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.

Supergirl art battle?!

So, I participated in an art battle on penciljack.com the topic "Supergirl". Now my opponent did a really cool piece of Supergirl fighting generic robot in the citay. I'm not being sarcastic, its really pretty cool. I on the other hand focused on the "girl" part and tried to do something reminiscent of Masakazu Katsura's I''s covers. Penciljack didn't really get it. They complained about the photo background and the "simple pin-up" pose (to which I say 'try copying it and you'll find out what makes it complex'). From now on, I'll play the penciljack game, but I just wanted to show this to all the briamaniacs out their and explain that I'm still an artist even though its gonna start to look like I'm selling out and not trying things or challenging myself...

Vitriolic. I really don't mean for this to sound as spiteful as it probably does. This is one of those instances where seeing something in plain text really strips it of a lot of inflection and context.

Also, for those interested, I upgraded my phone to the G2. Its incredible! Does everything that the Itouch did (music and art inspiration on the go) with a LOT of freedom that comes from the AndroidOS. This is not a joke. The phone is bad-meaning good. My favorite thing about it right now is the Gameboy Advance emulator. I've been playing Pokemon Ruby :P
On that note, I've also been experimenting with more XBOX 360 games. Top of the list right now are Gears of War 2 and Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm 2.

Regained my muchness?!

As part of my resolve to produce more "finished" work, I dug up a cleanly drawn piece and colored it. I'm still experimenting with different styles, but I've gotten good feedback from this. Its a very simple medium flats/tins/shades technique. I think I need to fool around with more lighting effects.

repost...

new portfolio site and new artworks soon...i promise.

Happy 2K11!!

These are some quick life drawings from Dr. Sketchy's Philadelphia last month. The model was REALLY easy to draw. I sometimes, in the scramble to keep up appearances and stuff, forget how much I love the actual act of drawing...I'm reminded of this EVERY time i go to a life drawing class!

The science of old-school RPGs...

So, I was testing emulators on my vaio netbook today. Now as some of you know, the best emulators run most games very well. You'd have no problem playing Super Mario World on any emulator. The problem comes in with Squaresoft RPGs. Now, I loaded up Final Fantasy 1&2: Dawn of Souls for the gameboy advance. The emulation was pretty bad for the intro, but I wanted to see how it would handle the actual game. Pressing start about 257209562 times lead me to the "opening cinematic". It began with this operatic score...I mean, this music was epic! But the visuals behind it was a bunch of cutesy 16-bit sprites. I particulary recall a scene that just had a rinky-dink tower on barren desert world map with a partical system covering the wholescreen and moving left to right. At that moment, I thought "I actually like that these simple graphics and symbols let my imagination handle this 'Tower standing in the sandstorm image. I thought "This is why I still like these games". Now you think about it. You thought Magus was cool in '96. The rinky-dink graphics of Chrono Trigger only nudged you in the direction of how to invision that character, but your imagination, powered by all the things you'd seen and experienced at the age of 15 made him cool for you. Now think of how differently you might have envisioned that character AFTER seeing Ninja Scroll or Princess Mononoke. Now think of how you might see him in the present, after seeing more recent animated awesomeness! Point is, i realized that the way I see a game like Final Fantasy VI changes as i change. It grows with me. Final Fantasy X does NOT. And neither does any other RPG made after....Maybe Wild Arms 2074523056 is old school style, but who cares about Wild Arms. A lot of you missed out on this experience because you only really got into RPGS with FF7, But I think that you might all be able to relate this concept to RTS/RPG hybrid games like Final Fantasy Tactics and Disgaea.

335 Days of Scetches!!

So I've been watching a lot of TV since the invention of Hulu and Netflix Watch Instantly on my ps3 & wii. One of my guilty pleasures is a fox show called "House". Structurally, its a terrible concept for a show. Basically Greg House is the Sherlocke Holmes of medical maladies...literally, he's Sherlock Holmes the way Neo was Jesus. Even though it can be predictable, I still like mysteries and i love Love LOVE Sherlock Holmes. This is a sketch of that character painfully scanned on my piece of crap all-in-one. Find me in real life if you want to see the ACTUAL drawing :P As a side note the original title for the show was "Everybody Lies" :)