To smooth digital communication in business...

Drawing from magazines (artistic stretching)

It's been a long time since I've been able to just sit down and draw. Problematic ally, before I can tackle the great beast that is visual communication, I need to warm-up some. The same way a singer or actor does vocal exercises... This is one way I do that. Drawing a photo from a magazine in my style.

Throwback Thursday WoW Nostalgia (AGAIN!)

When the Mists of Pandaria expansion was announced, Blizzard revealed concept art featuring the new playable Pandaran race. All of the art they had was of males, so it got me thinking "How will the female Panda people look?"

I imagined that they'd be much fatter than they turned out to be, but I understand the compulsion to have all of the selectable body types with unique silhouettes.

Throwback Thursday: WoW Nostalgia

Years ago in World of Warcraft, I had a Gnome Deathknight tank. I've always been fascinated by the possibilities of drawing unusual body types, so this was really fun!

It should come as no secret to you, that I'm not very experienced with digital painting. Here are some of my earlier experiments. Wonder Woman in a simplified 2-tone style, Makoto (from Street Fighter) actually painted with watercolor and using slight digital modifications, and an orc wizard from an old defunct story...incomplete, but fun to work on.

Chibi Leo!

Mohawk Storm!

Happy new year, everyone! Once I get the Wacom hooked up, I'll color this sketch, but I wanted to share it. I used to draw Storm a lot between high school and college. From a character design perspective, she's a very interesting specimen...Especially the Alcatraz punk version!

Throwback Thursday?!

I've been feeling nostalgic lately...Much more so than usual. Watching a lot of anime and thumbing through old comics, artbooks, and collectible cards. When I think about some of the things I came up with in my college days, I always laugh quietly to myself. I was such a try-hard!
These characters, Venus (a half-human dragon who transforms into...a sort of armored, winged, nakeder version of herself) and Miles Coltrane (a young martial arts jazz fan with a dark past), were the main characters in my magnum opus "Giant Steps".
This was drawn back in 2001. I had just gotten a new Rapidograph that was so fine, it practically cut through paper!

So I've been in kind of an artistic funk lately. HOWEVER, I've been seeing a new girl (who will be referred to as "GF"). Still not feeling the drawing, so I just sketched her out in my super-deformed style. Also it would take a week to fully capture the curliness of GF's hair...

Anyway, what I absolutelyhad to share with you guys is the cat thing. GF has a cat who's generally afraid of people. Yes...a "Fraidy-Cat". The cat usually hangs out in her closet, but sometimes, I feel something peering at me from across the room. Its the cat! Staring at me from the cracked closet door like a creep! At first she would hide behind the door, but now she comes all the way out, sitting perfectly still and staring at me. If i make a sudden move, she dives behind the closet door! ....creepy ninja-cat...

Sharing sketches with friends...

So, me and some of the guys have been sharing sketches with eachother by way of smartphone camera. I don't have a lot of time to sketch on an average weekday, but here are some of my personal favorites. The first two are characters from my graphic novel and the 3rd is WWE superstar Alberto Del Rio.

Life drawing at FTS Gallery...

So, apparently there's an open life drawing class in Stratford. Win! Didn't bring many supplies, figured I'd just check it out...get some work in. The model was pretty good. Did nice poses. Hardly moved. At one point I started drawing her in crayon just to mess with her a little. She smirked. It was fun. Also, I kind of failed at the one where she sat down, so i started drawing it in a super-deformed cartoon style...which was fun, of course.

Unintentional chibis...

So, I'm planning to run a D&D game, and as I was writing the history of the deep dwarves, i felt compelled to draw the deep dwarf princess. Think I might use this to study some digital painting in the near future...

As i'm drawing this graphic novel, I keep bumping into snags. I haven't really drawn a comic since high school, so things like "Oh, I can't ACTUALLY draw those" or "What does this character wear again" pop up frequently. This is a little diagram of the main character outfits.

2012 Sketch a day: 001, 002, 003, & 004

First day back home from the long holiday adventure. Here are some scans of sketches done in the last couple of days...mostly. First is actually from a few months ago when Blizzard announced the Mists of Pandaria expansion for World of Warcraft. They released a lot of concept art, but none of female Pandarans. I figured i'd try my hand at it using influences from...well, fighting games and Kung Fu movies.

Next up, Spider-Man is a busy New Yorker, so i imagine sometimes he has to take bagels down in one bite.

I've had this idea for an animation about the adventures of a bard. The style is derivative of the Final Fantasy III remake for the nintendo ds.

Finally, one of the characters from my graphic novel is just...I dunno, she needs work. So this is me fiddling around trying to pin down the design of "Giest".

More character dev for the graphic novel

So, for those of you just joining us, I've been working on a graphic novel...The Great American Graphic Novel! As a side note, character design is kind of my thing, so I have A LOT of development sketches.

Ok, so a colleague asked me how Amazona's battle kilt worked. Basically, its made of twelve alternating strips of a heavy leather-like material.  Even numbered strips on the outside and odd on the inside. So, it falls like a long skirt with slits, 'cause sometimes a lady needs to axe-kick people.

Amazona v.5938659857075057057

Don't feel like I'm nailing this design. Something is off, and whatever that thing is, makes her no fun to draw. The hair's a blast, though :)

All Star X-Men sketches...

So, what would YOU do if you had a  chance to create an X-Men series? A friend and I had been batting around ideas just for the hell of it and that conversation put some cool design ideas in my head. This is a rough approximation of how I'd handle Beast. 

More concept art for the graphic novel. Some people have commented that his mask looks like spiderman, but actually its supposed to look like one of those Area51 aliens with the spooky black eyes. Te second pic, I just wanted to work on the color scheme a little. Think I'll go with a lighter gray next time.

Same character...

...with her girlfriend. This is a sketch for a splash page late in the book. I had a very clear vision of how her hair would be splayed  out on the bed while she stares blankly into nowhere. But I wound up copping out :( Sometimes that happens in the sketching stages. Hopefully, I'll have it worked out by the time I get to the actual story-page. 

What I've been up too...

Well, I've been working on "The Great American Graphic Novel". The founding fathers intended for us to have the freedoms needed to make a graphic novel, and I've been pounding away. Since I'm keeping the story pages top secret, I hadn't been posting. 

But for you, my loyal Briamaniacs, I will post sketches!

These are some developement sketches for one of the main characters. Sometimes I need to design what a character's back looks. Being an animator, a quick alternate view sketch becomes a hole page of "Oh how do her teeth look when she smiles" "Where does her hair part when she wears pigtails"...But sometimes I just warm-up by drawing a character doing regular everyday activities.

Artstream: Ed McGuinness

Maybe you weren't paying attention...but this guy is doing some of the best mainstream work in the industry. As the legend goes (and don't quote me on this) Ed Mcguinness was a pizza delivery boy. By a stroke of luck, won the lottery and was like "Wow, now I can stop worrying about survival and devote myself to breaking in to comics." He paid his dues, showing sample pages to editors and pros at conventions, and eventually found himself pencilling a Deadpool miniseries. We loved Ed's work...We loved Deadpool, and so Mcguinness got more chances to prove his awesomeness. He started working with Jeph Loeb on Fighting American for Awesome Comics, and that relationship flourished into a full-on creative team. The two even made it to the top of the mountain: Superman. The Loeb-McGuinness Superman run is one of the best the series has ever seen, and after a ridiculous ammount of issues, they finally moved on to something new...Superman/Batman. I won't get started on the brilliance of that particular concept, as this is a post about art. After Superman/Batman, Ed "signed on" at Marvel, but the original Ultimates4 idea he was supposed to do got canned. Red Hulk became McGuiness' new project, and OMG, that book is crazy! At first, we were all on the fence about the story, but after about five issues of Hulks having Dragonball-scale battles, you kinda stop caring about why they're fighting in the first place. Keep an eye out for McGuiness' next project, he rarely fails to impress.