“In committing to artistic growth, you need to refine your skills to support your instincts.” Joni Mitchell
"The pursuit, even of the best things, ought to be calm and tranquil."
Marcus Tullius Cicero
Thursday, July 3, 2014
Best quotes about art
“In committing to artistic growth, you need to refine your skills to support your instincts.” Joni Mitchell
"The pursuit, even of the best things, ought to be calm and tranquil."
Marcus Tullius Cicero
Tuesday, July 1, 2014
Thoughts on style
When finding a style, try to make a list of the things that you dislike, on top of the things that you like. One is not the opposite of the other.
Also, try to make a distinction between the things you genuinely want to create yourself and the things that you just enjoy consuming.
Thursday, February 6, 2014
January - Continuation of Design and Prep Work for Months to Come
Another year, another batch of days to improve or atleast claw my way out of the holes I dig myself! One thing I'll to do this year is to track my progress each month. I find that doing so keeps me motivated, sometimes by the sheer shame of how I practically did nothing to move forward.
Besides playing the stupidly addicting card game Hearthstone, here are the things I've worked on.
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| A fairly shy Frankenstein design |
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| Aladdin, inspired by looking at old MAD Magazines |
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| Shangri-La |
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| Cockaigne, an imaginary land thought of by smelly medieval peasants |
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| Avalon, where the trees are delish and King Arthur's blood flows freely |
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| Sodom and Gomorrah, now known as Vegas |
5 out of 6 of these illustrations are done when I didn't have a freelance gig. After I had one, things have progressed turtle slow. Hearthstone, big surprise, is something I blame for this as well. But forward motion is forward motion so onwards to February.
Wednesday, December 4, 2013
Monday, December 2, 2013
Wednesday, November 27, 2013
Friday, November 22, 2013
Green arcanian
Nigby’s acidic spittle flew as he passionately gave his lecture about the many evils of beauty. It was a life-changing talk, no one got a chance to apply it though.
Monday, November 18, 2013
Monday, November 11, 2013
Vandine the Fertile
I was sketching last week and had this idea of a barbarian woman blessed with such incredible fertility that she uses her children as disposable minions in battle. The name “Vandine” popped into my head and I knew I just had to make an illustration out of it.
Here we are many late nights later, the piece is finally finished. I never knew making an illustration is soo challenging. I guess it’s like giving birth. It’s messy, you struggle and push hard to get it out of you and once it’s out, it’s just…out.
I am hungry, sleepy and I need to catch up on work but at last that idea in my head is now born. Ladies and gents, I present to you - Vandine the Fertile.
Here we are many late nights later, the piece is finally finished. I never knew making an illustration is soo challenging. I guess it’s like giving birth. It’s messy, you struggle and push hard to get it out of you and once it’s out, it’s just…out.
I am hungry, sleepy and I need to catch up on work but at last that idea in my head is now born. Ladies and gents, I present to you - Vandine the Fertile.
In addition to this, I also made a coloring tutorial and a preliminary sketch for the character. Check em out below!
Sunday, November 3, 2013
Ridin' Dirty
On his 5000th day of service as a squire, Pekto discovered the ability to turn into a fun-loving cyclops with a set of perfect teeth(for fun-loving cyclops anyway).
Around the same time, his master and all around pain-in-the-butt Sir Sean passive-aggressive, transformed into a leashed pig.
At that very moment, both knew their lives would never be the same.
Thursday, October 31, 2013
Yamabushi Heretic
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
Sunday, September 22, 2013
My own principles of design
What is design?
According to the dictionary, design is a specific arrangement of elements to create a desired result.
Lately I have come to the realization that I can't master all areas of art in my lifetime. I enjoy and want to make many kinds of art but I can't possibly learn all of them in my time here on Earth. Instead I made a list of the things I enjoy most in art and focus on them. These are based on my own values and what I enjoy the most.
In short, these will help me create the desired result - simple, lighthearted, appealing illustrations.
Here are my criteria for good design:
1. CONTRAST - size(big x small), direction(horizontal x vertical), angles(straight x curve), lighting(light x dark) texture(rough x smooth) substance(hard x soft). Don't be shy on making big contrast, push more, experiment, have fun, learn. Experiment the distance between elements(eg. eyes from nose), and play on proportion.
2. SIMPLICITY - simple shapes, clarity and silhouettes
3. APPEAL - anything that catches the eye, could also be but not limited to - cuteness and childish features
4. STORYTELLING - the illustration, animation or work of art must tell a story, not just pretty figures standing around
5. INTEREST - the secret sauce, the thing that will separate your bear design from all other bears. This is
something unique and quirky about your character, like a bear that grows flowers on it's nose, a flower that eats moonlight, a young kid who gets insanely strong after the adrenaline rush of a panic attack. The humorous, the insane, the creepy, the tongue in cheek; anything to add life and make your heart skip a beat while drawing. One can only play with shapes for so much, somewhere, a poor guy is doing the same thing wondering why his characters still look generic.
Monday, August 26, 2013
Sunday, August 25, 2013
WHEEL OF TIME FANART!
This has been a long time coming.
I’ve been listening to WOT audiobooks for the past months while working so I guess it’s just natural to make fanart for the book I love.
P.S. Mat Cauthon is the coolest character ever. Uno is not far behind though with his cursing and eyepatch.
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
Quick painting test
The result of playing Bastion and listening to WOT while working. I'm planning to use the same style in a WOT fanart piece. It's been long overdue.
Tuesday, July 30, 2013
Mid year catch up
Wow! It's been a month or so since I last posted on this blog. Time flies so fast and life threw some huge boulders on my way so yeah. But here I am, stronger than ever before, and itching to get some personal projects done since it's officially the eighth month of 2013. I usually release a cartoon atleast once a year and I'm not planning on breaking that tradition now. It'll probably be released in the last quarter but in the meantime, these are some designs I did for the game I'm working on. I had fun working on them, but more importantly, I got a chance to exercise this new drawing style I've been developing behind the scenes.
Monday, July 1, 2013
My best animation so far
Last year, I accepted a project - making cutscenes for an ipad and iOS game to be exact - and did the best I can for three whole months, even if the project budget is only for 1 month, and being under an NDA until the game is ready to be released.
The reason for this is that I wanted to test where I am, skill-wise on making animations. The budget didn't matter, nor the NDA, I just want to know what will be the result of my full effort. Eventually, I finished it, and the weird thing is that it didn't even bother me knowing that other people won't be seeing my hard work until a year or so.
I forgot about it and moved on to other things.
Fast forward to this day, the client suddenly contacted me, telling me that the game is about to be released on July 16. It's time to release the project to the world! Somehow this didn't excite me, but as I watched my work again before uploading it, the feeling of wanting to give everything I got to making a project suddenly came back to me. I miss that feeling - you're totally exhausted to the point that you just like to sleep for a week, yet you're happy cause you never held back. I think I'm going to try that once again soon, but this time, I'm gonna make sure it's for my own personal project.
Anyway, here's one of the cutscenes I'm talking about:
I did the art and animation, my good buddy Patrick did the voice overs, while the client provided the story.
How bout you, when was the last time you worked really hard for a project? :)
