Darkness and Lots of Bubbles

Watercolor Girl

2010-07-11T06:35:00.000-07:00

It's been awhile since I did any watercolors, so I thought I'd give it a try. Watercolors are such a strange medium. First of all, you're allowed really no mistakes, or at least no major ones. And second, it's all a matter of calculation and then rapid painting... at least if you want some nice, flat colored areas. In other words, it's a very different way of doing art then the usual digital method. What I wouldn't give for save points (though I did a couple of intermediate scans so I'd have at least something if I messed up the picture).

Overall, it took me about four hours. I could have done it faster, but I messed up the first one and I didn't want to do the same for the second.

Nikki!

2010-06-23T18:17:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to figure out a comic style I feel comfortable with, and here's my latest attempt. It's actually a combination of 3D cel shading and painting details in Photoshop. I think it's getting closer to a style that I'm (A) happy how it looks (B) I enjoy doing and (C) doesn't take a huge amount of time to do.

New Tutorial!

2010-05-09T02:46:00.000-07:00

I decided to do a little more, so here's the second tutorial for making art in Sleep is Death.

Worldbuilding 101: Advanced Room Building

It's about doors, windows, interior walls, and stairs. I hope it helps!

Oh, and here's the graphics .pak I mention in it:

galvin2.pak

Tutorial Finished!

2010-04-24T17:01:00.000-07:00

It's still at

Worldbuilding 101 for Sleep is Death

I dunno if people will like it, but I figured that if I wanted people to be able to use the style I created, they could use some tips.

I should say the style of this is based on Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics (and its two sequels). I've been a fan of it since I saw a preview of the book in the back of a copy of Cerebus. Check out his website, it's pretty interesting:

http://scottmccloud.com/

Sleep is Death

2010-04-23T23:43:00.000-07:00

I've been playing around with the new game, Sleep is Death. It's a two-player storytelling game, and it's pretty interesting. Check it out if you haven't seen it, it's at http://sleepisdeath.net/

If you click on the picture, it'll go to a story I made for the creator of the game, Jason Rohrer. Oh, and I did all the art in the story. Here's a screenshot:

Anyway, I decided to write a tutorial for the art I did, and here's the link to it:

Worldbuilding 101 for Sleep is Death

It's only up to Chapter 2, but I think it's coming along well.

New Pic!

2010-03-17T23:59:00.000-07:00

It's hard to work on the computer doing art all day long, then sit back down and do art for yourself. Even so, I found the courage and iron will to do another picture. This one features a girl I've been working on for a couple of weeks. She's all 3D and rigged, so I can use her for anything I want now. Of course at this stage I usually say 'Well, time to do something else' and never use the character again. Will it happen again?

Stay tuned and find out!

More bottles

2010-01-14T23:46:00.001-08:00

A couple of new tries. The bottle of the right turned out nice (carving is always a nerve wracking experience. I can't tell you how many I've broken doing that). The one on the right was an experiment that didn't quite work on the front, but I think the back worked out fine. (See below)

Stone Village

2010-01-02T10:55:00.000-08:00

I added more pieces, so you can see more clearly what I was going for. Sort of a modular building block set made of of ceramics. I think if I wanted to continue it, I'd make the pieces a bit more organic. Also there would be bridge pieces, rock walls, buildings with larger footprints, etc. In the short term I think I'm done now, and I'm going to work on some other projects.

Mini-house and tree!

2009-12-28T19:27:00.000-08:00

Here's a view of some stuff I've been working on. It's a nifty idea which I'll go into when I have more pieces, but here's an in-progress. Both of these are cast pottery, the house being cast by a four piece mold. I then glazed it to give it a carved-stone look that I think came out pretty well.

Rocks!

2009-11-30T01:04:00.001-08:00

Well, it's been awhile since I posted anything, so I thought rocks would be a good start. Who doesn't love rocks? I recently went to my favorite place to get rock reference, American Soil & Stone, and took a ton of pictures. Then I decided to try and see what I could do with them. I think I can do better, but it's a start.

Table Girl

2009-08-15T19:43:00.000-07:00

Here's a test of the style I've been working on. The subject owes some to Moebius and some to an artist named Shaun Tan who did this great picture book on an immigrant coming to a strange country and finding everything very alien. This would be a tourist visiting that country years later (after color was invented).

Found render

2009-08-01T00:54:00.000-07:00

Wow, I'd forgotten I rendered this one out like this.

Pinecone trivia!

2009-08-01T00:38:00.000-07:00

I was looking through old pictures for stuff to put up, and found this. I have a bunch of pine cones that my mom game me in a basket from the trees in our yard. I had em sitting around awhile and they were really dusty, so I tossed em in the dishwasher.

Did you know they close up when you do that? It was so weird.

They all looked like the middle one before I washed em. Eventually they did open back up again, but it took em a week or so to do so.

Star Wars Uncut

2009-07-27T11:59:00.000-07:00

Working on my part of Star Wars Uncut. For those who don't know, it's a site where this one person cut Star Wars into 472 15-second pieces and asked people to refilm em. So far there's live action, some stop action, and even a little traditional animation (well, rotoscoping). I'm doing mine in 3D, and here's a couple of characters that will be used in the famous 'Snow Moon'* clip.

* as in 'That snow moon, that's a space station!'

Ok, more bottles!

2009-07-16T00:00:00.000-07:00

Presented due to high demand...even more bottles!

Bottles!

2009-07-12T13:53:00.000-07:00

Look, a picture of my ceramic bottles. That's right, made from clay! It's an exciting new material that's all the rage here in Mesopotamia.

Testing to see how easy this is...once more.

San Francisco Pics: June 2009

2009-06-25T18:30:00.001-07:00

Time to use up someone else's disk space! Take that, free blog site!

Click on the pictures to see em larger.

Flash.....ahhh! He'll save every one of us

2009-06-20T00:24:00.000-07:00

Here we go. If this is working right, you should see a Flash loop I did a few years ago. Just seeing if I can embed Flash into this Blogger foundation I'm using.

2008-07-27T16:12:00.000-07:00

I react several ways to art. It usually goes like this. At the lowest scale I think 'Good for them, they're trying to do art.' Stick figures and such fit here. In increasing level of skill, it goes: 'Ow, that's not good at all' 'Someone needs to work on their skills' 'Eh, not bad.' 'Huh, this has possibilities.' 'Very nice' and 'Dammit, that just makes me angry. ANGRY!'

Here are the artists who make me jealous and frustrated, even as I admire their work.

Moebius - Ah Moebius...also known as Jean Giraud. Probably my favorite artist. His work is incredibly imaginative, very well drawn with a clean, fluid line that makes even a scribble of his something to admire. He's mostly known as a comic book artist, though he's done a lot of design work for various movies. Ever since I discovered him, I've had his work up on my walls, and even after all these years, I love him to death.

Imperial Boy - 帝　国　少　年 - Here's an artist I only found out about recently. I first saw his stuff in a manga anthology called 'Robot', and thank goodness his name (well, nickname) was in English. Because of that I was able to find his website...and his stuff is simply amazing. Mostly his art is cityscapes, though I really have to admire how he spends times designing even the smallest pieces of his environments. His main page doesn't show a whole lot of his stuff, but I was able to find his blog...and it's full of artistic goodness.

Bill Sienkiewicz - Ah, Sienkiewicz. If Moebius isn't my favorite artist, it's Sienkiewicz. Just thinking about him makes me sad. I first discovered him when he was doing the art for New Mutants. He was supposed to have done stuff before that, but New Mutants is where he really shined. His work was...frantic, full of energy, full of fire, yet showed an incredibly strong artistic foundation. His stuff didn't look like the current art at the time; in some ways it owed a lot more to earlier illustrators. And that's just his black and white work. His paintings were very experimental, with angular outlines, forced perspective, and collage elements that several artists at the time tried to copy, but no one was able to capture his look.

He went on to do a lot of great stuff, especially 'Elektra: Assassin' with Frank Miller and his own mini-series, Stray Toasters. Then... he pretty much disappeared. And just when he was about to do something that I think could have been one of the best comics ever made. It was a series called 'Big Numbers', and was written by Alan Moore. Some people say Sienkiewicz got too overwelmed by Moore's notoriously long and detailed panel descriptions, but I've read some things that indicate it's more complicated than that. Still...it breaks my heart to think of what could have been, and I miss seeing his artwork in comics. He still does things from time to time, but honestly it doesn't seem his heart's in it.

And when I have more time, you'll learn about:

Dave McKean
Seth
David Mazzucelli
Range Murata
Naohisa Inoue
Lebbeus Woods

2008-07-27T16:07:00.000-07:00

Say Bye to Uni for Me - Ah, unicorns.Who doesn't enjoy a story about unicorns? I know I do. Still a long ways from how I want a comic to look, but hey....I did it years ago.

Yum, Cake! - Comic I did for a friend of mine, featuring the introduction of Rainy and Darissa!

Meanwhile on Planet Grignr 7... - The art might be rough, but I really like the story. I plan on maybe redoing the art someday, in the meanwhile, see it as a sketch.

Kera's Tale - Here's what you get when you make a bet with a friend that you can make a short comic before they can. The first comic I did that I was pretty satisfied with. Oh, and yes...I won that bet. Easily.
Damn I'm good.

2008-07-27T16:05:00.000-07:00

Elevator Girl - I really like to do animation loops, things that are less movies and more like living pictures. This is an example of that. Don't expect any plot or story, it's just a picture... though more alive.

Flute Girl - One of my animated GIF tests. I do really like the possibilities of there GIF's, the problem with them is that they don't allow preloading... so they can be pretty choppy at the start.

Firefly - One of my favorite looped animations, and one that's really nice and simple.

SPHERE! - Oh no! A giant sphere attacking the world we all love and care about. Please, please, let this only be some sort of electronic nightmare and not actual video!

CLIFFSIDE TEST - This was an animation I was working on for a bit. Maybe I'll go back to it eventually. It's got possibilities. If you're wondering where the cliff is, well...it's later on in the animation.

Train 2.0 - This one should look pretty nice when finished. I work on it from time to time, improving a part here, a part there. Not sure when it'll be finally done, but I'm not in a big hurry to do so.

2008-07-27T16:00:00.000-07:00

2008-07-27T15:53:00.000-07:00

A sculpture of the wild herdbeast, the Teldarian Frumblesnatch. Watch out for its hooves!

A sculpture of the rarest of four-legged birds, the wonderful Phyloteen Hydroc. Enjoy! .

This one makes me rather sad. I spend a lot of time on it, but then it exploded in the klin. I think some parts of the clay were just too thick. Anyway, enjoy the pictures I took of it before claymageddon. (Other views here)

2008-07-27T12:36:00.000-07:00

Glyphiti - Bizarre art thing. The picture is made by tons of different people, and you can change it too just by clicking on a part of it. There's usually a ton of op art, some scribbles, people putting their names down, and some really nifty tiny artwork. Oh, and from time to time someone erases the whole thing and it's back to square one.

Scott McCloud.com - Years back, Scott McCloud wrote a book called 'Understanding Comics'. It explained what made comics an art form in itself, and one with many possibilities.

Ghibli Studios - Best animation studio ever. Ever! I'm looking at you, Pixar. (That's right, Disney isn't even in the running. Heck, Dreamworks is kicking your butt, Disney!)

Geocaching - Treasure hunting in the 21st century! All you need is a GPS.

io9 - Nifty site for scifi fans that I've been checking out recently. Updated daily. (Did you know science fiction was once called 'scientifiction'? Weird, huh? I'm not even making that up.)

Rifftrax - From the people who brought you Mystery Science Theater 3000, this site offers audio tracks that make fun of some of the biggest and worst movies around. My favorite might be the Star Wars pre-trilogy ones.