I miss Aberrant....

Many eons ago in 2000, I did a bunch of little vignette styled pieces for the super powers in the Aberrant Player's Guide. This was my first real Aberrant assignment....I did some headshots from Worldwide Phase 2, but those were "fill in" type pieces.

The whole idea behind the pieces was that they weren't scenes as much as just quick glimpses of what that particular power did. The one to the left was super strength or something like that. I kept it simple...super hero lifting giant rock. I think I used my own character, "Liquidizer" for this one (his "heat vision" type power basically reduces people to a puddle of glue and bones).

Using your "own" heroes was also fun. I do not like "iconic" characters in RPGs. Why? Because over time you get several different versions of the character and half the time they don't look right. For this assignment, I used guys I'd had in my sketchbook for eons (make sure they are characters you don't really care about as they'll become the property of whomever you do the work for).

My only real regret on this assignment was not doing any grayscale shading in it. Instead, a crapload of black and tick lines out the wazoo. Still, I hope to revisit these pieces again one day...clean up the line work and slap some color on there. 

Fun Fact: Chinese Donuts are better hot than cold.

Another Fun Fact: I probably watch the Big Bang Theory waaaaay too often for my own good.

Stay tuned as I'll be posting up some revisions to my sketch for the unnamed rpg project I'm working on. Today, I work out the particulars of the perspective...then hopefully tonight start the pencilling. 

The Sketchening Extended Director's Cut....

I was flipping through one of my old sketchbooks today and I found this.  This was for some sort of free pdf Warhammer fan magazine from back around 2003-2005. As with any sort of "fan" publication, it imploded before the first issue went into layout (I know as I was also doing the layout).

I think after things imploded I added the pentagram. Kinda cheesy...just like every t-shirt design ever created for Motley Crue (feel free to insert the name of any hair metal band if you happen to be a big fan of the Crue...and I'm not laughing at you, I'm laughing with you).

Thinking about reworking the piece now into a more Warhammery/Mordheimish page element of some sort. Maybe one day, I'll get to layout an RPG book that is based on Fahfrd & the Grey Mouser (FYI...I can draw the shit out of Faf and Mouse).

Fun Fact: I have a ton of sketchbooks with only 10 pages of sketches in each.

Another Fun Fact: Most of those sketches are of human faces.

Stay tuned as I try to find my sketch of "Rob Liefeld Draws Dickbutt"....although, I'm thinking about doing up my version of Dickbutt now.

The Sketchening pt 2

Had a sketch redo. This time, I pretty much based it word for word on the description. Kinda meh...but what can you do. So, for this piece, a terrfied Bobby Hill looking kid is huddled up under his blankets and is staring at the "closet door of doom". The only light source for the piece will be a window which is out of the viewers field of vision. I'll probably do a light blue hue to the whole thing. I'm still thinking about maybe having some sort of mist coming out from under the door...just to push the idea there is somethign behind it and not just some wuss of a kid staring at an empty closet.

As far as my whacky perspective goes, I'll be setting up a model shot in Maya or Sketch up and then fiddling with the camera's settings to get the appropriate perspective reference. I don't consider it cheating if I'm the guy who is building the models and the scene.

Fun Fact: Monty does not like to be woken up or moved at anytime. Ever.

Another Fun Fact: My sleep schedule is so screwed right now, it is pathetic.

Sketchbook: the Doodling pt 1

So exciting news here in Lilburn...I'm once again doing illustration work. It exciting and terrifying at the same time. I haven't done what I would call "professional" illustration in almost 8 years now. Most of my work from 2004 up until 2011 consisted mostly of fill in work for when artists bailed on a White Wolf project or for personal projects which mainly revolved around me making jokes about stuff (and I promise, Dudes of Legend ™ or Dudes of Yore™ will eventually see the light of day.)

So what I'm doing for this particular project is a half page color illo. Yes, color. Luckily the client uses a great deal of color b&w art.

For this piece, a child is afraid of the "monster in the closet". The initial image that popped into my head is over to the left (well, a sketch of what popped into my head anyway). The main idea I'm going for is that the closet is a dark a forboding place the child is terrified of and then I will take the shadows from the closet and "morph" it into the monster at the top. I'm still not sure about the monster....I have a werewolf up there now, but I also had a cthulhuesque type critter up there....and an angry goblin.

I'm also still hashing out the color scheme as well. I had though of a strong yellow light being cast by the door but now, I'm thinking of almost a blue to simulate moonlight illuminating the child's room and a small part of the closet interior. I'll figure out what color for the critter part once I settle on a critter. 

Another thing that I am toying with right now is the use of a texture over the color areas to give it a sort of watercolor effect. Don't get me wrong, the idea to actually paint the piece has crossed my mind but I'm trying baby steps here. So, I'll probably either drop a paper texture over it or maybe just a light "clouds" texture. Mainly just something to spice things up.

The piece to the right here is the beginnings of v2 of the sketch. Yes, the fat kid in the foreground does look like Bobby Hill from the back. The idea for this piece is the child is peeking out from his hiding place on the other side of the bed. I'm toying with doing a window pane shadow across the wall to add something to it. Again, this is just step 1...I'll take this piece, trace it onto another piece of copy paper and add more to the sketch (or make changes) until I get something I like.

I should probably point out something about my sketches. I use them as a reference for placement of objects and figures...and maybe some of the lighting. I'll sometimes change poses and various details in the final if I think it'll look better. That's why they are sketches and not pencils.

Last thing for tonight, these are some doodles I did to warm up.They are not works of art by any means...just me messing around with my fine point sharpie. I think the dude on the left was the beginning of a goblin type guy and the wolf thing on the left was me trying to come up with ideas for the critter in v1 of the sketch.

So that is all for tonight. I need to try and get a little sleep so I can do my usual daytime work stuff. Hopefully, I can post some of that stuff in the near future (I have to ask).

Fun Fact: The Bacon-Cheeseburger Taquito at Quik Trip is a true delicacy.

Another Fun Fact: The 49 cent soda  promotion at Quik Trip is over, and I'm not happy about it.

Cleaning up the blog a little....

No, you didn't have a brain aneurysm that screwed up your memory or anything like that. I'm cleaning up some of my blog posts...you know, the ones where I ramble on about crap forever because I posted it at 4am.

Why do I do that?

I honestly have no idea why. Maybe it's sleep deprivation or the lack of energy drinks in my house. Whatever the reason is (secret government radio waves), some of my previous posts have been wiped from the face of the internet.

So to compensate everyone for the loss of those pearls of wisdom...those steaming piles of personal insight, I give you the "Undersea Kingdom" from a Gamma World book that I didn't even bother to remember the name of. Here's a fun game, try and find the character from the Little Mermaid in the piece.

Fun fact: I took a date to see the Little Mermaid. The movie was her choice. As a matter of fact, the only choice I got to make that evening was butter on the popcorn...after having a five minute argument about it.

Moral of the Story: Never let your date choose the movie or the presence of buttery toppings on your popcorn.

Tune in this weekend as I will have some actual posts about art and design and not just me making quips about how whipped I was my senior year of high school!

Falling Scales 2!

Sweet!

My first official Onyx Path title is out. I did the layout and design as well as working with the artist on the cover.

What is it? Well I'm glad I imagined you asking that. Falling Scales is an adventure for the World of Darkness. It's sort of like those modules you'd get for D&D in the old days (or a few years ago if all the D&D you know is d20). They are fantastic for those gaming sessions where you just didn't have time to put together your own adventure for the group.

This one is actually pt two of the adventure (I also did the layout and design on pt one, but right now I'm pimping pt two). But you can check them both out at Drivethrurpg.com.

Check it out!

Fun fact: the SCALES part of the logo was made using the font Zamora. Another fun fact: the only reason I ever even checked out that font was because Zamora was the city in which Conan and Subatai stole the Eye of the Serpent in the original Conan the Barbarian. A third fun fact: Sandahl Bergman was super hot in Conan the Barbarian.

So to sum up: Go check out Falling Scales 1 & 2 and Sandahl Bergman was really hot in 1982.