Oh man I need to post more!
Just finished the first of a new portfolio I'll finishing up during the holidays!
Here is a process of Absentia:
Streams!
I'm streaming on Twitch now! www.Twitch.tv/Mike086
Here is the image from tonight's stream!
Watch the video here: Painting Ghastly
Whoa! Long time no blog!
I'm going to be doing a series of Twitch stream about the basics of Photoshop painting. I'll go over interface and tools and highlight several processes for painting and illustrating.
If you want to watch Part 1, check it out on my Youtube Channel, I'll be uploading the videos there after the streams: My Youtube Channel
www.Twitch.tv/Mike086 Follow me to be notified when I go live.
If you are looking to download my brushes, you can find those here: MCIII Brushes
Drawlloween is upon us!
Drawlloween, the yearly monster-a-day drawing challenge is upon us. This year I will be focused on design and quality of my final image. Each monster should present a decent design and good rendering.
Check out the calendar! You can visit the site here: http://www.drawlloween.blogspot.com/
Work in progress update
I've been so behind on updating this blog, here are a few work in progress images from this week. I've been using Zbrush more and more as my move to LA approaches.
Robot Pencil Mentorship
Totally fell off the boat in terms of posting, I need a better schedule.
Here's the news! I've started studying under a mentorship, I just finished gathering up a ton of reference for some new characters and I wanted to share that reference here:
Chupacabra Con!
Well, this weekend was a first, my first table at a convention. (see picture below)
Sales were at a minimum but meeting some cool game developers and making myself known to the gaming public was my main goal.
I did create a set of art cards to sell, the unsold ones (most of them) will be online within the week and up for sale to the internet public.
A big thank you to everyone that stopped by and said "hi!" to me at the convention it was a cool experience. The next convention I'll have a booth at is Spectrum Fantastic Art Live! 4
In the mean time, I'll be catching talks at the Creative Juice Expo at the end of the month and getting artwork done to submit to Spectrum 22.
Thank you for visiting my site, if you enjoy my work, share it with your friends, I'll be back to the grind in the mean time.
A big thank you to Carlton Tomlin for helping me with my table. Check out the work of Priscilla Kim, and Alicia Vogel, two other artists from the Sketch Night that were tabling at Chupacabra Con.
Process Gifs!
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year everyone!
I have some process gifs to share before bed!
Black Tide Elf Development
I've been designing different fantasy creatures for BlackTide. Each species is based on classic fantasy creature: dwarves, elves, goblins, orcs.
I've touched on the goblins and dwarves, the orcs even have a little work done on them, but I've been putting off the elves until now.
Here is my progress so far:
Memories of School and Art Part 1
I wanted to share some memories that pertain to art, drawing, and school. There are a few key memories that stand out to me very clearly.
Let me first say that I've had a passionate hate for school for a very long time. Growing up there were few times I enjoyed the idea or reality of school and having to go to this place to learn about things I wasn't interested in. I was never bad at school, I was almost always in Honor or Advanced Placement Classes, but good grades don't make you enjoy school.
My first memory of school was at a place called the Rainbow Learning Center, a private daycare and kindergarten near my grandparent's house. I remember vividly walking in with my parents and with my backpack and blue Aladdin brand lunch box, I think it had Mickey Mouse on the front. Growing up I've always been shy and hated meeting new people and strangers. I didn't even like seeing my own relatives when being reintroduced to them on various holidays.
Okay, back to where I was, my parents had walked me into this room where some kids where sitting lined up on one of those cafeteria tables that folds up so it can be pushed to the side. They sat next to me for a while but at a certain point they told me they were going to have to go to work. At that moment I realized I was being left at this place I did not know and wouldn't see my parents until who knows when. I remember crying and not wanting to talk to anyone. I know they left and at one point I was able to relax and I moved over to a TV they had on in the mornings with the other kids.
At this point in my life art and drawing were things I did but didn't talk about, something everyone does, like playing make believe.
I eventually warmed up to kindergarten and made friends, like everyone does. The next few years I'll skip over, just know that I don't remember much of 1st grade, and my first 2nd grade, I repeated 2nd grade because I have a birthday in late August which means that I am either the youngest in my class or the oldest.
My second 2nd grade is the year that things started changing. Firstly, I liked my 2nd grade teacher, she was very kind and I remember her fondly, Mrs. Vargo. Secondly, this was the year that a girl in my class came over to me and asked, "Can you come over here and judge our contest, we want to see who can draw the best." I was suspicious of her intentions and asked her, "Why do you want me to decide?"
"Well you're good at drawing."
Some bat creature and his companion.
That was her answer. It was significant to me then and something I remember vividly as it was the first time that someone, not related to me, told me that I was good at drawing. I think it went to my head immediately, I remember thinking, "I'm the best drawer in class!" That notion stuck with my for the rest of the year and into the 3rd grade.
Here is what I used to do when I was in 2nd grade, I did this for fun whenever we had free time. I would always take an encyclopedia from the shelf, sit down and look up different animals, then I drew them and read about them for as long as I could. I did this often and at the time I had wanted to be a zoologist. To this day I have a hard time reading fiction books, and and easier time reading non-fiction, specifically reference books. Dear reader I love wikipedia.
Above is a lion fish character, the same character with armor and weapons, and his aircraft.
The "Zoobooks" telephone number to order your subscription.
The other big thing that happened when I was in 2nd grade was probably something that has completely shaped the way I turned out and matured. Rated R movies.
A shark character I drew, the same character with his armor and weapons, and his aircraft.
I saw the following movies in 2nd grade:
Alien
Aliens
Alien 3
Terminator
T2: Judgement Day
Predator
Predator 2
A spiny alien influenced by "Alien".
So all of the images featured in this post are from when I was 8-9 years old. I have sketchbooks dating back from the 4th grade, and a few loose drawings from before then.
Next time: 3rd Grade or: How I Learned to Stop Loving School and Hate it all over again.
Introduction to Digital Painting Session 3
Hello Class!
You can find the demos from Tuesday's class here:
Be sure to come ready to draw on Thursday as we'll be spending most of class on character design.
I'll also demo an Alex Grey-esque work just before the character design portion.
Character Design and Shape Language
Hello everyone!
I gave a talk about character design and shape language last week. If you want to watch that talk again you can do so here:
I recorded a longer video where I sketch out some ideas for the Empire of the Void.
Along with this video I wanted to link a few more resources about character design that I've watched.
Ricky Nierva's TED talk that has a lot of information about character design and shape language:
I also wanted to link everyone to some webpages about character design, those can be found here:
Chris Oatley's Website - Chris Oatley is a former Disney character designer and concept artist who started his own online art school. His site has an amazing amount of resources and artist interviews.
Dan Warren's Mentoring Class:
Dan Warren's videos were a great resource to me as I was trying to learn more about designing characters and telling stories through their wardrobe and accessories.
Hope this stuff helps! Keep learning.
Introduction to Digital Painting Session 2
Okay good news Class! We're throwing out the syllabus and gearing the rest of the sessions to what all of you want to focus on, I'll work in fundamentals and Photoshop technical aspects into the different sessions.
Bad news for the past two session I've seen that the livestream video quality is absolute crap so I won't be streaming the class online, instead I'll capture my screen and voice and upload the video after the class day.
This means that the next sessions will look nice and crisp instead of low quality. Sorry about the low quality of the previous sessions.
Here is the video from Session 2:
Again, feel free to contact me with any issues or questions about the class, we'll have better video the next sessions and I'll send out a new syllabus next week.
Introduction to Digital Painting Session 1
Welcome to my blog! As part of the Introduction to Digital Painting class I'll be linking some resources from each of my sessions in this blog.
Click here to access our class thread for questions and to post work.
Here is the Crimson Daggers forum for resources and to receive feedback and critique.
If you missed the class you can watch and listen to the demos here:
Watch live streaming video from mciii at livestream.com
mciii on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free
Watch live streaming video from mciii at livestream.com
If you are in my class and viewing this post, please begin playing in photoshop before Thursday's class, make marks, draw something, and troubleshoot your system before you come to the next class.
The only things I need you to do before the next class is to get Photoshop up and running and get your Tablet working with pressure sensitivity/ready to go for Thursday. If you do have your system running, begin making marks, playing with brushes and getting a feel for working with your tablet.
Drawlloween 2014
Here are all 31 monsters from Drawlloween!
Absentia Process Gif!
Here's a little look into the steps used to create this image!
Nebula Sketch and a couple DnD character portraits!
The two characters will be to showcase my commission prices, I still need to render one of them and showcase what a rendered character portrait looks like for anyone seeking an RPG commission.
Caught up on Drawlloween!
I got really behind on coloring my Drawlloween illustrations, but today I binge colored them all!
Click the Images to scroll through each week's collection.
Click here to view the Tumblr that features my work and the work of my friends, Pieter Wessels, Carlton Tomlin, Nih Llian, and Josh Godin.
Here is week 2!
Week 3!
The last few including today's "Timothy Burton":
New work on it's way, Drawlloween Week 1
The first week of October means the first week of Drawlloween, one monster a day for 31 days.
Here are the first 7 monsters:
Besides Drawlloween I'll be working on another sea witch for the Black Tide world and a mascot for a small RPG convention that will be going on in January.
New Website!
Welcome to my new site! I have tons to talk about and I'll get to the talking as soon as I send out some emails!