Baldur's Gate Enhanced Portrait

So, Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition just came out on Steam which I immediately grabbed for nostalgia's sake. Its still rather buggy and the networking isn't ideal currently (they plan on making it more netplay friendly). But nostalgia tends to be a powerful force when it comes to geekdom.

In any case, one of the things I loved about Baldur's Gate was that the resources in the game were fairly open, meaning I could drop in some files and I'd have some shnazzy custom portraits and voicesets to use. So of course, years later and a few professional gigs into my career I'm all about making my own portraits.

I probably could have used some stray model to do a portrait of but I was feeling egocentric at that moment and dug up a picture of myself instead; Which always causes its own problems as you have some sacred cows about your own appearance, at least I do anyway.

And of course I'm a mage.

Painting layout post

Maybe you'll recognize the face from the sketches I posted earlier. I was rather taken by the idea and I'm hoping to get a painting out of it in time for a gallery showing in a couple weeks. I'm nervous since its my first gallery show, even if its group. So many things that could change and struggling with what do change about it. But I like it so I'm putting it up for public perusal before I start on the physical piece.

It also doubles as a fun character portrait for my World of Darkness game, making a changeling... maybe a muse. 

National Self Portrait Day

A day late as I've been doing the last couple of years, but I like it! I'll have to speak to my plastic surgeon about some jaw alignments, but imagery is sometimes about beautification, right? Its also awkward doing a somewhat realistic treatment on top of a sloppy drawing because there's always going to be things like, "My eyes are too close. My lips should be bigger. My jaw isn't that chiseled." Laziness gives its just results. Two-hours in photoshop from a mirror sketch and cellphone picture.

More character things of friends!

I actually finished this soon after the last one I posted but I've been procrastinating on posting it. He said he likes to play gunmen and he likes pets. I forget why we ended up with a clockwork doggy.

Coming back!

Hi all, it seems I am again seeing a lot of time freed up in my employment schedule and that usually means my creative energies are finding some personal avenues to be funneled into. My last contract was actually some game design work which I found an amazing experience. I just really get into system design, numbers and how they correlate to experience. I've been doing balance and general design work for Vorp! a browser game hosted on kongregate. http://www.kongregate.com/games/ENDGamesLLC/vorp

Having explained that, I admittedly haven't been doing much arting which I'm keen to fix in the coming weeks. Going to start sending out messages to let people know I'm free for work and its pretty exciting to consider design work an avenue for me now that I feel much more confident about it. I doubt there's much need but I'm tackling that opportunity if it comes up.

Recently I've started doing a personal project of illustrating some friends as character (as I tend to do). Its a good way to ease back into some character illustration and trying to see where my art muscles are at. A friend also suggested this might be a good time to consider the world of fine art, which I'm hesitant to look into earnestly, I just don't know where I'd fit into that world of expression and self-direction. But we'll see, I'm meeting up with my friend, Veronica, who wants to show me around her gallery and maybe inspire me to become a member of Next Gallery. We'll see.

Enough distractions! Here's the first portrait of a series of characters based on some friends. My process is generally hunting them down and establish what sort of character they want, in this case my friend was interested in some sort of air-mage so this is my crack at it. Currently working on another portrait that includes a steampunk dog. Animals AND mechanics? Definitely some lackness of such in my skillset so I'm excited to see how that goes.

Mouseguard - Kedabra

He's so adorable! Playing in a Mouseguard campaign and he passed out an interesting blue-pencil template of mice and asked us to do a picture of our mice, who am I to refuse an art assignment?