Secret Project

Here is a sneak peek at something I have been working on, a self initiated illustration project. Part of a double sided board game idea.

More to come on this...

Slight deviation

Yeah I know, it's been a while between posts, but I have been busy learning 3D software and doing tutorials and the like. The end result of someone else's tutorial isn't really the sort of thing you want to be posting on your own site.

Anyway I have a bunch of images from the last two months so I will try and get them up over the next week.

Here is some thing I have thinking about a bit. I grew up near the deviation in Geelong and it dominates the view from my parents house. Compare this recent shot to the one at the top which was taken way back in 1866.

I used to paint and draw it a lot back in the early 90's but haven't since then. A friend wants an acrylic on canvas painting but I have been enjoying doing it digitally. It is actually more dramatic than it looks in the photos so I wanted to push that as much as I could.

Started out in situ doing a few quick sketches and scanning those before trying a bunch of colour combinations.

Sketches





Colour roughs




A more finished rough



And a detail...


I have to make several alterations, the evening sky was a late addition and I will need to change the colour of the hills and trees to reflect that. I want to rework the foreground and then think about pulling out the old paints and brushes and getting down to the real work...

Sartorialist sketches

A few of my favourite figures form the great Sartorialist book and blog. The Sartorialist

A Zbrush dragon doodle

Here is a little Zbrush doodle of a dragon.

I have been learning the program for a while now and I am starting to be able to bend it to my will.

Some more landscapes/animation backgrounds

A few more of these bush layouts I made in early September ...

Some new landscapes

Sorry, it has been a while between posts.

I have been busy doing all different things but I thought I had better put some online.

Here are some quick animation layouts/background done in August.

More or less realistic or cartoony, but all done quite quickly in photoshop or painter.

Vincent Price Caricature

I've been working on this caricature of Vincent Price over the last week. I love Price's voice and demeanour. The regal king of horror who never took it too seriously. The final background is supposed to have some sort of cheesy 70's Asian restaurant vibe.

I found a great site that has a lot of his audio recordings which I listened to while doing the picture. (insert maniacal laugh here...)

Here is a work in progress image.


My initial sketch and colour guide, it started as a pretty straight portrait but soon changed into a caricature, much like Vincent Prices own career arc.

illustrators Australia A3 exhibition 2011

Here are some images of songwriters from a series I am doing.

That new guy, Bobbie Dylan and the dark and brooding Nick Cave.

Quite graphic with Ben Day dots, strong lines.







I did meet Nick once but forgot to ask if I could call him my surrogate cousin.

These images were printed for the Illustrators Australia annual A3 show. There are some really good images from Dean Gorissen, Nigel Buchanan, Anton Emdin and especially a previous lecturer, the brilliant Andrea Innocent.
A3 show link

I am pretty excited about the fantastic GRAPHIC festival coming to the Sydney Opera House in late August.

Scott Mccloud, Jim Woodring, Peter Kuper and amazingly Robert Crumb!

I have bought my tickets and I'm especially looking forward to the masterclasses.

Long long ago on one of my first internet sites I conducted a short email interview with fantastic comics and stencil artist Peter Kuper. I think it was way back in 2001 or 2001.

It is still online and here is a link to it: Peter Kuper Stencil Art.

Of course most of the attention will be focused on that old curmudgeon R.Crumb! I think it is his first trip to Australia, I wonder if Aline is coming along too? It should be fun...

A few symmetrical doodles

Here are a couple of unfinished doodles done mainly in Zbrush. Start with a rough symmetrical lo-res blob and slowly up the resolution as you paint it into focus. The technique is from a great tutorial by Neville Page.
It is weird to only have to paint one side and have it magically appear on the other side. Of course the cyclops needs a lot more non-symmetrical work, but it would be kind of cool if we all grew hair and whiskers symmetrically.