hALF bLOOD pRINCE

Potter!! The movie is finally out, which means our Harry Potter video game is also released. I was lucky enough to work with the guys early last year storyboarding the cutscenes for the game, which was fantastic fun for a potter geek like myself, sitting drawing Dumbledore, Snape and the rest was great fun, and getting a peek at the new characters like Jim Broadbents Slughorn was amazing. So here's some of the boards I worked on, covering the very first opening cut scene of the game, a moment between Ginny and Harry in the room of requirement, and one of Slughorns memories. Hope u enjoy checking them out, might drop a few more Potter bits n pieces off in the next few weeks.

CaptainFuzzball part 3

The third installment of my new ongoing Fuzzball flavoured comic adventure comedy thing. 'Nuff said :)

Captain Fuzzball 2

Mornin' all! As promised Fuzzball is back, in the second of his new adventures.....and Zeek is with him, you didn't really think I'd get rid of him did u? :) The story follows on from where part 1 left off, but reading part 1 isn't essential - although i would obviously say if u haven't already checked out the first part then scroll down and do that first! It's great fun working on this stuff, and there's definitely some more coming very soon, probably another 2 weeks time or so....see ya then!

Captain Fuzzball Returns!

Welcome to the first Fuzzball Friday!

It's been a few weeks since I last posted, but I've been busy finishing off some brand new Captain Fuzzball strips that will
debut online at this blog.....currently I'm thinking there'll be a new one every fortnight or so, really enjoying writing these at the moment, adding that extra character really alloyed me to get some banter going between them, much more fun. But it's not all about me, I wanna know what u folks think, so give it a read, and hopefully a chuckle, and drop me a comment. Enjoy!

Astrofunk 2 Cover Concepts

-Howdy!
Back with some Astrofunk issue 2 action this week - I'm almost finished the final version of the cover, but thought I'd stick up some of the work involved in getting there. As you can see, it's changed along the way, the only constant being that right from the initial sketches i knew that i wanted the cover to use the 8bitChick, and preferably show off the 8bit guns themselves, so went doodling crazy. The first page shows where i got to with my first pass, i liked the fact that u saw the scared rabbit and the stickers of the chompatrons, but upon reflection the post just wasn't exciting enough....soooo, i went back to the sketchbook, and came up with the idea of her running towards us with chompatrons by her side, and i think it works much better - there's more energy in the pose, and i think it just reaches out and grabs u more. Or here's hoping anyways - sure you'll let me know if i'm way off the mark :)

Back next week with....something else!

sPACE wARDEN

New character time!

This guy is a new villain for Astrofunk....can't say too much about him without revealing story elements, other than he's a traffic warden in space - with a gunslingin' twist. Developing this guy's been great fun, especially working on his face..trying to get a stylised version of those Gene Hackman wrinkles, and an evil grin, makes u happy to be sitting at a lightbox :) I find creating the reference sheet really useful, even if u think you've know hot to draw a cowboy or whatever, there's always some little nuance u can find....either that or a completely diferent idea! Working on some colour passes next, so more from this guy soon. Oh, and that Astrofunk 2 cover which i promised....it's a comin!

More FGN...

Just a quick post coz i gotta run home and make a curry :)

Some more work from Family Game Night, which I've been enjoying getting to grips with on xbox live, especially Connect 4...even though I suck! So if u want an easy win, challenge me :) I got to do a good variety of stuff on this game, and these show some more of the diferent aspects of that - whether it was designing trophies based on the games or creating views that appear outside the games room, or concepting the diferent themes for the room, all great fun.

Next up - I'll have the cover for Astrofunk 2 next week, maybe not finished but at least a sneak peek at the work so far. Until then, adios!

Family Game Night 360

Back again!
Today sees the release of Hasbro Family Game Night on xbox 360 - so right now u can go online and download the first of the 3 games, Connect 4, Battleships, and Yahztee, along with the gamesroom which comes in a variety of themes. Concepting these themes was one of my main duties on the project, which i worked on for most of last year.....so I thought I'd start by sharing just one of these themes - Secret Agent. This was one of the last to be concepted but one of the most enjooyable to work on. You can see from the screenshots that the in-game model turned out pretty close to my concept, and the View concept with the potato walkers is actually used as the in-game texture for the view outside the window. This game was really great for me in stretching my skills into some more realistic enviroment work, and I've got afew more to post up here in the coming weeks.

You can download the room and themes for free and try out trial games, so even if u don't fancy spending pennies on the games u can check out my concept inspired themes :)

Check out info and trailer on the game over at xbox dot com below

http://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/h/hasbrofamilygamenightxbla/


Plus check out a selection of screenshots from the game and reviews over at Ign below

FGN ScreenShots

Trivial Pursuit

Friday the 13th saw the release of Trivial Pursuit on consoles everywhere, and I was lucky enough to get to do some cool stuff on the project. I wasn't on it for very long, but managed to produce all of the avatars which u see in all versions except 360. I created about 30 of these characters, each with 5 expressions to show their reactions to the questions posed....so here's a quick glimpse at some of those, the game is great fun and not as stuffy or boring as i remember triv being when i was growing up :)

Got another game out this week , so will get some concept up from that in afew days, 'till then Adios!

SF4 Pics

Quick post - got my SF4 prizes through this morning, so wanted to drop off some quick photos for those that requested it. The US version contains 2 dvd style cases as shown, and as u can see my artwork is found inside the 2nd case containing a soundtrack CD and comic. Apart from the image being a bit more cropped than i would like, it's all pretty dang cool - plus the US game and anime dvd all run on my PAL xbox, so good times :)

D-CON - Thanks to everyone who dropped by the astrofunk stall at D-Con, great to meet lots of new fans and say hi to some old buddies, if you've just picked up the comic then drop me a comment here on whatchya think , your suggestions could help shape issue 2...which i should post more of soon...ish. Keep sketching! ...and playing street fighter...but mainly sketching :)

HADOOOOOOOOUUUUUKEN!!

News just in - the human torch was denied a bank loan today. :)

In other news, I was lucky enough to have my Street Fighter entry selected as one of six finalists which will each appear in diferent versions of the game. It's amazing to be up there with the 5 other fantastic pieces, there's some truly awesome artwork - you can check all 6 out here at the capcom blog

CAPCOM UNITY BLOG

It was great fun working on a pic for one of my favourite video games series of all time, so I'm pretty excited to see it out there - the entries are each on inside covers of the dvd/game cases - my entry is on the inside of the anime disc in the Xbox360 Collectors Edition

Anyways, some guys requested desktop versions of the image, so the two images above are for normal or wide desktops. Now I gotta go play some street fighter!!!

oh - and thanks to Chris and Gordon for feedback whilst i worked on the image, cheers guys!

UPDATE - Looks like the artwork only appears in the US version for anyone keeping an eye out for it.

cHOMpTaSTIcNES

U WANT IT ROUGH?!? OK U GOTS IT! :)

Working away at Astrofunk 2, been making great progress and managed to find a cover design i'm pretty happy with , so might get that up here soon....plus should be some Fuzzball up here soonish too, but in the meantime here's some of that 'roughstuff' that Captain Nolan requested :)
These Chomptastic robots are great fun to draw and appear alot in issue 2, so thought I'd stick some of the roughs up here , plus the initial sketches for page 9+10 of issue 2. These are ususally done at post it size then blown up to A4, and i always enjoy looking back at how a page started....back soon with more Funk!


Oh - Astrofunk and I will be appearing at D-Con, an Anime and Art Convention in Dundee on the 28th Feb, so if yer in the area drop by and say 'howdy' :) see link below for info

http://www.d-con.org.uk/

And here....we........go !

HOWDYHOWDYHOWDY! It's been a long night, and my whiskey glass is getting empty, but finally I have it - the first 2 totally finished pages of ASTROFUNK 2!! It feels great to be back in the world of astrofunk drawing these characters again...I've got alot of issue 2 drawn out and ready to colour, so it's a definite release for later this year, as for exactly when, stay tuned..... These 2 pages are 8 and 9, so not the beginning of the issue, but a good place to give u a preview without reavealing too many of my secrets :) Gotta say a big thanks to everyone who has been asking about the second issue, always fantastic to hear from someone who enjoyed the first one, really gets me even more excited to be working on this sequel....so I hope u all enjoy these pages, be sure to let me know what u think! Up next is some Captain Fuzzball, I'm working in a slightly diferent format for him at the moment, with quick little one scene gags, the first of which will be up next week....this is a format I've always enjoyed when done by the masterful Bill Watterson in Calvin & Hobbes, so I thought I'd give it a shot. Hopefully it means you get more captain fuzzball up here on the blog regularly, albeit in smaller doses....but don't worry , I have 2 or 3 larger adventures in the works for him, including of course the back up strip in AF2. Anyways, I think I should finally call it a night and allow myself to sleep......hope u enjoy these pages, thanks again for support and be sure to say Hi....Goodnight~!

Wishing Well Studios

First post of 2009! ...and it's just a quicky, ease u into things gently :)
Just wanted to point folks in the direction of 3Dtotals site - where they have just added the link to a new 'Making of' feature by the very talented guys at Wishing Well Studios. It's well worth a look, and details how they put together the latest scene from 'Mules Gold', covering everything from concept through modelling, lighting and more. Check it out at the link below

http://www.3dtotal.com/

As for me - got a number of projects on the go at the moment, but mainly focussing on ASTROFUNK 2 ! It's going really well, and check back later this week for the first glimpse of two finished pages....infact i gotta go colour them now! Adios!

Gauthier Arcade Edition

Just a quick post of a custom vinyl toy thingy i painted up recently...these cool little guys are called 'supa coin op bros' , google them for some awesome custom jobs that put mine to shame....but this was great fun, a leaving gift for my good friend Captain jacques Gauthier , who has taught me many new skills of the pencil variety over the last 3 years at ea....cheers for that buddy! me can draw betterer now! ...well, a little :)

nUDE

Ho-Ho-Howdy! This is the last of the pictures from my life drawing this year....it's been fantastic getting back into it, was a really great course and I'll hopefully go back to it next year, although not immediately. Need to put some more time into astrofunk and other me stuff, aah how I'll miss the nudity :) Gonna try to get a couple more blog posts up before the end of 2008, so stay tuned and keep sketching!

oPPOSING fORCES

Hola!
Been a while, but thought I'd drop in some work I did recently for an SF4 competition....don't imagine this entry will get anywhere, as there are some fantastic pieces I'm up against, but it was great fun getting down to drawing the street fighter cast, and knowing it was for the comp really pushed me to put the extra time in, so I'm pretty pleased with the end result.
I wanted my image to immediately say 'SF4' as a pose to 'that could be any street fighter game', which is why i focussed on Seth, the new Boss in the latest game. It's interesting looking back at my early work on this, and realising how weak some of it was, I really enjoy seeing the progression....infact I want to add a quick video to this post of the progression of the final piece, coz that alone went through a number of changes. In the end I settled on the hexagons inspired by Seths background stage floor design, and used them as an easy way to show every fighter. So there all in there I think! If i have missed one, don't tell me ;)

mAG bLAG

Just a quick shout to mention that the new 'Official Nintendo Magazine' has a cool 6 page feature on the making of ZUBO - and I was lucky enough to have some of my work featured. As someone who used to devour these magazines as a kid this gets me kinda excited, so forgive me for shouting about it :)
I used to love looking at the artwork for the latest mario game, copying drawings of final fight characters, doodling evil megaman bots, or creating my own street fighting dudes. For me, checking out some new artwork for a game was more exciting than a new screenshot, probably still is.. :) Anyway, the sketches shown are from some of the move storyboards i produced, so i might get afew more of these up here soon. Adios!

Life Drawing Portrait

We got the chance to spend the whole of last weeks session on a portrait, so I thought I'd take the chance to try out my new set of coloured pencils ( cheers Captain Dearsley ) . It was great fun, spent just under an hour on line work getting a likeness, then went crazy with the colour, layering it up for about another hour, so this is about 2 hours work. Anyways, seems like all i post is life drawing these days, hopefully get something more exciting up here soon!

quickstyle

couple of quick little paint jobs....didn't have much time on either of these, but wanted to get some painting done, so sat down with a glass of whiskey and the wacom pad. good times :) gonna try to get into something bit more meaty in the next few days, but was good fun just stayin loose and crazy with these 2, basically starting with silhouettes and working into those. Hoping to get an enviroment piece up next, probably involving some more hot monster action :) see ya then!

Round 2 ....and 3

More nudity - this covers the last two weeks of life drawing, did the pastel piece this evening, and last week was a mixture of shorter poses. Great to get some practice at colour studies, looking forwards to maybe trying out some painting next.

Ray

Woo!! Zubo is here at last, so I thought I'd share a little of my work from this awesome project. I mainly worked on storyboarding the battle moves for the game, but this cool little guy Ray was one of the few characters that I got to concept myself. He was the last to join Team Alien, and the storyboard shows his unique battle move. I had a fantastic time working on this game, and it's great to finally be able to play it myself! It's out now on DS, so go grab a copy! You can check out more about the game at the official site here

ZUBO.ea.com

Return to Nakedness

Started a new life drawing class last night, good to get back to it...been a good few months since my last class, so felt tough at first, but soon got going, and was really enjoying it by the end. The tutor kept all the poses pretty short just to warm us up, so all of these were about 12 mins. Looking forwards to trying some longer poses and diferent mediums....oh, and finding out whether u gain any new drawing skills upon hitting your thirties....although it's more likely i've lost some, much like my hair :)

Lady time

Word of the week in sketchclub was 'Vixen' ...thanks Chris :)
Had fun doing this one, good to get back to studying the old female anatomy books. From the sketches you can see she was a bit more tooled up at one point, all samurai sword and grenades, but thought that was a bit cliched, so tried to simplify and make more fun. So the pet gimp came into things, and the hair colour is inspired by vixen - female fox. Anyways, great fun, enjoy.

Smiley

Just a quick portrait, pencil drawing then straight into photoshop....was looking at some russian research for my knight ideas, and came across an old black n white photo of an interesting lookin fellow...based the drawing on his worn face. Added a couple of features like the scar and pinbadge to give a little more interest. Good fun, now it's on to the next sketchclub word.....

101 - Thai Pad Doodles

..and a 47 - crispy duck pancakes :)

just a quick sketch dump - i love doodling little characters and nonsense, and love checking out other peoples random scribbles. So that's why I'm dumping this lot here. Some of these are things I'd like to develop...others definitely not :)

The Dark Knight 100!

100TH POST! HOLEY MOLEY!!!

ok..not THE dark knight, but a knight who is pretty dark :) This is my piece for the sketchclub theme 'knight' that i started with sketches in last post. I think it's turned out ok, what I am pleased with is that working on this has kicked off alot of ideas around the same theme....so i really want to develop this character, put more design work into his outfit, and i have afew ideas for other characters in the same world...so expect more Knight action very soon.
NEW BLOG ALERT! :)
- Us sketchclub guys decided to stick all our artistic endeavors in one place, so we now have a group blog - The Uncanny Sketchmen ( catchy eh ) ...you'll see the link over on the right, check it out, what i always love is how you get such a variety of results from the same start point.

Anyways...I am actuall gonna go straight back to painting some more! hmm..what to paint...maybe captain fuzzball...maybe knight...we'll see!

Sketch time

Just a quick update...wanted to put up the rough work and pencil line for Biker...originally i sketched out roughs of a huge fat guy skidding on his lil' bike, or a gang of big burly guys on their choppers...but that might've been too much work :)

Also, the second page are roughs for the next sketch club theme 'KNIGHT'...these are just my roughs, I'm working on a final line art at the moment, so that should be up maybe at the weekend. And yes there is more comic stuff coming sometime soon, probably 'Fuzzball' in flavour :)

Sketch Clubtastic - Biker

Howdy folks! the sketch club word of the week was 'Biker', so here's my effort. I sorta knew right away i wanted to draw a fat guy, and the cute tattoos kinda came from just wanting to get some more contrast in the idea and image, something a little more unusual. Then i gave him the chopper coz well...choppers rock, my dad has one back home and i take it out for a spin whenever i'm back there, it's awesome. Anyways, pretty pleased with how this guy turned out, I'll get the preliminary sketches and linework up tomorrow after i get some stuff scanned. Big thanks to the sketch club boys for all the feedback, check out their links on the right for their quality artwork.

Digital Cowboy

Started doodling at the weekend, trying to draw one thing, and ended up drawing something completely diferent - this guy. The head sketch at the top right of the pencils page is how he started, and he slowly developed into this crazy dude, with Pixel Pistols and funky shades :)
Pretty pleased with how he's turned out, I was goin with the word 'GunSlinger' in my head, but knew that i didn't want it to be your traditional cowboy. Oh, and thanks to Annes and Jacques for their feedback whilst workin on this, always useful. Anyways, time to start another drawin now! good times ahoy!

Post It!

Just a real quick character sketch, didn't spend too long on this, but wanted to draw an average person rather than design a character like a soldier or monster....so based this on a guy at work, dunno if he's happy about that or not :) Anyways, he loves his post it notes, hence the wall of blue behind him. Got some more stuff coming soon, including new comic style action.

day 3 - FLyIN' mONStuR

So if the soldier aint climbing over big monsters what else are they upto? Well...I supppose they could grapple onto one of these wierd things, use them as a way to get from place to place....or just take a ride for fun :)
Really enjoyed these 3 pieces in this theme so far, think that each piece is an improvement on the last....for this one I was lookin at stuff like Walrus's and Coral for reference ideas on the flying creature, and u might just spot some little star fish attached to it's body. Don't think there'll be anything else this week, maybe a small real quick piece like a soldier helmet detail....but back next week! Let me know what u think of these 3 and have a good one!

day 2 - mON-StUR

ok, so today i thought 'what the heck are these soldiers doing? ....well turns out their climbing buildings then trying to get onto one of these crazy things...been lookin at some wierd mole and turtle claw reference recently, so that's kinda inspired bits of it....anyways, had fun doin this, probs won't get sumthin up tomorrow, but maybe day after along same theme. I like the idea of tryin to grapple onto something that isn't stationary in a game, could be fun....

1-a-day - GO!

Howdy....I thought this week i might try to get a picture on my blog everyday....well, atleast for the first 4 days before i get busy at the weekend with other stuff, but anyways, I'm gonna try to keep the ideas within the same theme / world, so I've gone with this soldier guy to start with. This kinda character pops up a heck of alot in video games, and i always think it must be tough to come up with a new lookin variant on the future soldier idea. Luckily this kinda quick painting means i dont have to go too indepth into the design, but I'm quite pleased with his initial visor design and the guns. All good practice, and enjoying just painting. Anyways, tomorrow night look for something else from this world.....maybe something ....monstrous maybe :) Sleep times beckon!

Bonus Stage

After taking my little thundercat themed break, I got back to finishing my SF4 piece, and here it is. I certainly need more practise in the painting department, so this was a good exercise, and I'm quite pleased witht the result. But i need to get alot more digital painting done, get better and quicker, so expect more of this stuff soon hopefully. Anyways, streetfighter rocks, enjoy!