Monday, February 29, 2016

Leap Day Art Update

Happy February 29th everybody! I almost missed making a blog update this month, but luckily we were gifted with an extra day this year.

So far, I've been pretty good about my New Year's resolution of setting aside time to do personal artwork. I've got a pretty big 3D animation in the works for my portfolio, but that one isn't quite ready to show off yet. I ran into a bit of trouble between my tablet and Substance Painter, so I've got a new Wacom on the way. Expect a big update about that project next post.

For now, I wanted to show some of the 2D drawings that I've been doing. For my first drawing of the year, I decided to make something a bit bizarre. I was going through a list of game ideas that I jotted down one day, and I came across this idea about a 2D fighting game where everybody looks like they were made out of paper. Everyone would be drawn on notebook scraps and have a traditional style. I don't think I'm going to take on a project of that magnitude any time soon, but I figured it would be fun to draw a quick mockup character.


Continuing the traditional artwork trend, I drew this picture of Chozu one night with an ink pen and a sharpie. I've always been impressed by the amazing things that people can do with pens, especially manga artists. Having those pure blacks gives a really nice contrast, so I looked up some references and decided to create a fake comic book page. Something else should probably go in that bottom corner, but I'm rather satisfied with this one so I'm a bit scared of messing it up by adding more to it. There's no ctrl+z when you draw on paper!



I decided to do some more pen & ink after that with some Pokemon. I've been really into the whole 20th anniversary celebration, so I recently replayed Pokemon Fire Red. After that, I decided to draw the team that I used in the game. I did a similar piece with Pokemon Black a few years ago when my tablet was broken, so I thought it would be nice to use a similar style. I drew this first on paper, scanned it, and colored it in Photoshop. Heavily inspired by the original Ken Sugimori concept art and his use of watercolors.


Clearly that wasn't enough Pokemon for me, as I then moved onto Pokemon Crystal on GBC. For this one, I decided to go purely digital so I could have a bit more control over things. Instead of a static team photo, I went with a full scene. This is the gang encountering (and capturing) the legendary Suicune inside the Tin Tower at Ecruteak City.


It's been a while since I did a full scene with so many characters, so this took me a bit longer than expected. Overall, it was a lot of fun though. I always love when artists show their process, so below you can see the all of the different phases I went through. That first sketch sure was messy...


 Because I have different heights and distances in the scene, I decided to experiment with some depth of field. I think I could probably get this looking a bit better, but it was sort of just an after thought I decided to play with at the end.



Speaking of extra features, I also thought it would be fun to animate this scene a little. This picture wasn't really made for animation, so don't mind the weird gaps that appear in some places. But I thought it might be fun to move some of the layers around to highlight the fact that it's on a bunch of different planes. This is the kind of subtle animation you might see in something like a motion comic.


Anyways, that wraps it up for this month. It has been nice to take some time to draw for myself again. I should have my new tablet this week, so expect to see a pretty big post about my new 3D project next month. Until next time... Adios!