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

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!

Blue Pencillin' It

yooooooooo

Long time no post, apologies, I've up to my eyes in work for the past while and very happy to be able to say that. I've got a tonne  of these types of sketches at the ready, been doing some traditional work for a spell now as my Wacom is left in studio most of the time.

Here's Marcus, I'm going to paint this up in a similar fashion to my Cuchulainn post. stay tuned, I havent gone anywhere, I'll blitz the blog with posts around Christmas!

Page 1

Due to the last few months being kinda mental I'm getting back into a comic I started. I tweeted some of the designs a while back. Here's page 1 it's still in progress but I just wanted to post it. More so because now that I've blogged it I'll definitely see it through. It's written by a good friend of mine Eamonn O'Neill, check out his work here he's an amazing writer.

What we see here is Jim, a detective based in Dublin and Skull Boy, a person that only Jim can see and interact with. The story begins with a pretty major event in Jim's life, he's just had to shoot a young boy in order to stop him from blowing up himself and everyone else in and around the school. The story follows Jim as he tries to get over the whole situation, while dealing with an extremely violent group of 'soldiers'. I'm being vague on purpose, I'll sell it better when I have more to show.

It's a great story and promises a lot. As ever Eamonn's dialogue is pure genius. I'll keep u all updated with it as the comic starts to take shape.

Ben's Birds

Here's my collective post for the theme "Birds Birds Birds".  It features Black and White from Tekkonkinkreet, a favorite film of mine. I've wanted to draw these guys for a while now and I haven't drawn a city-scape in ages so I thought I'd try do the both here.

And as always I tried something new here too. I reversed my halftone dots, so instead of using the actual dots themselves I used the area around them. Just thought it would give me a more 'square-er' feel when sorting out the building silhouette.

I had a lot of fun with this one. I kept it B&W for obvious reasons. Since the theme was about birds I tried my best to keep them as much a character as Black and White are in this piece.  I like the idea of the crow resting on blacks club and White playing with the only dove in the whole city.

White's imagination is a great element to play with. In the film about half the things he's interacting with aren't really there and some times he just floats in mid air. I thought I'd have him play with a dove that may or may not actually be there, that's up to you.

I'll blog again soon, laters!

Commision Christmas Card

Hi folks,

Here's an update on the blog that isn't just from the Collective Thinking Blog. Brent Pope got in contact with me again to produce a Christmas card for the National Children's Hospital in Tallaght. I thought I'd throw a non 'texty' version up on the blog, just the illustration itself. Here's George Hook and Brent Pope with their snowman. Hope you like.

Merry Christmas!
Ben

Mythology with a Modern Day Twist- Cuchulainn

Okay so it's another collective thinking blog post and it's another new style im trying out. I tried it with Spidey last month but I couldn't really get my head around it, I think it's starting to click with me now though.  As soon as I started painting over mistakes rather than erasing them it all started to work out. I'll definitely do a few more of these, I really enjoyed it, and it's always great to learn a new style. Lots o fun to do and pretty handy to have professionally.

Here is Cuchulainn. I freakin Love Cuchulainn! I've been drawing him and reading about him since before I can remember. But I've never drawn him like this. Actually before I drew this I would have thought it to be near blasphemy to produce something like this about Cuchulainn. Well here we are, the piece is finished and I actually kinda like it, so it cant be that blasphemous.

My original idea about this was to have a close up on him sitting down with "Gae Bolga" ingraved into his gun.  Gae Bolga was the name of his spear,  it was a weapon that pretty much killed whoever and smashed through whatever got in its way.  I really wanted to involve it in my painting and since I've been looking at a load of Ashley Wood lately I thought what a better way to involve it than as a big honking robot. And with the Ashley Wood influence so to came the Steampunk style.

Hope you like it!Until the next post, laters!

Childhood hero

Alright so i figured yesterday that my main idea for the this months post is taking me a little longer to crack, so on the odd chance that it takes me a little longer to figure out than the months deadline here's something I knocked out this morning.

I think I was only kid to prefer Leo over Raph, I just thought he was the best. and when i thought about it as I was drawing this, there are some Leo and Spidey character similarities, that maybe the reason why I love both those guys. But if anyone ever aks i'll say its cause Leo had swords! :)

Tried something new with this as well. I like  the ink spatter and roughness of it all  i reckon ill do more of these in the future and also go on to take em a lot further, watch this space.

The other post im working on is obviously Spidey (there's no way I'd be leaving him out), he'll be done in a different style alltogether

Go check out the rest of the posts under the same title here http://collectivethinkingblog.blogspot.com/

"Remember what master splinter thought us" - Leonardo

Hip Hop - Children's Book is FINISHED!

Here's some illustrations I did for a new children's book called 'The Hip Hop Opotamus". It's in collaboration with Brent Pope, all is left is printing it. I'll be sure to give an update when its in the shops.

I did a pitch for a cartoon series of the same characters with a great bunch of people, I'll post up the finished bible and animations as soon as they all get the go ahead.

Please pick up the book it's for a good cause. Brent and I want to do it for a suicide prevention group, when we decide on the particular group I'll let you know and you can support em all you want by buying as many copies as you want ;). 

Anyways I hope you like what you see, I posted up some more of the images, obviosuly i didnt post up all of em cause I want you to buy the book.

I'll in touch soon with the name of the charity that we have chosen, laters!