I started this sketchbook way back in October of 2010 and, about a month ago, I finally completed its final page. I was filling pages at a good pace and was aiming to have it completed by early fall ’11 but, as it inevitably seems to happen, I was forced to slow down towards the end of the year and I finished it much later than I had originally anticipated.
My newest sketchbook is well underway and I will, of course, be posting scans for it sometime over the next few weeks.
But before that, let’s wave my Orange sketchbook goodbye.
The full set of scans for this sketchbook can be found here.
Apologies for the lack of updates but the Holiday season was a busy time for me. I’m starting to get back into my routine and catching up with some of my commissions so, hopefully, the updates will be a little more frequent from now on.
This particular piece started out as something completely different but I just wasn’t happy with where it was going. Then I watched REDLINE (which I recommend for the beautiful animation alone) and it kinda guided the direction I ultimately took this piece in.
The Avengers has the perfect mix of ingredients, The Hobbit has the pedigree and Dark Knight Rises has the edge of the unknown and the unexpected.
Ridley Scott’s Prometheus has all of the above.
Its trailer is easily my favorite out of all of the above films and after many months of vagueness regarding the film’s ties to Alien, I think it’s safe to say now that there are definitely a connection to that franchise. The throwback to the Alien title sequence as well as the quick shot of the Space Jockey and the general aesthetic of H.R. Giger’s work clearly points towards that direction. Ridley Scott’s film career has been fairly ho-hum outside of Alien and Blade Runner but this trailer has gotten me pretty pumped up about the film and it’s gonna be interesting to see what Scott can do with a science fiction story using modern special effects instead of rubber suits.
I’m extremely hopeful but a small part of me fears it could be another case of the Star Wars prequels.
As the year draws to a close and with potentially no new artwork from me until early in the next year, I quickly threw this up to send the year off.
2011 has undoubtedly been my most productive year yet. I tried to show my various attempts at dipping my toes in different styles rather than showing my progress in handling a single method.
September was the hardest month to pick. Some of my best work from the year can be found there.
You can find the template for this meme (done by DustBunnyThumper of deviantART) here.
New Year’s is just around the corner and I have two sets of Sketchbook Updates before I actually dive into my current sketchbook (which is looking pretty empty at the moment, I admit). I’ve been very busy over the last few weeks with real life stuff (the good kind thankfully) but, hopefully, after some time in January I’ll be able to get back into drawing all kinds of good stuff.
The full set of scans for this sketchbook can be found here.
I thought the Hadouken effect was gonna give me trouble but it turns out it was everything else that did.
This isn’t my favorite but I really sank some time on it and I refused to put it down until I was satisfied with what I had, so much so that I added the hobo bag even after I had uploaded everything, which is something I never do. I think the composition is a little too similar to Mario vs. Master Chief and Mario vs. Cloud (I realize that the more of these I do, the harder it will be to not repeat myself but still) and I worked a lot on the background but I don’t think it’s quite at the level I wish it were.
As for the piece itself, I like to think that the set-up is that Ryu walks up to Mario and then Mario takes off his shoes and rips off his sleeves like a badass before they get into it. I need to play with the outfits some more.
I’ve started at least 4 different pieces over the past week and every single one of them I’ve deleted due to “going nowhere” syndrome. I decided to look through my sketchbook and pick out something that I liked and use that as my starting point (which would be the blonde on the right) and everything just kinda went from there.
I tried to keep it simple and focused on the figures and making the reflection seem accurate enough.
The first trailer for Metal Gear Rising definitely piqued my curiosity but the long secrecy behind the game along with the lack of any solid information on what it was actually gonna play like (stealth? action? both?) and Kojima Productions’ ability to truly deliver on the “Lighting Fast Action” tagline has caused my interest in the title to wane a little bit.
Well, Spike’s VGA revealed a brand new trailer for the game today (above) and, just like that, Metal Gear Rising has skyrocketed to the top of my must play list. Sure, it was an exciting, action oriented and very over the top trailer and it seems much closer to the “Lighting Fast Action” promise than the original trailer was but what really sealed the deal for me was “Developed by Platinum Games.” Bayonetta is easily one of my favorites games of the last couple years (Vanquish slightly less so) and, well, these guys know how to do brawlers and they’re gonna make an awesome game out of this. It was the pedigree that Kojima Productions needed to turn Rising from a “well, they tried a different genre at least” to a “OMG, THIS IS THE BEST ACTION GAME I’VE EVER PLAYED!”
I absolutely cannot wait to get my hands on this now.
This was done for the newly started Drink and Draw NYC weekly challenges. It’s amusing to me that I’m doing these from Barcelona but I loved going to the Drink and Draw gatherings back in the lovely city of New York so these online challenges are a great way to keep in touch with that group of people.
The challenge was to mix Gundam with a superhero and after, a fair amount of deliberation, I went with Cyclops from the X-Men because his power seemed one that would translate well to a robot.
And, once again, I love drawing mechs because you can pretty much throw subtlety out the window. You just have to make it bigger, badder and crazier.
A was a little lost as to how to handle this at first but it’s quickly becoming one of my favorites now.
Two things I like about this one:
1) It’s actually the first one where part of the figure is cropped which is a result of me thinking a little more about composition from the beginning instead of creating two floating figures and then throwing a background behind them.
2) I changed the shading up a bit in that there is different colored light being reflected on the figures instead of just gradually darkening of the base color.
The background is obviously inspired by the cover to the first BioShock and it was nice to be able to put a little storytelling in there. I like how it’s the calm before the storm and it just made sense to have the fight be over a Little Sister, even if Mario ends up looking like a dick in the process.
Ryu is up next and the line art is done but I’m gonna wait a bit before I tackle it because there are still other things I want to draw (and commissions too). I’m trying to get these to be a weekly thing at the very least though.
