Frog

It's my monthly video game themed post! I think there's no better day to do it on than today, the day when the biggest video game ever is being released (that's Grand Theft Auto IV by the way). Which means that for today and the following weeks we'll all enjoy the numerous news stories about how this game turns kids into homicidal drug dealing criminals. I will not be playing it. At least not for a couple months. I'm under a self imposed game buying freeze. I was buying a lot of games and not playing them because my "to play" pile was getting bigger than my "currently playing" pile could ever catch up to so I'm trying to exercise some self control and finish what I've got before I get more. My gaming embargo will be lifted on June 12th (coincidentally in time for Metal Gear Solid 4) but until then I've got plenty to play.

Right now I'm playing:

Resistance: Fall of Man - Why this incredible FPS doesn't get more attention than the very average Halo series I'll never know.

Metal Gear Solid 2 - This is the last of the previously released Metal Gear Solid games I've not played. This is one of those video game franchises that tells the type of story and has characters and situations in it that really could not successfully exist in any other medium. They are all so weird and wonderful.

Rock Band - Still Awesome.

I've recently finished:

Zack and Wiki - I actually liked this game less when I finished it. The early puzzles are short, fun, and solvable, but near the end cease to be any of those things. I'd still recommend it, just not as glowingly as I did last time I posted.

Metal Gear Solid - Fun, engaging, challenging, rewarding...I love this game.

Chrono Trigger - Frog is a character from this game (in case you were wondering why I painted a frog with a sword and wearing armor), he's a warrior cursed to look like a frog and he speaks in old english (how cool is that?). He's my favorite character from the game and he's also got a great musical theme. If you like JRPGs and retro games definitely track down a copy of Chrono Trigger.

Games I started to play, but didn't like very much, and stopped:

Devil May Cry 4 - This is a good game, the DMC series is just getting stale. I highly recommended it if you haven't played any of the others or you just loved the others so much that more of the same sounds great to you. I just got a little bored.

Super Smash Brothers: Brawl - I tried to get into this series with Melee and just didn't get it. I tried again with Brawl and I still don't get it.

Anyway, what are you playing? Anything good?

Benjamin Linus

LOST is on again tonight (woohoo!) and it's a Ben-centric episode (woohoo?).

Green Gore

I'm not sure how well I captured the likeness, but anyway, Happy Earth Day...yesterday.

Tutorial Thingy

This is a demonstration I did here at Avalanche for my fellow artists. Others have posted or may post their demonstrations as well. I talk mostly about shape-making and composition then start a sketch (which eventually became my "Wii Warrior" a few posts before this one) using those principles. It's pretty long but is hopefully informative in some way to those interested, if any, in my thinking process.

The Seward Family

This is a new piece for a project I started a while ago. I didn't like the direction it was going then and dropped it. After some retooling I'm excited to start it up again. I've found I'm good at starting things, but not finishing them.

Wii Warrior!

I consider myself as much a gamer (I really hate that term) as I do an artist. I play almost every day (to my wife's dismay). I own a DS, Wii, and Playstation 3 (60gb). I don't know who visits my blog and plays games but I want to occasionally do some video game themed art and list what I'm playing in hopes that people can see what good games are out there and post suggestions for other games I might enjoy. I'm fortunate to have 3 brothers who are all gamers and I feel like we're in our own little game club, so I at least expect them to contribute.

Right now I'm playing:

Zak and Wiki: the Quest for Barbaros Treasure - If you own a Wii I would seriously consider getting this game. It is fantastic and one of the few 3rd party Wii games to really "get" the platform.

Silent Hill: Origins - A worthy addition to the series, and considering how amazing the series is, being called a worthy addition is high praise.

Chrono Trigger - I've wanted to play this for a long time since it is generally considered one of the best console RPGs out there. Younger players might be turned off by it's 32 bit presentation (it was originally a SNES title), but don't let that stop you. It has it's reputation for a reason, the story is great the characters are charming and the gameplay is really smooth. I'm really digging it.

Rock Band - Awesome.

I've recently finished:

LOST: Via Domus - Fun for LOST fans (like me), but I can't imagine anyone else liking it.

Professor Layton and the Curious Village - If you own a DS get this game!

Bigfoot

I guess Totoro was grossing people out so I've updated my blog with another woodland creature. This one painted with watercolors about 20 years ago. I think I was 7 or 8 at the time.

Alan Tew's Totoro

This is a painting I did from a sketch by my friend Alan Tew. Check out his blog here.

"My Friends..."

I've been doing a lot of caricatures lately (as you can probably tell). They're pretty quick, plus I feel like I learn so much doing them. What is a group of caricatures without politicians like John McCain? I'm having fun with these so I'll probably keep doing them for a while.

The Good

The Bad

The Ugly

Captain Ahab

"..the madness, the frenzy, the boiling blood and the smoking brow, with which, for a thousand lowerings old Ahab has furiously, foamingly chased his prey-more a demon than a man!"

-Herman Melville

Happy Birthday Heather

My wife's birthday is on Sunday and she loves to cook. She has a binder which she keeps original recipes, recipes off the internet, and recipes from magazines in and has expressed an interest in me drawing a cover for it. So I did this for her birthday and gave it to her a little early.

Happy Valentine's Day from Chicago, 1929

I did this for the Avalanche Blog. The theme is 1920's gangster and, this being Valentine's Day, I could think of no more fitting a piece than a tribute to the Saint Valentine's Day massacre of 1929. Al Capone's men took out 5 of 'Bugs' Moran's men (plus 2 others), execution style, in a warehouse on Chicago's north side. Al Capone was conveniently out of town at the time. My favorite part of the story is the dude who's full of about ten bullets telling the cops "I'm not gonna talk - nobody shot me." before dying. That's dedication!

"It's not the years, honey, it's the mileage."

I can't help but get excited about the new Indiana Jones movie.

Knighty Knight

This is a concept painting I did from a design by my brother Josh. He's the main character for a little animation we're working on. Should be fun.

The Queen of Snow - 2

I made some changes based on the suggestions of my fellow artists here at Avalanche. I took some of the warmth out of her face and simplified the background. Subtle changes, but I think for the better. Do you agree?

The Queen of Snow

Battling a Beast

Christmas Card

This is a card I did last year for DWHP. They requested I not go too crazy with the charicatures, but it was a pretty fun project. Some turned out better than others.

Woodsy Elf, the Making of...

For those that may be interested, I know there's at least one out there, I've provided an insight into how I work to create the images I do, using my recent Elf picture as an example:

1. I start in Photoshop, the background is generally a flat, neutral color. The sketch is on a multiply layer on top of that.

2. I then take the .psd to Painter and do a quick, dirty color/rendering pass with the Digital Airbrush tool on a layer between the background and the drawing. I was at first going for a green/purple color palette though it always changes as I go along.

3. Then, in a new layer on top of the others I do the actual painting usually with the Cover Pencil brush. Here, in addition to rendering the character, I refine the colors and shape.

4. Back in Photoshop I hide the original drawing and, in a new top layer, block out the shape of the character in flat color. I then modify a copy of that shape to display these color gradients.

5. Next, I make the layer I created in step 4 a color layer at about 50% opacity. This gives the colors more depth and variety. I like the effect of one color fading into another that this provides as well.

6. I like wallpaper designs for backgrounds because...well, because. I just make these in Photoshop using the selection tools, Fill command, and Rotate/Translate commands.

7. I pull the opacity of the wallpaper design way down and add gradients and new colors to the background. I then use the Magic Wand tool to select the edges of the character by using the flat color shape I created in part 4. Then using the Edit/Stroke tool I get an outline around the subject.

8. Bringing back the character and adding a little texture to the background gives me the final image.

Woodsy Elf

Blue Braids

Sam the Squirrel - Part 2

Here's the second batch of drawings from the character design workshop here at Avalanche. The last filter we put our characters through was style.The lower image is just a couple of the style explorations I tried, the one on the left is inspired by, but not an exact copy of Miah Alcorn's art. The one on the right is inspired by Stephen Silver. For the final I took the elements I liked from the style exercise (mostly from Stephen Silver) and worked my own style back into the character to hopefully end up with a design that is consistent and appealing. We were asked to render the final image in a way that provided enough information for a modeler to build it in 3D. I'm considering building a model of him myself, we'll see if I end up having the time or not.

Sam the Squirrel - Part 1

My fellow artists and I at Avalanche have been putting ourselves through a character design workshop. The character must first be a squirrel, muskrat, or badger and appeal to an audience of boys and girls age 7-11. The character should fill a "helper" role for the player in an action/adventure game. We started the first week with our initial designs and have been critiqueing ourselves and each other on how we can make him/her/it better the next week. We've also been putting our designs through four filters, one each week: Contrast, Novelty, Story, and Style. Week 1 was my initial design, inspired in equal parts by Phoenix Wright, and Sly Cooper, and named after the greatest private detective of them all. He mainly helps the player by analyzing whatever evidence the player finds in their quest. Week 2 I added more contrast to the design by (among other things) thinning the body, enlarging the head, moving the facial features from the center of the face and intensifying the eyes. Week 3 I combined the next 2 filters (since I actually missed a week), for Novelty/Familiarity I made the shapes more unique and tried to unify the squirrel elements. For Story I removed the coat and added a hat which I feel better communicates the background and personality of my squirrel detective. I've so far found the workshop to be extremely helpful and I feel like my design has improved. The final design should be done in the next few weeks. Head over the the Avalanche Blog to see everyone else's.

Halloween '07

I didn't get a chance to decorate the house last Halloween since my son was born a fortnight prior to the holiday. This year, however, I found the time and I'm generally happy with the results. I'm even more excited about is this picture I took of them for the following reason: If you look in the lower left corner of the window you'll see my cat sitting, as he often does, on the window sill, the light has caught his eyes in such a way that they appear to be glowing in classic Halloween cat fashion. I included a close up, because I think it's pretty cool. Also on display here is my costume - Mario (Heather was Princess Peach and Max, Baby Yoshi), and my pumpkin which won first place in the pumpkin carving contest at Avalanche.

The Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow

"What was to be done? To turn and fly was now too late; and besides, what chance was there of escaping Ghost or Goblin, if such it was, which could ride upon the wings of the wind?"

-Washington Irving

Floating and Flickering

A Woggle of Witches

To be honest, I'm not entirely happy with this. However, sometimes I just want to move on to something else, so here you go.

This is Halloween

Welcome foolish mortals to Halloween season. I love Halloween. From now until Oct. 31 I'll be watching horror movies, reading scary stories, listening to suspenseful old radio shows, and drawing more Halloween themed stuff. This piece was fun because I included three seasonal stereotypes: the sexy (but dangerous) witch, the Boris Karloff-like undertaker guy, and the mutated, possibly undead-certainly inbred- hilbilly maniac. I'd like to thank the Haunted Mansion in Disneyland from which I stole the background wallpaper design, and my dad who was nice enough to help me with the "Happy Halloween" part of the image.

Pyramid Head

The greatest video game villain of all time! He never says a word, he wears an apron, and his sword is big enough to make Cloud jealous. Oh, and he wears a metal pyramid on his head. However, if you've played Silent Hill 2 you also know he's scary...really scary.

WANTED:

I have been crazy busy, and my blog has, as a result, been crazy neglected. Still, I was able to squeeze some drawing time in here and there to create this image for the Avalanche blog.

Apples to Apples...

Dust to Dust.

Fode and Beed

This was done for the Avalanche Blog, the theme being stupid Star Wars characters.

Braaaaains...

Homeless Hardware

A panhandling robot for the Avalanche Blog.

Everybody Hates Jack Thompson

Even if you don't know who he is, you hate him.

Hitman

Sketch of the Dead

Just a little sketch with a brush pen and a Prismacolor marker (and Photoshop).

Dragon

A dragon for the Avalanche Art Blog.

Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle o' RUM!

There are two types of people in this world, those who like the Pirates of the Caribbean movies and crazy people. The third film is awesome. Go see it.

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Sketches

Axe Angel

I've been working on this one for a while and I'm still not really happy with it, but I'm also tired of it, so here you go.