Examples of my art…

So recently a friend asked me to show him some of my art. It’s been some time since I had brought it out to even look at it, and I spent half the night searching through old back up folders and external hard drives searching for it… That’s sort of when I landed on this idea.

You all deserve to see what I was capable of. I have pulled out the remnants of my old portfolio after the apartment flood that destroyed almost every piece I had done going all the way back to the seventh grade. I found several of the digital copies of the gamer stuff I’ve done, and that’s what I showed him and will now share here. Some of it is from way back, and others are more recent. None of it was dated, so I don’t really have exact time frames, but you can sort of tell by looking at them.

I have back stories, skills, and in some cases powers and magical items that each of these characters carried. But this post is about the art, not the games. The guy above is not small, the wolf is giant. Now days I realise that better backgrounds and imagery that gives the viewer a better frame of reference is important, but back when this guy came out, I was just happy to have the image to go with my character idea.

This guy was from a fantasy game I played in a friends homebrewed world of magic and monsters. He was a fairly high level fighter with lots of cool gimmicks in his gear and story. I was trying to use some shading and textures here, the guy whose neck is turned the wrong way around, you can see some attempts at metal reflection on his wrist bracers. I tried to use it on Calron’s sword and cloak brooches at the neck. It’s hard to tell but he also had a tattoo on his face of a blue dragon.

Most of my pictures had fantasy and superhero ideas behind them, this second picture of Calron included better action and I was getting okay at drawing hands here. I changed the outfit and added a light reflection on the chest gem stone. I also made a passing attempt at showing a connection to the ground below him with a shadow scribble, but apparently either got bored with the drawing or had an A.D.D. moment because there was no other shading in the image.

Before Marvel created their character of this name… way back I had created an idea for my friends and I where we would have mercenary superheroes with powers. I was bringing the idea from a cross of G.I. Joe cartoons and the DC character Deathstroke. I got the idea for his utility gun that could fire grapple cables and such from Aeon Flux on Mtv. But here I was trying to bring into my art color and design a costume I thought was cool. Sword hilt cross slung over the shoulder, belt pouches with a skull belt buckle, low strapped gun holster for quick draw, and long flap folded boots because why the hell not?

This character has been through so many iterations it’s hard to recall them all. The dark energy blast and style of a demon back before Hellboy was a sparkle in the eye of Darkhorse creators. You can’t tell from this picture, but he has three fingers and an opposed thumb, sharp clawed hands and here I went about inking the image. The ink was done with a razor point felt tip pen given to me by a friend. I was getting better at musculature and was trying to expand my repertoire for hair texture… I was never happy with my hair in drawings. Still aren’t.

I can’t recall where I got this background picture from, but I put my character flying over it. The red lines going back into the distance show his flight path. Here I added some Photoshop help to my art. You might be able to tell I did the old bevel and emboss trick to give him a little 3D look. Also again leaps and strides in musculature but still not exactly right.

Lest you think I only do superheroes and fantasy warriors, here I show you a character I created for a project I did for my animation degree. This is Ticker the timing pocket watch. I have a glitch in the gif that blinks a black frame at the end, but I don’t really have the program I used to make this anymore to fix that issue. I recall I got a really good grade on this one, the teacher loved the idea that Ticker needed to wear a wristwatch because he couldn’t see his own face.

This is a character sheet I did for a short animation I made where this kid walks bow legged into his room, does a roll on the floor and comes up drawing his toy dart gun, he shoots the camera then as the lick and stick suction cup dart slides off the screen you see him back out in the hall and it starts over again. It was a project that called for a looped animation. Timmy here was a pain in the butt to draw doing his summersault in his room, and because I “cheated” on the ending with the suction cup dart starting over, I got a “C” on the project overall. Character sheets are supposed to have a good break down (seen on the left here) showing the basic shapes that make up the character. They need some facial expressions for emotion (bottom right) and the character shown from various angles for reference (top right). The idea is if the character goes out for “inbetweeners” they know how to draw him. This way the animator draws the “Key frames” or main action images and a few showing prime motions needed, then the inbetweeners fill in the rest for you.

This was a timed project using markers and a light pencil drawing behind them, the idea was to help get work in under a deadline. We were each given an image and told we had till end of class to finish. Mine was pretty rough I have to admit. But I felt like it got the basics across. Unfortunately I made poor Mr Hanks look like his face was way to small for his head and he was wearing dark red lipstick in World War II. But as I recall, he fared better than Jeff Goldblum did in my first attempt. I’ll spare you that one.

This is all done digital for a game I run in a steampunk world. Jenious here is a mechanic for steam pipes and a tinkering inventor that one of the characters knows.His cybernetics and outfit, spats and all were made up on the spot. I drew and painted him as a fun project… needs work I know, but I’m still getting used to the tools I have now. Photoshop with a Huion KAMVAS GT-191 Drawing Tablet I got last year… Some of my newer work is better, but I’m still improving.