Friday, May 17, 2024

Cruise Ship Season

 A little late in posting an appropriate piece of art for the start of Cruise Season in Seattle. Better late than never.

I used to ride my bicycle past those big ships when they were in port, north of downtown Seattle. Haven't done that in a while. Maybe this summer.

These concept ink drawings were done a few years ago, with possibly making paintings from some of them.




Thursday, May 16, 2024

Crater Lake Part 3

 Posting more favorite trips from 2023 and these are more from my trip to Crater Lake. This time through the lens of my Nikon, rather than through my cell phone. I was able to not only get some detail around the park as I walked along but there was also parts of the lake, close up. A fun hike and a stunning view throughout.



Thursday, May 9, 2024

Pages from an old sketch book

 Concepting art for games or animation studios is one of my all time favorite parts of what I do for a living. I can come up a at least 10 viable ideas in an afternoon and have most of them roughly drawn out.

I usually don't hesitate, but I do make time in the beginning for looking around for inspiration to spark some ideas. This usually doesn't take too long.
It's a lot of fun getting those ideas in some sort of form that is easily understood, visually.
Then there are the drawings I do in my sketchbooks. Those don't have a motivating factor that I'm trying to appease. It's just my mind wandering through various thoughts.
Here are a few pages from an old sketchbook. The unifying idea for these: "Contraptions".



Wednesday, May 8, 2024

Crater Lake, again

This week's continuation of photos from my favorite trips in 2023. Going back to Crater Lake this week. After arriving at the north end of the lake, I made my way south along the west rim. First to the eatery that wasn't really open much at that time of day and then on to the lodge, which was really a great old place. Seemed like something out of a movie.
Getting to Crater Lake is a bit difficult. There is a very long drive from anywhere on several highways. But well worth the drive.


 

Tuesday, May 7, 2024

Character concepting

 Concepting characters can be so much fun, especially at the beginning of a project and before the style is reigned in. Exploration is finding the visual depth of characters and so much of the time when the style gets reigned in it gets sanitized to the point where the characters look like they were stamped out in factory. Not every character design needs to look like a Pixar marshmallow. And bravo for some animation studios for taking a different tact with character design. Same for game studios.

So when you are given a chance to explore your own ideas about what a character should look like, let your mind find your best ideas that aren't obvious and start drawing!
Here are some quick character drawings early on for a project, that went from mild to wild rather quickly. I'll post others another time.