What...March already??!!@!

This was done over a year ago as a part of an overall concept proposal. It was felt that a comic book feel would best convey the background story.

 

More Dinosaurs

I've been neglecting this poor old blog lately...oops...Anyway here's a dino animation I cobbled together from bits and pieces for one of the local shows. As always there was no budget. The main sauropod was actually a bit of 2D animation.

...Hey! More life drawing sketches!!

 

Not sure if this really works. Strangely enough I was quite happy with my original sketch. It was only when I decided to do a colour version of it that I started to see all of its shortcomings. Oh well, I present it here as evidence 'yer honour..

The Fabulous Baker Boys.

 

These were done for a promo for the TLC network show 'Cake Boss'. It's  basically about a cake baking family empire in New Jersey. The concept was for you to think the mafia have moved in, then it's revealed that the 'boss' head 'gangster' is actually a cake baker. The style was in a sort of a comic-book/ paper cut-out look.

The elements I created were taken into Maya and intergrated into a 3D camera move.

Render sketches

When I returned from holidays someone had left a large A3 style calendar on my desk. I thought ...'Great I can mark off relevant dates right here in front of me'. I then noticed that the calendar was for the year 2009, obviously what I thought was an act of generosity was actually someone cleaning out their trash and dumping it on my desk.

Being the ever resourceful fellow, I flipped it over and I use it as a sketch pad for when I'm waiting for my computer to finish whatever calculation it's doing at the time. The top sketch (Hulk or Frankenstein's  monster) was sketched in blue biro. I then took it into Photoshop to ad the colour.

Happy New Year 2011!

Another one of them thar' Tharks from John Carter of Mars...

Love at First Bite...

A couple of designs done for a game concept. And, you guessed it...there were vampires in it.

Quick sketch..

Another sketch of an old sock character. Ultimately he was deemed a 'bit too furry'. I always liked this one, though.

Warlord of Mars...Tharks

Another John Carter of Mars pic.

I actually started this picture before the Dejah Thoris pic. I kinda got sick of it and put it to one side. I finally got around to finishing it the other night. Yep, against all logic I'm looking forward to the new film....sigh...

 

The quick sketches are experiments in Illustrator. It's a bit like Photoshop...and yet, annoyingly not.

The last illo is a concept from a top secret project that will probably never see the light of day.

More Termites...

Termite Attack!!!

These are some frames from a storyboard concept for 

another Pest Control TVC. The idea this time specifically deals with termite problems. I sort of thought 'Aliens'...'This time it's war' kind of thing could have made quite a fun spot.  The termites are supposed to be this relentless army who is led by an evil queen. The hero is the pest control dude who arrives just in time to stop the ravenous horde from destroying some poor woman's house.

Unfortunately the client passed on the concept.

Possibly a bit over the top for your average day time or late night viewer....

 

Vive la France!

Did the 'History Alive' at Fort Lytton again this year. I took this photo during a recreation of Waterloo (the French won this time around). I then did a bit of picture trickery in Photoshop.

I took the whole family along and made a day of it. There were Romans, Vikings, Knights, Confederate soldiers as well as different groups from WW1 and 2.

We were having a picnic when it was interrupted by a German WW2 tank followed by a parade of German soldiers in full gear. My daughter was most indignant at having her lunch spoiled in this way.

Heresy

At a recent SciFi/Comic convention I got talking to a fellow down 'Artist's Alley' who showed me how he inks his work in Adobe Illustrator. Now, I've dabbled with inking in Adobe Flash with some good results, but I was always keenly aware that I was using the software not in the way it was originally intended. After all, Flash is fundamentally a web/animation program.

Well here's my first attempt at 'penciling' in Photoshop, 'inking' in Illustrator then coloring in Photoshop.

Early days, but I think there's some promise in this technique. It certainly is fast!