Ahead of the game

Here's a thing. I'm after buying a bunch of painting techniques books, this is me beginning to go through them ;)

Totoro Warmup

Wanted to do both some observational work and some fanart for warmup this morning. Luckily I have this Totoro moneybox that's totally earned it's place as a paper weight/bookend and now still life model. Would have quite happily poured another hour into this to get the textures and materials just right, but I'd set myself a cap of 40 minutes.

North, North by East, Northeast by North, Northeast.

So it's HOWLING wind outside this morning, and it reminded me of some of my time in the Sea Scouts. We did a lot of rowing, and I loved it. Both with a bit of swell, as you had to try and navigate the waves and find a stroke that didn't have you catching crabs or air, and in perfect calm, when the movements of the oars in the spurs were perfectly in unison to the beat of 'We Will Rock You' I always found sailing to be 'sit there and hold a rope/stick' Gimme an oar any day. So this happened as a bit of a warmup.

This goes a long way to explain my ability to recite 32 points on the compass, all those sea shanties and an allround disapproval of paintings of boats with the tide out.

House Call

I love colouring Adam's stuff, and I love Doctor Who. That makes for a high index of fun when it came to this. Adam colours his own stuff all the time, so his work is set up in a FAR more organised manner than I would normally trend. So yay. This happened SILLY quick, and was a lot of fun to play the RGB against each other. Hope you all like it. Lines by Adam Law Colours by Ciaran Lucas

Ratchet in the Works.

I've a funny feeling this is gonna be one of those pictures I'm gonna look at in the morning and see a million things wrong with, but here's this for now. My annual Ratchet and Clank fanart. These are the games that really got me into gaming, and I still mightily enjoy bludgeoning hundreds of aliens and robots with my trusty Omniwrench. This is like the 8th year I've done this, and I'm trying to outdo myself from the previous year. Links to the older ones can be found at http://charco.deviantart.com/art/Ratchet-2011-259230893 which I find hilariously awful. Sort of. The...2008 one I'm still kinda fond of. But onwards and upwards. Hope y'all like it. Ratchet's property of Insomniac Games, I just play the things they make.

This morning's warmup. Getting used to Magic Picker's colour wheel, I find so far that it's forcing me to be a lot bolder with my colour choices. Trying to work with opacity less, to force myself to commit quicker and work like oils more. Hope you guys like it.

Noticed I didn't have much cutout style stuff in my gallery, particularly in terms of backgrounds, so I knocked this out.

Magpie

As Mr Law was so kind as to draw my Goblins, I drew Magpie for him. Well, I did, and I thought the drawing was a bit rubbish, so here's another one.

I do panel teases now. Panel teases are cool.

Here's a little tease of what I'm working on when I'm not working. Unfortunately, I'm supposed to be working at the moment, so this'll have to wait a bit more. OH, and Adam Law drew my Goblins for me and did a wonderful job

Birds of Prey

This morning's warmup. No idea who the characters are, but ideas were bouncing back and forth in my head like a film trailer while this was being drawn
'You hear what they're calling em? DOGfights. I don't see a goddam dog up there in that sky. Too busy chasing their tails. We're birds. We're hunters. We win'

If THAT's the case, then that gun is way out of timeframe, but screw it, it's just a doodle.

Goblin Treehouse

Concept drawing for the Goblin's sitting room. Trying to stick to the rules of anything they've had for centuries or found in the dump, adding to their insular lifestyle.

Ended up doing the pencils for this at two in the morning last night, and then woke at 7.30 eager to do more. Obvious different techniques used this time- no inking, lots more textures, one brightness/contrast adjustment layer for lighting.

ONWARD.

Nilbog is Goblin backwards

Today, barring a quick stop to pitch a marquee (as you do) was time for me to get a bit more work done on my pet project, Goblins. I've a tendency to rush headlong into making a comic without hammering out the characters visually as much as I'd like, so I'm taking this one at a time.
Ug and Fez are today's subjects, following on from the last time. Two more stars of the show to go, maybe three. This is all building towards something. I have a plan.

Really.