Detour Took, Inspired, Rested, and Back To Creating + #SMM

So It's been a bit over a year and life kind of took over. Mind went a bit adrift but there's nothing like the sudden urge to need to create something again. I think the year's given me a bit more time to really prioritize what kind of art I want to focus on developing and striving towards. Visual Storytelling is the goal. 

I've got to give a huge shout out to Chris Oatley for being a huge inspiration and encouragement. I'd even go as far as to call him a mentor of sorts. I've enrolled in his online classes to show support and join an online community of like minded visual story tellers that want to help inspire growth and developments.

Also, I've decided to take on the person project of creating a short "one season" comic of a trio of super heroes. Currently labeling the Project #SMM. Below is practice with one of the first sketches of the trio, working on both line work, understanding form, atmospheric perspective/lighting, Mixing layers and color, Color Comping, and using new techniques with gradients to shape forms. It's a pretty rough work that's taken over 5 hours or so experimenting. While definitely challenging at times, redefining shapes and line work from a rough sketch. I can at least say I've already taken huge lessons to heart and feel a deeper understanding of layering opportunities for future renditions and pieces.

The Elementalist Concept Art

With Christmas around the corner I've come to find it as a great excuse to exercise some concept work as presents for friends who have been asking for some sort of drawing for awhile now. I figure One piece a week, first two days will be general drawings and concept, and finally a rendered version by the end of the week. Building up my portfolio has been a fun and invigorating task and has definitely helped in developing a process and method to getting work done. Hopefully each piece turns out better than the last. But since this is more of a test of timing and restraint, I'm looking forward to seeing what happens.

On to the sketches! These are some quick character concepts for a modern day elementalist. I'm not entirely sure how I envision her, but I know there are very key physical characteristics I have in mind for the final render. So far I'm really just getting a feel for her style and attitude, mix and matching till I find something that really fit's the mold in my head.

Tomoroww I should have a more defined look to this character and hopefully have a couple sketches for a final render concept. I really can't wait till I start another detailed coloring and get more practice with texturing through brushes and building upon multiple light sources. Till then, cheers!

White Queen

This piece was a practice in creating a methodical process for digital painting. More, specifically in character design. While i originally wanted to get carried away revising the concept and background, I'm much more anxious to start on another piece and plan it out a bit more before rendering it fully.

Hope you enjoy!

Rich Woman WIP

Just a few shots of a current work-in-progress of a character concept piece. More than anything it was to try and really concentrate and build on my proficiency at digital painting. Thankfully I've been studying Papa Ninja AKA Serge Birault. He's pretty much my favorite digital artist and often my inspiration for constant growth.

Enjoy.

Caligula

A Practice in illustration and character Design for a crazy woman named Caligula. Inspired by a quote from a TED talk. Random I know.

Iteration Is The Name Of The Game

After a long day of practice, variation, and most importantly iteration, I've managed to produce a few designs and ideas. So far I've reinforced the idea of tonal value's taking precedent in the composition of each design, working from monochromatic to a limited number of color and minimal variation in text. Time to share the spoils.

After some iteration and thinking, I updated my own work

Monochromatic Exercise (Time)

Monochromatic Exercise (Ripple)

A business card for my buddy with influences of camera and CMYK ideology

Business Card Experiement

In these recent weeks, I've been figuring I needed to really work on my design skills. More the ideal qualities that both knowledgeable and inexperienced eyes react to positively. The Alias alone had been influx for years now, ever since I was just a little kid creating a name that would serve as the umbrella to all my artwork and experimentation. After many iterations I ended up somewhere between nostalgia and simplicity. The nostalgia comes from what could be one of my favorite musical bands since my childhood, Everything But The Girl (EBTG). Their name was simple and unforgettable, but maybe that's just my own personal taste. After many ventures into completely detached alternative names, I found that I wanted to keep my name somewhere inside my alias. My general nickname, Ray, seemed fitting and short. So Low and behold, I've come to the conclusion of Everything But Ray (EBR). I could have spent forever coming up with a name or incorporating my nickname from work, Noodles, since most people misspoke my name from Ramon to Ramen (hence ramen 'noodles'). But I decided to keep it simple and reverted back to my nostalgia and regular nickname.

After deciding it was time to design and practice vs. coming up with names for the sake of design, I knew i had been stalling and in a way working backwards. Technically, you should be able to design any name or words given to you, so I wanted to find a way to make this to work with these ideals in mind.

Useful, Usable, Desirable, Valuable, Accessible, and Credible

So to begin decided on something simple, a business card. Here are the results of a couple hours of experimentation and work.

(If it doesn't work in grey scale, it wont work in color)

(A basic StyleSheet for Possible Colors)

Yup, it's simple, its clean, and I think it works in color while playing with the name.

Next up, possible Logo and website Design while using this as a basis.