Last week Lilian brought my attention to Illustration Friday. It’s a website that posts an idea for an artwork every week, and links the artwork you made in that particular week. Sounds like a great exercise for me and the Wacom. According to the Welcome page: Illustration Friday is meant to challenge participants creatively. We believe that every person has a little creative bone in their body. Illustration Friday just gives a no-pressure, fun excuse to use it. No clients looking for a particular thing. No one judging the outcome of the work. It’s a chance to experiment and explore and play with visual art. Curious about collage? Try it here. Never even picked up a colored pencil? Why not now? Just have time for a doodle? That’s okay, we’d love to see it. You don’t have to be an illustrator or an artist to participate. Just pick up a […]
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My Faux Star Wars TV Promo
A new Star Wars TV show? Sadly, no. Yesterday, as I was monkeying around with Painter, I remembered that once I thought of making a opening credits-type of video of my IRC Star Wars RPG gaming group, Sabredart. So I figured, why not just do a storyboard for the credits. Then it hit me, how about a storyboard for a promo using images like the old Justice League opening credits (before they became Justice League Unlimited). You can check out the storyboard on this SWAG thread, and as an added bonus, my good buddy Derek Jones has actually made it into a real quicktime video, which you can download from the page. (Note: Thread has since been nuked. Click here to view the video on Youtube.) Edited: 12th June 2013
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A Banyan Tree
More scratchings with Painter Classic using the tablet, with some highlighting using Photoshop. This barely resembles a real banyan, since I drew this without any references. Note to self: use more references if you don’t actually remember what things look like.
Continue readingStephan Martiniere Concept Art Gallery
In addition to Ryan Church in my post before this, I’ve also noticed that Stephan Martiniere, the illustrator that was employed on a freelance basis by Lucasfilm for Revenge of the Sith, has also started to display his production paintings from the movie. Apart from that, you can also see samples from other movies he worked on, such as I, Robot, The Astronaut’s Wife and Red Planet. [[image:mart1.gif:Mygeeto:left:0]][[image:mart2.gif:Mygeeto:left:0]]
Continue readingRyan Church’s ROTS Concept Art Gallery
Looks like Ryan Church’s official site has updated with new Revenge of the Sith concept artwork in his pro gallery. As with his Attack of the Clones pieces lower down in the same page, his stuff here are spectacular displays of digital painting. I miss Ralph McQuarrie‘s and Joe Johnston‘s (among others) concept art from the original trilogy as much as the next fan, but I think Ryan’s work make up for the former masters’ absence in the prequel trilogy. Click on his pro gallery link above to see some of his work on the movie. [[image:rc1.gif:Utapau:left:0]][[image:rc2.gif:Mygeeto:left:0]]
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A Spider-Man Portrait
I saw Spider-Man 2 again today. The movie version of the Spidey costume is quite rich and detailed in texture, yet true to its comic-book origins… As before I wondered how a student / freelance photographer, making barely enough as it is, is able to afford to come up with the costume. Did he sew it himself, or did he make a custom order from someone. In which case, how did he hide his identity from the costumer. Anyways, it caught my attention again enough for me to try to recreate some of its texture in a piece using Painter.
Continue readingImperial Black Ops Project Funding
[[image:darth.jpg:Well, he had to get the credits from somewhere:center:0]]
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Valley Orchid
It’s not much to look at, but there’s something that barely looks like an orchid in the picture below. No, I don’t know which species it is, only that it’s yellow. And yes, there’s a water-filled valley beneath it. This is my second piece using Painter Classic, scratched out with dry media mostly. Using the program is more difficult than I thought. Oh, by the way, check out this amazing colour-based optical illusion. It’s quite amazing, especially the third one.
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Arise, New Graphics Tablet!
The other cool stuff I bought the same day I bought the table is this Wacom Graphire 3 graphics tablet. In fact, I’ve been wanting it for many years now that when I finally have it in my hands, I didn’t have the heart to remove it from its box and plug it in for FOUR DAYS. This morning I finally did it. After getting the tablet up and running with my computer, I proceeded to install the bundled Painter Classic software. When I finally ran the program, my blood went cold. All the colours were screwed up! It took me about 30 minutes before I decided to increase my monitor’s setting from 16-bit to 32-bit colour. Only then did I let out a sigh of relief. I grabbed the stylus, played around with the controls a bit; then tried playing with different brushes and tool on different layers; finally […]
Continue readingIrfan’s Birthday Present from ABC TV
Apparently ABC has a birthday surprise for Irfan’s 3rd birthday this year. They’ll be airing the Lost second season opener on September 21st. Hooray! More answers to our questions already, like the fates of our intrepid (or suicidal) mariners Sawyer, Jin, Michael and (especially) Walt.
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Tales of the Prototype and the Table
Last week, we printed out some of the prototype pages for the first ever Hishgraphics e-book. To be honest, prior to this I do have a fair amount of doubts about the project. In my mind, I estimated that perhaps this would have a 20-30% success when it’s eventually released into the wild. But after holding these coloured printouts in my hands, looking at the storytelling from the viewpoint of sequential art, I feel like this has at least 60% chance of succeeding. The story is somewhat half-baked, in retrospect it looks to me like its influenced by a bunch of different sources such as the C. S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, Enid Blyton’s Faraway Tree series, Neil Gaiman’s Sandman and Pixar’s Monsters Inc. Substantially more text has now been added to the short paragraphs with large typeface size that you see on the image above, so the current version […]
Continue readingBaen Free Library
There are many reasons why I love the intarweb. One of them is free cool stuff you can get from various sites, and legal too. Baen Books is a publisher of science fiction books, and it has now jumped onto the freebie net goodies bandwagon by unleashing upon its readers the Baen Free Library. Check out the free science fiction stories written by professional authors. You can read in several formats which is kind of cool. Cause if say, HTML format gives you an allergic reaction, you can always switch to RTF. I’m just gonna pick out which story to read. I’ll go get my dice now.
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Ringu As An Animated GIF
I can see this happening at a mamak stall or a university cafeteria, in full view of all the patrons going WTF?!? Thanks to Vincent “Dino” Gong, Evil Administrator of the Unofficial ACS Sitiawan Alumni Forum.
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The Cliff In My Mind’s Eye
So after drawing a dozen or so robots and a couple of cyborgs for a freelance client, I thought I’d take a break and draw a quick pencil sketch of this seaside landscape which real estate value would no doubt be way over my head should the location exist. I figure this would be a fantastic place to cook fried noodles. Anyway, enjoy. The art, I mean, not the fried noodles.
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Today’s Breakfast
Using whatever ingredients left in the fridge, I came up with this earlier today, took a picture of it, gobbled it all down, and now in my belly it will find a new definition of pain & suffering as it is slowly digested over a thousand years.
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