Lots of Updates!

I have a lot of news to share, since my last post. The past few months have been a little stressful, but also very exciting.

At the end of February, I completed the first version of my BFA thesis project. For my thesis, I chose to combine my focus on digital painting and illustration with my love of world-building to create a digital "book." The end product is a Flash-based compendium that provides visual and text information on six different species of my own creation. Titled "Encyclopaedia Creaturae Rationalis" (that is, "Encyclopedia of Thinking Beings"), version 1.0 features a built-from-scratch interface, designed and coded by myself; information on the biology, habitat and culture of each species; and large, full-color digital paintings to depict each species and their planet.

It was a massive project--which I still want to add more to!--that presented a lot of challenges, but in the end, it really paid off. At the BFA Thesis Show this March, I was pleased and utterly shocked to receive the Alumni Association Award for my thesis project. The president of the college informed me that I was the first Digital Art major to win the award.

I really need to give credit to my friends and classmates for this, as well: Wes for introducing me to the basics of Flash and helping me to troubleshoot my "book."; Leah and Olivia for critiquing my work; and Christine for tea, moral support, and more.

The other goings-on over the months have been a bit less intense. I began freelancing in addition to searching for permanent employment, and got my first commercial freelance job with Kinou Games. I did a large batch of 2D coloring for their upcoming MMO "Papa Pirate, Baby Bandit." Kinou was a really great client, and I'm very happy to have gotten the opportunity to work with them. I've also been doing a large number of personal commissions for miniature artist "Insane Kangaroo" of CamoSpecs fame, which has been another fun project.

Lastly, I've jumped back into web design, and have been working on a portfolio website for Dr. Dominic Catalano. Dr. Catalano is a children's book author/illustrator and and was one of my instructors at BGSU. I really admire his work, and enjoyed his class, so I'm very excited to be able to do this for him.

I've also completely revamped my own website. It's built from scratch and far superior to the old one, not to mention nicer-looking. You'll notice there's even an RSS feed on the page for this blog.

Critters!

It's been awhile since I last posted. I've been busy with commissions, that I'll hopefully be able to post later. In the mean time, here's some personal sketches I've been working on. Alien critters!

I always enjoy having a few "rules" to play by when I create new creatures and characters. It helps keep me focused on important aspects of the design and the opportunity to find creative solutions on how to work within my rules.

One of the rules for this set of xeno-animals is that none of them could have true teeth (the predators' fangs are part of the skull), and they must have scaly, avian/reptilian feet. With just those two rules, I've made five different creatures, each with its own niche. Hopefully, their roles will be clear from their designs. (Click the image for a bigger view.)

• The nova-frill is a small arboreal creature that eats fruits and nuts. Its brightly colored frill changes color and fans out to frighten predators.
• The poiga is an herbivore that lives in lowland jungles and marshes.
• The firetail is a pack predator and scavenger that inhabits grasslands. Males have a brightly-colored tail to attract mates.
• The terror-bear is an apex predator that prefers temperate and taiga forests.
• The skaptopus is a small jungle insectivore, and a good swimmer.

These have been a lot of fun, and I've also enjoyed getting critique from and bouncing ideas off of  Leah. I'll probably do another set of creatures like this in the near-ish future.

Concepts

Continuing the concept work I've been doing lately, I moved on to fleshing out character designs for some of the Syäloä characters. Because my initial focus this time was clothing design, I simply re-used my temple guardian sketch as a base. It saves time and the pose--frontal, fairly open--works well for quick sketches.

The first design is for the High General of the Autocracy, Seket. This one was particularly challenging, because I needed to incorporate armor. What I finally decided upon was a modular design. The partial armor Seket has on is her everyday wear, which augments her strength without being cumbersome. More pieces can be added for combat.

The second design is for the Empress of the Autocracy, Nileshta, which developed much more easily. I got a lot of great feedback from Leah and Christine, which really helped the process. Christine even contributed a few touches to Nileshta's headdress.

IDW #151 Final

Here's my final image for IDW #151.

IDW #151

So, I decided to stop lurking and do some of the community activities on conceptart.org  I picked this week's Industrial Design of the Week, for which the prompt is an remote-controlled, surveillance ornithopter. Drawing mechanical things is a bit outside my comfort zone, so I thought this would be a good challenge.

Everyone seemed to be doing dragonflies, so I decided to start from a beetle. I ended up going with a scarab. Initially, I thought about trying to make some futuristic Egyptian-styled device, but wasn't quite sure how to pull that off without it looking like BattleStar Galactica... So, after playing around with it, the design kind of transformed into a very 50s... thing. Kind of an amalgamation of everything mechanical from that decade. I referenced cars, motorcycles, cameras, microphones, radios, TVs, and even refrigerators.

I'm pretty pleased with the design, overall. (Not sure if it would fit the "avoid detection at all costs" bit, but oh well.) The only thing I'm really hung up about are the wings, but I feel they're starting to look more mechanical, now.

1st image: Overall design and color, perspective view.

2nd image: Back view, refining details.

3rd image: Final for IDW #151, fully-painted perspective view, line-drawings for alternate views, labeling and size comparison.