Pics!

First post of the new year! Hope you're all keeping well.  These are a couple of presents I did for a few friends of mine for Christmas/Birthdays.

The first one is for a friend of mine who asked me one night to draw her a Panda. I was surprised how much a film like Kung Fu Panda had subliminally seeped a default Panda design in me, so when I noticed this coming through in my roughs I went right back to basics blocked out a tonne of new shapes, just really quick gestures. 

Best to keep everything crazy rough at the start so trying loads of new shapes and gestures is a good thing to do and it helps prevent you over working a drawing and falling in love with what should only be a preliminary sketch and never the final product. I always find that when the shapes/pose have been rushed and not planned out/experimented enough always leaves you with a product that lacks that special something and is usually riddled with mistakes. This is the longest part of my process. It deserves the time when this has been figured out the rest falls into place.  

This particular image was when I was playing with some dog-like characteristics and shapes with the Panda. I was told a long time ago that if you're trying to make an animal character likeable it really helps to add some dog in the design/character of the animal. It's something worth keeping in mind, it always helps me anyways. Here's what I came up with. His name is Peter Panda

 The next one is for my girlfriend, it went through a few iterations again. I knew immediately it was going to be a film noir style to it. I got to play around a bit with this one. The original pose of the woman in the pic I really liked but I kept on changing my mind about the environment. I eventually settled on the last. Got to play around with some new brushed in PS that I have been enjoying. I don't think I've gotten the best out of em just yet, but something is starting to click. This is Lady Fatale

One of the many iterations

Here's the Christmas card version

and here's the final one. My fav

And here's another, This is a Mouse Guard pic. David Petersen's Mouse Guard is class! If you haven't read it I recommend you do. This was a present for a few friends of mine ( They're married now so I can cheap out and get em one present :P Ha!) They have some great art hanging up on their wall and i thought that this would fit in with the rest of their original pieces.

Since they're a married couple I kind of liked the idea of couple of mice running away together and the scape of what is at a mice's disposal in these books is huge. I had a lot of fun working on this one too.  I find drawing a good set of wings extremely satisfying. Got to play with a few new textures in this one as well.

More to come soon getting to the other end of the to do list. Hopefully I'll have as much to blog nest time as well.

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

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

 

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!

Sketchbook Doodles

So it's been a while since I posted anything. Believe me I have good reasons but lets get started with some new posts. Since I haven't had the time to do any finished or digital work outside of the studios/jobs I'm working in at the mo, I'm going to post up drawings from my sketchpad to keep the blog more active. These drawing range from good to fail, some are just ideas, me exploring a shape anything really. So here goes a few doodles and I'll talk about em as I go. If you follow me on twitter, you'll have seen most of these before but there are some new ones that I've only done in the last day or so that I haven't tweeted or anything with other than post here. Hope you like.

These three heads are three figure studies I did while waiting for a friend. Goes to show it's always handy to keep a sketchbook with you at all times. these range from about 3 to 5 mins

 Just wouldn't be a sketchbook of mine without some Spidey doodles

Another figure study. Saw this guy on the bus, pretty happy with the shapes I used in this. And considering it was drawn on the bus, pretty happy with the line quality too.

Random eye in my Pad... my 'eyePad' a hur hur hur

Seen this guy reading the paper on the bus. I was really pushed for time on this one as I almost had to get off at my stop, pretty happy with it tho even if it is rushed

I was watching 'How to Train Your Dragon' thought I'd have a go at drawing sum vikings. I don't really like this sketch myself but its been received really well on twitter. I'll be drawing more Vikings so! This is Pro-markers, tippex pen and a sharpie

Two more people who I actually see pretty regularly on my bu. Always keep that sketchbook handy

Some swallow studies. African or European, that's up to yo. Some prelim studies for a tattoo design I'm working on.

More figure studies, people I drew while waiting around in town. That woman actually had a freaky long neck

Some doodles I did in front of the telly

Another tattoo design I'm working on

Some more telly doodles. When I finished drawing this guy on the left I realised he looked really pervy, so I gave him something to perv on.

Been watching Supernatural,  I  dig this show so here's Bobby and a Leviathan... and a strange dark figure cloaked in shadow

Another telly doodle, quite happy with this one, I reckon I'll ink it up soon

This is a submission for the collective thinking blog. the theme was 'The 7 Deadly Sins"  I went with a pretty Wrathful Hulk. He's choking the security guard for letting Rick Jones into the testing grounds, Banner is watching in the background.

Been having some crazy dreams lately about the Witch from Left for Dead chasing me down Patrick street in Dun Laoghaire. Its good for me that zombies don't know any Ju Jitsu, but she packs a crazy amount of cardio, she never stops running.

Tried something new here, not ecstatic about this one yet, but I want to bring this into PS and paint it up.

and here's the last one. This is Jack the Ripper. Poor composition here, really missed my marquee tool and paste option, but i do like the idea. I'll draw up some more of these soon and get em all right.

Here we go, more posts soon! Maybe even tomorro!