At the behest request of Captain BJ, I shall also complete the soundtrack of my life game. Of course, because it is necessary for me to do things better than my co-patriots, and, ramble on ad naseum about myself, I will go one better on the ipod shuffle listing. For those of you unaware of the process, the official rules can be found on Billy’s blog (or Willtron’s before him), but I will summarize them as follows:     

1) Obtain listing of life events, much like those found in the standard bio(e)pic

2)      Utilize digital music player to randomize songs in your pirated music collection

3)       Using the order of the shuffled playback, relate life events to songs played in the subsequent order

Now, the standard rules are to just ctrl+c, ctrl+v the songs as they come and display them for all to see. This is all fine and good except that I’ve found most of my friends’ playlists to be littered with the type of unknown and esoteric tunes found only among the ultra-hipster variety. So it’s all fun and games but no one has any idea what the hell makes the songs that came up so poignant or hilarious.

So for you, dear reader, I am willing to add new dimensions to the tired process to enhance your viewing pleasure. Not only will I list out the songs and their applicable life events, but I will also, for the duration of the songs length, type like mad about how the song either applies, doesn’t apply, could possibly apply, or any other funny/interesting/emo anecdote that comes to mind. I will only type for the length of the song and not go back and change anything…you’re going to get pure stream of conscious style writing here… the real radioactive stuff!  If you have no idea what I’m talking about by this point, don’t worry, you’ll catch on quick enough.

Before we begin, I have a few caveats to get out of the way; first, when I say that I won’t go back and change anything, I’m talking bulk of idea. Spelling and grammar will be fixed to make me appear less retarded than I am in real life. Secondly, you’re not supposed to skip songs or lie about which ones came up for whichever event, but I will not consider any Frog Eyes, Stills, old Protest the Hero, new Fiona Apple, or any non-single Jay-z (save Threats), Fugees, or Lauryn Hill….mostly for the reason that they should not be on there anyway. Finally, I warn you all that my itunes shuffle algorithm tends to love Matt Good, Marilyn Manson, and Metallica. They collectively encompass 100 out of 3500 songs, so I have no idea why. Ready? Here we go…

Opening Credits- Ocean Breathes Salty, Modest Mouse

Strange pick for an opening credits song, with its almost break-beat-esque gallop. Regardless, the most quotable line of the song is “you wasted life/why wouldn’t you waste death”…I mean, commonly the opening credit song is like the theme song to the movie, and here MM is already predicting the outcome of my early life. Will my life play out like an art house character driven bog film in the vein of The Station Agent? People just sitting around wasting their lives?

Waking Up- New Slang, The Shins

I honestly couldn’t think of a more applicable wake up song. I can see it now, this is the early musical montage of the film. Showing what my life was like as a child…pretty, happy, care free… this is the Shins in a nutshell. Just put this song on and try not to smile thinking of a young child crawling out of bed and waking up his mom in the morning light. Sitting, eating his bowl of cereal while his feet dangle from the chair, lengths off the kitchen tile, playfully swinging back and forth.

  First Day at School- Olsen Olsen, Sigur Ros

Montage part 2! Dreamy as this song is, when I reminisce about my kindergarten days, this tone comes to mind. Not drugged out dreamy, my waking life, as I remember it now, sings with a whisper, especially this far back. I didn’t know a lot of people (who does?) in kindergarten, and I didn’t make friends easily, but there is an unspoken optimism in every child and I’d have to go this far back to remember it in myself. Quiet and withdrawn without being introverted, wistful without being melodramatic, years of potential within, kindergarten is a Sigur Ros song.

 Falling In Love- Ending Start, Metric

What are the odds that my ‘Falling in Love’ song would be a lament? Nearly a dirge? Considering the first (only?) time ever fell in love turned out the way it did, I guess it’s only fitting. How endings start…with answers…

Fight Song- Miranda That Ghost Just Isn’t Holy Anymore: C. Pisacis (Phra-Men-Ma), The Mars Volta

Opening with one of the most frenetic riffs in my library, the third movement of the longest (and possibly greatest) epic in the vast collection of Mars Volta epics perfectly captures the fight song to the fight I never had. Seriously, I’ve never been a fight outside of a sparring ring and have no desire to. I’ve heard it said before that weary is the life of a man who’s never been in a fight, as he’s never had anything to fight for.  Is a life of meaning dictated by the conflict therein? I would heartily argue the con.

The third act of this movement completely disintegrates to a dreamscape of tuneless panders, most likely the dazed thoughts of mine whilst bleeding on the pavement.

Breaking Up- Last Century Promise, The (International) Noise Conspiracy

It’s tough to relate a political song to a relationship break up, but the Noise Conspiracy is the only band I have ever encountered that could write a song about how they couldn’t love their girl because of an oppressive capitalist society, so in the face of such creativity I am humbled.  The (I)NC often twig on how capitalist society forces people to work jobs they hate, stifling the vibrancy they once had. In any relationship, boredom can be a monstrously destructive force. Complacency has never been a hindrance in my relationships; in fact, I could only hope for such an obstruction…it would speak to any sort of longevity.

Prom- La Cerca, Sparta

I was raised in a certain way/and I think I’ve let you down/so I’ll take my ways and I’ll find a brand new path…I mean, these sound like high school grad mentalities, but they certainly weren’t mine.  Grad was such a given step for me, and I was surrounded by so many positive influences, my only problem was choosing what the hell I was going to do with myself. 10,000 choices imperil one to inactivity…

Life- Elmo, Holly McNarland

I don’t know what to say. This isn’t a life song…oh wait, we hit chorus and Holly screams Where do you fit in? which is pretty applicable to anyone. I mean, that’s life, finding where you fit in. I shall say nothing more for fear of waxing clichéd.

Mental Breakdown- Ease My Mind, Big Wreck

This song has the tone of a whiskey slur in a peanut shell bar. So there you go, ladies and gentlemen, it’s always the ones you least expect…here I come, unabashed alcoholism.

Driving- “You Got a Death Wish Johnny Truant?”, Fall of Troy

This is my exact thought every time I step into a vehicle. Any of you who know me know that my luck behind the wheel of a car, if possible to measure on an integer scale, would factor well into the negatives. The frenetica of this song is probably matched only by the movement of my eyes whilst driving (cut to ECU of protagonist’s eyes)…

FlashBack- Clumsy, Our Lady Peace

Aren’t all pleasant flashbacks accompanied by guilty pleasures of bygone years? This song would inevitably oversee the reminiscence of high school daze, the hallway chatter, the endless summers, crushes, kicks, and smiles.

It should also be noted that the only reason I ever listened to Our Lady Peace, even back in high school whenst my tastes weren’t so acquired, was because of the wonderful CRTC meddling known as “CANCON” whereby each and every radio and video station must play at least 15% Canadian bred content.  This is responsible for Nickelback. This is responsible for Our Lady Peace. But, this is also responsible for Metric, Protest the Hero, Alexisonfire, and k-os. You win some, you lose lots, but I’d rather the few than none.

Getting Back Together- Colorblind, Counting Crows

I can only hope my getting back together can be as beautiful as this song. Nothing to do with racial relations, this elegant number could pull tears from fish (which, as you know, have no tear ducts). This is a rare little number, as it only appeared on the Cruel Intentions movie soundtrack and never on any Counting Crows album, which is criminal (almost as criminal as Talk Show Host never appearing on any Radiohead album). It’s the only Counting Crows I possess, and any who doubt the validity of my fervor for this song, download it yourself, you may be surprised to find yourself a fan.

Wedding- Testify, Rage Against the Machine

It’s only inevitable with the unadulterated mounds of pure power I have on my itunes that something of this nature would show up on the most inopportune moment. Could have been worse…could have been Underoath (or Between the Buried and Me). I guess I can just go by the title and state that if I ever get married, it’ll be in a court house…no churches for this guy.

Who controls the past now controls the future/who controls the present now controls the past…as a side note to those of you illiterate goons, this line was actually lifted from Orwell’s 1984, which de la Rocha often alludes to throughout the Battle of Los Angeles album. It also doesn’t bode too well for the relations of my movie marriage.

 Birth of Child- Heads Up Baby, Femme Fatale

 Screaming incoherence over raucous chaos…sounds like any birth I know of. At least it’s short and sweet.

 Final Battle- How Do, Sneaker Pimps

 My final battle must be with cancer, because this long, drawn out number has epic, spacey qualities to it.  Nearly whispered vocals over a full reverb echo synthesizer riff, this song has the mood of white linen sheets over wrought iron bed frames and cool sunlight spilling over a withered body. It seems all my battles have become quiet struggles within myself.  Don’t worry, we’re nearing the end of this journey.

 Death Scene- New Noise, Refused

 Man, if I must die to any song, this would be the one. Go out with a bang. A five minute, eight second progressive hardcore-punk anthem for the ages. Can I scream? Dancing to all the wrong songs, enjoying all the wrong moves, but hell, I am jaded. Maybe by death I won’t be.

 Interestingly enough, this song comes off an album called The Shape of Punk to Come, which, oddly enough, was right…10 years later…this is what punk aspires to be. This and Good Charlotte.

 End Credits- Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, Black Sabbath

 I actually don’t know this song very well, but I could see the credits to the players in my life’s play scroll by serenaded by the Ozzman.  A fitting exeunt.

 Now I’m sure most of you are thinking that I rigged the songs, but I’m being completely honest when I say this is exactly what came up (save for one of the aforementioned blacklisted songs by Protest the Hero). It’s surprisingly light considering the heavy nature of my collection, but, for the most part, suitably fitting. It also showcases a modicum of my lack of taste.

 As a post script, if I had rigged the songs it would have went something like this:

Opening Credits: I Summon You, Spoon (perfect opener)
Waking Up: New Slang, The Shins (I wouldn’t have known unless I did this thing)
First Day of School: We’re Going to Be Friends, The White Stripes (just too fitting to be passed up due to cliché)
Falling in Love: Untitled, Interpol (the loneliest, most epic of songs. You fall in love alone the first time)
Fight Song: Tip Your Bartender, Glassjaw (Get Tanked anyone?)
Breaking Up: Play Crack the Sky, Brand New (I break up emo…if you didn’t know)
Prom: In Your Eyes, Peter Gabriel (for obvious reasons)
Life: Indifference, Pearl Jam (never give in)
Mental Breakdown: There Could Be Nothing After This, Underoath (everything, everything…)
Driving: Lusty, Lamb (I’ve always liked trip-hop while I drove)
Flashback: And It Stoned Me, Van Morrison (remembering a time I never lived through)
Getting Back Together: Untitled, Trespassers William (it’s only when you realize what you lack)
Wedding: Fade Into You, Mazzy Star (the most beautiful of songs)
Birth of Child: Caught a Lite Sneeze, Tori Amos (if you know the meaning of this song, you’d know I’d be having a girl)
Final Battle: Hexagram, Deftones (has been known to cause listeners’ heads to asplode)
Death Scene: Switching Off, Elbow (I know who I’d be switching off with at this point)
Funeral Song: Pyramid Song, Radiohead (nothing to fear, nothing to doubt)
End Credits: Blue American, Placebo (I wrote this novel just for you)

 Love is suicide

 

Highlights from being on a farm in Davidson for the weekend:

 

   - Shooting guns is fun. Shooting guns while dressed up like a Cletus is even more fun. Shooting guns while dressed up like a Cletus on farm land with targets being cans of Pilsner and old yellow oil jugs is a flippin' riot. Also, saying "bang bang" everytime you hit something is a pleasure only known to me. And everyone else who's done such things.

   - A .22 is quite possibly the pansiest of all guns. I'm pretty sure i could Cobain it with one of those and walk away with a headache.

   - Turkey bacon rules.

   - Everyone from neighbouring farms walks into farm houses pretty much unannounced. This can be disconcerting while you are doing things that you maybe shouldn't be.  Like...ummmmmmmmmm...drinking at 11 AM. (Certainly not me, of course.)

   - Every town in Saskatchewan has its own definition of "booze cruising." They vary wildly and should be clarified before performing. Certainly not by me, of course. Seriously.

   - Ground moose hamburgers (mooseburgers?) are goddamn tasty. Also, the leanest meat i have ever consumed. I made 3 pounds worth of giant patties thinking they would shrink but i was powerful wrong. Pure, unadulterated injections of protein straight to my stomach...oh lord. If Jesus made a burger, it would be a mooseburger.  As a side note, i really am a monster. I eat so much, children and small appliances stop working.  Side side note, whomever came up with the term 'gamey' for describing such meat is a moron. 'Gamey' as a descriptor really should be read: sour with a robust undercurrent of smokeyness. That actually means something. Describing game as gamey is like describing oranges as orangey. To someone who's never consumed oranges this means absolutely nothing. I only use oranges as a hyperbolic descriptive case because they seems to corner the market on retarded descriptors. Lets just call apples reds and plums purples.

   - How to make a friend in a small town: start talking. (seems to apply in dorms as well. With the added bonus of sex. Certainly not me, of course.)

   - My brain has a hard time processing someone telling me about how poor their family was when two breaths earlier they were telling me about how they flew to places in their private plane instead of driving 'because it was just faster.'

   - I need to work on my free-styling. Engineering is so <pause> wack/It makes me want to smoke <pause> crack

   - Point for Curtis. Perfect in every situation.

 

It's still relatively early in the evening while i write this. Tomorrow sees the coming of two horrifying midterms (well, one horrifying...the other merely....imposing) which stirs me to waste time blogging again.  It's been a while, as predicted, since i posted last, but i am nothing if not consistent.

 

The subject(s) of this post exist somewhat as a purging of my art file.  See, i rarely, if ever, finish a piece of art.  Most lie in various states of graphite undress, forever waiting in vain to be finished.  I'm not really sure what it is, but if i walk away from a drawing, i will never sit down again and conclude it. It's like if i didn't finish it the first time, it didn't deserve my full love and respect. Actually, the real reason i don't is because i can't.  When i get in the groove of drawing a piece, i hold my pencil a certain way and have a 'touch' of a certain weight and once i walk away, it's lost.  I've tried going back and adding to an unfinished work but it just blares of oil and water.  The depths too deep and the lights too sharp. 

 

It never really used to be much of a problem, but as the level of detail in my pictures increased by exponential proportions, so in turn did the length of time to completion.  As such, i started drawing pictures that simply segments of portions of features of details of closeups. As a notion of 'art', they were works unto themselves, especially when they focused on subjects of superlative rarity...say...Fiona's lips (Chad, you can post the digi-pic if you have it). But otherwise they were glaring examples of how i can never finish what i start.  Now, with half my art scanned into digital bits and nibbles, waiting for a second shot at tender care and attention, the format has granted me both a boon and hindrance to overcoming this flaw.

 

As boon, the shiny new tools have granted me renewed initiative to revisit the pieces again. As hindrance, the tools offer me another opportunity to half finish a half finished work in an entirely new way, introducing a new level of pathetic-ness previously unseen. I mean, i don't even have an excuse anymore because there is no weight to a mouse click (and, yes, i'm back to a mouse. A tablet tool is for tools on tablets). So here they are; the unfinished works, half coloured, waiting to be finished. I guess by posting them here, i'm essentially expunging my soul of any connection i had to the ideal of completing them when deep down, i knew i probably never would. Enjoy.

 

 

Here is one of the very few pictures of Jiin outside of his stitched leather garb.  Essentially a production design piece, it showcases how Jiin looks just after breaking out of the ungodly containment forced upon him.  Yeah, he looks a little rough, but so would you after being sadistically tortured for 10 years.  I was happy to save this pic from a life of ridicule. See, when i originally drew it, i made his legs way too short. For some reason i looked at the length of his body and decided to try and squish the rest on the page, trading aesthetic appeal for completeness. Unfortunately, it looked either completely rediculous or like was trying to coerce some impossible forced perspective. Regardless, through the magic of Photoshop, i was able to stretch the bottom half of the image making him a solid 9 heads tall. Due to the lack of detail, the stretching is almost invisible, with drawn, swooping lines and a nicely blocked out form. Actually, i thought the added height gave Jiin both a nice imposing frame and extra thinness of emaciation.

 

As for the actual colour job, i was trying out a technique i read about somewhere online, where you colour a block out in black and white, then use the colourize tool in the Hue/Saturation menu to give it life.  The author stated that further manipulation afterwards is necessary because colourize gives deepest saturation to the shadows, rather than the highlights, giving the skin a plastic, dead feel. I actually thought that would be grand for this pic, giving Jiin that "i just had slices of lemon sewn under my skin" look. I added a blue low light/fill light to decrease the temperature of the shadows and increased the contrast to deepen the lines in the face, and Hazza, near-dead Jiin.

 

Unfortunately, it took hours and hours to get that textured look, and as such, i walked away after finishing the neck. Coming back to it a week later, i tried implementing the right shoulder to no avail. Oil and water. So here he stands as just a face. Too bad. Could have been a killer pic.

 

 

Hell Puppy's original name was Neo Rollobot. This means absolutely nothing to you (unless you are Chad. Or Vice), but his origin has roots in the XX-bot mythos.  Back when we were creating Omega Response (the game after NeoMyth but before Ninja Stars...it was the one we spent the most time on), we had grand visions/delusions of grandeur to the viability of our product, so the powers that be (aka- the committed 2/3) at Crestfallen proposed that to ensure our game wouldn't receive an M rating, all enemies had to be robots or of robotic nature. This followed the old skool Nintendo mantra that it's ok that you die as long as you don't bleed. It's ok to beat the hell out of someone as long as they pour sweat. And it's ok to shoot things as long as they aren't living. I mean, it made sense not to want an M rating, as there was some chart in some book from some author stating how an M rating would restrict the audience, and therefore sales and hence, saleability of the product. Oh how the times have changed.

 

Regardless, i created a giant collection of robotic baddies ripe to eat lead and spew gasoline all with preliminary names based on either their appearance, function, or (non)hilarious in-joke, all with the suffix 'bot'. There was Polarbot (appearance), gruntobot (function), and grantobot (hilarious in-joke) among others, but the first pic ever modelled was a spider-like robot with two legs dubbed 'rollobot' for his ability to bundle up into a ball and roll at the player. Anyway, very long story shorter, Omega Response failed horribly with the critics (our loving  friends and family members), especially the aesthetic of the robot enemies. They had garish colours and metal panels that screamed "I don't fit with anything!" so Chad sort of told me to maybe look into drawing up more hardcore (read: gothmaster) incarnations of each baddy that would follow the mechanics already laid out for each 'bot.

 

So i drew up this thing. Three legs. No head. Some swinging blade-thing floppin' about in front. Honestly, the stress must have been getting to me because this thing is wack. Regardless, i loved this little beast. Unfortunately, in the scant week it took me to redo all the baddies, Crestfallen went through one of its many upheavals and the entire project was scrapped (good-bye 2 years of evenings and weekends).

 

Looking for something to spend some serious time with i grabbed this pic and started colouring him up. He came together really quick, so i started colour manipulating him early and he exists at this point as you see him.

 

Truthfully, i did up this pic a couple of days ago, so i may still do some more. But i doubt it.

 

 

This is a minorly altered version of the horrible colour job i did on this pic. I've posted it only as further evidence to my abandonment of her.

 

I shall say no more. Please excuse me while i weep.

 

 

I spent a lot of time with this picture. Now, to be sure, Spawn is, honestly, the lamest superhero of all time, but there was a fairly lengthy period of my life where i thought everything Todd McFarlane did was solid gold regardless of its quality (or lack thereof), so i both originally drew this picture and coloured it up as more of an homage to that time period than of the character itself. There are an ungodly amount of layers at work here, slowly laying on colour after colour, building depth and detail.  I really tried to keep the level of detail high here, without overworking the image and i only kind of succeeded.  Some of the original detail in the drawing i'm pretty sure i added simply for the sake of filling space and it kind of made colouring this difficult.

 

I tried a few different subtle techniques on this drawing that were relatively successfull, and i'll probably implement them in some other drawings. I kept the highlights of the lines between the details really bright, which creates a craggy nature on his face. Added to this, i applied a spackle-like layer of green around the bumpier parts giving texture and resonance to the skin surface. It looks good, but sometimes i get the feeling i may have over worked it, as his face sometimes resembles a coral reef. Some of the jutting pieces have incredible contrast, giving them a sharp, angular appearance.

 

Regardless, he looks good both close and far and i may finish him in the future.

 

But probably not.

 

 

This is the Xu pic i posted about over half a year ago. I've not worked on it since and probably never will.

 

There are portions of this picture that i really do love. This was the first, and probably best, time i ever implemented a fill/low light. It probably has more to do with the underlying pencil composition, but it just works like it never has since. The musculature just pops on Xu and it really adds an awesome dynamic to the image. Additionally, the cape colour job is something i'm really proud of. I did the blue trim in Illustrator to keep the lines perfect and applied it in Photoshop and added the texture.  The colours on the bottom side of the cape have a unbelievably subtle glow that came about in the colour balancing of the image, and i've used the macro in pretty well every picture since.

 

As i type about it now, i'm beginning to realize that i probably love this image so much because i learned the most on it, and have successfully implemented the techniques i learned on it on the most pictures. You can see the fill/low light additions on the Jiin and Hell Puppy pics and the glow is heavily prevalent on the Ashley pic from last posting.

 

Regardless, this one i know i will never finish mainly because the hair colouring would be a nightmare i would never want to even attempt.

 

But i will forever remember it.

 

Even if i could never commit.

It's been a long time since i've blogged. I apologize, but since the last posting I've made it through finals, Jesusmas, and , of course, a couple of digital pictures.  I should get this out of the way right now, this semester is going to be hell. Don't expect the frequency of postings to increase or even bear any resemblance to consistency ( aka- a whole lot of jitter....>ack< see(!), it infects already!).  Regardless, i'll try to keep something coming at least once a month. God knows 99% of you have already seen the art and don' t read the words anyway. And on that note, onto the pics!

 

 

There is so much to say about this picture that i don't even know where to start.  First off, I never expected to actually colour this pic. The original pencils were in my 'infinitesimal detail and 5 million degrees of tone' style of drawing which doesn't translate well into digital art.  The only other picture originally drawn in this style that i've coloured was the Beast. For him, i just framed out the shading blocks and colourized them. It looked good on that picture because, for the most part, the Beast is white.  Such processes would render this picture rather bland so another approach was necessary.

 

Basically, i painted Ashley the same way i did any other standard digital picture.  I wanted to keep the picture soft so i used a circular brush at 45% hardness. I didn't go all the way soft because pictures tend to look overly gradient-y and doughy with very soft brushes. By maintaining some semblance of hardness, the picture has punch but the lighting still creates a glow.  Ahhhhh, the glow.  The glow was created for two reasons: First, if you look at the original pencils you'll see that i never finished the drawing before scanning it (well, actually, it still resides in this state). As such, i needed to find some way of working the unfinished bits into the drawing. A low contrast picture with plenty of whites creates the illusion that the washed out parts are bathed in light, a lot like the effect your eyes give your brain when you wake up to an overly sunny white room.  Since i always (always always always) put a light source from the upper left, this worked well with filling in the reason for the hair not being filled in.  Reason number two was that i wanted it to look like you were looking at her after waking up in an overly sunny white room.  To complete the radiosity-like light bouncing, i kept the palette narrow, putting hair colour on the skin, eyes, and lips and vice versa.

 

The rest of the development of the picture is basic layers of brushes over and over, pounding layers down and adding more layers. Kick up the colours with oranges, harshen the contrast and pound down some more.  I spent a lot of time on the eye 'makeup'.  I normally have huge difficulties putting makeup on my female pictures because they always come out looking like whores. I mean, i know the basic principles of makeup application (if you can tell there's makeup, there's too much on...yadda yadda), but it just seems if you want to add some colour, it really cheapens your girls. So i basically kept the minimum amount of colour here, working with deeper fleshtones, which could either be cast shadows or makeup, either way, it deepened the eyes.  Interestingly, i've actually intently watched girls put on makeup solely for the knowledge of doing pictures and i've been amazed. I mean, girls who can hardly draw stick figures expertly mixing colours and toning effortlessly on their faces. And here i am, like a 5 year old with crayons makin' the girls purty. Bizarre.  In the end, i sent the pic to a few girls and got back some responses that the makeup around the eyes was too heavy, still.  I don't really see it, but if so, what the hell, she must be a mother truckin' rock st*r.

 

For final touchups, i added highlights to the hair and freckles. Yes, freckles. I actually spent about an hour getting the freckles looking just right.  It seems every time the freckles subject comes up i get kinda accused of over-sexualizing this picture.  Conversations like this:

    "Yeah, i think the freckles look really good."

    "That's because you are a pervert."

And yeah, i can kind of understand the accusations (of over-sexualizing this picture, not of being a pervert).  I mean, beyond the colour scheme, which suggests that early morning glow, there's the extreme close-up nature of the framing (which means you would be looking at her really close), the EXTREMELY dialated pupils (which suggests love or arousal - it's true!) and the look in her eyes, which i still have yet to put my finger on.  I mean, i drew it, to be sure, but i'm not sure the intent in the look.  There's a sadness in there somewhere, but that's not the presiding emotion. Anyway, yeah, the freckles add it too, but i'll need someone out there to explain that one to me.

 

The original pencils were drawn in a style based off of an amazing japanese illustrator named Ayami Kojima. She does amazingly effeminate and delicate illustrations, though the more i look into her work, i find she is a HARD-core gothmaster. Like, the sweetest art ever airbrushed on the side of a van type of gothmaster. Angels with half skull faces and dragons flying from swords type of crap. Regardless, she does amazingly quality work, and you should look her up.

 

Finally, i should probably explain where the name 'Ashley' came from. It's sort of embarrassing, but whenever i draw the picture of anything or anyone, different segments are inherently based off of my own real life observations, even if i don't mean to.  Sadly, whenever i draw a picture of a girl out of my head, she inevitably looks much like one of my friends' girlfriends, past or present. I don't try to, they just come out that way. So, yeah, this is Ashley.

 

Just think, someday your girlfriend too will be the subject for one of my drawings. Don't worry, it's just a symptom of the neuroses.

 

 

Ever since someone posted that "This guy have sick art!" on my threadless submission, the traffic to this blog has increased a million fold. Well, maybe more like 76 fold, but regardless, there are people here now that do not know me, nor i them. To these people, i say, welcome, peruse around and leave a comment.  You may be surprised to see the gothmasterness of some of my art (as compared to the vomit inducing cuteness of the aforementioned submission), but nonetheless, everything you see on here is mine.  If you want information on any of the pieces scrolling by above, just look for the corresponding blog entry below and read to your heart's content.

 

To those of you who frequent this blog independent of my humble attempts to whore my art around, go and vote! My shirt is up on a groovy little site called www.threadless.com. Follow this link and give me a 5!:

 

 

cuz i'll need all the companion love and support i can get. Seriously, the hipsters that frequent this site tear apart submissions with obscenely low ratings.  If i win, my shirt will get made, i'll receive some cash and i'll spread the love of free shirts around (and not necessarily my shirt, any shirts on the site). I know you have to register to vote but, hey, while you're there, peruse around the shirts for sale, there are some seriously amazing and funny shirts there. Anyway, there are only 5 days left at the time of writing this, so go now, it'll only take 5 minutes.

 

Ok, enough shameless plugging, onto this bi-week's post...

 

 

This was my first attempt at a picture that was pure design elements.  I was originally inspired by Vagrant Story's architecture and design artist Akahiko Yoshida, who has done some amazingly complex work.  I am always in mass appreciation of anyone who can do something i can't, and frankly, i suck at mechanical drawings. So, in turn, i wanted to try something new and dissect what makes the designs look so flipping grand (and, i guess in the process, reduce my appreciation for the artist...whatever).

 

I did the original drawing before ever knowing that a program like Illustrator existed, so everything was plotted out using rulers and triangles, engineering style.  I'm poverty stricken when it comes to art supplies and my serious dearth of materials meant i was reduced to etching out circles by measuring a common radius off a central point with an ancient wooden ruler. You do what you have to do, but it was mind numbingly painstaking.  As with all things that take a long time, i started to get impatient with it (especially having to mirror by hand) and started adding some fairly unsightly circles willy-nilly. Essentially unfinished, i threw it on the stack and somewhat forgot about it.

 

Going through the file, looking for something new to do, i stumbled across this design and thought it would be really easy to do up in Illustrator. I was right. It literally took all of 20 minutes to layout the original lines and apply the brushes.  I fiddled with the stroke size until the small details had enough weight and the larger swoops had enough dominance and then fiddled around with the top until it looked right.  Finally, i added the large over-arcing line across the body and called it done. I was actually somewhat unsatisfied with the newly glorified top and removed it and saved the leftover body as a different file. I thought it took away from the cross shape, which was the original intention, but i like it now.

 

After the design was relatively complete, i saved it as a pdf and took it into Photoshop. The big trick with taking things as vector art into Photoshop is to open them as very large files. When taken as vector art, Photoshop seems to do a really crappy job of anti-aliasing the edges and you end up with a horribly jaggy image. If you open it very large, then shrink it, Photoshop will auto-add extra anti-aliasing to soften the image, actually giving it a crisper look overall.

 

Watching the slide show above gives a misleading idea as to the generation of the final image.  It started out as the design, black on white, then overlayed onto the yellow gradient.  The beauty of the overlayed layer was that i could fiddle with the gradient until i was satisfied without having to constantly reapply the design overtop.  Additionally, i would add more gradient layers overtop and multiply them with the lower ones, creating different effects. I wanted a gold with radiance and i think i relatively achieved it.

 

From there, i took the design flipped it upside down and increased its size and applied it to the bottom right and left. I copied them onto a single layer and overlayed it on the gradient, reducing the overall opacity. At this point, i wanted to give the original central design more punch to separate it, so i created 4 additional layers with the same design and fiddled around with them until satisfied.  They were all black, which was bad because it prevented me from multiplying or color dodge/burning it, so i colourized it and set it to whatever colour looked best with the effect i was trying to create.  With the multiple layers you can set an effect, then change the colour in Hue/Saturation window and see the results on the fly.  I added the 'Plastic Wrap' effect to one of the layers to add the 3-D-imization to the design and increased the size of one and softened it overlaying for a subtle red glow around.

 

Generally, when overlaying, the opposite colour of the underlying layer will cause the most zang, so often i'll copy the under layer, manipulate it some way, colour invert it, then overlay.  I used this to do the white underlying layers; I applied one of the colours of the background to the design image (which if you look close, you'll realize is the just the original design, flipped upside down and blown way out of proportion), colour inverted it and overlayed. Hazza.

 

The final bits added were the zanging top and bottom designs which came about while fooling with trying different warping tools to create a different design withough having to do much extra work (i'm very lazy).  The best ones came from the Polar-Rectangular coordinates tool applied twice, moved around and overlayed ontop. Zang.  Finally, i added that little warping in the center (which looks like crap without the entire image, but draws the eye to the center on the final...it was getting too busy on the edges), which is actually a hand lasso'ed selection with tons of feathering and a gradient manually applied then applied with 'luminosity', i think. Hey, whatever looks best.

 

All in all, this image came together really quickly (like, one night) and then little tweaking over a couple of days. The speed of it really shows if you look close...it's not even close to being symmetrical. I tried fixing it after the fact, but the original design is not even close to being balanced and i was too lazy to do it all over again.  Meh, no one really notices.  The coolest thing about this piece is that i can go in and screw with all of the layers independently and it completely changes the look and feel. It can go from super gothmaster to almost bordering on classy. Well, not quite.

 

Someone mentioned that it looks a lot like the tribal tattoos that every jock clone has, and i'd have to say, yeah, it does.  Regardless, i still like it and it sits as a pretty cool desktop and good example of what Photoshop layers can do for you.

 

Big sloppy ones...

I wasn't even going to do an update this week, but i've found out that there are a select few of you who actually like my blogification, so i've added this little bit.  Frankly, i've been spending way too much time on Illustrator and Photoshop lately. My retinas are fried from staring at a monitor for literally hours at a time, whipping up these little ditties.  This week was especially bad. Since finishing up the Red series, i've been looking into what to dive into next and thought that colouring up some of the Omega Response characters would be choice.  After toasting off this Volgin pic instead, i've officially burned out on computers. So i've decided to take a week off of Photoshop and Illustrator, starting Monday. So anyone who had digipics in the wings will have to wait a little longer. I need a break.

 

Now anyone who's talked to me lately has heard me expound on (ad nauseum) how Illustrator is magnanimous for colouring up stuff, cuz it takes the skill off the mouse and puts it in the brain (where most art skill should reside). Laying out the blocks of colour in Illustrator (as objects) means i don't have to actually trace anything with a mouse, i just manipulate vertices until it's perfect. Which is good...cuz i suck with a mouse. I mean, i really suck with a mouse.  Now, i've done some Photoshop originals, but if you look closely, you'll see that either precise lines don't exist (Artery) or all the lines are mechanical (T, Omega) and i can do everything with shapes. This is not a coincidence. I suck with a mouse. I won't even get into how long it took me to block out the entire Santa pic by boolean-ing out each cutout for layer after layer (>ack<).  Which makes the newly posted gems such a profound leap for me.

 

I've tried multiple times (well, half tried) to colour up some of my Omega Response (or NeoMyth) characters in various different methods and they have all come out looking like garbage.  I thought doing them in illustrator would be keen but after doing a partial outline of the blacks, i canned that idea. It looked like crap. The depths were too deep and the lines just blared. Scrapped. So i went searching around to how the masters did it. Because, honestly, if it meant tracing my pencils in Photoshop, i was going to give up there. But alas, a little tutorial by one of my favorite artists, Hyung Tae Kim, showed me that, truly, the pros just deepen the pencils in photoshop too.  The trick, oddly, is just to scan them in huge, then print them off small. It gets rid of a lot of the grit and garbage that comes with pencil scans.  Desat and brighten them up and contrast out the pixels and voila, nice looking pencils.  On to the colours.

 

I guess i should explain at this point why i did a pic of Volgin from Metal Gear Solid 3, rather than one of my own characters. I can't. I drew up the pic of Volgin a coupla days after beating MGS3 while desperately falling in love with Yuji Shinkawa's art style.  Trying some new angular hard line techniques for the dimensioning happened to turn out very nice and i've since been drawn to this pic. Going through the portfolio, his hard lines screamed for digital colouring and i decided to give it a go.

 

It turns out that the pros use Corel Painter for their colour jobs. Wha..? a Canadian product? I mean, i'm the first person who'll say the word Corel with the tone of voice reserved for child molesters and non-ipod apple products, but Painter is, apparently, where it's at for doing original digital art.  Photoshop is actually for altering photos (who'd have thought) and has been adapted as a hack for doing up art.  Weird. Anyway, since i don't (though i will) have a copy of Painter, i also had to hack this picture with Photoshop.  Using a technique adopted and bastardized (is that even possible?) from Chad and Hyung, i started with a large brush at a low opacity (~6-10%) and stroked out pass after pass to lay in the depths on a multiply layer above the pencils.  It's relatively painstaking but it's incredibly forgiving to sloppy work. The technique kind of acts as an averager of your strokes.  The more layers you add on, the thinner you make your brush and fill in the details.  The second Volgin picture shows me about halfway through. 

 

The biggest difference between the halfway and final, as far as colour layout goes, is that, with the aforementioned technique, the circular brush shapes appear violently. This can make your pic look really amateurish, so a good idea is to select the lighter shade at 100% and alter the ends your applied lines.  Next, i punched up the colours so he didn't look so fadey and harshened the contrast to give the cuts depth and colour blocks vividness. The final touch is a secret of the ages that i've always wondered about trying but only came to fruition on this pic.  Sometimes the line art can overpower the colour and create an oil-and-water effect. To rid the picture of this, you can go into the pencils layer and outline the different sections (say, facial details for example) and colourize them to the native area colour.  Keeping them relatively desaturated and dark will maintain the detail, while applying that little bit of colour will 'set' them into the picture, unifying it.  And whu-bam, we have a killer Volgin pic.

 

I really liked the way it turned out on a whole, though i can't quite decide on whether to deepen the pencils more or leave them the way they are. I have (this is a recording) a tendency to overwork my pics, so i've left it light for display.

 

The final pic is my original pencils of Phi from Omega Response, placed here as a preview of what's coming up (if it doesn't suck). I'm in the beginning stages of laying down some colours, and it's right in between being awesome and putting my fist through the monitor.  I've always loved Phi, and she will inevitably make her way into the NeoMyth mythos at some point. Her place in the Omega mythos is key. I originally created her just to fill a part (the part of Phi....19th generation or so in the Omega Response program...all the Reflections are named after successive Greek letters), but she grew into a pretty substantial foil for Omega. I could dive for hours into that whole thing, but i'll leave it at that for now. I'm thinking i might do a whole backstory sequential post series as i colour up the Phi pic, but there's probably only 1 or 2 of you who would even remotely want to read that. If you do, leave a comment or message/email me and i'll do it for you special. Otherwise, i'll leave that gothmasterness in my head. Somewhere. So yeah, this is Phi, in casual wear, looking hot (love that jacket...inspired by the one Uma wears at the end of Kill Bill Vol.2), and if anyone tells me she looks a lot like Rikku can eat it cuz she was created the summer before the Japanese release of FFX.

 

Hugs and Kisses!

Just thought i'd add a little blog about the faces most of you have seen as my Messenger pics. 

 

The little spaz you've seen is a character named Red that i drummed up a coupla years back under some creative duress.  In spring of 2002, the committed 2/3s of Crestfallen Entertainment Inc went down to San Jose to spend a month whipping together the final strings of the game de jour, Ninja Stars, and shop it around at the Game Developer's Conference (GDC).  Between grabbing mits full of swag and marvelling at the new nVidia graphics cards, the boys managed to snag some vis-a-vis time with some industry sniffers.  Showcasing our somewhat shallow, but nonetheless endearing, little effort proved to be a somewhat humbling experience, but eventually there seemed to be some folk who were reasonably interested.  Of course, as execs are wont to do, the ones remotely interested had a shopping list of things they would have liked to have seen in our demo. One of which included a main character with a little more 'personality'.

 

 Now, with the amount of time, effort, blood, and mental space making these games encompassed, we (especially they) were essentially willing to bend over and gnaw on a pillow while the execs pleasured themselves with our jubblies just to get some recognition. And money. So, as such, i received a frantic email from chad relating that we needed a new main character. Now, this may seem like no big deal, but you have to understand that, beyond the fact that i was 3000 km away from the rest of the team, creating a new main character is not just whipping up a fuzzy new creature with googly eyes and an industry approved minimum amount of 'tude.  The character has to 'fit' in the established world, his physical shape has to function with the predetermined play mechanics, and the overall mood of the character must match the desire of the target audience. So, being a master designer, i whipped up a fuzzy red creature with googly eyes and an industry approved minimum amount of 'tude.

 

Seriously, if you guys could see what the rest of the game looked like, you would laugh 'til it hurt. The original game was based on little ninjas that looked like a hybrid of Playskool Little People and Dragon Ball, shoddily coloured by a 5 year old (but it actually looked pretty cool...you'd have to see it).  Whereas Red, well, he would be cell shaded (think Zelda for gamecube). So yeah. But that's what you get when you give me 2 days to come up with something.

 

Regardless, long story short(er), i sent off the Red-Action Packed (vit: 'tude) B&W, the boys liked it, the companies gave us the giant brown-eye finger, and the dream, finally, died.  So the point is moot now anyway.

 

So here he is folks, the character that never was. Not even high enough on the priority chain to achieve modelled status, Red sat in a pile of 8x10s waiting to be loved.  Fast forward a coupla years and he comes to life in blazing colour, screaming to be animated old-skool 2-D style.  The years have worn well on him...what initially seemed to me to be just another throw-away, BS character has become one of my new simple favourites. A lot of my pictures tend to get overly detailed to the point of clutter, but Red is a fine example of simplicity.  You can tell he was created in a hurry, the logistics of bringing him to life are horrid...he has no neck or core connection points, so, either he'd have to have his limbs sprouting from his mane (critters style), or else he'd have to have a body added which would seriously detract from his fundamentals. So he's a floating head, perfect just as a flagrant expression of emotions.

 

Yeah, occasionally i love my stuff too much. They are my babies.

Twice in one weekend.  Yes, i've been on the computer for many hours straight, churning out the photos for your ingesting pleasure. Don't worry, you probably won't see another update for a couple of weeks. That is, unless, of course, i decide to put up some of my illustrator characters (which most of you have seen already anyway).  I guess all that's holding me back is that i have no way to sign these buggers so that someone can't credit my work. Now, i know i'm kind of being delusional thinking that someone might actually want to use some of my crap, but i'm thinking better safe than sorry. It's not that i want money...i just want the credit. I actually want people to use my stuff as desktops or MSN icons or whatnot.  Though the likelyhood of that actually happening are slim to none... bah, one can dream.  So, yeah, if any of you computer gods know of a way to digitally fingerprint my 'pegs, leave a comment. Actually ANYONE leave a comment. I'm desperate to know if anyone is actually reading this thing or if i'm screaming into dead air. Anywayz....onto the pics!

 

Bell Trinity Basement:  Just a nice little picture of the basement where us Hydro workers communed for lunch everyday.  The original picture was not this wide-angled, i just cropped off multiple inches of carpet and ceiling to achieve the desired effect. I was able to do this on this shot because i was actually smart enough to kneel down and brace myself for the shot. I'm naturally as shakey as a crackhead, jigglin' and wigglin', so all my shots come out kinda blurry at larger sizes.  Other than that, just punched up the reds on the highlights and blues on the shadows.  All the flares on the lights are natural, as are the combos of the orange pillars and blue concrete. Those interior designers were really thinking.  As a side note, not long after taking this shot a security guard came by and told me that i couldn't take pictures of the Bell Trinity building becuase it was constantly up for interior design and architecture awards. I told the guard i was sorry, i didn't know, then proceeded to go up the stairs and take 30 more.

 

Dandillion:  This picture is the somewhat crappy result of multiple hours of frustration over the course of two seperate days two months apart.  Back in August, i tried to get the macro lense of Chad's camera to work on a single dandylion in front of concrete (insert art-fag comment here).  Shot after shot came out blurry with the concrete in blazing focus.  A month later i found out that i had to put the camera into SUPER macro mode for shots like that (who knew?). Anyway, after perusing through the shots to try something really cool with, i started to kinda like the blurriness of the flower. Fast-forward 2 hours and i'm still wrestling with it to get the concrete to stop overpowering the flower. Eventually, i gave up in (relative) failure and the picture is how you see it now.  Heavy cropping and whitespace added to pull focus to the flower (colour) and away from the concrete (neutral), and a little bit of zang on the yellows. A million things were tried and 999,998 of them were thrown out. I think it looks kinda like a bookmark for your mom. Hey, they all can't be masterpieces.

 

Hydro Bathroom: It may not look it, but there is heavy doctoring on this shot.  If you look close, you will realize that this shot could not occur naturally, as the photo taker is not reflected in the mirror. Well, i was there at one point, taken out by the magic of the clone brush and some keen pattern matching.  Additional removed elements include a stack of used paper towels in front of the dispenser and minor glare details on the blown out counter top.  Of course, the blues were blazed on everything but the mirror reflection, wherein i wanted to maintain the orange pot light glows for balance.  The only thing that bothers me with this picture is the floor/ceiling balance. It was taken from a standing position, which was a mistake. The slope of the ceiling is twice as steep as the floor slope, causing a weird angle that is so obviously from a standing human that it hurts.  The horizon line occurs at about 2/3 of the way up the picture, right in the center. For these hallway shots to give that 'infinite' look, the horizon should occur right in the center. Friggin' amateur.  Other than that, i like the pristineness of the whites and blues. Zang.

 

School: No, not MY school, just A school.  Actually one of the clearer pictures i've ever taken, as i braced the camera on the deck of my apartment to take a long exposure shot.  Of course, through the magic of photoshop, it has turned into a monet-inspired mess.  There are actually two layers at work here, the orginal messed up with the paint daub filter, and then a copy of that on top messed even more with paint daub and multiplied over.  Of course, the original shot got the blues and pinks zanged and the contrast set out the wazz. Of course, those flares are all natural and are not stars or the moon, just some parking lot lights that lost their poles in the effect.  This one makes a really nice desktop which i think i will apply...now.

 

Trinity (detail):  I really like this picture.  A lot of work went into it, including having to completely redo it after photoshop crashed without me saving.  The original is pretty big, and since MSN MySpace only allows for pictures about 600x600 without shrinking, i decided to show a detail of it so you folks could get an idea of the cool stuff in it.  The original picture was of the Bell-Trinity building from the ground, looking up. There are about eight layers at work here.  The first layer is the original shot, hued, saturated and contrasted to a nice degree. The next four layers are varying degrees of cutouts of the original, adapted and overlayed. By about the third layer, the sky was completely blown out, so the rainbow effect was created to add to that pop-art appeal.  The next layer is the darkened outline of the building frames which was achieved through a variety of overlayed and inverted layers with contrasting and thresholding. I'm being vague here because i can't quite remember how i got it, but i got it in two completely different ways over the two times i did it, so there are many paths to that end.  Finally, an overlayed gradient (see a pattern here?) on the rainbow sky was added to finalize.  So yeah, there's actually a lot to this picture and it deserves to be in a Gorillaz video. Call me.

 

So yeah, if you've made it this far, you either like what you see/hear or you love me. If either of these is true, add a comment. You never know...people who are nice to me get free art stuff done all the time

Just a small update, decided to put up some new pictures from my time in Toronto.

 

 Not really too much to say about them. They are all, of course, doctored out the wazzz...you know the drill. I guess i could say a little about each one:

 

The Church: Besides punching up the sky and highlighting the blues, the only other altercation on this picture was the removal of a skywire that went horizontally across the entire frame. Because the sky is rather uniform in colour and the buildings have very consistent vertical lines of colour, the wire was a very easy removal with the clone tool in Photoshop.  I like the lines in this picture. The vertical horizon line (which ends out of frame) creates a nice wide-angle look, even with the standard lense.  The flags' matching blue was just luck (or a good eye, you be the judge).

 

Dead Picture: To answer your first question, no, i am not naked in this picture, i am wearing some very low slung pajama pants (as all pajama pants should be slung).  This is me, literally 5 minutes after i woke up at 5:30 AM to go to work at Hydro. As you can see, my hair is in an awesome, parted down the middle, bowlett toss and my face is completely unshaven (though that doesn't change as the day goes on).  There is some obvious heavy doctoring on this picture to get it to look like one of those old coffee stained, scratch filmed, over-exposed shots.  A veritable tonne of layers are at work here, mostly with overlay, affecting different sections.  The original shot is highly contrasted and then duplicated onto two more layers. The top one is a 'Cutout' of the original, negatived and then overlayed at half transparency. The next layer down is a 'Torn Edges' layer, again, negatived and overlayed at 10% transparency. The combined effects give the sort of airbrushed, over-exposed look. Additional layers of scratches and fogs, as well as swaths of desaturation (bottom left of frame to bottom of non-camera hand) top off the look.  The crack and water stain actually are a magic wand selection of my body, moved up and to the right, gradiented from light blue to light yellow and then overlayed over the entire picture. Got lucky with the crack...i was just looking for the water stain.  The whole inspiration for the look of this pic came from all the twisted Ashley Wood stuff. Or Cliff Nielson...pick either, but good luck on finding anything on Cliff Nielson.

 

Eaton's with Car:  Really nothing special going on in this picture. Very minor touchups on the contrast and colour, but other than that, this baby's all original.  If you've never been to the Eaton's Center in Toronto, the architecture is truly alarming.  I kinda wanted to show the sheer magnitude of the framing and try to give a sense of how long the main hall is. Plus this thing is 4 levels deep...>ack<.  I can't remember the brand of the car that's being showcased but i took a little time to make it gleam in the pic. If you're wondering what the ad board in front of it says, it's "Holy Schintzel!"

 

Overlay: This, ladies and gentlemen, is pretty much a tech demo of what the 'overlay' option can give you.  Again, not too much to this picture. A little contrasting and colour altering. There is a hell of a lot less colour manipulating on this picure than the other cloud pictures, this one actually retains the original cloud colours (they're actually all from the same set of clouds, even the 'over the 401' pic).  Looking at it now, this picture really looks like one of those posters that have a single inspirational word with a quotable phrase underneath that you see in every office in North America.  This one would say "The Clouds - Even if you suck, Photoshop will make you look like a pro".

 

Under Nathan's: Taken on the same day as all of the other pictures, just another angle of Toronto's city hall. Very little doctoring was done on this picture, just some colour enhancement on the windows and a blue-ifying of the shadow. I had a hard time deciding whether to desaturate the green in the plants, or leave them as is.  They sort of overpower some of the more subtle details and don't match the colour scheme. In the end, i opted to go with less doctoring (although i did add a little red to everything else to balance), and leave them the zang green that they are.

 

Water Leaf: The only picture of all of the water ones that i took on that day that i actually like.  Believe it or not, there is reasonable doctoring on this picture. Besides the standard colour punching and contrasting (with additional complex contrasting with the curves multiplier here to get the glimmers around the leaf to shine brighter than the base glare), i removed two or three dead bugs that were on the surface of the water with the clone tool. There was one in the upper left corner and one just right of center. I thought they muddled up the pristine-ness of the water. I would remove the wet fuzzy, half in the water and half on the rock on the bottom left, but it would be noticeable so i left it. It still bugs me to see it there. Maybe someday when i grab some skillz.

 

 

Because i'm mainly using this space as a showcase for any digital art that i've done, I thought i should fill this blog with something about the pictures contained herein.

I guess, first i should tell everyone that any photo you see in here is doctored out the wazzoo. You will see no photography that exists as god (but wait, there is no god <thanx Ivy!>) intended.  Because i suck at taking pictures, i let my Photoshop skillz make up for my lack of camera skillz.

That being said, the September pictures you see are from my time in Toronto.  Taken with my cousin's super awesome Olympus digicam over the course of one day and two evenings, the 10 shots included are the ones i've doctored so far.  God (there is no god) willing, i'll get around to doctoring up some more, but i doubt that will happen any time soon because school and Illustrator have been taking up most of my time.

Oh Illustrator, how thee is ruining my life.  Keeping me up late at night.  Begging to be taken care of, caressed, and loved. >Ack<. So.....yeah, most of the rest of the pics you will see coming will be illustrator pics, not to mention all of my Messenger faces.

Because i am a massive art-fag, i desperately look for insight into the artist's works, so it is only right that i give a little background into the pictures in the arty-art section:

 

Artery: This was the first picture i ever did exclusively in Photoshop. You can see a lot of the diddling around with the various paintbrush alterations (shrinking on a path, overlaying...etc.), but i worked pretty hard to try to make it as non-tech-demo-y as possible.  This image actually started out as a very faint purple, and then after a little colour hueing it looked best as red, like as if you were looking down the inside of an artery.  You can see the adjacent arteries through the wall of the main one (that you are in), and the star at the end is where it is broken and light is shooting in.  Shockingly, no one that has seen it has suggested the whole birth canal route, though that doesn't mean i wasn't thinking it while doing it (at least at some point).  The digital writing on the side was an idea i've had for a long time but it never really came together as i thought it would. Again, being a monster art-fag, all of the words actually mean something (biology or tech-wise) and if you take all of the first letters of each line, you get a special message.

 

Blanka: Probably my favourite Street Fighter pic that i've done, and i've always thought about colouring it up.  I actually did a string of Street Fighter pics that will eventually see their way into this space. Eventually.  As will the coloured Blanka...but that will be even longer. I started doing the outlining and blocking out of the pic in Photoshop before going to Toronto and am having a difficult time getting back into it in the face of Illustrator's warm glowing warming glow.  As for the piece itself, i liked the old man look in the eyes of Blanka (hey, he'd be ancient by SF3 standards). His hair is an homage to Rose's hair in the Bengus Alpha drawings and his tricep is taken directly off of Chad's. At least, how i remembered it in my mind.

 

Omega and T: The T was the second picture i did exclusively in Photoshop. In hand drawings, i am essentially unable to do mechanical subjects (machines, houses, Jareds), for whatever reason, so i stick to doing organics.  With the click of a mouse i can get exact straight lines, so i thought i'd try my hand at doing some. I picked the T cuz i wanted to do some self-logo-ish stuff. It started out as a single layer with just the T on white, and i thought it looked so metallic; i gave it a plate and a red surface to frame.  This piece essentially taught me how to use the selection tool and options in Photoshop. The metallic shading is directly ripped off of a tutorial Ward Schell gave in an airbrush demo back in '98. Hard line to soft, hard line to soft. Easy as pie. Cool colours on top, warm colours on bottom. The harsher the division line, the shinier the metal.  The Omega was the first time i ever did a design in Illustrator, and then imported it to Photoshop.  I did it right after the T, thinking it would save me time on the original layout.  Due to my inexperience with both programs it took me twice as long and the quality of the image was so bad i had to shrink it to look good ( i usually do stuff in the >2500x2500 pixel range).  So in the end, while the metallic shading is much more 'correct' on the Omega, the actual pic leaves a little to be desired.

 

Space: This pic was done halfway through Artery. I couldn't decide which colour i liked more, so i did one of each.  If you flip back and forth, you can see that most of the arteries are gone and the tendrils are minimized. About 10,000 more lightning zaps were added, and it just looked overdone, so i cut them all out and added the cool negative overlay on the outer ring. Oh, and for all you people out there who know that i like to use lens flares just a little too much, neither this pic, nor Artery, have a single lens flare used in them. I purposely did the sparks manually so the purists wouldn't yell at me.

 

The Beast:  The Beast started out as a design for a monster for Chad to model in 3D Studio MAX that would be "the hardest and most awesome thing ever".  Originally dubbed 'Vagina Beast' because his whole front section (which you can't really see from this pic) is opened up from the mouth to abdomen to form a giant, fleshy throat. It looked a lot like a vagina, and hence, vagina beast.  The original drawing was done in Minneapolis and became one of my all time favourites.  After commandeering a scanner and scanning in all my work, the beast stood out and i had no idea how to colour him. Normally, you separate the line art from the white space, then add massive blocks of colour underneath in layers to form shape. With all of the delicate tone that exists on the beast, i couldn't really separate it out, especially on the gums sections.  So instead, i cutout the different coloured sections, colourized them and added the colour directly to the shading. The result (with a little dodge and burn) is what you see before you.  It has a little 'Fred Astaire dancing with a vacuum cleaner' look, but i liked it nonetheless. Long live the Beast, and i plan to model him in 3D myself someday....as soon as i learn MAX.  And grab some skillz.

 

Christmas: This picture was the first picture i ever coloured in Photoshop. I scanned in the hand inked work and separated it in Photoshop. After (foolishly) creating a layer for ever single object in the frame (yes, every different present was its own layer) i selected the main colour then added one highlight colour and one lowlight colour.  The multitude of layers was truly retarded, especially since i was doing all of the colouring on the scanned image at 600 dpi (which was something ridiculous like 12000x9500 res) on a celeron 2.3 GHz with 256 M of RAM and no exclusive VRAM.  Argh, did it chug. I wanted to get the picture done for christmas cards, but i only finally ended up finishing it at 3 AM on Christmas Eve.  So don't be surprised to see it on any of your cards this year. I'd like to do another...but...well with finals... Oh, one other note on the pic, the Santa face is influenced HARD by a Santa pic Todd McFarlane did for an insert card in Wizard Magazine way back in '92. Hadn't seen the card in, like, a decade, but i definitely remembered the face. (Everyone says he looks crazy, but i think he's just excited about how full his sack is....hehheheheheh.) And, yeah, there area bunch of lens flares on the picture too...good luck in finding them you elitist bastards