Snookered

Hellooooo,

I keep getting busy and leaving the blog idle, so I set myself a new goal. I'm gonna start blogging once a week, whether it's work in progress or fully finished pics it's going up. No excuses! The Internet knows no mercy and neither does my guilty conscience. Soooo I'm really gonna try and stick to this. This means 4 more posts before Christmas and I'm going to continue blogging during the holidays. So let's get started.

Almost as soon as I said that I'd blog once a week on twitter I immediately blanked! Perfect timing. I had nothing. What I was doodling was pretty dire and forced, I haven't actually had a block in a long long time just couldn't shake it off.

Yesterday I remembered that I started saving pics into an inspiration folder ( I hadn't used it in a while). It's full of stuff I thought was pretty cool and it inspired me, but I was too busy to do anything with it at the time so I kept the pic until I had some time to do something with it.  This was the pic I used a inspiration yesterday

It's Duffy. Something about this pic just really hit home and I was doodling ideas straight away. Much better ideas, stronger drawings ( anyone else think she kinda looks like a living Gwen Stacy? Just me? ).  So with Duffy in mind and a project I want to get off the ground next year with Gary Reynolds I drew this,

I'll get to colour this next week and I'll also want to draw something so there SHOULD be a couple of things on the blog by Friday 14th. See you all on the blog for them! Laters

Alright so here's the rest of this post, I started dropping in flats. This process usually takes me a while because I'm partially colour blind. But I have a umber of palettes saved for such an occasion. So I took from a couple of em for this one. This usually leaves me with a general early idea of whether the palette works or not. I probably spend more time on this than any other stage, other than thinking about what I'm going to draw. It's time well spent if you ask me.

This is what that stage looks like. I used to paint primarily in grey before I went to colour but now since I use a number of saved palettes i find it easier to paint with colour and cross reference that with a greyscale. I can then make changes in the greyscale or the colour version, whatever one I feel that I'll get the most out of at the time. Here's what that version looks like,

I think you can tell that in this greyscale I played around with a darker skin tone and black stripes on her top. Something about it just wasn't working for me so I ended up going right back to the drawing. I ended up taking out the dangling strap

I just wasn't able to see it in the colour version but when I brought it back to the line I really felt that the strap kinda ruined the whole flow of the pose. I was happy enough from this point on so I felt comfortable making any additional changes while painting.

Here's some flats with a shadow thrown in. The shadow just helps me see the shapes better when I go to paint it, just I know the kind of brush stroke I'm looking for.

The first thing I do when I start painting is always the eyes. If I get this part right I have the character set, I'm happy. If I feel near the end that it needs another touch up, it gets one. I think the eyes are one of the most important part of the pic. It's where people are going to look, if the eyes don't rest there permanently they are def going to stop for a second or two or slow down before they look at the rest of the pic. I'm sure we've all heard that the eyes are the window to the soul, so give em some time to get em right.

From here on it's all painting and texturing. Going back and forth with greyscale and flipping the image so I know It's all working the way I want.

So this is it almost there.  Pretty happy with how it's looking and at this point its pretty much going to look this way at the end. I always feel like sprinting to the end when I get this far, that's when it's time for a tea break/sleep and come back at it fresh so you don't end up spoiling anything. I'm still fixing things at this point and adding in stuff so best not to spoil anything important.

The Thong. I was referencing a pretty unique thong. I thought it looked fancy, everyone else thought it looked wrong or it had fallen down so best nip it in the bud and make the change. Here's a thong we're all familiar with. I think it was the right call, looks better for it.

This is it almost there. I put up some wallpaper, threw in a few more shot glasses and yes the pool balls actually say 69, Hi-Oh!!

So after a few fixes and the final lights put in here's the finished version, beside the all important Greyscale version I use throughout painting it. I think it lets you see how one informs the other

I ran this past my girlfriend Amanda last night ( If you're into make up and similar stuff like that check out her blog here ), funnily enough she said, "what if she had a black top". I thought that was kinda funny since I tried a black top early on in the process. I shrugged it off thinking it cluttered the palette, but I'm willing to try anything at any stage if it makes what I do better and did up a black top version. I think she may have been right, I honestly can't choose between the two.

More posts to come real soon. I'm hoping to get one more out this week and I'll have another one for sure on the blog next week. Trying to do a lot more with the blog from here on my friend Peter McNally is knocking up a load of great posts over on his blog and it's inspired me to do something similar. Check out his blog if you haven't before it's one of my fav's

 I hope you all dig this I'll do more like it soon, Laters

HULK Test Script

Alright so As promised this week a new blog post. 

The DICE con is on this weekend ( If you don't know about the DICE con go here )so I thought I'd draw up some new pages.  It's from Marvel Adventures Hulk #6 -NAMOR. It's probably the only test script I have left on the computer so I'm gonna have to get some more and do a lot more of these of the next few months.  

Just worked on my pencils here as that's pretty much the gig I'm trying to get. I wanted to knock out another page but I won't get a chance before Saturday with my storyboard job needing some serious attention, at the moment.  Some of you might recognise the first page from ICN, just changed it up here, I think for the better. Also on 2nd look I'm not so content with the last panel on the first page might even just leave that page out, I'll try fix that up next week, time permitting.

Hope you guys dig, wish me luck. Laters!

Guest spot in Tommy Kelly's 'The Holy Numbers"

Hi folks,

Long time no post. Apologies I've been crazy busy lately buuuuuut I'll have another post next week of some new sample pages I'm working on. So I'm hoping these two quick posts will make up for the lack of posts lately, I'll get way more on top of that and post monthly if not every fortnight.

But right now, my friend Tommy has just put up the latest installment of his online comic "The Holy Numbers". A few weeks ago he asked me to do a Pin up for his next issue.  Here it is, I'm posting it up now as he has now put out the book which you can go here and pick it up. At the moment it's FREE I don't know how long it's going to stay that way so pick it up while the going is good!

If you dig Tommy's comic check out his work on the website above, you can find him on twitter and if you are a Reddit user you can get The Holy Numbers there as well.

See you guys next week when I put up the Sample pages. Thanks a mill for all the views I really appreciate it!

Ben

Sketches and Ms. Noir

hellllooo.

So here's my latest bunch of sketches, I've finished another sketchpad and thought I would throw them up on the blog. Anyone who follows me on twitter will have seen this figure studies and sketchpad doodles already, but true to past blog posts I'll put those drawings up here too.

Here's a pic I did on the train last Friday the 13th.

Here's a hipster I saw on the same train. Here I used sharpie, fine pen and because I have no grey tone pantones with me, pencil

Here's a guy I saw outside a bookies

Another guy I saw outside the same bookies

Just a guy walking down a street 

This woman was waiting for her kids to hurry up, she wasn't at all happy

Pretty sure this guy was actually a zombie, one strange looking dude

I think she turned out as the best figure study of the day

This was guy outside a café

Some heads of random people

And this is Ms. Noir.  It's a piece I did for an animation art auction that will be on in the Science gallery next Sunday. There's some AMAZING pieces up for grabs, from old school films such as The secret of NIMH, The land Before Time, All Dogs go to Heaven. Not all of it is drawn/painted either there's some amazing crafted pieces that have been stitched and stuffed and pretty much you name it its there. It's a very eclectic gathering off work. 

I think a big congrats is due to Bianca, Estrela & Simon for organizing the whole thing. It's shaping up to be a great day. All the pieces will be auctioned in aid of The Children's Sunshine Home & LauraLynn House. So if you're free on Sunday the 29th of July and you want to pick up an awesome piece of art you know where to go.


Until the next post. Laters!

Telephone Tess

Soooooo I've had this idea for a while that I wanted to do a collaboration with a friend of mine. I figured I'd ink it up and see if he wanted to paint it. And he's on board HUZZAH! I'll reveal his name when he's finished painting it, I don't want to give it away now.  Soooo this post is a work in progress here's the inks of 'Telephone Tess'. I hope you dig it cause I had a lot of fun drawing it.

Then I got a new iPhone and found myself a place that make custom iPhone covers soooooooo I figured I'd do up something for the phone and came up with these guys I wanted to keep the colours really basic, mostly cause the guy I asked to paint it will do a better job than I ever could and I wanted the cover on my phone to be uniquely mine but kind of passive. So kept em like so,

Hope you all like. Laters


Pardon the amateur photo, just got the iPhone case delivered. I'm really happy with it, it printed out really well and the case is very sturdy/strong.

I'd happily recommend Case-Mate to everyone http://www.case-mate.eu/diy?bypassLandingPage=true

Or if you'd like your very own design please feel free to ask, I'd love to design more. All my contact details are to the right under the Bio

Some Things I've Been Working On

Yooooo, Been up to my eyes lately so im gonna post a couple of things of mine that are mine and not under NDA ( most of my drawing lately is owned by somebody else hence the lack of posts) sooooo here we go.

I was asked to do a new page of The Hip Hop Opotamus book I did for Brent Pope. Looks like he might be able to get Jedward to be involved so I did an extra page of the book featuring the Jedward Meerkats! I posted up the inks of this on twitter and a lot of people guessed who they were without any hints whatsoever so I suppose that's a job well done. That hair cut is just so iconic I guess you could give anyone a fringe like that and people would guess that they're Jedward.

This one is an ICN noodler  guest post. I was asked by the very cool and very talented Gary Reynolds (go here to check out his new character 'BLU i' on his blog) to do a spot again! I was very happy to.  It was around the time that Maurice Sendak past away. I'm a late comer the book and the work of Maurice Sendak but felt compelled to do a tribute all the same.

And this something I did yesterday. If you haven't read "I Kill Giants' by Joe Kelly and J. M. Ken Niimura, then you really need to. It's an awesome book and Barbara Thorson is a great character, I can't believe more people aren't talking about her and this book. She's such a likeable character and she has some of the best dialogue I've read in a long while.

Anyways I hope the 3 pics cover me for being slow to post so until next post, G'luck!

Tank Girl Birthday Card

Yooo, so long time no post.

Apologies, time at the drawing board outside of work has been tough to find. Buuuuuuuuut I did do this last week.

It's the culmination of a number of warm up sketches and about 2 hours of cleaning it up after work one day. I drew it for my Brothers missus Maria, she was sound enough to draw me one for my birthday back in December so I thought it would be cool to repay the favour.

First time I've ever drawn Tank Girl, I'm a big fan of Jamie Hewlett, so I'm pretty sure subconsciously I drew her in a way that's more reminiscent of his style than anyone else.

She's a lot of fun I'll def be drawing her more. She's pretty outrageous so you can do a lot of fun stuff, originally I was going to have her light her cigar off of her pants as they were still on fire/burning and upon reflection I'm raging I didn't do that. But pretty happy with it all the same.

Hi all so here's something I've wanted to post up for a while now. This is,

Carmen Sandiego Adventures in Math: The Island of Diamonds

  It's a career highlight for me since this is a cartoon I used to watch when I was younger. It was also my first gig as a character designer aaaaand this game is on the Wii, the first major console I can say that I have a product on. Well its not 'my' product, but I got a little slice of that production pie, and it was tasty. Here's hoping for more character design jobs, they're a lot of fun. And more work with the HMH crew, they were great. Here's just a taste of some of the characters I did, I did quite a lot but I'm only going to post up a few.

You'll notice this style is far more realistic than I usually do, just shows that you have to be fluent to some degree, it's still that two-tone style that I'm used to so that really suited me. I guess all those figure studies I do really paid off for there. It really tested my posing as well, as all the characters had to have a 'waiting at the bus stop' kind of feel, so no big outrageous poses and something more passive was needed.I feel like I still managed a good variety

If you want to check out the trailer for the game go to the Nintendo website here you'll spot some of my designs throughout, along with work by,

Gary Reynolds

 Wang Zhuo

Viv Duignan

Tommie Kelly

Stephen Mooney

So I guess there's nothing left to do now than advise you all to go out and buy the game! Go buy the game :P

 All this work is © 2012 Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

 

Figure studies

Just testing out my new Blogger iPhone app. Here's some figure studies and a Hulk doodle I posted up on twitter a little while ago.

Here's a woman that was outside a cafe begging

Here's an old doodle of the Hulk. Think I drew this while waiting for some feedback on some boards

 Messed up the likeness on this but happy enough with it

This guy just seemed happy that it was sunny day

ICN Noodler Post

Hi Folks!

I got asked to do an ICN Noodler post by my friend and amazing artist Gary Reynolds

Please visit ICN if you don't know of it it's an awesome website.

So here it is, did a fantasy type piece. It features a Dire (Thanks for that idea Mark, loads better than the werewolf one) Wolf, Dire Warrior and a Dire Princess.

I decided to put up my various stages of development here too.  Here's the roughs

So here's my digital pencils. At this stage I'm thinking about, design, composition and canvas shape.At this stage I don't focus on line quality too much  as I'm still trying to figure out the drawing. This stage is pretty organic as the drawing tends to figure itself out I'm just sorta along for the ride.

Here's my digital inks, and what I submitted to ICN. I had every intention to paint it up for ICN but unfortunately I just couldn't find the time.

At this stage I think a lot about line quality and my use of black. At the moment I'm really enjoying using deep pools of black and leaving just enough of the shape in there so the viewer can make out where things start and end.

I enjoy this stage a lot, there's something almost meditative about inking.

And here's the final piece, managed to find the time yesterday to get stuck into painting it. Just got stuck in really, threw caution to the wind, I have more fun with it that way. It took me a little longer than usual to paint this, I had to make a new palette and being partially colour blind this tends to be a long trial and error process. Fun all the same tho.

Tried to give the sense of this being a Dire Princess, with her loyal pet Dire Wolf and her trusty royal guard. I don't usually approach 'fantasy' art but I was looking at a lot of Frazetta lately and well that guy just cant help but inspire.

Hope you all like!

Commission

Yo so here's a pic of the Plaque I designed for a mate of mine. My mates trainer and close friend had a surprise birthday party and my mate and the guys at the gym got together and organised this Plaque.

I was given a pretty cool theme, something along the lines of 'The Last Irish Warrior' with some Samurai influence to it for good measure. It was a fun easy gig to do, I'd be happy to do some more.

My mate and his trainer do Mugendo, if you don't know about it you should check it all out here, it's a class Martial Art. And the guys training here are some of the best.

Just got this photo the other day, I hadn't seen the final result until now. Well happy with how it turned out and more importantly my mate ( the client) was too!

Thanks for the gig Fergal