Joust Remake

This month, the challenge at work was to do some new art for a classic game. I never was a gamer when I was younger. We had a Coleco Vision with a million games and the adapter to play Atari 2600 games, but my gaming experience stopped there. All my friends moved on to the NES and I later got a Sega Master System, but Altered Beast and Outrun were as far as I got. So my knowledge of games quickly diminished, as I had to rely on trips to my friends houses to see what the new games were. Some may think I was a deprived child, but I think it was better that I was outside, where I love every minute of nature. Here are a few sketches that I am working on putting together for a remake of "Joust." Man, my abilities sure stink compared to my colleagues. Makes me sick, they are so good. I'm going to attempt to paint this one up for the challenge

Just Another Monster

This is just another monster idea. Seems pretty good, but I feel like I haven't put enough into it. I think I'm going to paint this one up. I'll post that soon.

First Final Painter 9 Portrait

So it's final. I decided to stop noodling it and just pump it out. I think it turned out pretty good for my first foray into digital portrait painting. By the way, did I mention that I LOVE undo? It beats painting on a canvas and constantly scraping, repainting, scraping, repainting, sanding, repainting until it's right. But there is still that physical touch of paint on a canvas that I think Painter, no matter how good, can duplicate. So I'll keep at it. Hopefully I can get quicker from here. If I take as long on other images as I did with this one, I'll never get any better.

Portrait in Progress

This is a portrait that I am working on in Painter just for kicks. It's my first time really trying to get colors right on the computer, so I cheated a bit. I have never been able to pick out sublties in color, so I thought I would experiment. What I did was use the eyedropper tool on the actual picture to see what colors were REALLY there versus what I thought was there. I was amazed how poor my choices were. So this has really been a learning experience. The portrait is of my wife, but for those who know her, it doesn't look a whole lot like her. The drawing that I did was actually really good, but while zoomed in and painting, I accidentally moved the painting layer a tiny bit down, and didn't catch it until I was way too far into the painting, so here it is. I'll post a few more pictures of the progress in the near future.

Few More Sketches

Just a few sketches in my free time for an art challenge at work. Man, I haven't done this in a while...It was great to do but all too revealing at how much I need to improve. Hopefully I'll continue to improve, but unfortunately that'll take another 10,000 drawings.

Painter Character Test

Here's just a little attempt at coloring a drawing in Painter. I'm not liking the composition much, and the painting is unfinished, but I think it's ok. The title of this is "A child's first encounter with his imaginary friend". That could be the big bully's imaginary friend is a pip-squeak bean-alien, or the kid alien's imaginary friend is a big oafy kid.

Painter 9 Oil Test

Well, I tried out the Artist Oils brushes in Painter 9. Quite impressive. I'm still haveing a hard time with this digital media stuff. I love undo, but there's just something about the tablet that I can't get used to. Oh well, keep trying. This one was a quick sketch, and I didn't have a model.
I had a teacher once that would always say that there are 10,000 bad drawings that have to come out before something that is good. Well, I hope that I'm close to 99,998. More like that many to go. Whew.

Been A While....

Ok, the holidays were super busy, and work has been even worse, but here's a few images that I did a bit back while trying to practice in Painter 9:

Some older drawings

These drawings better represent my work. They were done in a figure drawing class at BYU while I was studying there. I am trying to get back to that ability. It'll take some time, but it's worth it to me. I've got a long way to go until I'm there, but I hope it will go quickly...for my sake. It's so frustrating not being able to draw like I used to.

A little late...

It's been a bit longer than a day since I updated, but here's the next one. Man, I need to review anatomy. Been too long. You start to forget what mucles are there and what they do. Another Painter 9 Sketch.

Another Painter Test

Here's one from today. I think I'm starting to get the hang of it, but still, I need a LOT of work and practice.

Slowly Getting Better

Here's one where I was trying to see what the media was like in Painter. I really like the ability to layer pieces of my drawings. I can work on it like I do with chalk and paper. Seemed to turn out ok, but I ended up having to go home, so I didn't finish it. Once again, anatomy needs work, but I was going for a dynamic pose. I need to start including the head and hands and feet. One of my life drawing teachers in college said that only incompetent artists leave the head and hands unfinished...so maybe I'm incompetent, or I'm just afraid to go back to them.

Still Catchin' Up

Here's a couple more that I did in the past month or so. Man, my anatomy has suffered since I left school. I feel like I can't seem to place any muscles in the right places. I guess it's back to the good ol' Loomis books I go. These are from August and September. Once again, in Painter 9...just learning it.

Daily Sketch

Well, I have been trying to regain my drawing abilities lately, and here is the first attempt. I plan on doing one of these a day, and see where it takes me. It's done in Painter 9, which is a bit strange for me. I don't know if I like a Wacom tablet or not. Seems too smooth for me, but I think I can deal with it. I hope this begins a great journey toward the way I used to draw a few years ago...before 3d. So here it goes.

Getting Started

Well, I guess this blogging thing is the way to go now. I guess I'll give it a try. Hopefully this develops into something that can be appreciated by many users.

Just a little about myself...I'm a character TD and animator for Avalanche Software, a game development company for Buena Vista Games (BVG), which is a division of the Walt Disney Company, so in short, I work for Disney. I've been doing this for 5 years now, and I'm loving it. Art is my passion, but that even takes a back seat to my wonderful wife of 6 years and our 2 kids. I live in Utah, where I graduated from BYU in Animation.

We'll see how this goes.