fantastic fun machine

Film Studies

2011-08-15T10:38:00.000-07:00

Some film studies I've been doing for digital painting practice and experimenting. I want to do more of these to sharpen my painting and learn.

The top sketch above is a 20 min block in. Most of the information is there in a gestural application. I later wanted to try a tight version of the same shot, concentrating on clean contour edges. I actually prefer the gestural feel, as the tightness all around took a bit of the life and energy out of it.

Below are a few more that I'll keep adding to.

Rocket Theme

2011-05-17T12:17:00.000-07:00

Recently got asked to contribute some old spaceship, space opera images to help aid an promotional demo for Rocket Theme. Was interesting to see the web designer frame the sketches for his purposes for an web site interface.

SSX Characters

2011-04-16T12:43:00.000-07:00

SSX cast line-up

Ty Thorsen

Tane Mumea

Griff Simmons

Alexis Moreau

Moby Jones

Zoe Payne

Elise Riggs

Kaori Nishidake

Mac Fraser

Psymon Stark

Working with the team of artist's mentioned in the prior posts, Daryl Mandryk, Chris Bourassa, Andrew Domachowski, and myself jammed together on the designs of the new SSX cast that have been recently annouced!

EA's SSX blog has the cast details. The process work above was put together by the team and shown here. I'll update when there's more.

SSX E3 2011

2011-04-15T15:13:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to the SSX team at their E3 2011 showing. Trailer looked great and showcased their Race it, Trick it, Survive it themes while revealing 3 returning cast members!

Below are a few development sketches done during that time. The exaggerated curves and contours that complement each other, made the environments feel toony and fun! This style is best articulated by concept artist James Bowes, who's simply the king at SSX worlds gameplay. You gotta see his work!

SSX

2011-04-14T09:37:00.000-07:00

Recently, a hand full of sketches have been published in EGM, Game Reactor, and PSM3 as part of EA's SSX relaunch of the franchise. At the time of these sketches, EA wanted a Survive it! themed direction, along side Race it! and Trick it! as the game's main pillars.

Since working on the project, there were tons of designs and concept sketches from myself and the group of artist friends, working together under the banner of Mighty Canvas Concept Studio, serving as EA's concept art vendor. ( Andrew Domachowski, Goran Bukvic, Daryl Mandryk, Chris Bourassa, Luke Church, John Yip ) I'll post more to share when images go public.

For now, here's a few Survive it! themed designs + sketches done in around, and for the release of SSX's teaser video in winter 2010. Goran, Andrew, and myself.

Go Canucks!

2011-04-09T20:59:00.000-07:00

Some concept sketches I did last year for the Vancouver Canucks to help their creative team with designs for a surface face lift of their home ice, Rogers Arena.

Kinect!

2011-04-02T21:37:00.000-07:00

Kinect Adventures! was the showcase launch title for Microsoft's Kinect hardware debut. I was asked to help with some concept designs for the game back in November 2009 and into the beginning of 2010. With design objectives evolving around fun and optimism, it was a pleasure to work on! Above are wrapper concepts that the team's creative director, Darren Bennett, and myself jammed on as my first assignment on the project. At the time, the team knew roughly what gameplay features and type of games were going to make up the gameplay experience, but the project did not yet have an authorized direction to have everything drive towards. The Avateers! was the one chosen out of the bunch, and it drove the overall creative direction for everything onwards.

Introducing the Avateers! From here on, I worked closely with Good Science Studio's art department, David Galloway, Ryan Hastings, and Mike Spalding. Below are a few of the ideas we played around for interactive critters, vehicles, trophies etc! all in true spirits of an fun adventure theme.

io9.com

2011-03-16T14:03:00.000-07:00

Woke up this morning to a call from a friend saying some old spaceship sketches were featured on a website called http://io9.com/ The feature is HERE.

I had no idea?! so it was a nice surprise over a morning coffee. The images were obviously taken off this older blog post on here I thought? But then I discovered that it was actually from someone had posted on here Conceptships blog.

Flattered, unworthy, and dumb founded.

WIRED Play

2010-12-23T21:23:00.000-08:00

WIRED magazine a few months back asked to see if I can help contribute an video game Concept Art looking sketch for their PLAY section of their January 2011 issue.
The above image is cropped for their ipad format prior to an last minute editor's revision.
I will update this post with the print format page with type, and headings they layed out to relate to the colored lights on the ships and story more clearly.

Old Timey Dave

2010-11-20T19:12:00.001-08:00

An old timey portrait of my friend Dave Galloway who just returned to town.
I like the way it feels, humorous. I have a craving now to do some portraits of peeps I know.

The good fellas.

WIRED

2010-08-26T00:24:00.001-07:00

Hot off the press!
Here's an update of some commissioned art works I did for WIRED magazine a couple months back that just got published in their print and digital i-pad format, September 2010 issue.

The creative team at WIRED asked if I could do some submissions based off a similar art style as some concept sketches I have done in the past, using mixed media techniques.
Overall it was a fun + humbling experience doing an print-illustration assignment in this particular style. Definitely a change of pace from the everyday concept sketches I'm used to doing.

cover submission

feature opener

thumbnails + roughs

ImagineFX

2010-07-22T15:54:00.000-07:00

Aside from being busy with client work lately, I have recently been invited to contribute some art works to a digital painting magazine called ImagineFX. Based off some spacecraft designs from my past, they wanted to do a "development" section in their issue to showcase my process. So I generated a new set of designs, and re-purposed some assets to have fun with.

Nimble, Compact, Critter, Explosive.

Here are the 3 development images I submitted. Overall, it was fun to sketch ships again, and as usual, I would love to expand the design further with more time. Not exactly sure what issue the article will be in, but I'll be sure to post when it hits the stands.

thumbnail studies

concept sketches

model-sheet format

Working in-game

2010-05-26T10:25:00.000-07:00

Here is a set of sketches were I worked with 3D environment artist to describe a section of their level.
I used their camera fly through to help determine which pockets of the level needed to be designed out to help the 3D artist make a run for it, all with-in the capacity of available artists and time to complete the level.

Also attached here is a sheet of street props and small destruct-able objects.

Just like my earlier post, certain assets needed to be removed from the sketches, I'm missing the main focus it once had with the main character in the shots.

Environment Design Sketches

2010-05-26T10:10:00.000-07:00

Here's a few environment design concepts to add to the unannounced AAA title posts.

At the time, some major influences came from art deco style LA buildings, multi-level settings, and the metaphors I described in some of my abstract-ish studies in my earlier posts.
These turned out a bit more on the romantic side. I have a few other takes with different vibes of buildings and mood, but this set felt nicely wrapped together.

There were some minor editing, such as painting out signage and main characters in the scene to be authorized to post publicly. I did my best to quickly patch it up a bit.

More updates

2010-04-14T14:00:00.000-07:00

Some more updates.
Again a mixture of sketches to get a hang of the statement we wanted to say, as well as trying out possible routes to chase.

Works from an unannouced title

2010-04-14T13:45:00.000-07:00

Just got permission to share some selected works I did for an unannounced title!
Always cool to finally share a chunk of work when it's approved to post online.
I'll continue to add more sketches.

These were done to communicate a statement from simplifying it, abstract of in-game. I always have fun with studies like these for a chance to use some of that artistic expression outside of the everyday production sketches.

A few sketches where I went with a line art treatment. The sketches were done very early on in the project, and I wanted to see if a lighter feel could work with the core concept at the time.

Candy alien sketches

2010-04-14T10:58:00.000-07:00

Here are some sketches of weird, highly organic alien beings. I went for a CANDY feel in these, inspired by retro sci-fi vibes, while trying contemporary shapes.
Space is colorful in these concepts! saturated colors in the world to separate from the normal black, as well as adding in gases, clouds, planets, anything I could think of that can help define distance and orientation.

Below are some thumbnail sheets I played around with.

Character Designs

2010-03-31T16:26:00.000-07:00

An character design for a TV show called Sanctuary.

Concept sketches for fun. Inspired by the Saul Bass print on my wall.

Character thumbs

2010-03-31T10:55:00.000-07:00

Always fun to sketch in a thumbnail + rough form, especially when the sketches are left gestural, and at times using analog materials, markers, pen, pencils.
Some table scraps I dug up from past client works 2004-2006.

Not characters, but thumbnails for different guns. I figure I'll add this sheet to the post since they were done at the same time as the others above.

Sneaker collage sketch

2010-03-30T15:32:00.000-07:00

I did an oil pastel drawing for a friend's birthday present. Before attempting the final drawing, I had some cut and paste fun in Photoshop during a slow afternoon at work. Collage sneaker head vibe.

I decided to run with a traditional still life study. Classical vibe for a classic shoe.
I'll ask my buddy to send a photo of it to share.

bird birds

2010-03-29T22:39:00.000-07:00

Here's an old 3D sketch I did as a study for a part of a graphic/illustration for a friend Goro Kumatsu and at the time, his sponsor, Sobut Snowboards in JDM land.
I wanted to see what a 3D vibe would feel like for part of a sketch I had done in ink. (reminding myself to find that sketch in the hard drives. 2003!)

These are a set of pictorial style illustrations of arctic birds I drew from back in the day. Marker on bond paper, and minutes from posting, I gave them some color and played with the drawings in Photoshop.... I couldn't resist.
Not sure why I put them on the back of the canvas...Perhaps it's a secret hidden treasure.

Off the clipboard

2010-03-25T14:32:00.000-07:00

I had some time today to scan in some pages from my clipboard of sketches and notes. I then applied some color to them in Photoshop with out changing any of the doodles, leaving the lines on top and not edit. coloring is all one sitting, so I left the color scheme the same while I messed around with different executions.

So I know we all scribble and doodle during meetings right? well I know I do... So what I did back when working in-house was bring my clipboard with a few pages of scrap papers from lovelydesign to doodle on, rather then having little doodles here and there on handouts, printouts, spread sheets etc. I kept scribbling on the same pages, adding bits each time.

The sketches being unconscious, and pen on paper, the doodling brought back influences from my graffiti and college years.
A good friend and artist Josh Pong, who happens to be one of the best graffiti artists/drawers/designers I personally know, shared the same inspirations and influenced me a lot during those golden years as a freshmen at Sheridan college. To this day, I still see his influences in my skarty style sketches! He's the best, and buck bro, would love to work on a project together one day.

Anyhow here's 4 of them!

Level design demo

2010-03-25T11:37:00.001-07:00

Last night's class we did a game production level design assignment. Here's the demo I managed to squeeze in the 90 minutes.
I'm no expert compared to the friends I know that tackle these tasks on the daily, but when given the chance, these assignments are fun to draw into.
Line art is fun! Just wish I could have done it on paper to get that pencil drawing comfort and accuracy.

Anytime I do level design work, it always reminds me of old Sheridan layout assignments.....

Warming up

2010-03-25T10:48:00.000-07:00

A quick little sketch to warm up for work.

speed paint buddies

2010-03-19T17:38:00.001-07:00

Did a speed paint session with a friend and fellow artist Luke Church for an in class demo.
A few random sketchy doodles during the session.
The two on the left are other older in class demo's Luke and myself jammed on.

This speed painting below was done with a friend and fellow artist, Daryl Mandryk. It's quite different from what we ended up with, but I felt like sketching a bit tonight and revisited the doodle.

Head Study

2010-03-19T16:59:00.001-07:00

Found a bit of free time and did a head study last night from imagination.

I need to do more studies.....

Need For Speed for Nintendo DS

2010-02-20T13:28:00.000-08:00

I found these 2 sketches in my hard drive that I'll like to share.

These 2 images were generated back when I was asked to help come up with an unique look/art direction for a Nintendo DS skew of Need for Speed in 2008.
After defining a problem statement, my objective with this assignment was to introduce an look that would work for a small screen, a slightly younger audience, while still keeping true to the franchise.

The second image is to show what they had when I was working on this assignment for comparison. It ultimately drove me to chase the direction that was presented in the concept sketches.

Was a fun contribution.
Remember picking up good learning's during this exercise with my art director at the time, David Taylor.

To see my Need for Speed Undercover concept artworks, please click HERE !

Sessional Intructor

2009-12-08T12:58:00.000-08:00

I believe to have mentioned in earlier posts about my part time concept art night class I teach at VanArts in Vancouver as part of their game-art/entertainment-art program. Presently, I've been on staff with them for the past couple of years, and it's become my weekly outlet to paint and get jazzed with the contagious enthusiasm from the students. I want to take this opportunity to post, describe, and organize some of the works from in class demos with everyone! I'm hoping this will be benefitual for current, past, future students, and friends who are curious about the class to have a quick glance, line of sight, and some of the lessons and painting processes we discovered and practiced. I will be updating frequently with new and older assignments to share. So keep an eye out for new images!

Location Design

Above are some samples of location design demos. From thumbnail blocking the composition, to painting out structural elements, I would consider these as rough concept sketches. Mainly using up 2-3 hours to thumb and paint before going any further with the design and presentation. In working conditions this painting velocity works great for me, allows room for critique as soon as the impact is there in a sketch without having to hedge my bet on just one fully finished painting.

3D Paint Overs

These images are from demos on showing how 3D artist's can quickly describe a scene by using 3D. In this type of sketch, I consider the 3D to take care of most the drawing, for everything built is structurally sound, in perspective and graphed out. All we need to focus on is the lighting/mood, textures, and painting out the rest of the scene. The less problem's we're solving all at once, the better, and less stressful it'll be. Personally, during production, especially working with level design, I tend to do lots of these paint overs for speed, and consistency with what they have laid out as a level/gameplay space, good for economizing 3D art assets.

Party Assignment

This assignment is adopted from when I was at Sheridan. Always one that was memorable to me when I was studying there. The objective of this assignment is to create an scene and illustrate it from 2 different camera views with out changing anything from the scene in both shots. Take away from this exercise I found is better understanding of 3D space in a 2D image. Measuring distances in perspective, rotation of objects, and consistency. Where I found these practices most useful outside of the everyday sketches was when I got my first taste of generating layouts for 2D animation, shot by shot needed to stitch up seamlessly and correctly. These are just the thumbs from the class. I will add the final image as I do want to paint these two out when I'm free.

Speed Painting

These are in class speed painting's where I demonstrated quick and dirty rapid-vis concept sketches. The first one above was a take on mashing custom brushes together, a tribute to Andrew Jone's work, while the other character sketches were treated way more organic. The take away from doing this exercise is to speed up our painting process, training our artistic integrity to care less of execution, less precious with our works, allowing the designs to run loose and free. The above are generated with-in 20-30 minutes. I introduced this exercise to students by having them do speed painting jams with other classmates, artists and friends.

Thumbnail Generation

This page above is a sample of character thumbnail generation for an in class assignment with a very open brief with-in the fantasy genre. I tend to do most of my thumbnailing on paper with a leaky pen, and sharpie marker to keep things loose and permanent during this stage. Last thing I want to care about is how the sketch looks like, but rather, I want to exhaust ideas, both bad and good, putting them on paper as quick as possible and out of my system. I tend to think of it as dumping all the preconceived/generic ideas out of myself as quick as possible. My execution approach is sort of like creating post-it notes of ideas with 1-2 minute gestures to later organize and pick potential shapes+designs out of to further chase. Attached to the top of the sheet is what I do with potential thumbnails. Quick paint overs of the actual thumbnail sketch, somewhere in the lines of 20-30mins to simply explore a sketch a little without devoting to much effort into a notion before it's validated. Thumbnail stage is definitely one of my favorites of the process, If I could, I would do these all day long, and I encouraged the students to generate as many thumbnails as possible for each assignment.

Painting downstairs

2009-11-18T10:29:00.000-08:00

Now that I have no studio to go to work, and with a home environment that is far too distracting during the day; I have been very very lucky to be offered to jam in solitude at my friend's place when they're gone during the day. This has been an awesome setup since I started settling in this week. The apartment is actually my neighbor's Susanna + Sebastian's right down stairs from mine. Traveling time to work is now about 20 secs, having lunch with the family is as easy as going up stairs, and the place is quiet and cozy with their two cats, Miso + Ming, keeping me company. So far so good!

That aside, based off the NDA situation with the artworks I've done the past year, it leaves me with nothing to post unless I sit down and generate new personal works. It's portfolio time for me as well, so the motivation is working out quite nicely. I merely want to take advantage of my free time before I start getting busy with client work again.

For this set:
I've been jamming on a set of images that I want to belong in one direction and universe. My objective is mainly to showcase how I would handle science fiction worlds.

Here's the first one from yesterday's sitting!

*I'll be updating this post as the images get finished, if all goes well, I'm aiming for one a day.

Leap of Faith

2009-11-13T11:53:00.000-08:00

After a long tour of duty with my most recent project, I've decided to make a bold change in my life and give freelancing and contracting concept artworks a try.
A leap of faith to strive for a creative space and livelihood that I ultimately would like to obtain.

For now, I have lots to learn and experience with the business end. I’ve already got my first experience of what the waiting head space, finalizing contracts, scheduling to best help the one's who’ve shown support feels like. Something I’ll need to get used to for sure, time management, accounting, and all the other elements freshly discovered.

All of this simply stems back to my creative appetite to try a hand at different problem statements on the regular and allow time to mature my own artistic voice on the side. I had a set-up such as what I’m describing a few years ago, where I was part of a central concept art group for EA. I had many opportunities to touch different games with-in short time frames, always changing it up, keeping fresh. I really enjoyed it, and is what’s appealing in these next steps to constantly challenge myself.

The inexperienced side of my situation does make me feel honestly nervous about it all, being responsible for my family’s livelihood is quite heavy.
Luckily my lovely partner Shari and a few others from the industry have been very supportive of my decision, and it does ease my butterflies quite a bit.
If in fact I’m not suited for freelance work after trying it out, I’ll go back to working fulltime. But at least I would have gave it a good shot and gain that experience in life.

Where does the time go?

2009-06-14T11:47:00.000-07:00

Wow! I haven't posted anything since January!
Quite telling how occupied I've been the past six months.
Where does the time go?

I've been feeling simply overwhelmed with work loads and home responsibilities that it seems to be always a catch up game, and a battle for free time.
I'm sure this is common for most artist's working in the field who have also entered parenthood for the first time.
Quite shocking to think of when we once had so much time we were thinking of ways to kill time.

Regardless, I need to make an bigger effort to free myself up to chase ideas that I've been bouncing for personal projects. The soul's hungry for it.
Ultimately talk is cheap, so lets see what I actually do about it.

Space Ship Dump

2009-01-25T15:39:00.000-08:00

These images were done early 2007. Mostly inspired by spaceship sci-fi illustrators, I wanted to try out a few of they're techniques to help generate art works for a subject matter that I haven't explored. Good learning's and fun all around.

Speed paint jams

2009-01-04T20:02:00.000-08:00

While busy working on art works for clients and projects, it's such a nice break every now and then to have free for all sketching and digital painting sessions. Speed painting is a great exercise to speed up the painting process, being bold with brush strokes, and being light on your feet constantly changing the sketch as it progresses. When painting as an collaboration, it's even more fun! bouncing the image back and forth every couple of minutes to see what others and myself would add and change. All in all good ol' fun with Photoshop and a tablet.

Here are some that a good friend, Daryl Mandryk and myself have done in the past when we both worked at Propaganda Games. I'll continue to update when we jam some more.

Cartoon bits

2009-01-04T15:05:00.000-08:00

A few sketches of cartoon bits for a friend of mine Justin in Toronto. On this assignment, I had the joy of coming up with different art directions/styles for the show, allowing myself to freely construct images in a few different looks that felt appropriate for the objective. Most of these I remember where done late at night after Adelaide was fast asleep.

Life drawings from college

2008-12-30T23:21:00.001-08:00

Found some life drawings from Sheridan and studies done shortly after getting settled in from moving to Vancouver. Kept as part of an older portfolio I showed when interviewing for digital animation at VFS.

SSX On Tour

2008-12-30T01:06:00.000-08:00

SSX on Tour was probaly the most fun I've had on a project to date. Their art team asked me to help give the presentation of the product a hand with art works that resembled a high school rocker wannabe glam shredder!

My friend Rich Curren was the art director responsible for pushing such a daring flavor to this franchise and to the gaming world. Like it or not, we all went for it!
Now we got to remember that at the time when this product came out, there was nothing like it yet towards presentation in gaming. The loosely drawn day dreaming skart style was already an progressive art movement from skate artists, graffiti artists, and to do justice, my own personal voice and friends I grew up with, had not reached the malls yet.
Speaking of which, I actually got my friend Dennis Chow aka GLAM, a true school rocker with a knack for this type of artwork to jam with me and Rich!
I remember rifling off sketch book after sketch book packed with funny little doodles in all types of styles in wacky dispositions. Even took the time at the end to layout an art book for all the drawings!

Heres a few pages from that book.

Below is the intro movie for the game. Some how, I ended up doing all the drawings, poses, initial boards and provided any other 2D support to pull this off. Luckily the best video team I've worked with had a blast animating it all! Props go to Clint Jorgenson, Craig McKewin, Rich Curren, Mark Raham for putting this and the many many other movies together with their magic! We were known as the band. Now a days we're all so busy working on separate projects and places we barely see one another anymore. I guess we'll always have our memories!

Street Smart

2008-12-29T21:12:00.000-08:00

While mostly solving production design problems with drawing and digital paintings these days, there's still the side of my resume where I once pursued the art of animation, both hand drawn and digital. I'm not entirely sure where my student film from Sheridan college lives at this moment, might be tucked away at my mother's place somewhere? (If I find it I'll update) However, I do have an digital copy of Street Smart, an animated short I made in 2002-2003 during my studies in digital animation at Vancouver Film School. Below are a few concept sketches, production stills, and 3D model turn arounds that survived from the project.

The movie below is a story board reel used to time out my scenes and animation keys. I remember spending a good chunk of my time tweaking and figuring this out before any 3D animation was touched. Ultimately it made the 3D production a lot easier to manage and execute on with a solid plan done cheap with pencil and paper. No duh sort of speak :)

Ultimately, I ended up with a short film titled Street Smart after months of scratching my head trying to get the software problems solved on top of artistic issues. At the time, it was shown in the 2004 Hiroshima film festival for best student film! Was very flattered to say the least. Here's the demo reel version that was packaged for employers. I ended up taking the first job I got offered and never got a chance to shop around. I sometimes wonder where I could have ended up if I kept my options opened and sent out demo reels. Regardless, I could'nt be any happier than I am today, working professionally doing what I love :)

Cheers to the VFS faculty and classmates for the experience, and a special thanks to William Bates, Paul Tanner, and Diego Bergia "the animation bandit" for getting me through towards the end of the project.

Sketchy skates

2008-12-29T17:00:00.000-08:00

Here's a few pencil, pen and digital sketches dug out from a skate project from 2004.
When looking back here, the design inspirations, completely prejudice and guilty of it, crept into these sketches. Lots of fun and enthusiasm to be simply allowed to experiment with all sorts of looks before an art direction was authorized.

Pirates

2008-12-29T14:56:00.000-08:00

Here's a few pirate sketches done a couple years back.
I remember truly having fun with these back then, embraced different Photoshop rendering techniques to accommodate the subject matter the best I could.

Quick excercise

2008-12-29T14:37:00.000-08:00

I gave myself an quick exercise in breaking down an existing design with a broad problem statement to come up with something ownable that is still related to it's origin.

1st Sketch is usually the most generic, but needed to get it put down on paper and out of my system.
2nd and 3rd started to abstract from it's source quite dramatically, becoming more playful and stylized with personality peeking through.
By the 4th sketch, I felt it was so far removed from the original reference that it became its own identity, within a thin line; retaining the believability of an automobile.
Keeping in mind, the renders were picked out from a few pages of thumbnail sketches, one take at a time.

Overall, I was pleased with the quick exercise and had fun!

I wonder what their world is like? The characters that live in that world? Starting to fantasize about it......

Oh by the way! I love Subaru Impreza's! :)

Blast from the past

2008-12-29T14:14:00.000-08:00

Originally posted in an older blog where I separated personal works with industry related works. Ultimately, with encouragement, I'm deciding to have it all in one blog rather than two.

The following sketches were done when inspiration and motivation was flowing, found myself always in my sketchbooks doodling.

Drawings from the wonderful pages of lovelydesign journey books.

Sketchbook center page from yet another lovelydesign book.

Ink and watercolor sketches in the park and off a beach in a small town British Columbia.

A collection of a few oil pastels on cardboard. These were created to be showcased in an group art show in Germany at the time.

Billy, Freddie, and George at the top are 18x24 charcoal sketches and the bottom image is a pen drawing that I played around with in Photoshop. These were both showcased in a book "Sketchbook Black and White" and was later shown at a local art show.

Paper, ink, and Photoshop was used to create these images. These were shown in a book "Cats and Dogs" and the city scape image was shown at a local art show.

City Sketches from the sketchbook that somehow made into Photoshop. The top image was sketched on Robson Street in Vancouver when I first arrived in the city just after school. The bottom image is from studies for a friend's skateboard design.

These two were done for an book and art show called 8-bit. They asked for a take on a old school video game, and this is what I handed to them. These now live in a home in Vancouver.

Character sketches

2008-12-01T23:53:00.000-08:00

Here's a few random character sketches all done at separate times.
Learning and experimenting with different rendering executions and plain good Ol' sketchy fun during Photoshop painting demos for students, friends, and co-workers.

My favorite exercise

2008-12-01T22:49:00.001-08:00

My favorite exercise!

Ever since my times at Sheridan college, I remember how much life drawing was a key component in my life. Going 5-6 times a week! sometimes even more during portfolio grading deadlines during school, hoping for a keeper here and there while conning myself not to care.
I kept the life drawing up 2 sessions a week when I first moved to Vancouver and slowly tappered into once a week when time got more scarce.

Now a days, I'll love to find time to keep the drawing up, been challenging since adjusting to parenthood. But I wouldn't miss Adelaide's baby year's for anything :)
Perhaps it's time to blow the dust off my charcoal case, flex that muscle again, and making marks for no one but myself for a bit of exhale from the reality of working in a production studio.

These gestures are dated from a few sessions in winter 2005

Turok

2008-11-29T00:04:00.000-08:00

Here's a few production sketches from the game Turok I slipped in a couple years back.
Did not get much of chance to get involved with this project for I was dedicated to another at the time, but was always down to lend a hand during slower times at work and jam with my co-workers who were setting the production design for this project.

Shouts to Micheal McCartie, Chad Smith, and Daryl Mandryk! These guys made my time at Propaganda Games one of the greatest experiences of working in the field with other concept artist's locked in a room, while listening to the Conan soundtrack on repeat and attacking each other with outlandish caricatures :)

Resorted to Drawing

2008-11-28T23:25:00.000-08:00

Found a few odds and ends from a few years back.

The days when everything I worked on started with pen to paper, and rendering in Photoshop slightly with out confidence.

Always been connected to drawing due to classical animation back in school days. So when digital painting was first introduced, I did not know what the heck to do with it. Always found myself resorting back to a drawing/sketch to hold the image together. What's telling is the style creeping in to the sketches back then.

Fun times :)

Need for Speed

2008-11-27T22:17:00.000-08:00

The most recent shipped game I helped work on just released, Need for Speed Undercover. This title being my first full production cycle working as a concept artist at EA in years, while previously only being involved in pre-production or pitch phases of ideas/New IP.

The experience was definitely an eye opener to what goes down during a NFS production cycle.
Much props to the art hero's I worked with on this team, Alan Jarvie, Rose, and our fearless leader Dave Taylor.

Here's a Art dump of some of the many concept sketches I've provided during this production. I used mixed media in Photoshop to best execute for this type of product. Photo stitching and paint over, ultimately allowing anywhere between 2-6 hours from thumbnail to completion.

Anyhow, here's some images! :)

Coffee shop sketches

2008-09-02T23:26:00.000-07:00

Here's a batch I've kept from Christmas vacation 2006.
At the time, I just finished a project at Propaganda Games/Buena Vista Games and had a line of sight of possibly moving on to help work with a friend's proposal for an up coming project. Therefore I wanted to create a few new sketches that I could show along with whatever I had as a portfolio.
Since I was on holidays, I spent my morning's sketching these up with a little help from Soma Cafe's strong americano's. Ahhhhhh I remember those days, my last of "much free time" before Adelaide was born a few weeks later :)

I did end up getting the job. Back at the Ol' EA mothership in Burnaby BC.

It's about time

2008-09-02T23:07:00.000-07:00

So here I am. Having a bit of down time, surfing the web and catching up with old friends on MSN messenger.

Inspiration!

I struck upon an old school mate's blog. It was wonderful to see what he's been up to all these years. Reading and looking at all his delicately articulated experiences, inspirations, findings, and most intriguing to me, artworks! And wow! His work is so true to his art and full of heart. Found myself floored by all the great images. I soon came across a conversation with another school mate friend who motivated me to start my own blog to share my artworks and adventures. With out much hesitation, I did just that. He'll be my first visitor I believe.

Revelation!

With now a venue to keep a personal journal and art collection. I can only hope to help inspire and motivate myself in creating more art, as well as sharing the little joys in my life with all of you who may be visiting.
Thanks goes to Jason Kim for getting me motivated. My love Sharilyn will be proud of this when she finds out. She's been using a blog ever since I've met her and always encouraged me to create one of my own to share.

It’s about time :)