and outside of game development. Leigh Alexander springs to mind.

And maybe one day we'll see something similar at the new V&A Dundee?

Also this was my first experience of the V&A cafe which was the true unsung hero of the day. Hake and butterbean stew <3

It's been a long, long time.

Somehow it's been almost as long since my last blog post, as the amount of time I originally used this blog for in the first place. And seeing as it felt like I ran this blog for ages, I'm officially angry at time for being a thing and also for scaring me like that. Obviously a lot has happened in my life since then, but I'll spare you the ol' catch-up story. 

So, I've been having a think about how to start up this blog again. It seems to still get some traffic, and I imagine most of that is because of all the popular IP name-dropping I used to do. But I've also had a few students get in touch to say that they've been sent to my blog by my previous lecturers, so that's cool too! 

Because I'm now working as a concept artist in industry, I can't share any of the work I do all day. However, something I sort of almost got into with this blog back in 2014 was the chance to share various thoughts on certain themes and patterns in films, games and books that interested me. And then occasionally this would lead to little micro projects for me to do in my spare time. It also just feels great to get thoughts down on a page sometimes.  

I work here now.

I've also been planning on getting back into doing lunch hour paintings since I started at Dlala. So far I've had no luck mainly because we have Steam installed on the work computers. I also used to love sticking my life drawing sketches here too, but unfortunately, it doesn't look like I have a class near me at the moment. 


At the moment I'm really enjoying Firewatch. I'm also on my third re-watch of Aziz Ansari's Master of None series, which I'm obviously obsessed with. I'd really love to write a little about both of them, so hopefully I'll get that sorted within the next week or so. And hey, I might even get some new personal work up too. 

Until then!

Figure Drawing of Recent

Thought I'd chuck up of all my recent figure drawings from my Tuesday evening public classes. :)

Lunch Hour Painting Number 3

Lunch Hour and then Some.

Got round to doing another lunch hour painting today. At the end of the hour it was nothing special, but I really liked the colours that were happening, no doubt in thanks to all the No Man's Sky artwork I've been looking at over the past few days, and so I kept at it, in total I probably spent a good 4-5 hours on it. I didn't use any reference images for anything, so that's why it does feel a bit iffy, but I'm still happy with the sense of life in the image, and the sort of underlying details dotted around the place.

Thanks :)

The Lunch Hour

Every Tuesday I'm fortunate enough to attend All the Young Nudes figure drawing, but aside from that, I haven't really worked on any personal stuff, because it's been great weather and because I'm making so much during the day on MProf that I don't feel guilty doing nothing in the evenings.

Although now I'm starting to get depressed at this complacency. And SO, I'm going to spend my lunch hour working on personal work. It'll probably just be quick little thumbs, sketches, or the odd speed paint. 

I'll be uploading my figure drawing from ATYN's soon, but for now here's a quick painting I did during today's lunch hour. 

Environments & Ian's Masterclass.

One of the most fascinating things I've experienced to date - Ian's Masterclass - was a great insight into the workflow of a professional concept artist. Sitting watching one of his famous dockyards come to life, I struggle to think of a time when I was as enthused and focused. Futilely, I try to memorise the thinking behind every brush stroke, but that's just not the way it works. What I took away from Ian's class was more of a mindset, and a new range of neat shortcuts and techniques, which have really cut down my production time for environment pieces.

My Own Denki Doodles.

About a month ago I contacted James from Denki, in the hope that he would be willing to chat for a bit about Professional Specialisation, and general art chat. Turns out, he was! Not only that, I requested a brief, which he gave me on the spot, which went on to be featured as an article on Denki Doodles - James' art blog. I've written more about this in my Report, and there's a full write up of James response in the feature, which is here.  However, I thought it would be cool to give a quick synopsis from my end, and touch on my thoughts throughout the brief.

Brief:
-Father & Daughter Relationship
-2-D Side-Scroller Platformer game mock up screen.
-iPhone 5 dimensions.
-In Denki's style
-7 Days

So I was given seven days to work on the project, and as you can see by the above image, the initial work I started out in didn't exactly scream Denki. To start off with I was eager to not worry about style too much, and let the heart of the brief drive the work. However, towards the end of the brief, I then started to worry about the style, and so that then meant I forced the context into Denki's style, where it didn't belong. And so, I sent the brief over to James for some critique, and it was the usual case - everything he noted, I sort of knew deep down, I just couldn't admit / deal with it until someone mentioned it. Then it full steam ahead. 

By sending James my entire development pool of artwork, he was able to see the trajectory of it all, and noted that he longed for the relationship struck at in the image below, and to try and hold that image close, like a reference bible. 

From that the next stage was developing the daughter and the father together, making sure they not only worked together on a stylistic level, but that their relationship was strong and clear.

After working out this character relationship in my own Denki style, I took influence from something James had mentioned on an earlier Denki Doodles post about creating something mundane from the world, and letting that be visual style guide for the rest of the world. So like James, I messed around with some trees, and I don't blame him, because drawing these vibrant Denki trees is about as fun as it gets. From there I crafter a layered background which harmonised with the trees, but hopefully didn't feel too cluttered.

In the end I was so pleased with the final result, and how well I'd managed to respond to James' remarkable feedback. He sure knows his stuff. The analysis he gave me on the final result is something I'm very happy with, and now I'm glad I stuck at it. If you're interested in doing a Denki brief for James, he's more than happy to help, and would love to hear from you.

1920's Project: Paint-over Sketches

Decided to some paint overs of the sketches from yesterday. In the renders you can see I've used the classic art neuveau circle behind the images to try and keep the early 20th century rooted in the designs, while pushing them. I also took some inspiration from the whole Egyptian depiction from the early 20th century to promote royalty and explore fashion and colours, while again still rooting the world in the 20's.

In the sketch/paint below there is a security guard, and on the right a member of the royal guards. I quite like the idea that arose in the sketch stage of the security guards heart monitor being this big, chunky cumbersome device.

I really like the retro-futuristic impression given off by the deco circle in the royal guards' head gear. i think this sort of iron-man design incorporated could be good at linking members of different factions in a very relevant way. Although, I'll still need to do some more tests to see how well that actually works.

Till' then. :)

Traditional Sketches & Coffee Shop Sketches

Life Drawing / J.C. Leyendecker.

This week in Life Drawing only 5 of us showed up and so after a couple of initial poses Ryan asked if anyone had anything in mind, and as I'd been looking at a lot of 20's artwork for this new concept I'm working on I offered we look at some Leyendecker illustrations and try some of them out. We did and I think they worked out real nice. Either way it was much more enjoyable than usual. I also stylised some of the sketches, mainly the hair, to make them feel more reminiscent of the 1920's.

Concept Art Context - A Spin on the 20's.

Over the past few weeknights I've been working out a context to demonstrate a strong, interesting portfolio. While speaking to Ian and Tom (my mentors) we discussed the over-saturation of cliches in concept art portfolios. This is something I've always actively tried to avoid in my concept work so far. Obviously it's easy for me to say that, having only worked on student projects, where commercial value hasn't been at the forefront of my mind at *all* times - cliches are cliches because they sell. 

As I've mentioned in many previous posts, I love drawing inspiration from a wide range of sources, and try to be as eclectic as possible in the ideas that I draught. 

20's Headgear Moodboard

I saw a really nice hat in a charity shop recently like the green one in the photo above, and it was one of those *definitive* 20's hats. When I was sitting sketching later on in the day it popped into my head and I started what would go on to be a predecessor to this quick painting:

First Style Test

Later on in the evening I stumbled upon a really interesting website which gives light insight to the music, literature, fashion, and general culture of the 1920's (you can visit it here). While I was reading one of the pages, I think it was one on movies or art, it mentioned the growth of photography versus portraiture, and I immediately got an idea for an interesting context to start coming up with some ideas.

The context came from the idea that the conception and invention of photography as we know it, was fundamentally different, and the result of this being that their would be an alternate timeline created wherein a scientist - a sort of Tesla character - managed to create a capturing device, which, similar to digital cameras absorbed tiny electric signals in the air which could be transpired in a pixel-fashion onto a canvas. I also like the idea of the technology developing alongside a personality, or at least a mock-personality, in the form of a robotic arm. The whole mechanical arm/portrait idea is reminiscent of those street caricaturists you see, and I think, gives the sketch an eery familiar feel to it - and eery familiarity is always the best kind, right?

In a betamax fashion, the invention of this would go on to remove the 35mm-film era from history, being unfathomably more accurate than film photography available at the time. It would also propel general technology ahead about a century. 

I don't know how much more thought I should give the story, as it's probably enough to get some good work from at the moment, and of course, I like to let the art sort of just develop the story as I work. 

Retro-futuristic / Sci-fi sketches.

In the sketches above you can see the inventor testing an early caricaturist photography device, producing 5x7 resolution portraits. You can also see other relevant-of-the-time applications for the device which I don't think are as interesting as the portraiture one, but are still appropriate. In the middle on the bottom you can see a sort of quasi butler / hal character which moves around on rails, and also a weightlifter on the bottom right training against it. The top half of the page is mainly me trying to 

convey the life of the inventor and his mannerisms. 

Below are some further sketches to fit into this world. They don't quite match up stylistically yet. But the top right and lower left ones I feel could converge pretty nicely, and I especially like the androgynous feel of the latter, and will definitely be experimenting with the fashion, like I have here, further. 

Further Character Designs w/ Lighting