Robots and Monsters!

Hello All,

Tonight is the night for all you robot and monster lovers out there!
It's a group show and I've got some pieces on display. You can find all the info above.
If youre in town I'd love it if you could swing by!.. and if you're not don't fret -I hope to post a few photos afterwards.
(flyer design by peter ricq)
Chowder

Jess

Cornwell Studies

If I had a beard I'd probably grow one just like Skipper Steve up top..
These sketches are copied from some paintings and studies by Dean Cornwell: A true American badass. He trained under giants like Frank Brangwyn who, in my opinion, was one of the best hands down. Apparently there was a time when it was hard to tell a Cornwell from a Brangwyn painting because he was just that good. Unfortunately its hard to find much material on this guy even though he was one of the premier illustrators of the 20th century. Dean Cornwell: Dean of Illustrators seems to be the best all round book on him, however its out of print and tres expensive.. Anyone interested in parting with a copy??

Moody Environment Number 1

Thought I'd take a break from the characters and focus on some BG's.. I was striving for those uber cool outlandish sci-fi concepts your man Sparth effortlessly cranks out. I feel the walls could still use a bit o texture to them. Any crits, comments or tips are welcome! Thank you to the good souls posting on Flickr for the sunset photo...

ROBOTS!!

Here's a few robot concepts I've been working on in my spare time..

I added some text to one version to enter it in a cover art show my friend organized a few weeks ago. Some healthy influence from Ashley Wood but wonky enough that I can still call my own. And yep, you guessed it, all with no backgrounds because I'm quite lazy these days..

The bottom ones are basically recycled / mirrored images of the 1st one. Duplicated, flipped and multiplied in PS to create some interesting shapes then painted over top of..

Miscellaneous character concepts

Mercenary, Pilot, space captain and sheik 3000. Heres a couple sketches i did for my portfolio. I've been gearing a lot of my recent stuff more towards the concept design field. Coming from an animation background, I feel it takes quite a bit of re-training of the brain to think and draw differently..

Football hooligan Step by step..

Some ego-maniac art director yawned all over my work, so I went home and painted this! Haha a little fire in the belly helps sometimes. A lot of my friends ask how i work in Photoshop and there really is no easy answer.. I guess the best way is just to show it.
I've decided to post a rough step by step of one of my favorite pieces.. I managed to save a few versions as it was coming along, and as you can see some images show noticeable progressions.. and others not so much! This is something that worked for me at the time, I've since built and experimented with different way of working and approaches.

• I had no idea what i wanted at this stage and it literally all started with a scribble. The basic masses and shadow are blocked in 1st with the dark brown and afterwards i started to use other tones.. about 4? the red and purple reflected light was an after thought.
• I paint/erase around the edge of the head to define the silhouette better. I continue blending colors in the face and slowly begin to find the form, keeping in mind the dominant light source from above.
• Some more minor tweaking around the head, and more blending. Yikes! He's lookin scary, I try and pull it back a bit.
• Chiseling out the shape of the figure with different background colors, i'm really enjoying it at this stage and thrashing around a lot.
• Almost there! Things are really unifying and you can see I'm playing around with different ideas for a tattoo. I was thinking psychotic UK football supporter and trying to sell that with the union jack, not sure where to put it either.
• BOO-YA! Complete. Used a photo for the tatti (I'm a big fan of the west coast native art) and pictures of my hands as well.

Heres some of the various refs i used. Ol Brendan gleeson had a pretty intense expression and i tried to get that same feeling in the face. I think he helped.
I really should use reference more often, as its such an invaluable tool, but i only tend to do so when i'm really stumped on something. Hope this was helpful!

Gauge room, Apartment, warehouse

perspectives off on gauge handles.. oh well.

Cinema

Heres a little something i did for a video game that got canceled recently.. the movie that its based off (which i'm not quite at liberty to say yet) is still scheduled to come out this year. I was given a basic 3-D model to use as reference and embellished the rest of the details.
Pencil sketch colored in PS

More..

Well, you axed for it! I was messing around with some textures, overlay, painting and erasing and all around general color noodling and came up with this... Its going to get transfered on canvas, stretched and framed where it will finally end up as a mixed media piece as part of an art show i'm having this friday!! (49 Powell st 7pm-11pm for those of you in the area)
ciao for now

28th Century Druid

This piece is a bit of a tribute to all those early French Sci-Fi pioneers.. Moebius, Mezieres etc. I had a lot of fun doing it, its a bit of an escape from my usual style. It started with a line drawing I did at about 3 or 4 am one night, scanned it and started to color it a few days later.. Still have to finish it and put in some sort of background though. Hmmmm...