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...

More Black and White

Female assasin of some sort.. Elektra's cousin? Or maybe just a lady that likes the tight clothes. hmm.. Sketchbook and PS.

Ink Study

I decided to sharpen my inking techniques and what better way than to study from one of the masters: John Buscema. Probably the quintessential Marvel guy, he's responsible for loads of work in the early marvel days and has worked on all the major characters.. just look him up online and you're bound to find some solid gold! He's well noted for his renditions of Conan, which is maybe why i enjoy his stuff so much, i really dont know..
I used a brush pen called Pentel pocket brush on this piece and it seems to work quite well. It has its own ink cartridge so theres no need to keep dipping. I'm still tempted to give the sable brush a shot though; theres nothing quite like the real thing.
Anyways I'm by no means trying to pass this off as my own - its merely a study and I'd like to give proper credit where its due.

Let's Dance!

Sans Jupe ou Avec?
i'm quite enjoying the black and white these days. It just doesnt get much more bold than that..

New Post (Finally!)

Well, due to popular requests I've taken it upon myself to set time aside from my busy schedule of unpacking my life out of boxes stored over the last year and a half and post some art! I worked as a character designer on the TV show Edgar and Ellen before making the transition to Skunk Fu.. These were some of my favourites. Big up to Greg Hukaluck and Byron Leboe for their help along the way, 2 soopa talents i worked with at Bardel.

A work in progress...

Conan the barbarian fresh out of a Hyborian Age tattoo parlor!! I was picking away at this one in my spare time after work and inbetween assignments.. Hope to wrap it up soon, finish tightening up the silhouette, and fix the anatomy.. possibly post a step by step after its done! Pencil sketch scanned and colored in photoshop.

The Geometry Bros.

Here's an old piece that i recently refurbished.
It started out as a simple doodle as does everything.. Playing with shapes and geometric symbols. Originally the square on your man's chest was just another innocent triangle.. Thats when the PS fan boy in me took over and i decided to turn it into an 'x' and thus a playstation promo..

Life drawrings

Some recent stuff from our much needed life drawing revival..
15 and 10 min poses.
Thanks to Anna for the Great poses!

Sketch clubbing

Nursery rhymes & Fairy TalesHeres some of my sketches for the Cartoon Saloon sketchclub... every week (or month depending on our free time) a new theme is selected. The 1st one was for nursery rhymes and fairy tales, although Jack the ripper really has nothing to do with either..
aand the botom is video games.
You can check out the sketchclub blog here

Lisbon Dec 06'

I was lucky enough to travel to portugal before Christmas.. What a beautiful Country! Lisbon and Sintra were worth it alone. Great food, friendly people and an impressive history made this a favourite. Here are a few pics...

Rossio Square by night
A true coffee connoisseur
Aaah yes the pixel art graffitti

Sintra!!

Sintra was by far one of the best stops.. A town about 30 mins outside of lisbon full of palaces and castles.. Dominating the hilltop is an 8th centry moorish castle, Castillo de los moros. Amazing.

Doodles at work

weird octopus/gizmo attacks car!!!
Bitten by the doodle bug again..

Ivan

Upon receiving a relentless
assault of blows to his head
and mid section, Ivan the
cartoon character decided
to do steroids.
No one could have guessed
what happened next...

mmmmgrrroaaahr!

pencil sketch colored in Photoshop

Moths got into her sweater collection

One of my earlier painting experiments in PS

life skratches

Aaaaah yes 1 min gestures..

Did these in my early months in Ireland. Rumors of reviving life drawing seem to be resurfacing here at Cartoon saloon. Now if only we could get a good model...

Female fanfare

Faces

Faces are fun

smell the flowers

Smell the flowers..

..while you can.
Thought i'd start off with some oldies until i get some new material