The Illustration Masterclass! (Catching Up, pt. 4)

(OK, so I'm a little late to the party on this one, since this happened all the way back in mid-June... but here goes!)

I went to my first Illustration Masterclass (IMC) this summer, and I certainly hope it isn't my last.  It was amazing.  I got to meet and hang with some of the greatest people in the fantasy industry today.  Let's just say that my Spectrum autograph collection has grown...


To save myself some work, James Gurney has an article here.

The artists included:
Ian McCaig, Donato Giancola, Greg Manchess, Dan Dos Santos, Adam Rex, Julie Bell, Boris Vallejo, Rebecca Guay, Scott Fischer, Irene Gallo (AD of Tor), Scott Allie (Comics writer, editior of Hellboy/Buffy and others).  Guest lecturers included Peter De Seve, Mo Willems, and James Gurney.  I want to shout out a big Thank-you to Rebecca Guay for putting it together.


One of the best things about it was the social aspect of it.  There people from all walks and stages of life (some great pros among the students, people who have had careers like matte painter, concept artist, Nickelodeon animator, children's book illustrator/author), toy illustrator, architect, and many others).  It was great to all have our meals in the same place and talk to new people every day.

And at the end of it all, I still managed to do a painting.  (Well, not finish it, but get a good start!)
Here be it:

16" x24", Oil

The class photo.  Lots more people here.  Guess where I am?  Yep, hanging from the tree!

Shot of faculty, courtesy James Gurney.

Interior of conference room.  We probably had nearly 20 lectures here in the course of a week!

Setting up in the upstairs (traditional) studio

Critique with Adam REx, Irene Gallo, Boris Vallejo, and Dan Dos Santos

This is priceless - Donato Giancola and Greg Manchess fighting over who's the best artist.  Either that, or giving a demo of taking good ref by roleplaying a slave and master... or something.  I'll let you take your pick.

Peter de Seve!

Donato starts a drawing for a middle earth painting.

James Gurney, guest lecturer, makes his rounds through the upstairs studio.

An excerpt from his lecture on composition, discussing the use of eye tracking technology

While looking for a teacher on the lower floor, I discover Ian McCaig giving an impromptu demo by sketching a student.  Boy can he ever draw!

Underpainting.  I think there's a beauty to how this is already!

Anticipating another lelcture.

Greg Manchess working on a book cover painting.

Ian McCaig giving a demo on concepting creatures based on what's around you.

Donato Giancola's bio lecture

Me and Ian!  He's an amazing guy, such an awesome attitude and full of energy and creativity.  I aspire to be like him in personality as well as art.

Left: art director's sketch, right: finished painting.  lol

Instructors in wrap-up roundtable discussion, pt. 1

Instructors in wrap-up roundtable discussion, pt. 1

People's work set up for open studio, upstairs

People's work set up for open studio, upstairs

Here's a WIP of my own painting!

Phew!

Catching Up, pt. 3

OK, here's the final part of my foundation's semester work.  Some will look like repeats but it has been tweaked and updated.

Refined this one a bit.

Refined that cast drawing.  Could certainly be a never-ending process!

Here's a better layout of my Portal turret design.

And here's some newer, rougher stuff from foundations.  The following 4 are quick composition studies from works I love, mostly traditional painting/illustration but also some modern commercial stuff.

Here are a few I made up for a couple given emotions. It's more challenging than it seems after awhile, especially for hope/joy as opposed to fear.

Here's an example of a couple of the digital color studies I did.  It was also an excuse to get more acquainted with Painter.

Here's an example of compositional re-engineering.  I'll admit this isn't a good piece, but it  was fun and challenging in its own way and I think I got something out of it.

Here are a couple examples of the many "figure turnarounds" Marshall gave us.  The objective was to do it daily.  I'll admit I fell short of that...

Quick jumping gesture studies in class

Click to watch the animation I made by compiling a figure spinning exercise.

Started modeling this when I was new to 3DS Max.  I had a hard time with the topology but, 3D modeling is a good way to study form when you're forced to geometrify.

My attempt to model a swiss army knife, and make its file texture with just mesh.  You can see the weirdness that followed...

WIP of Bonnie & Clyde before they were gunned down.

First page sketch of a comic I'm working on, based on the vibe of  Little Nemo.  It has to do with my world actually being made of polygons, and pulling up a little thread ends up tearing up the whole fabric of spacetime.

Whew!  So as you can see, I was busy during last semester.  And this was on top of my freelance stuff, which I can't show here yet.

Catching Up, pt. 2

Next, I jumped into TAD foundations semester 2 in February of this year.  Overall, I think it's a great program!  Visit this link for more info:  http://www.theartdepartment.org/

Here's some of the stuff I did (not all of it though!):

Cast Drawing progress

Color/composition class

Some comp studies for color/composition 2

More comp studies

My own comps for fear/foreboding

Here's some stuff I did in Figure Drawing 2:

Idealized male/female project

Fun with child anatomy, something I find difficult to get "right"

I decided to make up my own species instead for this.

We did a lot of studies where we spun the figure in our head.

PAINTING 1

Study from life I did at Panera Bread

... same thing, but at night

This one is a lighting scenario from imagination.  Sort of an "apocalyptic sunset" where that main light is out.

Corvette I did from life in a cold garage

Same version, at night

Here's my version from imagination.  I learned a lot studying the lighting on car photography (which I found is actually incredibly inaccurate with all the compositing and post-processing).  Actually, mine's pretty inaccurate because I made it a lot more reflective than it would be in real life.

Here's an aircraft I painted from life in a local air museum.

...and this is lighting from imagination.  Great exercise!

Here's something for painting class/last man standing.  It was done as a collab with Colin Boyer (www.colinboyer.blogspot.com).  We had a LOT of ideas and weeks of process work to finally arrive at this composition and concept but it was a lot of fun.

HONORS STUDIO:

Honors studio is a great program - it's a class where we get real art directors or artists as guest teachers to give us real world type assignments and critique them.

For Art Director of Popular Mechanics - an article about space tourism

For Anita Kunz (mock New Yorker cover)

For the art director of EveryIPublishing, a company that makes sequential art stories for the iPhone

For Gary Kelley, a Calendar that expressed a duet (mine was May, I decided to do an interior design that wove man and nature).  Still not done yet!

A sample of the many sketches I did for Valve, in a redesign of a Portal turret

Here's a WIP of my final rendering for a mobile version.  I lost my more final version when my power went out but I plan to go back and make it better sometime.

For Jeremy Cranford, art director at Blizzard - a mock card illustration!

3D Class:

The first object I made, in modo

I made this in 3DS Max, which was new and uncomfortable at the time, but now more comfortable than modo was.

Catching Up, pt. 1

I can't believe it, but it's been about a year and a half since I've updated this blog with artwork.  I even have a post about my stupid reasons for not doing so.

Now, because blogs are supposed to be current, I don't want to waste a bunch of posts putting up what I WOULD have if I'd been updating in a timely fashion.  But to take you from where I left off to December 2010, here's some of the stuff:
http://www.mechaorthopteroid.deviantart.com/gallery/


I graduated CCAD in 2010 and went on to do some freelance, which is still under NDA so I won't post that until it's out.