Richard T's Art Blog

Holiday MTG Cards

2011-12-29T12:46:00.000-08:00

Hi All,
For Christmas I made some of my magic buddies some Magic the Gathering cards as gifts, each one representing them as magic players or their D&D characters (which are them dressed as their characters). Been keeping these under wraps until after the holidays so they don't get a chance to peek but now I can reveal the set. I had to rush a couple to get them (not in time D:) for Christmas, so that's why some of them have uneven areas of finish. Also, facebook is at the same time a great place for reference and a terrible one. Its odd that some of my friends would have hundreds of unusable photos and others would just have the one perfect photo in their profile image. (just a note, I doubt blogspot will open the image at a decent size so just drag the image to a new tab or copy>paste image url)

Campaign Map

2011-12-28T00:43:00.000-08:00

Hey all, just finished a map for my D&D map and sharing it here. It feels rather Elder Scroll-ish with the icons and naming conventions but I think its a provocative one; each name is a story in its own.

Dragon Talon Peninsula

And the last three backgrounds for the iphone commission!

2011-12-14T00:30:00.001-08:00

IPhone game paintings

2011-12-06T13:41:00.000-08:00

Working on a commission for an independent I-Phone game with scrolling paintings for the backgrounds. Here's four of seven that I've done so far. (Posted with permission)

Sketch! Update with value!

2011-11-20T02:24:00.000-08:00

Its been too long since anythings gone up here so here's a late night sketch of an old shopkeep. Ethan Karnopp, Toby Lewin, and I are cooking up an animated concept reel.

Its been awhile since I've done more of a drawing-drawing. Its nice, I should keep a habit of it.

Mural

2011-10-24T17:06:00.000-07:00

I've been planning a mural on my living wall for awhile, this is the latest iteration of what I want it to look like.

Study from movie capture (Defiance)

2011-10-01T00:00:00.000-07:00

Was critiquing another artist's study and figured I hadn't done one myself in a good long time. I left the finished one at the full rez and the progress shots at a more web-friendly size. I estimate it took me about 3 hours. Each progress short is roughly 30 minutes.

Card art backing

2011-09-11T20:57:00.000-07:00

Here's the backing of the cards that shows all the different guards or stances represented on the cards.

And here's a couple more samples of cards:

New Era: Card design

2011-09-11T11:18:00.000-07:00

I recently was given a link to http://superiorpod.onprintshop.com/ by Mr. Mike Rayhawk. It looks like a standard printing company until you take a deeper look at their products page where you'll find that they print custom playing cards and other game accessories.

This was excellent for me because I've been playing a kind of variant 3.0 rules character for a Wheel of Time campaign. After playing a bit of 4th edition I was feeling like the melee classes in WoT was a bit lackluster and developed a system modeled after the sword forms from the books. The basic idea behind the system was that you get a deck of cards (I'd been using marked standard playing cards) representing opportunities to use any of 50+ different maneuvers.

Designing the components of a card has been really fun for me, particularly because I went through the extra effort to make some nifty icons for different stances associated with my variant system. I'll show those off in the near future but I thought I'd put up my card proof since I've just finished it. At the moment I'm not sure if I'm going to do a full card back, I might take a leaf from the Magic the Gathering cards and have a simple background with all the stance icons represented.

I'm such a nerd.

Just some sketching

2011-09-06T00:10:00.000-07:00

Haven't done any finished stuff so here's a little something for now.

More D&D stuff, this time more character oriented.

2011-08-29T12:00:00.000-07:00

Housemate's first 4th edition character (Goliath Barbarian) needed to be celebrated with her own artwork. I'm going to guess 3 hours 30 minutes but that estimate is in hindsight so iunno for realz.

New D&D Stuff 2

2011-08-20T16:38:00.000-07:00

Its been awhile since I've continued work on my tileset so this is my getting onto the bandwagon post. Tried to make a thicker forest type tile with a few "special terrain" extra bits at the bottom. Some blood crystals, some runes, and a rune circle of some sort which I have in mind to make into a god circle. The print is slightly off color from the other tiles as I'm still evolving the palette and trying to figure out a saturation and gamma thats appropriate to use with minis.

Study from a photo of a friend

2011-06-08T02:42:00.000-07:00

I probably could've picked out a better painting ref, sometimes its easy to forget that a good photo isn't always a good painting subject. The subject was rather blown out oddly, which I guess helps pull me away from "strong light overhead". We'll pretend it was a reintroduction to the using broader planes of a face instead of strong contrast.

Game Icons - Art Test

2011-05-21T20:21:00.000-07:00

Got word from Roger Chamberlain that there was a possible position open to do some icons at DireWolfDigital. He asked me to do an art test since my portfolio isn't particularly chock-full of icons.

I'm worried that I tried to fit too much detail to the icons' detriment. And the time spent on these is going to be troublesome if I'm going to attempt more than four a day at the same level of artist's anguish. I suppose I'll have to budget out "stare at drawing for an hour before doing anything".

Another D&D Character

2011-05-14T21:33:00.000-07:00

Wish I could bring myself to develop the armor and outfit more but I've spent enough time on this image that I feel like I should move on. I'm pretty happy with the overall style, I'm hoping that I'll practice enough to blend referenced and non-referenced parts better.

Rosh, Half-orc fighter

Celebrity headstudies

2011-05-06T21:03:00.001-07:00

These would be cooler if they actually resembled the celebrities.

Oh right, I had colored this.

2011-05-02T13:20:00.001-07:00

Forgot to upload the finished version of the armsman drawing. Rearranged his arms to make him more interesting. I'm feeling like I need to do some real studies with figures in action. Doing too many of these "character layout" types. Sweet, I think I figured out how to size up the thumbnails. Much happier.

Blogger's image layouts annoying me.

2011-04-27T15:54:00.000-07:00

Lets see if I can do this right...

Sketch for Armsman

2011-04-22T17:47:00.000-07:00

D&D seems to be my driving creative force as of late. This 'ere is a character concept for a campaign I'm planning on playing in. Kind'uv a classical swordsman adventurer. The setting is based on the book series, Wheel of Time though, which has some great depth when it comes to sword fighting. So much so that I've taken to creating a unique class for the character. I was thoroughly unimpressed with how the official ruleset handled a swordsman.

D&D Portrait

2011-04-15T21:29:00.000-07:00

Revisiting an old portrait that I enjoyed working on. I'm trying to revitalize some character stuff.

New D&D Stuff

2011-03-23T18:05:00.000-07:00

I need to get into the habit of posting new stuff I work on in my personal blog, its getting to the point that I'm no longer giving out this blog to employers cause theres nothing on the first page worth showing. Time to turn this animal around!

Doing some artwork for a D&D campaign I'm planning on rebooting, and whats a campaign reboot without a campaign map?

Had some fun with making this, bevel layer style is the hero of this piece when I accidentally bumped the depth slider to max and it created a really nifty way of planning out mountain ranges. I had to keep the image rather light because I'm meaning to note down locations and I didn't want legibility to be an issue. Some of the shadows actually might still be too dark so I might continue massaging it with some color balance or exclusion layers.

Speedpaint

2010-11-12T01:06:00.000-08:00

Was hanging out in vent and we decided to do a thunderdump, a speedpaint using three objects, a blue bowling ball, red ribbon, and branches.

Some D&D tiles

2010-10-27T22:30:00.000-07:00

Decided to throw up some jpgs of a few dungeon tiles I've been working on for personal use.

Oh, I've been naughty

2010-08-03T15:14:00.000-07:00

I haven't updated this blog in months, its not as if I didn't have anything to show... just hard to post stuff expecting people to see it I guess, not like I have much of an audience after a year of non-posting. A couple of these were speed paints, some I spent a little longer on. I still need to figure a way better to format these new posts.

Oh yeah, I have a blog

2010-01-11T14:42:00.000-08:00

So, I had downloaded the demo version of ArtRage 3. I enjoyed it, it makes me want to give painter another try. Doing this painting made me miss a few things like controlling how much paint is left on the paintbrush. Wish there was an option that would force you to "dip" the brush. I usually painted heavily in an area until the brush began to empty and then slowly blend areas together with what was left in the brush. In art rage I couldn't help but feel like I was doing single-line contour drawing since I couldn't lift the pen without it reloading automatically.

Some unfinished work

2009-11-25T13:09:00.001-08:00

Been too long since my last post so I thought I'd post some stuff. Its unfinished and I don't really plan on finishing them but thats okay.

Dominance War, we begin.

2009-04-01T23:58:00.001-07:00

So, I had decided to join Dominancewar, an international digital artists competition where you have to design a character and illustrate it according to a set topic.

Anyway, so I've started thumbnailing (silhouetting) some designs for my character. I have a beginning idea, but I tend to flit around ideas so I won't say it out loud or it might freeze in the air.

Some old mspaint paintings

2009-03-28T21:21:00.000-07:00

I was going through my image archives and found these MSpaint images that I did before every getting a scanner, photoshop, or a tablet. I was totally a MSpaint badass. Posted for coolness' sake.

Something new!

2009-03-24T23:03:00.000-07:00

I've been getting a few requests from people to paint on their linearts. Just little anime portraits. I took a lot of liberty fudging the lineart and correcting certain areas. I didn't feel too concerned about keeping the virgin lines cause I wasn't getting paid to do so. I'd find it difficult to work around noses/mouths/eyes that I didn't feel comfortable with anyway.

New series of images from LON 06

2009-02-19T20:39:00.000-08:00

Hey, so Legends of Norrath set 6 came out last week so I suppose I'm allowed to post my images. My sister seems to think I did better on the last series. I tend to go back and forth, I think I had a bigger range of quality in the images this time, some I like much better than the last set on average and some are just.... approved cause the deadline was nearing. Also, formatting a splurge of new images is a major headache on blogspot. This window I'm typing in is teeny and its a pain tracking the images everywhere.

Small update

2009-01-28T15:42:00.000-08:00

Trying to figure out my color profile issues with the air genasi. I seem to have found the reverse problem... but its getting better, or at least it seems to adjust in my favor.

Update on a picture

2009-01-26T21:41:00.000-08:00

*sigh* I'm having a bunch of trouble with my color profiles, everything keeps saving out with a bluish tint. Its really getting on my nerves because it also messing up the contrast of my images. Compensating is hard too because its imprecise and doesn't really prevent the contrast evenly. I'm going through my monitor's color profile and photoshop's color settings and setting them to Adobe RGB 1998 but the "monitor color" preview for photoshop is still showing the image with more blue added.

So anyway, I've changed my character a bit and gave him a full pauldron and more armor along the arm. I'm worried about balance but the character is just looking too badass at the moment for me to care that much.

Two new images for January

2009-01-21T21:46:00.001-08:00

Alright, I have myself a face study, Tortuga (someone from ventrilo) was doing a face study on ventrilo and I was bored so I stole the photograph that he posted and did my own study. Note to self: Get a solid drawing down when doing portrait studies.
Also, new character!

Made a new air genasi character in D&D and I was having some fun doing an illustration for him. Not completely done but here's what I have for today. I plan on finishing the hand and maybe redoing the gauntlet, the clothes need some polish too. There might be issues with the canvas color, I might do something with it to get his head and hair to pop out a bit. I'm also having problem with color profiles, apparently the color profile that I'm working in Photoshop is NOT the same profile that it uses to save my work, so my images are coming out lighter and with a blue tint to them :/
Bit nervous about the aftermath of a job interview.... was hoping they'd call by today, otherwise it seems like I'm waiting for... a kind of letter, which I hope isn't the sort that I think these letters are for. Didn't really feel I was a very COMPELLING interviewee, hindsight is 20/20 though, so hopefully I wasn't as bad as I thought I was. It did bring up a good point though, not enough thumbnailing on my site and blog, which was... crippling during the interview. So expect to see me uploading them more often along with their finished products. Except for these last couple of images... I kinda... didn't thumbnail... for them.

New Zombie

2008-12-19T15:46:00.000-08:00

The last of a set of three zombies. Just to remind you all, I've been playing a browser-based zombie survival game called Quarantine 2019. Its more like a freeze tag game where civilians and zombies try to convert each other. Anyway, I decided to reach out to the community cause I was enjoying the game so much; I asked people to submit their own photos to me so I could draw them as zombie characters. It took awhile to get photos but I managed to release a set composed of a Smart zombie, Fast zombie, and Strong zombie. This here is the strong zombie, tough and hard to take down.

New Zombie Picture

2008-12-03T17:52:00.000-08:00

Hey there all, so I've come to post a new zombie for my zombie project. I thought it came out well, was playing with the blur effects to try to make it feel not so static, its supposed to be a "fast zombie". I'm starting to get that I have a lot more fun when I have something in front of me to paint from. I think that's problematic when I'm low on budget and need to put something complex together but portraits are a lot of fun.

Sony Work Hurray!

2008-11-24T18:14:00.000-08:00

Got permission to post my sony work, yay! So here are the six illustrations that I've done.

ZOMBIIESSS

2008-11-18T20:10:00.000-08:00

So, it seems like everyone is playing the demo for Left 4 Dead, so I have zombies on my brain (hoho zombie joke). I've also been playing an internet browser game where you are a zombie or a civilian trying to turn the other to your side; While avoiding getting turned yourself. I thought it would be a fun project to do a set of zombie portraits for the game, sort of as a donation since I've enjoyed playing the game. To kind of stir up the community I've also asked people to submit images as references. I'm sort of withholding the images from the community until I have a full set of a smart, strong, and fast zombie images. But I don't have compunctions about sharing it with the rest of the world! (Or at least the world that reads my blog)

Self Portrait

2008-11-02T12:59:00.000-08:00

So yesterday was Conceptart's internation self-portrait day so I decided to do a self portrait in photoshop. Roughly two hours, from a mirror:

I've uploaded a bunch of older life drawing work to my website but they aren't on display yet, but look forward to seeing those.

Umm, hi

2008-10-26T22:28:00.000-07:00

So... I'm just waiting around I guess. Applied to Netdevil for the position of Concept Artist. It'd be exciting to get but I'm worried about the timing of things. Cause I'm sort of waiting on permission to show the images I did for Legends of Norrath. I'd really love to have that professional work in my portfolio so Netdevil will be all excited to hire me. So I'm kind of in an uncomfortable position of feeling that I'm in stasis while the world moves on. But I'm managing to distract myself I suppose. I started started a sketchbook thread in conceptart.org. It'll just be a secondary place to post work as I do them besides posting them here. Its mostly to reach out to the community, but also I'm hoping to get mentored by one of the more experienced artists. Theres like an hour study of a boxer in the topic for now so its not even worth linking to as of now.

I'm also hosting a project on Gamingw, a community for game-creation hobbyists where I moderate the graphical arts section. I'm doing a 'Face of GW' project where I collect portraits of members and then run them through a morphing program to create a face made up of the averages of all the images. Had a lot of fun last year and I hope to get some higher quality images this year around.

Also! November 1st is conceptart.org's international self-portrait day! Just a reminder to any readers of this blog. The premise is that on November 1st, everyone needs to do a self-portrait and post it on that day. Heres a link in case you want a look-see, they also have links for the topics of previous years: http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=139827

I suppose I'll throw up a sketch for a character I'm playing around with. Its an anthromorphic giant crocodile! Just trying to figure out his shape. Just a fun D&D character, I really wanted to push his ridiculous strength but trying to keep him crocodile (though I actually think he's an alligator... but the monster manual probably wouldn't care to make a difference).

Panaromic Art and John Lennon's B-Day

2008-10-07T14:40:00.000-07:00

So, just to keep up with my blog, i decided to post a bit about what I've been doing. As a hobby, I like to work on game projects, whether its working with software like RPGmaker XP or using a modding program like Warcraft III World Editor. Something I've been interested in doing is, in a RPGmaker project, to do a panaromic background with multiple layers that scroll around at different rates to imitate a scrolling camera. Mountains far away stay fairly static in place while objects up close move much more. I'll post some of the progress I've had with that. I'm up to four layers right now, with the last layer still in a stage of progress, but the shapes are there and its useful to see how dense it'll look once all the layers are in place. I haven't decided whether I'd go beyond four layers. If I do go for a fifth layer it would be more for random doodads than a wrap-around treatment of generic landscape. But here are the layers as I have them:

So yeah, I'm pretty excited to see it once it gets into the program and all the layers start moving independently of each other. It should be noted that all of the layers "wrap" so I'm able to repeat them indefinitely. I think its extremely helpful that they would be scrolling at different rates since the shapes should combine in ways to make it less obvious that they repeat. Of course, the layer that has the highest probability of being noticed as repeating is the highest layer. So what I may end up doing is doubling the width of it and fill it in with more shapes so repeating it would be delayed.

I'm also looking forward to this Thursday, I hope to attend the Imagine Peace Paint-In in downtown Denver. Its a large event inviting local artists and local bands to paint and play (respectively) in Civic Park. I haven't quite figured out the logistics of carrying canvas, palette, painting supplies, and easel downtown but I should be able to manage. Hopefully I'll find my friends already down there and they can look after my stuff if multiple trips to my car are necessary.

Ooh, and something else exciting is that SOE is planning on releasing their new Legends of Norrath online card game set, Ethernauts, later this week. As soon as they do so, I should be able to get permission to post the work I've done for the set here and on my site. So look forward to that!

New Character Art: Khurshel

2008-08-25T19:44:00.001-07:00

I'm feeling pretty frustrated by the work I'm doing for SOE. I'm just struggling to find my mindset when doing some of the images; I can't find that one element in the image to drive me to finish it. I'm working with my main stay of finding repetitions of light and dark but I'm having a hard time finding suitable references for what I want to do.

Anyway, today, after a few hours of messing up one of the illustrations I decided to take a break and do an illustration for Khurshel, a D&D character I play. He's a beguiler/wizard/ultimate magus Illumian, but that's not he craziest thing about him! During character creation, the DM decides each character's magic items and he decided to give my character "The Suit". The suit is a magical tuxedo with a matching stovepipe hat...

Its very different from how I usually visualize my characters, but I ran with it (pictured right w/my bat familiar, Esma!). I'm very happy with the result... although... you could probably find the model reference by googling "tuxedo" within the first few pages. :S

2008-08-20T18:19:00.000-07:00

The Great Game is a forum event that I plan on running late 2008, or whenever GamingWorld 6 launches, whichever comes later. The game rules are fairly complex, but the main point that I'd stress in this post is that its a lot of opportunities to draw for me. Every other week, each day, I create a small illustration for The Great Game. More information will follow, but the game is something of an RPG/Risk Board Game. Anyway, I plan on setting up a website so its easier to disperse instructions. For that I've done the following works, representing the twin goddesses that work to split up the players among two forces. Red White (bottom) represents uncontrolled creation and passion while Lady Black represents negation and control through a negative process. Lady Black represents negative creation, in certain types of sculpture, such as marble carving, you create by removing material. Her powers and philosophy is centered around less is more; color is light bands negated.

Sony and Personal Work

2008-08-03T19:17:00.001-07:00

Oops, haven't been keeping track of the blog as much as I probably should. Well, I signed the contract with SOE so I won't be able to show any of the images I'm working on until the card set has been released, which I don't know when that will be. However, it doesn't stop me from posting personal work!

This was a character portrait done for my face to face D&D DM's wife's character. A level 7 ranger with a snake motif. I kinda feel like I need to make the snake at the bottom more obvious and larger but I dunno, maybe I'll keep her pet out of the way. I enjoyed practicing armor in the picture, though I'm wondering if it was a big deteriment not having any kind of armor reference photo. I'm not that pleased with the sleeves, they are really brushy and don't really feel like any particular type of fabric. I'll probably do some more experimenting to try to get different types of cloth.

Starting to work on my cards

2008-07-09T14:06:00.000-07:00

So I've started to work on my card assignment for SOE. Heres the assignment description:

Location: A clearing in a swamp.
Action: A mighty troll leader rushes forward with his large war axe. Several other trolls are advancing behind him.
Focus: They are filled with anger.
Mood: It's an ambush!

My first rendition of the picture was pretty plain and ugly in my opinion so I scrapped it and started working anew. I guess I didn't really have anything in mind when I did the first one so I decided to refocus myself and go through the assignment again. I wanted to really hit up the brutality of the piece. Also, looking at the first one, they looked more like squat goblins than lanky trolls. So I went out of my way to really stretch the pose of the main character, stretching out his neck so he could give a big warcry. I also added a very scribbly figure in the lower left hand whose face is being grabbed by the troll. It looks more like a ball of scribbles but its tough to draw a guy whose face is being grabbed. Anyway, hes meant to lend some sense of scale to the trolls.

Anyway, these are very very rough drawings, but I'm concentrating on the drawing composition so I'm not going very far into making these very clear necessarily.

Old:

New:
Also, I was given a very spiffy PSD as a card template so I could see how the image looks with the border colors and the fade off at the bottom. Extremely useful, I wish I had this when I was assigned a test image.

Right now, the biggest issue that keeps coming up is that this card isn't showing an ambush! To me, it just looks like a nice warband of trolls lead by another troll. Apart from trying a totally separate idea, I think I have two ways to go about this. I could scale back the image and expand it to show some troupe of soldiers who can show surprise at the ambush. The other way is just reworking the diagonal movement in the picture so it looks like they are either bursting from the ground or rushing down a hill; maybe show them at the moment where they are coming from behind some trees or something so lots of explosive shattering of terrain.

I'd actually prefer the second method, because I'm worried that by shrinking down the action and including more figures I'd be losing the main idea behind the card, which is to showcase the main troll. If the card was showcasing the act of ambush, this card would totally fail, but I'm trying to balance between showing some kind of ambush while making sure the card is clearly about that troll.

Back on the blogwagon

2008-07-01T17:27:00.000-07:00

Eh, took a kind of break from the blog after graduating I guess. Some news about SOE though, I did get accepted in their artist pool, and I plan on getting a contract on their next assignment run. If I do good work there's an interview possibility at the end. I wasn't really given much information about the interview, but I assume its for an in-house position with benefits. In the mean-time just playing around with personal projects. I recently jumped aboard a small garage-game project that my friend is working on. Its a videogame done in a game engine called RPGmaker VX. I'll be doing hand-drawn maps for the game. I'm very excited to be a part of it because of the visual scope. The game is based in large part inside the Yggdrasil tree of Norse legend. My friend will be doing a loose level-design for the maps which I'll come in and illustrate for her. While I've been waiting for that I've produced a few pieces to sort of sculpt out the design for it.

Change of mood!

2008-05-22T16:32:00.000-07:00

So I woke up this morning and took another look at the work I've done so far on the illustration. I didn't really think I could do another one without making Roger wait a few more days so I decided to attempt to finish this one. I did some minor tweaking to the poses and settled on a position for the sword. I'm not 100% convinced that the focuses of the illustration works out but I'm feeling better about it. Also, I'm starting to notice that the kind of purple-teal tiles I was working on at the bottom actually made the picture feel reallly flowery. It feels like a flower field in the middle of a dungeon. Anyway, heres the final that I've sent:

To be scrapped

2008-05-21T23:50:00.000-07:00

While I was waiting on some crits I kept working into areas that I felt were fairly safe. I took a break from the image and came back and I was totally aghast. The poses are -awful-. I'm scrapping it and starting with thumbnails tomorrow. I really like the colors and the some areas but the poses are just so much of a wreak it might be better just starting over. I don't know, maybe I can just do major adjustments to the image. I worry that I might come across a conflict of interest though if I have to repaint some of the nicer areas.

Test Image

2008-05-21T11:51:00.000-07:00

Image Description

Location: A dungeon room.
Action: A large and powerful Troll swings his sword in a broad arc.
Focus: A tiny Gnome is nimbly ducking under the swing.
Mood: Little guy makes good!

This is the assignment I was given by Roger Chamberlain, art director of SOE. I've done about three redos of the assignment so far and this is the latest version I've been working on. I feel like I'm struggling a bit because I'm not used to have multiple figures in an environment like this. Its definitely going to be something I'm going to practice with this summer. Because I've been looking at this picture for so long, I'm worried that theres some things I'm just not seeing. Also, because the action of the picture is supposed to be the gnome ducking under a moving sword, I'm not sure how I want to illustrate that. The sword right now is a placeholder to however I decide to do it, but at the moment, theres a slight motion blur to it. My issue right now is whether it looks like the gnome is ducking or if they are simply posed together.

Last post for today... I think

2008-05-13T23:14:00.000-07:00

Phew... I'm exhausted, but pretty proud of my work output. It was nice to be on my game it seems today and yesterday. Here is the final of the environment. Had a lot of fun with playing around with my brushes to simulate the leaves. The floor of the picture is probably the least attractive of the image. But I don't know what to do with it. I was trying to do water, but its rather brushy I think.

Lots of posts today

2008-05-13T18:00:00.000-07:00

Moving on to the environment part of the illustration final I decided to redo the painting. The basic location is the same but I wanted to tweak the perspective to try to increase the vertical appearance of the environment. Separating the background from the foreground was a very good accident on my part. I think its must better than the sketch I had previously. I've been using some adjustment layers to augment the painting temperature wise and get a good gradient going on. I'm still figuring out how to do the wood "windows" along the left side of the painting. I'd like them to feel like stained glass but to be sure to keep them looking natural.

New Finished(?) Version

2008-05-13T11:58:00.000-07:00

I've put in more detailing into the face and tried to flesh out the roots a bit. It was hard to get a kind of bark texture on the roots because I wanted to keep them so thin, with the ruddy colors I used they actually started looking very fleshy and "war of the worlds blood veins"-esque. I started using a multitude of special effect layers to layer on top of the original and try to pull a more gritty worked into image. Also, I had forgotten that the work was for the CGchallenge which was themed around the circumstances of human-alien relationships. Originally I had then put in a McDonalds bag but it looked so much like an afterthought. My friend, Veronica Franklin was helping to critique the drawing too and she mentioned that it looked like he ought to be interacting with something. This was before the McDonalds addition and she had actually suggested something like a firefly off of the top of her head. But I decided to incorporate the McDonalds theme further and integrated a french fry into the image. This is actually the image I ended up submitting for the CGchallenge. Maybe its because I was overlaying some photography elements though, but the image seems fairly compressed in areas. It seems really bothersome to me but it must be some illusion or other thats making me see compression artifacts.

Heres an editted version with some small tweaks to the highlights and shadows as suggested by Bryan.

From Scratch

2008-05-12T18:35:00.000-07:00

So, Bryan was not impressed with my previous work. His e-mail hit me pretty hard. After I recovered I went back to photoshop and redid the alien. I think what I was missing from some of my pictures was that I wasn't looking at something while drawing. I'd look at artwork before and after, but I didn't have some kind of inspirational piece somewhere on the screen where I could pull ideas from. So I pulled up one of the artist's personal site links up that I have and propped up one of his images on my other screen as I worked. I decided it was easiest for me to deal with a drawing that grew out from black, it'd let me focus the painting more and give me a better basis to do the kind of silhouette drawing I like. I definitely was looser when doing this rendition, I think I had a kind of "fuck it" attitude at this point. But we'll see if that works for me or not.

Work in progress

2008-05-10T15:42:00.001-07:00

Heres an update on the alien, following Bryan's advice I've re-established the alien's silhouette and I've extended it out to include some of the branches to take advantage of their shapes. I've also thinned out the roots of the alien's legs though I'm not sure I've recaptured the kind of centipede-motion of the first sketch.

Further Developments

2008-05-07T00:53:00.000-07:00

I got as far as I could with the character design without dropping asleep on my keyboard. I decided to keep the alien much more tree-like and I started playing with the branches and roots, making them look a bit more like an octopus' tentacles. I also think clothes was the easiest way to make them look intelligent, detract from their "treant" appearance, and elevate them as more mysterious, "How do they put on clothes!?!"

I also started the environment study. I was struck by inspiration when I was talking to Ellen earlier and decided I wanted the environment to be designed as a "cathedral of light." Which makes sense because the aliens are so plant-like that I wanted to flood their environment with light. I think the stark lights would also create very interesting speckling effects on the floor and in combination with the alien's own foliage.

I started looking up bizarre trees and I found I really like banyan trees, particularly their root systems and their odd behavior of growing supporting root structures from their branches. I thought this would be perfect to create columns or pillars in my environment. I also was interested in trying to recreate a cathedral's stained glass windows by creating intertwining branches and vines to create port-holes along the walls. A few wells of light above water fountains completes the environment. Since its 2:00am I think I'd like to sleep a bit before looking at the environment again. I'd like to come up with more ideas for it. I'll probably think about drawing out individual elements to give them more design-attention and to better illustrate their structure. The light well is particularly important I think because right now it gets lost in the stark value-image I have here.

Oh, here are some banyan tree images from google for good measure.

New Alien!

2008-04-28T19:34:00.001-07:00

I was struck with this idea over the weekend of a plant-like alien who grew from an amorphous plant material to mimic the shape of species it was communicating with. I started drawing the face as something growing out of the side of a branch and swinging it back into the leaves but I started giving it its own unique form. The foliage in the back started becoming a shape that I thought looked like a snail's shell so I started building off of that.

This "Wood Snail" species is peaceful and contemplative, having evolved from navigating plants who tilled their own soil. I decided that they would decorate their head branch to draw attention to the large "tree top" growing behind them. With their clumsy hands and tiny little fingers I decided it would be interesting to give them an aesthetic value of small intricate work to contrast their roughness and sort of stir thoughts of spiderwebs on trees.

I'm pretty happy with the study of the face. I think the alien having a bark-like texture provides a different look to the character while allowing me to use that familiar slim alienesque face shape. I think having multiple eyes also sort of call to mind those tree-knot shapes that resemble eyes, also it sort of pushes the perception that this species is very observant. That, combined with having no mouth, makes for a very wise-looking species. It kinda reminds me of the legend of the owl, where people believed them to be wise because they had such huge eyes and seemed to be able to turn their heads all the way around.

Alien concepts

2008-04-22T22:35:00.000-07:00

Working some concept sketches for the CGchallenge: Uplift
http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/uplift_universe/

I tried to put down a variety of different types of aliens and then I plan on picking one to start branching out a bit. I also learned today that the CGchallenge entries are supposed to be fully finished illustrations though the entries can be awarded by the separate categories. I'll probably focus on the concept stages during the semester and continue with the larger composition outside of class then.

Refinished Cover

2008-04-15T23:31:00.000-07:00

Went back into the seawolves' eyes and the scales around the eye-sockets. Added a bit of drool and lights on the teeth. Lightened the shadow on the bottom of the character's tunic though I ended up covering it up with some leaves since I wasn't that impressed with it. Also scattered some lighter values into the darker areas, hopefully without disrupting the strong diagonal light going through the composition. I've uploaded a larger image than the last one to show some of the work I've done.

Finished? Cashel Cover

2008-04-07T18:05:00.000-07:00

Divergent paintings! The noon-end is nigh!

2008-03-31T16:56:00.000-07:00

I was feeling unhappy with my first attempt at the Cashel painting, I felt like the elements were separating themselves. I tried to be a little bit more free with the second attempt but I'm failing at colors it seems. I thought I liked the second try, but after working on it and opening up the first. I'm at a loss of which I like. I understand the first one is a bit further along but I'm stuck on which I want to put my energy into...

Flesh/Muscle Study

2008-03-24T20:59:00.000-07:00

Ah, new study from a photograph. I was really dissatisfied with the initial stages and then I started working into it a bit more with layer "glazes" and smaller brushes to get some more interesting brush strokes going on with a unified value transition. Also practically erotica.

Quick post

2008-03-18T23:50:00.000-07:00

Kinda sharing the computer with my sister who has lost internet access so I have to be quick about this. I was planning on creating more comps related to different pictures I like but computer-space is limited. I'm fairly happy with the way things look with what I have right now though. I'm just sort of getting involved with value and color.

Reference Photos

2008-03-11T23:20:00.000-07:00

I was able to get my classmate and friend Shane to model for reference pictures. Its really fortunate that I have a big friend like him. The character for the next cover project calls for an even bigger build, but indication of muscle definition is a huge plus. I tried a few photos with just the room lighting because I wanted try to get something similar to outdoor light first. The later pictures were done with lamps; I definitely like the controlled lighting better but I'd have to tweak the setting to allow such moody lighting. Maybe they will be fighting in the shade or something. I forgot to get references for Garric, the second character, he ought to be slumped down next to the standing character, Cashel. I don't really think it'll be much of a problem though, I think any reference will work fine even with it not sharing the same lighting, the way I'll paint it will probably be more indicative than a focal point.

New Thumbs

2008-03-04T20:04:00.001-08:00

Trying to spawn some new thumbnails for the next cover, but I'm feeling fairly uninspired by these. I really think I'd like to do one of the older ones. I checked out the Lord of the Isles book from the library and I've begun rereading. I love this book! Such a great setting and mysticism. Theres a lot of good character description for Nonnus, a character in the book that I hadn't really focused on while thinking about creating covers. But he's such an intense character, I think it'd be fun trying to illustrate him. I just can't pin down a comp for him though...

Sooo close

2008-02-26T23:28:00.000-08:00

Ack, stayed up late to try to finish the bookcover. I think I made large headway with the stained glass background but I still haven't done much with the outfit. I'm not really sure how I want to paint the clothing. I think I've spend too long thinking about the cover, too worried about having it look "finished".

I recently finished a personal picture, it took longer than I thought but I worked consistently on it with very little "dead work" going into it. Just having a lot of fun with brushes and expressing motion with the snake. As cheating as it is, I think its a lot easier working back and forth between a drawing and a solid form. I think it lets me be a bit more free with my brush stroke and texture. The snake on a white ground was really fun to do. In this case the background was easy to put in afterwards but I suspect most images aren't as forgiving as a densely foggy backdrop.

Tenoctris work-in-progress

2008-02-16T10:09:00.001-08:00

I was concentrating on the background in the bookcover with Tenoctris. I was thinking about her symmetrical pose and I wanted something that had more movement in the background to give the cover some more dynamic movement. I also wanted to incorporate an idea that Bryan Leister suggested, a bird motif.

Painters, Paintings, and Paint

2008-02-13T17:32:00.000-08:00

So, working on four different projects is difficult! But I'm managing them for the time being. I'm really running out of time to do my triptych for the thesis though. I did a photoshop sketch just to knock out a running composition for when I come in tomorrow. My friend Veronica's husband, Todd, is my model for the figure in the painting. It works out because his hair is great and he's free.

Came out of my meeting with Bryan with a lot of thoughts. Its funny that sometimes you'll know how to go about planning out a painting and then forget and then it takes someone else to remind you that paintings take research! So I'm going back to abcgallery.com and artrenewal.org to browse through some artist's work. Definitely Gustav Klimpt is sort of where I'm grabbing inspiration right now. I think I'm attracted to his work because his figures break "real space", which is sort of something I'm after right now. His figures are sort of embedded into the patterning and the atmosphere around them.

But this is the image I have so far in any case, I'm still meandering about what to do with the bottom spaces. I like some of the ideas going into it so far but the sketch doesn't interest me as much as I want it to interest me. I feel like I really need to break up the larger color shapes and really dig into it. Patterning makes it easier because it can take up space but have a lot of content. I just have to make sure not to overdo it. I'm also starting to lose what I really want to do in this painting. I have my initial conceptual idea that I used in my proposal, but now that I'm doing the sketch and looking at Klimpt, I realize I didn't really have a clear visual idea of what I want to do. My study set my direction but I don't know which road to take in that direction.

Also, after Bryan showed me all of these luscious oil paintings, I really want to start working in oil again. I like the idea that my acrylics may look like oil paintings, but theres really no way to get brush strokes in acrylic without difficulty. I have very little experience with oil, Mary is there to help, but should I be switching my last semester? Bah.

Oh, and heres the reference photo that I'd like to use for my Tenoctris image, my sister modeled for me.

Updated Tenoctris

2008-02-11T16:48:00.000-08:00

Changed the design slightly with more information about some brocade along the sleeves and basic color and value information. I just did the background with random lines, I think theres some interesting things happening but theres too many central points, which will probably be reduced in the final. I'm wondering whether I'll have the background completely tiled this way or if I'll shape it as a slab board.

Work in Progress

2008-02-09T10:18:00.001-08:00

So I had sketched out a rough of what I had in mind for Tenoctris so I have an idea of what to look for in reference pictures. The books mention that she wears a heavily-brocaded robe so I've been nabbing at those. Being a court-wizard, I also imagine her to be fairly well-dressed. A line in the book where shes described as a little bird helped me design her face and I hope the expression will help subdue her ostentatious clothing. The face is mildly abstracted, I rather like the long neck and the sloping shoulders.

I've also attached some reference pictures that I've just recently come across, a lot of Indian and that area. I'll probably incorporate more of the clothing design into the sketch.

Thumbs for Lord of the Isles & Strategist

2008-02-05T21:59:00.000-08:00

Decided to post up the preliminary sketches (or in the book project's case, thumbnails). It was difficult working on the Lord of the Isle sketches because I hadn't read the book in so long. But I have a pretty good vivid vision of what I do remember from it.

What I've got!

2008-01-30T13:50:00.000-08:00

I'm unused to posting things about what I have -unfinished- so this will get some getting used to. Umm. Well, I'm still working on work for Bamboo, the short film project that the Digital Animation Center is doing, I think Dan is planning on pairing me with one of the animators to work out the forest terrain. On my own initiative I sort of painted out a part matte part concept picture of a bamboo scene, I don't think its appropriate to the terrain but maybe the atmosphere is there.

I'm also in the preproduction course for the 2009 senior production, so I'll actually be doing the work for two films, which is really exciting for me, both because I'll have a chance to actually see this from the beginning and just because this is delicious for a resume. We're still trying to figure out a story hook for the production so you won't be seeing concepts from me until later.

Outside of school, I'm starting some work for my friend Dan on his Conquest trading card game. I've just signed a contract (one without NDA interestingly enough). I've always heard nothing but bad things about work-for-hire jobs but it sounds like I should be fine if I just need the images for portfolio purposes. I don't think Dan and his brothers are the type to take that away from me. Honestly, I'd really like to find out how Wizards of the Coast handles their contracts. *note to self, e-mail them about it!*

The Final Semester

2008-01-16T17:00:00.000-08:00

I can't decide whether the break was too long or too short. I didn't really feel I accomplished as much as I should've, though I recognize that I did do some work. I'm just happy that it seems as that my classes have all been lined up for next semester. Going over my schedule, I have -so- many classes that I know will demand a lot of work. For a time when I ought to be focusing on developing my thesis show, I seem to be setting myself up for a breakdown. I've never had to deal with a stress-related breakdown before but the time seems ripe!

Also, I think life has just slapped me. I don't have any real work-experience and I have $200 to my name. I'm feeling very awesome about the future right now!

If I think about it, while I don't necessarily have any clock-in job experience, I seem to touch on a lot of cornerstones of what may be perhaps my future career. I'm not just a student who wants to be a concept artist; I'm a student who has done concept art. I go to the sites, I buy the magazines, and I moderate a forum dedicated to graphic art. None of this stuff pays but that might change. My friend wants to produce a trading card game and he's been very serious about recruiting artists. I don't really feel like he's paying anything near competitive, but if the product launches, I think it'd be a great thing as a student who already has art on a product.

I'm still non-confident with my abilities as a draftsmen and I still lack a core ability where I can take an idea and carry it all the way through to the finish. But, winning Best Artist on GamingW was a nice little booster. Well, here is to ongoing growth in the coming weeks!

Update on the end of this semester

2007-11-28T15:50:00.001-08:00

Gwak.
The word to describe the end of the semester. I think yesterday I was really getting a little panicky about the last few weeks till finals but I think I've calmed down some and established exactly what I need to get through. My worry now is getting my independent study setup so I'll have enough credits to graduate at the end of next semester.

On the art side of things, I'm pretty excited, Mary got me into contact with a first-time author who needed a student to do a book cover for him. Its a little awkward because its the first time for both of us doing this, and I'm actually older than him. But I'm excited to be taking another step towards being a working professional. Actually, come to think of it, I should get into contact with Bryan since he has a lot of experience doing covers.

Besides the new cover oppurtunity I've been trying to get into contact with another job oppurtunity, this time as a muralist for some sort of children's playhouse. I don't want to say where in case I jinx myself. The job seems pretty unlikely, I'm not even sure if they are looking anymore but I'd love to get it.

Enter the fray

2007-11-14T17:57:00.000-08:00

So, blogging was suggested to me by Bryan Leister, a professor at UCD. So here I am.

So I guess I'll introduce myself.

My name is Richard Tran, a senior undergraduate attending University of Colorado pursuing a BFA with a double emphasis in painting and drawing. In the future, I hope to somehow work in the game industry. A dream job would be working preproduction and postproduction for a game company. I'm also keen on working up a reputation as a fine-artist.

I'll post my digital work here as well as on my site, http://medieve.leafo.net/. I'm looking to use this blog to talk about my work in detail that my site can't. I'll have to poke around this blog to feel more at home right now. This short intro should be fine for now.