Stay Toasty

Housewarming gifts for my brother.

From awhile ago, but it's new to YOU, right?



Stay toasty warm and eat lots of desserts. Happy holidays!

It's Tryndamere. He always looks like this.

(animated)

MY RIGHT ARM IS A LOT STRONGER THAN MY LEFT ARM.

Cactii

I got approached by an old FFXI friend to do some logo work for his translation company, Cactus Leaf Translations. It actually ended up being a lot of fun! You can check out his site here: http://cactusleaf.co

Here's the process from start to finish.

Sun Tigers

For Janell and Aniket. Who got married and lived happily ever after. :] Except they were already pretty happy to begin with.

Bonus concept sketches:

September Sketches

Wow it's been awhile. Sorry. Here are some sketchbook things to tide you over. I am working on a couple of projects right now. There have been some computer upgrades and technical issues, but fingers crossed, things look to be stable now.

Super Mario 3DS has Tanooki Goombas. This is a level of great that I was not immediately prepared to handle.




I would scan more sketchbook pages, but my scanner is so old that it can't run under Windows 7, and my MB is so new, that it doesn't like running Windows XP.

Patience

Goombas.



Just messing around with a sketch.

Nyancake!

For my birthday... my brother made me a cake!


You may all be jealous now.

Also:

Pixel stuff.

Remember, self, paint faster.

Working on it.
Next time compose something in advance, too.
Noted.

Pixel Kitty!

For Rachel.


Also a pixel environment, for fun.

Spritely, now!

Progress continues on the sprites for the D&D game. I still like the Atari-esque ones, but these are fun too. Pixel art is so different from the way that I normally work, that it has definitely been a learning experience.



Anyway, having fun with them, and thought I would share.

Happy Mother's Day!

To you, and to the person whose womb you emerged from.

Dream Paladin

Some stuff from a few months ago, when I was working on something.

Now playing: D&D on the Atari 2600!

Okay not really. But I am making little tiny icons for our virtual tabletop. Which is actually pretty hard.




I wonder what kind of tilesets we will be using for the map, though. I don't want to make one! But I kind of wonder if we can find something ultra simple to match. Haha.

Tricked!

Still not really spring. I knew that the nice weather couldn't last for more than a few days. I knew it!

Can it be spring yet?

I am definitely ready for spring. Lemme know when it gets here for real. For Calgary, that will probably be May.


The board is gearing up for a new D&D game. It's been a long time since I've played, I'm looking forward to it. It's 4e which is also more or less a first for me. But it's gonna be fun! My character is a Tiefling Swordmage named Bunny. Her interests include good swords, nice things, and breaking other peoples' legs.


She is pretty much a goon with a pretty face.
Semi related: Gnolls are amusing to draw, especially the less effort you put into drawing them seriously.

Leaning tower of sketches

Was visiting Jay in Georgia for two weeks in March, and, despite not drawing on any of the incredibly long plane rides, was surprisingly productive. I'm starting to get better at plane rides, though... I spend less time staring at the wing and resolutely telling the plane what a glorious piece of aerial technomancy it is than I used to.


Some of these next ones are drawn with my right hand. Can you guess which!

The second set of pages was done as a combination of both, which turned out kind of interesting in terms of line quality... I used my good hand for the details and bits that had to be curvy, but I used my right hand to just kind of make everything else jaggy and random.


Me and Jay kind of think Space Wolf should be a flash game about spinning backwards through space while you breathe fire. I'd play it. For a little while.

The perils of coffee.

Hung out with Rachel today. We split a peppermint chocolate cupcake, and a ginger creme cookie. Best of both worlds!

Here are some sketches. In some of the pages, Adventure Cat is off model..... very, very off model.

I don't remember why this happened.

Some sketches

For Jay's birthday I decided to get the best birthday present ever. So I got the most beautiful pony I could find.

Here are some sketches from last week.

Based on a true story.

One day they'll just download it into your brain upon payment.

Sketchbook

I got a new sketchbook for Christmas, from Jay. It is a moleskin! Which means that, while not actually made from the hide of small creatures, it is still pretty fancy.


I drew more space unicorns in it.

Global Game Jam 2011

Game Jam : Make a game in 48 hrs.

Here is the timeline of my experience as the team artist.

Friday: Join a team, concept a game. Draw sketches. Spend 3 hours trying to get the test critter animation to wiggle properly. No, I will not go to sleep until it is working right. Go to "bed" (floor) at 1:30am, don't actually sleep until 4am. Wake up constantly. Quietly panic that game will never be finished.
Saturday morning: Omg I look dead. And why doesn't the Tim Hortons have bagels. Oh hello delicious coffee. Then this youtube video.
Saturday morning onwards (time to get back to work): Paint the critter animation frames roughly. Paint it better. Paint repeatable background tiles ALL DAY.
Saturday night: Wait our game actually works? Amazing. Discover new types of tiles that I have to make. Make new tiles. Repeat. Paint ending screens. Sleep a little.
Sunday morning: Touch ups. Make instruction screen. Paint a few more tiles.
Sunday afternoon: We get sound! Game is working. Lack of sleep sets in. OUR GAME IS AWESOME AND I LOVE EVERYONE.
Sunday early evening: Present games. Everyone made awesome things. It's so fun to see what people come up with, probably the one thing I miss the most about school.



It was a blast, and I think our game turned out pretty great. Thanks / props to Scott, Ian, Ryan, and Jeff. It was fun working with you all, and everybody did awesome work.

People reading this: You should check it out!

Download / play game: http://www.globalgamejam.org/2011/critter-swarm
Youtube demo video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAqj_uQki4U

I think I need to sleep now.

Paintings from November

I did these sort of "level palette" sketches for Balloon Ferret, back in November. Color and theme and style, making sure everything matches and works as a whole, kinda thing.

Some more sketches from the last couple days. I am so close to finishing this sketchbook, I can taste it!




Except I wouldn't really want to, because this sketchbook has kinda been dragged just about everywhere...