Underwater Arch

Worknig back into an old piece. I actually liked the old one, but wanted to take Rover out of it for reasons. Also using the dual brush in PS a lot on this, interesting thing to play around with!

Tiny Island, but less tiny

So I posted this on facebook and twitter, and was asked (by Pete McNally and Ben Hennessy, both excellent artists!) to post it bigger. FB auto-shrinks stuff to ridiculous proportions. Anyway, here's a bigger version!

THU Golden Ticket Challenge

Backgrounds Reel

Here's my new backgrounds reel containing work from projects I worked on, edited together with some lovely music from the FLCL soundtrack :D

Feel free to have a watch, maybe share it round if you can!

Cheers,

C

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!