Part 2 of the purge of St.Martez, with a closer look at some of the major players in the engagement.

Inquisitor Slade is accompanied by members of his retinue and the Grey Knight squad Purgator, led by Brother-Captain Daedalus.

This may or may not be a prototype for characters appearing in some sort of graphical storytelling within the 40k universe.

Larger view available through the original link

The force of Grey Knights and Grey Knight Titans are victorious over the daemonic forces that had infested St. Martez for 250 years, banishing them back to the warp for 1000.

I made this to refine my rendering technique, I think it turned out pretty well. I should actually take a picture of my 40k army to go along with it :)

A larger version is available through the "original" link

This is a freebie I did for a prospective client. I think it turned out pretty cool, but I think for my next piece I am going to get into Painter again and see how grayscale rendering goes in it, to see if I can get a more painterly feel on my brush strokes.

A conceptual of one of my characters, Janus, Guardian of Jutai.

Hopefully first pages of the actual novel will start coming soon! Still trying to get the script finalized.

Did this quickly for a friend.

It was a good time to experiment with my grayscale rendering techniques, since I am slightly modifying the way I approach the pieces. I think it turned out pretty well... although I'm still not sure if this is the right character!

My tribute to Samus, since her new game is obviously going to be amazing.

I think it turned out pretty well, I'll do an "on creation" when it isn't time for sleep.

I linked two of the artists that are my models for not being terrible on the right, if you haven't ever heard of them or seen their art, you should go look.

E3 is going on, and I am tremendously excited for several of the games coming out (OMG METROID FROM TEAM NINJA?!).
Games I'm excited about:
Halo3:ODST
Metroid
Mario Galaxy
Splinter Cell: Conviction
Assassin's Creed 2
Sidescroller XBLA game from Epic/Chair
Brutal Legend
I'll add more later

I have a game picture to post here soon, hopefully tonite... we'll see if I have time to finish it up. It is a picture of samus, since I got so excited about the new game. Next I will probably do Master Chief, since Halo:ODST is coming out soon. I am going to try and make a habit of doing different characters for my quick rendering/color comps, since doing a lot of different characters is better than only doing my own all the time :)

I also probably have some commissions rolling in, so I should be posting some knightly coolness here soon. Also, I promised a pretty pony to my woman, so I guess I'll post that at some point as well.

Putting this up was probably long overdue.

If you have had any desire to contact me, here it is (I know tons of you have, right?). Also details are within on commissions (which I would love to do for YOU). My email is listed like that to hide it from spiders, my other email already gets way to inundated with crap to have another one getting loaded up. Hopefully the spiders haven't figure out how to read it when its written all clever like that.

So I've been busily working on a script for the first episode of my Galefire graphic novel, or whatever you want to call it, and I am finishing up. Hopefully I can have it finished in the next few days so I can have some friends and associates look it over, then I can actually start concepting out the panels. I've written 45 panels so far, and it will be presented in a 'cinematic' look, which basically means each panel will be a wide, page width box, and there will likely be 4 per page... I'm not really a big fan of the massively cluttered pages. I will probably throw a couple splash (full page) panels in there as well, but we'll see.

Went to an all day concert on Saturday, so I didn't particularly get much done this weekend other than writing. Hopefully I will have some info come back on some freelance work this week, otherwise it will be more writing and probably concepting out some more characters and locations.

Watching Metalocalypse while trying to draw is way too distracting, just btw.

So this turned out pretty good, probably going to use it for my twitter page's background. I am still fleshing out the workflow with this new technique, but I do like it quite a bit. I'd say this was about 2hrs or so, not too bad... the time estimation could be messed up since I kept looking over my shoulder at Metalocalypse repeatedly this afternoon.

In gaming news, Broken Steel DLC for Fallout3 went by pretty fast, but was definitely worth it, and now I am working on Fable 2, since I kind of skipped it when it came out. The story is pretty weak, but the combat is decently fun, hopefully it will get better the closer to the end I get.

I also got EA Active, since I am a lazy ass almost all of the time. If anyone says its NOT a workout, they are lying, because I am doing the easy sessions and its beating the crap out of me, I shudder to think what doing a hard session would be like.

On Creation: I rendered this pretty extensively in grayscale before adding any color, which was done with a color layer. After setting up the basic color with the color layer I went back in and did some detailing on another normal layer. After all of that I ran a Smart Sharpen on it to give it a bit more of a finished look.

Edit: This did get scaled slightly when I uploaded it, for the full version just click the original link at the bottom. I will have to modify it slightly to put on twitter, but that shouldn't be too bad.

Edit2: OH shit, it looks baller on twitter. That's right, baller.

So, I didn't really start this to be a color quickie, and it was really just to experiment with the technique detailed in the March 09 issue of imagine FX, and it wasn't particularly quick... probably about 2hrs, which I guess isn't too bad. I think it turned out alright, although I did spot some issues with the anatomy, but they aren't too terrible. I think the colors turned out alright for laying over a grayscale image, but it will take some more practice and experimentation to get it better.

Time for bed now though, just got done slaying some ulduar (I only have 3 pieces of naxx gear left!)

So I have returned... actually I returned last Thursday night, but I've been taking it easy over the weekend. Now its time to get back into the groove of actually producing stuff. Might have some freelance illustration work coming down the road, so that is good news as well. Need to shore up this technique before that happens though, look for something new coming today. I have a good grayscale rendering I've been working on sporadically over the last couple days which I am going to try and apply some color to, should turn out alright.

I actually have an idea for a comic, that may or may not be funny, but its about Fable 2, so that's old. Hey, at least new DLC for it just came out... right?

Nothing coming this week, I'll be basking in the sun.

I meant to get a color quickie up before I left, but I fell asleep on the couch, and then I had to super-clean the house before we ask people to watch it.

I'll be taking my sketchbook if I get any free time to draw.

Color Quickie 2, got most of it done over my lunch... total time invested might be about an hour, not too bad for my usual sluggish pace.

Same workflow as before, seems to work pretty well as long as I am aware how much the initial grayscale is going to darken it down, which generally isn't too much. Off to the store for the woman!

So, I am going to try and do one of these each day on my lunch break. We'll see how it goes.

I really need to develop my color theory, and the way I employ color, since I am pretty sure I'm terrible at it, and most of the time I have pieces that succeed because of dumb luck, or a limited palette accidentally (which is basically dumb luck). Once I get back from vacation next week (yay florida keys!) I am probably going to be taking a painting class here in town, so I can actually learn some traditional techniques. I'll be posting the stuff up with my thoughts as I do them, I hope I learn things!

On creation: So, this was kind of a new technique I employed. I started out with a super loose/rough grayscale, just to kind of plan things out. Once the composition (which I wouldn't call amazing or anything) was in place, I made a new multiply layer and laid in my base color for the whole piece, which was a dark blue. I wanted the image to be pretty cool, so the bluish/greenish tones dominate most of the piece, other than a bit of orange lighting, which I used since it is the complement of the blues/greens. The main thing I tried to pay attention to, was keeping my colors pretty pure from the color wheel, mostly just lightening and darkening them with white/black. Also, any contact colors (like, skin for example), I made sure to work up from the blueish wash that was over the whole piece, so it would all have a good consistency (which I usually have problems with).

Edit: I may rework this for the first episode, as its kind of a scene in it, but I hadn't planned it out yet. Could just be a shot from Sol's perspective... is that really how I want him to look? I need to do some mockups of this dude. I even forgot to draw glasses on him, sheesh.

Yes, someone at work got me sick over the weekend, so I did little else than sleep and take meds to try and stave off terrible headaches and endless amounts of congestion blowing from my nose and mouth. I am still kind of sick, but not quite as bad (just have retained the stuffy shit, at least the headaches are gone).

Been agonizing over a couple of pictures while not feeling terrible. One cool sci-fi floating city landscape for my dad, and a beach lighthouse for my grandma. I would say the lighthouse is giving me a fair amount of trouble. Tried a few new techniques, found them lacking, was thinking about something else in bed last night, might try it later.

I'll attempt a comic, but I got no suggestions :( oh well.

Well, I get a decent amount of traffic here at the site, although I can't imagine why sometimes; but I will admit, I don't think I am much of a "funny comic" kind of writer. I have my whole crazy/intertwining/social commentary first episode bouncing around in my head, and all kinds of artistic thoughts about how to improve, and the funny comics just don't seem to find their way in there most of the time.

So, I'm asking anyone who does think they are funny to leave a comment and give me an idea for what to do with the next comic. I would like it to be from WoW, since I get a decent amount of traffic for that, and I enjoy doing them, I just have problems ever getting an idea as to what to poke fun at (unless its deep mechanics, which no one gets). I'll be forwarding this onto my friend at WCFiction, and possibly my guildmates, to see if they can help me come up with something hilarity-ensuing to draw.

I am going to try and keep up on my twitter more, but we'll see. I am reluctant to post on it while I am work, and when I am at home I'm generally "doing" something. One candidate would be to chronicle this new style, and how it works out, although that may be lost without any pictures to go along with it, and I am sure not going to be posting a new version every 30 minutes. I am going to try and go back to grayscale and make a TONAL-SPLOSION of amazingness with which to color over, we will see how that goes (and by TONAL-SPLOSION I mean figuring out all of the tones, gray scale, before taking it into color). There is a great workshop for it in the new ImagineFX, so I'll be trying it.

Killed Mimiron finally on sunday night, that fucking bastard, and got Vezax to 6% on about the 4th try. So Uld isn't going too poorly now. Oh, and this "post to twitter" functionality for when I post doesn't seem to be working too well, so I may just be doing it manually from now on. Wow I was going to talk about something else but this is way to long, I'm outz.

Really, I do!

Its not usual in a game where you are barraged with just about every curse you can think of by another character! If you've played it, I'm sure you know EXACTLY who I'm talking about. If not, well why the hell haven't you gotten it yet!?

On WoW comics, I am really struggling trying to think of anything good/funny in regards to WoW comics. I don't really think I'm very comic funny in the first place, as usually my chosen method of humor is sarcastic/irony... which generally doesn't seem to translate well over the net. I am going to keep up the weekly comic (at least until I am fully ramping up to do panels for my graphic novel/web comic/whatever... which will then probably be posted more than weekly), which will still likely be about games in general, because that's what I do with most of my time, but maybe not about WoW every time. I'd rather not constrain myself like that, and doing different games generally makes me think about doing the art in different ways.

I was thinking about doing a WoW comic this week of Mimiron standing on a pile of bones, problem with this is, the only people who would get it are raiders. Now how many raiders are here looking at these comics is anyone's guess, but I don't know if its too many. Maybe next week.

On Creation: I sketched this out using a pencil textured brush, so it would be a bit more interesting than just the regular round brush; then I went ahead and blocked out the color in a multiply layer to kind of figure out where everything was going. Then I made a new layer on top of both of those set to normal and just started painting and covering up stuff underneath.

This was more of an experiment with some new brushes and a technique than anything.

I think my take-away here is "make the line work more readable", probably would work better on a single character than trying to draw two characters in a choppa.

Edit: So I guess I didn't notice the fact I made the foreground rocks and the background rocks the same tonal value, since the background rocks should have had less contrast with the background since they are further away. Oops. That will be something to keep in mind for the future I guess.

Warlocks got the nerf-bat this patch, literally!

I feel bad for them... well, at least until I remember getting feared for half of my life!

edit: Arms and shoulder perspective look a little funky, I probably should have rectified that before I started painting it!

Edit2: I just realized I put the wrong spell in the text bubble! Its conflagrate, not incinerate! My apologies Warlocks.

On creation : 2hrs, loose line art first, multiply color layer to lay in base colors and some shading, then a normal layer on top of all for highlights and detailing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPzNl6NKAG0&feature=player_embedded

CAT VS BOX, A CLIMACTIC BATTLE!

Ok, so I am going to try and bang this one out tonight before my guild OMGWTFPWNs Ulduar (yea, we'll see how that goes). It is less complicated than the last one, and I am still trying to optimize my technique.

I have it sketched out on my sticky note here (ah I love them for concepting). I have a bunch of other art I've been doing for Galefire Universe/Graphic novel, but haven't been posting. I may do an art dump in the next few days, although I don't really know how much I preliminary stuff I want to put up here... I might make a new art gallery category to throw it all in.

Edit: Yea I fail, doing it as soon as I get home today.

But then 3.1 had to go and come out today!

Seriously, I'll be playing. This is annoying though, because I haven't even finished the new Riddick game for xbox yet. Oh well, I guess there's not really that much new to do other than the new raid dungeon, which I doubt we will try tonight, although that would be nice.

Oh, to dream of Shaman Domination in 3.1... even though it is tremendously unlikely!

Nonetheless, I am extremely excited for 3.1 to arrive, perhaps I will stand a chance against all those DKs I love so much!

On creation: later when its not late

I picked up the new Riddick game today as well... now that this is done, and there are no raids on Wednesday, it will be Riddick night! I would complain about trying out different styles just to be frustrated over and over again, but I will probably do that later on!

and: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NisCkxU544c
watch, now.

So, I have finished both of the new DLCs for Prince of Persia and Fallout 3.

Prince of Persia's DLC was strong, I think, in challenge and execution. Maybe not so much in storytelling. It basically continues where you left off after the end of the actual game, which I'm sure you've seen if you've read anything about it. Now this is fine... but I hope after the ending of the DLC there is another DLC coming soon, because I'd rather not wait till Prince of Persia 2 to figure out what the hell Elika is thinking. On the gameplay side, the segments (between where you get thrown back to if you screw up) are longer and your timing needs to be better, but I don't think it was really too tough. I'm still sticking with the first 3 for last gen consoles are better.

Fallout 3's DLC was alright, but it didn't really wow me in any way. It seems kind of silly to get there as a level 20 monster in the best gear in the game, only to be beaten down by a bunch of raiders with nightsticks when you go in the front door so you can have all your things taken away. From there you are basically a slave until you get some gear back, and once you've done that you have to participate in some goofy arena deal to "win your freedom". It would have been nice if that were a bit harder, but nothing in Fallout3 was hard after about level 8. I'm not going to spoil everything, but I did very much appreciate the morally gray decision you are forced to make at the end. That almost made it worth the trouble of playing through the whole thing... almost. In my opinion, Operation Anchorage, the first DLC, was a better and more focused package, even though it was totally linear; and I actually died a couple times because it was pseudo-hard at some points (like stealthed guys with sniper rifles, ffs).

The new stealth-action-shooter-badassery Riddick game comes out next week, so that is the next thing on my list to play. Maybe one of these days I'll get to Fable 2... but i just can't seem to get into the "oh you're the hero, you need to go stop this villian" kind of storyline. Maybe if I played it as an evil bastard I'd have more fun... although I didn't do that in Mass Effect and it was great (maybe because your character in that game isn't a mute).

Serious Business INDEED!

Yea someone in our guild left... pretty much being a big baby about raiding. So this if for him.

Edit : yea, I will be fixing the plump index finger tomorrow evening. I didn't notice how plump it looked till I showed it to the woman.

Edit2 : Wow, I'm just going to totally redraw that hand. What the hell was I thinking?!

Edit3 : No I still haven't fixed it, been too busy slaying dargons and working on other pictures. The guy who left did come back though, yesterday, and gave us all an apology. I don't know if that was necessary, but it was nice after all I suppose.

Also got the raiding achievement (Twilight Vanquisher, 25man OS 3 drakes) tonight, which is what the guy left because we hadn't gotten!

Totally hilarious!

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=15864846564&sid=1&...

So, I've finally managed to fill in my "on creation" portions of my last two comic postings. I really need to do that sooner, and I will try to fill it in right when I post the next one (shit I don't even know what I'm going to do for it yet!). I have been doing a lot of experimentation with some new brushes to try and make them work, and get closer to that every elusive "new Prince of Persia" style I've been trying to put my own spin on.

I think I am getting closer, although I think it lacks some detail... but it looks like a different brush and style is used on those parts in the concept art to me. Broadly, it appears to use some sort of texture-comb/palette knife brush, whereas it might just be a hard round on more detailed parts when you get close (yes I've gone in and zoomed in as close as possible... I wish I could find a higher rez image). I will post something new when I feel it is ready... and I've also been working on some panels for my graphic novel/blog comic/thing, but they are not in order, as the first panel features the crew's airship, and I have not quite completed the design of it yet. It is build with sort of a hybridization of heavy industrial tech and smooth magical structures... so its a challenge. I feel it needs to be as fleshed out as any character in the book, since it will play a prominent role.

A friend of mine at work apparently is friends with Kevin Mellon (http://www.aimsatellite.blogspot.com/), who is an published artist/writer in the comic-ing field. He will be at the Planet Comiccon (http://www.planetcomicon.com/) this weekend here, so I will probably swing by and chat with him. Although at this point, it seems kind of silly to ask for direction since I don't really have anything substantive (graphic novel/book) created yet. That might be the first step!

Other than that, my director at work gave us some poor news. 2 weeks from now, I could be out of a job! AWESOME!

Hopefully a non-corrupted version of the Fallout3 DLC will go up on xbox live so I can get that downloaded. Still haven't finished the DLC for Prince of Persia yet, but I'm probably getting close. The platforming is more of a challenge than the actual game, but still not as interesting to me as the first 3 games.

http://eightbitdirtay.ytmnd.com/

Hilarious!

Ah, my love for DK's is HUGE!

Really, it is. I promise.

Just in case it isn't as readable as I think...
Gnome : FEAR MEH!
Lady : Every girl for herself you say?
Tauren : I am one with nature... and death.

On creation: This is another grayscale->color piece... yes I'm still trying to make it work, although I'm still not convinced that it does. Colors just feel totally muted to me when I do these, and its not really getting closer to the "New Prince of Persia" style that I am going for. I painted it totally in grayscale then glazed color overtop of it, although multiply'ing color always makes it look too dark, and the other other settings (overlay, color) tend to make it look too bright... to me anyway. I'm sure I'll try this technique again in the future, and will likely be again unsatisfied with it.

I guess the joke turned out ok, I mean, its another one of those "making fun of mechanics' (at least for the human female), sprinkled with lol-lore (Taurun) and... well a gnome.