The Wild Rover

In case ye didn't know, my pet project while Nelly and Nora's been in production is Rover Was Here. Here's some highlights over the past while;

A bit more character

So we're coming to the end of production on Nelly and Nora, and it's been fun. And challenging. Also, an awful lot like colouring comics, which I wouldn't have said going in. Emma (Hogan, art director)'s real passion lies in shape and pattern, whilst I'm a pure colour man all the way! This really allowed us to play off each other's strengths- meaning I got to do a lot of colour keying for each episode, with every conceivable weather type! We have some wild west influenced palettes, some very Japan-inspired palettes as well as exploring the almost contradictory nature of Irish weather!

With all those environments during the day, it seems like I had an itch to scratch with characters in the evenings- here's some I made for fun. Of course, we have a quick annual Ratchet and Clank fan piece :D 

Enjoy! 

Evolving Robots

I find myself using the phrase 'when things settle down and get back to normal' an awful lot lately. I noticed myself saying it an awful lot last year too. I'm still waiting.

If you're wondering where I've been the past while, most of my 'free time' is spent doing things for www.roverwashere.com  and I find myself struggling to even keep up with even that.

I've finally found myself in that place where most artists probably found themselves at long ago- a question of speed. I've long looked for the quickest ways  to get colours on the page and then clean up later, or clean line and colour like a comic. The former always infuriated me, as my colours were too loose for my taste, and getting a lineless look from lines required significantly more time to polish.

I want to keep the quality in Rover high, so it means something has gotta give. I'm putting more effort into thumbnails and studies, and to date that ALWAYS improves the end result. I'm forcing myself to be bolder in my colour choices, deliberately playing on contrasting hues and tones more than I would have. Having the cintiqs definitely makes this easier, as there's a definite removal of a mental block when it comes to painting.

Rover's design is shifting in small ways from week to week, and I'm totally cool with that; it's one of the main reasons he was made as a robot in the first place. Soon I'm going to start asking for help collaborating on some animated and 3d Rover bits, so if you want in drop me an email and we can sort something out.

Right, sleepy time!  Catch ye later!

Coolorus and a Sketchdump!

I have a distant memory of colour selection not being a problem in photoshop. It was before I tried Color Picker; as I hopped on that bandwagon to solve that problem. It might just have been me being slower at digital painting and needing time to look at the colour palette to figure out where I was going.

Possibly, this led to a Van Halen-esque approach of using 'that mad colour wheel nobody uses' in Photoshop as I've been told. Personally, I want to see all the hues in a wheel, and the values in the bar. Saturation can be controlled between the two; and it makes for quick selection. 

I like darting between colours, with hues defined as a course rather than an absolute value. 'More towards red' would come into my head a lot quicker than 'CHARTREUSE!'...if ever. 

So the faster I got, and the more I knew what I wanted the more colour selection in PS seemed to really bog me down. I'd played with painter, and coveted its colour wheel with envious eyes (and slowly began to draw my plans). The sliders were tiny and fiddly, so they weren't much help. Only much later did I properly get the hang of HSB sliders, but still it felt cold and detached. 

At some point I broke, and joined the great plug-in hunt. Color Picker was excellent in CS3, but I've found later versions to be buggy as hell. Kuler never felt right, too much clicking, and felt like the digital equivalent of getting caught in sellotape; sure it does a thing, but right now it's just messing me up and slowing me down. 

Last night I got Coolorus, and so far it seems to do the job perfectly. Variable displays of colour wheels, with the complimentary/split complimentary etc add ons in there for the interested, and missing that feeling of wrestling with the UI that color picker had. No bugs so far, but I'm keeping my eyes peeled.

Between personal commitments today I've been knocking out little tests. I've been looking at artists like Pascal Campion and wanting to capture that speed and fun and this really feels like a step in the right direction.  Definitely bringing the fun in! More painting/studies, more life drawing and working zoomed out  are on the menu too. 

Oh that reminds me, I have a tiger from last week to put up! Ref'd from a photo I took (so it's totes legit XP) I'd noticed in my sketchbook that I tend to draw things at the same relative scale to my field of vision and deliberately  avoided that in this. I love doing studies like this because it really pokes you in the weak parts, and helps you round out a bit more. 

The dinosaur was from yesterday, and the black and white thing was really getting me in a funk. A quick crop later, and I add it to my pile of doodles :) 

Robot still Here

Hey everyone, I had to skip my stream on Monday because I was a big pile of sickness so today I wanted to make up for it with a six hour stream-a-thon. I'd done this colour key earlier in the week, and while I switched the characters around I wanted to stay quite close to my initial doodle. 

It was a lot of fun, and even if the stream wasn't broadcasting for the first three hours (d'oh!) I still did the full six. Anyways, hope you like it!  

Even better, if you *do* like what I've been doing, could you mention it to people? In real life!? Clicky-likey-share is more than welcome, but word of mouth is invaluable. Please and thank you! The book's called 'RobotWasHere' for those that don't know!  Catch you all next week!

Swing and a something

The Spice Of Life

Some of my favourite bits when it comes to a project like this is the warmups, palette tests and design process. 

This was done as a quick doodle just to speed things up and work straight from the lasso tool and nothing more. Quick, but sloppy. I'm definitely gonna come back to the approach in a later painting though!

I was having a really off-week on the stream, and after doing some colour tests based on a doodle in my sketchbook, I decided to play more with the creatures that would inhabit that scene. Turned out to be a whole lot of fun.

This was to set the scene for a short comic sequence that's in the book, and was partially me pulling away from my usual compositions. FINALLY got some rain out that I'm happy with, and can control it easily. Really happy with it for even that alone!