Will this MADness ever end!?

Cover art for a 3D MAD issue from a couple of years ago. It was refreshing to draw him in a comicbook style for a change, instead of the more painterly rendition I usually do.

There were a couple of problems with my colour choices which clashed with the 3D separation process (red's usually a big no-no), so his glove was eventually changed to a pale green. Here's a link to the cover with all the text added.

We're ready for your closeup now, Mr Zombie!

Some coloured detail of previously posted black and white zombie pic titled, "Eat your brains, Billy.". Fun with texture overlays.

On a different note, I've made some alterations to the Gallery which should help it load faster.

...and lastly, I bought a microphone today, so you'll soon be getting tutorial videos with voiceover.

Blondes have more fun!

A couple of Illustrations from the archives. One is for NEC's Boot Up campaign, and the other from Playstation magazine.

Comic strip interlude...

Sorry, no videos today but while you're waiting here's excerpts from a couple of comic strips I did from a few years back- one for Microsoft and another from a cocktail menu for the Cargo Bar in Sydney.

Three shapes, three heads video

A fun little experiment using three different shapes to draw three different heads.




What I ended up with, was a Superman whose chin would put Jay Leno's to shame, a version of Fat Albert if he had come straight outta Compton, 'Hey, hey, hey, I'm gonna bust a cap in yo' ass, fool!', and a woman looking appropriately concerned.

Lots of fun to do and hopefully insightful...

A clearer, hi-res version of the video can be found here.

Downpour

Another WIP timelapse video, this time for Illustration Friday's topic 'Rain'.

You'll notice at a couple of stages I flip the canvas. This is a good way to spot mistakes because it gives the artist a new perspective on the drawing. Although, no matter how much I flipped it, the guy still looks like a dork. But hey, he's standing in the middle of a downpour grinning away, so he can't be too clever.

A clearer, hi-res version of the video can be found here.

SNIKT!

A sketch of Logan, aka Wolverine for the Drawing Board 'Wolverine' thread.

Girl video. Now in Colour!

Below is a timelapse video of the girl pic coloured. The quality's not the greatest but I'm learning as I go, so hopefully future attempts will be better. I was having too many problems with Google Video, so here's my results through YouTube.

To the left you can see the finished version.

Girl sketch video

Update: I've uploaded a new version to Google video (thanks PJ). For best quality, choose 'original size' at the bottom right of the playback console.

This is somewhat of an experiment. If you press the above pic you should see a video of that picture being drawn from start to finish. The first few minutes is me sketching in blue so it may be hard to see. Let me know if it worked or didn't work, and if it was interesting watching.

Inking other artists

For those of you not comicbook savvy, the comicbook art process works like this- because comics are usually monthly books, the art chores are broken up into different jobs. There's the penciller who's really the star of the show, he/she does all the groundwork, decides on panel layouts (with the writer), angles and basically draws everything. There's the colourist who colours all the comic pages (these days on computer) to look nice and shiny for print. And in between these two is the inker.

What the inker does is interpret and embellishes the penciller's scribbles (and sometimes that's all they are) into ink drawings which reproduce better in print. The inker is an artist in their own right and is usually called upon, not to just 'trace' the pencils (as inking is sometimes misinterpreted as) but to determine lineweight, shadow placement, and even to correct minor or major errors that the penciller has made. So basically, a crappy inker can ruin a great penciller's work, and a great inker can make fairly amateurish pencils shine.

Which brings me to my joy of inking other artists' work. Sometimes it's nice to just let someone else do all the hard work and to just be able to concentrate on refining and enhancing their pencils through ink. I've never done it professionally, and the following examples were done only for fun.


Here I've inked a Mark Bagley 'Spiderman' (one inked in pen, the other in Photoshop), a panel from a 'Punisher' sample page by Aussie artist Andy Finlayson, and a page from Steve Rude's 'Nexus'. Heaps of fun.

Old Skool

Old skool for two reasons.

Firstly, this was done before I started using computers for colours. Back when I used to hand colour stuff (so long ago). Here I used colour markers over a photocopy of my inks and used white gouache for highlighting.

Secondly, the subject is old skool, with current video game characters (from the year this was done-1999) worshipping the shrine of original 'old skool' arcade game character, Pac-man. This accompanied an article in Playstation magazine documenting the Top 100 video games since Pong (Pac-Man being #1).

The original illo had a little more art to the left, but since this was scanned from the magazine, some of it got trimmed on the page joins. So rather than trying to badly join the two with a big gap missing, I just trimmed it down.

Kids' stuff

Some manga style cartoons from a few years back. There's 'Cyberjack' a gaming mascot for the Disney magazine and 'Afterburners' which was shown as a comicstrip short on the Foxkids cable channel.

How do ya like them apples!?

A couple of caricatures of 'Good Will Hunting' and 'The Bourne Identity' actor Matt Damon, done as part of a Caricature Jam over at The Drawing Board. Pencil and Photoshop.

Panda

A personal piece done in Painter.

What I do for a crust Part5- Animatics

Sometimes storyboards aren't enough for clients to pitch their advertisements to test audiences. Another option they have are animatics. Basically these are similar to storyboards but the frames have various layers of movement which allow the creatives to make a simple animation to present to test audiences via the television. Usually the layers consist of basic arm movements, talking mouths and blinking eyes etc.

Here are some samples of my animatics. Very similar to my storyboard samples, but the frame sizes are different in dimensions, so as to fit standard and widescreen television formats.

Bus ads

Here are two bus advertisements I've done promoting France as a holiday destination.

The idea is that the art is repeated all down the side of the bus under the windows so the passengers' heads complete the illustration. Pretty funny when it works.

Surfing with the alien

One of a series of surf related comic strip advertisements done for a beer sponsored surf comp. Each strip portrayed a different far-fetched surfing move.

I feel the earth move under my feet...

A digital painting done for a bank's billboard poster from a few years ago. The final art had 'Earthquake' text across the top to give it the feel of an old style disaster movie poster.

I remember hanging out the passenger window on the freeway trying to take a photo of the billboard at 120km/h with my digital camera. Didn't have much success, even after numerous attempts. Maybe I should have just asked for a copy of the ad from the client.

It's a jungle out there!

An old magazine illustration for an article about the telecommunications jungle. I thought it was appropriate for the latest Illustration Friday topic- Jungle.

Animal character designs

Some cartoony animal character designs for a tiling grout company's ad campaign, which was canned at the last moment. It was supposed to be a series of animated advertisements, but in the end they went for the safe live action/actors approach.

Illustration Friday- Portrait

This portrait of late INXS singer Michael Hutchence was drawn over half a lifetime ago, back in 1988 when I was 15. It was done as my Year 10 high school major work, using chalk pastels. The original hung in my high school's reception area until I left in 1990.

Originally you were supposed to see his hand wearing the bracelet, but after it didn't turn out so well, I followed the popular artist's mantra of 'When in doubt, black it out'.

The new face of Superman

Here's my latest Aussie MAD cover, with this one featuring the Man of Steel. The cover concept is based on an old US MAD issue from the 80's. The art director requested a more contemporary version with modern furniture, washboard abs and the current Superman outfit.

Farm animals gone bad...

Well, they're actually a couple of very nice farm animals, but they look pretty badass in these pics. These are a couple of Aussie comicbook characters, both of which were very popular in the local scene back in the '90's. There's Tim McEwen's, Trevor the Bull from 'Greener Pastures' and Issue One's Cyberswine- Half cop, Half machine, Full boar! The Cyberswine was a cover for a fanzine mag called Comic's Edge and Trevor was a pinup in #2 of Greener Pastures, both going back about 10 years now.

Shadowplay

Some experiments with shadows in Zbrush from a few years ago.

More Caricatures

Some more caricatures from over at the Caricaturist's Caricatures thread at Drawing Board, you can check out the people's photos here.

Marv

A Sin City style sample done for a client. Drawn without reference (I'll have to buy those books one day). It's for a storyboard job I'm currently doing, where the client wanted the frames to have the mood of Sin City. In the end the artwork will look nothing like this. Would have been fun to experiment in this style though. But, it got me the job so that's all that matters.

On a similar note, one of the all-time favourite toys in my collection is a Sin City 'Electric Chair Marv' figurine. Throw the switch and the chair vibrates, his eyes glow red and he laughs, 'Is that the best you can do, you pansies'. Classic.

Ta Daaa!!

Yes, I'm back. Nice to have a little break. Miss me?

So why am I jumping out of a cake? (and more importantly, why isn't it a stripper?) This week's Illustration Friday topic is 'cake' so it seemed appropriate.

It's back to the grindstone for me. Be sure to pop in for regular blog updates.