Friday, July 31, 2009

Dead or alive, you're coming with me!


Watched the Robocop trilogy this week for the first time in donkeys. The first one was better than i remember - still think the villians shooting up Murphy is one of the most evil and raw scenes ever (for this kind of movie anyway). Numbers 2 and 3 were worse than i remember though and the least said the better. I'm glad Aronfosky dropped out of the Batman movies but quite looking forward to seeing what he does with the Robocop franchise - think that could be more up his street.


Anyway, as a result i've knocked up some Robocop doodles this week. Again, it's not a character i've drawn before and i experimented with some new (for me) digital colouring methods for this one too. I really need to invest in a tablet, pen and some painting software soon though - photoshop and a mouse just aint enough.

Thursday, July 30, 2009

Samurai Jane preview.

Another Thursday post (thanks for the reminder, Neil!)

In between the sixteen hour day shifts I get to work up some personal projects for my portflio. Usually high concept stuff. Tall girls with swords. And guns. And attitude.

Hardly anything new but the longer I take working up these ideas (in the background), the more similar ideas get out there before me. Regular Facebook Fan Page members will see a lot of my sketches online and I thought Thursday would be an opportunity to showcase this particular character and image for this week's Scotch Corner post.



Samurai Jane is a mixed media picture. My friend Claire modelled for me for a variety of poses and the final chosen photograph was comped together with a background image sourced from a book. Getting the right picture to work with and not against the main foreground character proved more difficult than expected and there was a lot of necessary processing and desaturating of the image before it was flattened. The layers were then filtered and digitally painted and decorative details were added to enhance the dress and sword. Really love putting all the elements together and hope to display the rest of the pictures from this set at a later date.

The character herself has a back story and there are tentative layouts for pace and story purposes. Finding the time to work on these personal projects is always frustrating as scheduled books have to take priority. Such is the freelancers life. I would hope to have Samurai Jane in a near completed form by the end of the year and wil no doubt feature more images in later posts.

Oh, and she kills zombies.

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Its What I do

Was looking through recent work which I wanted to put up, and everything less than about five months old is still covered by non disclosure agreements, so I thought I'd put up some 'classic Hepworth' today. Something that encapsulates my work in terms of both subject matter (OK, OK, I'm a freelancer, I do anything which comes my way...) tool handling and client.

An image from Changeling; The Lost, a roleplaying game product from White wolf for their World of Darkness range. If I recall correctly this was from the Rites of Spring book, in which I did a bunch of full page illos, which was fun for a change - I tend to overwork smaller images so it was nice to get my teeth stuck into a set of pictures without wondering if it was worth the hourly rate ;)

Pencil rendered image with some digital tone applied with a multiply layer or six on top of the scanned image.


Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Mighty Talos!

Graeme Neil Reid,Painting,Talos,Jason and the Argonauts

This is a tale of frustrations for me this week. I made a lot of basics mistakes working on this one, the first before I even started painting. I soaked the board and paper for stretching and left so much water on the board that it stained the paper as it dried. So it wasn't a great start and possibly a bad omen.

I set myself time limits on these 'learning' paintings, mostly because I'm a busy guy and I should be getting on with something else but also to stop myself from over working a quick painting. Well, this time I had managed to paint the hills and the sky by the time I hit the time limit. Then having decided to push on I hit a brick wall when painting the main figure. Man it was torturous to get through this and I almost gave up. Also I'm unhappy with the scan of the painting, there seems to be a lot of lost detail. The clouds have lost a lot of subtleness and I worked in some extra colours into the main body which is completely lost. Sigh... you can tell I've been frustrated can't you.

All that aside, if you don't know who this is then go watch Ray Harryhausen's 'Jason and the Argonauts' to see this colossus in action. He's cool :) And if you haven't clicked on it yet then do so to go to my photobucket page and see it nice and large.

Monday, July 27, 2009

Jon's Monday Crack

Afternoon All,
Here's a painting I did a little while back, which was later bought for use on a gaming supplement cover. For a while back there I had a nice little trade going in producing a personal painting once a month, and then finding a buyer. Which allowed me to produce some stuff I felt Art Directors would never ask for. In recent months I haven't had time to paint anything for myself, which is of course in many ways a blessing. It's nice to be really busy!

This one is imaginatively entitled Chasm Fighters:

Image Hosted by ImageShack.us



And click this sucker for a closer look/bigger image:


Here's to a good week!

Friday, July 24, 2009

They like the heat

The one advantage to having nearly 4 hours travelling a day to get to and from work is the amount of DVD's i manage to watch. So having watched the Predator movies this week ... ta da. I imagine this won't be the only movie inspired sketch from me - who knows what i'll end up watching next week.


Never drawn this gadgy before so reasonably happy with how it turned out. I believe they tried to invade Scotland last week when it was scorching but the midgies saw them off.

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Earthfall. 2009.


Earthfall was a series commisioned by Dark Horse Comics as part of their Zombieworld line back in 1998. Gordon Rennie and myself were lined up for this three part story and then the plug was pulled and the series was cancelled. Pity. It would have been really good. Great script from Gordon.

This is a new colour version of the proposed cover for the Dark Horse series. Who would have thought that in 1998 zombie comics would not sell? Resident Evil 2 was selling millions of copies on release but this comic series died. Permanently. It can be a very strange world sometimes. The writer Gordon Rennie went on to continue writing for comics and computer games. Still hopeful we can resurrect this project. The time is definitely right now.



The black and white lineart was done back in 98 and was the only work seen. I decided recently to colour up this image myself and rework some of the ideas slightly. The punctured suit and skewered arm still remain but the zombie face is replaced by a reflection on the helmet visor of the Las Vegas lights. The idea is to subvert the classic iconic Apollo and Neil Armstrong image, confusing the viewer with the neon sign reflection. Yes, this is on Earth!

I am still trying to find a balance between keeping the lineart clean and visible and having the overall feel and colour kept dark and ominous. Fairly pleased with the final result though.

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Bigger guns, we're going to need bigger f****g guns!


A bit of character art this week, a ganger with a .50 clibre sniper rifle. A simple piece of portfolio work again. Was trying out a new technique with this one - transparent colour over a greyscale underpainting, rather than alla prima painting method I would usually have used. I was quite happy with the results, artist's angst aside. Perhaps he lacks a little pop in the overall scheme mind you - some warmer or colder colours worked into the shadows maybe...

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

One small step...

40 years ago man first walked on the Moon, holy cow! I still find it amazing that people disbelieve it actually happened and as the years pass by it seems to be proof for those people that it couldn't have happened. I couldn't begin to go into all the arguments about it happening or not but I firmly believe it happened and if you spend even a small amount of time reading about the whole space race of the fifties and sixties you'll find it pretty hard to doubt it too.

Graeme Neil Reid,Moon,Painting,Astronaut

I wasn't alive for that historic moment when Lunar Module 'Eagle' landed at Tranquility Base or when Mission Commander Neil Armstrong descended down the ladder and said those words (on this very day 40 years ago) that everybody knows but I'll be doing my best to be around in ten or so years when the American rocket Ares returns to our neighbour or maybe it'll be the Russians or the Chinese. I guess you could say that the space race is back on again!

This is my second attempt at a traditionally painted illustration and again it's done with acrylic inks and also normal acrylic paints. I hunted out my acrylics and discovered that the majority had dried out and where useless so that trip to the art shop is really calling out to me now. I have a busy week in front me so I don't think I'll manage to continue my painting education for next week but you never know.

Monday, July 20, 2009

Monday Jon

Welcome to another week! Doesn't this endless procession of day on day ever come to an end?

Ok, today I thought I'd share something a little bit different. In this age of digital media we tend to cling on to terms like "sketch" and "painting" when our computers have really eroded the meanings of those words. With that in mind here's a "sketch" I made in Google Sketchup. A nifty piece of software which is well worth adding to your skill set. Sketchup lets you create three dimensional computer models very very easily. I've found this an invaluable tool to aid visualisation of complex scenes and settings. I don't generally work my models to any great degree of finish - they're used as an inspirational tool rather than something to directly use in my illustrations. Whilst I like to think I'm pretty good at manipulating scenery in my head, the finer points and subtle unexpected stuff can really be helped by experimenting with a 3D model. I graduated to Sketchup from photographing Duplo bricks...

So enough ramble, here's a bird's eye view of one of my recent models, a section of medieval town, built with the idea of being able to shoot multiple directions through it, much like a versatile film set.

Image Hosted by ImageShack.us

Here's the clickable larger version:


And here's a couple of views through the model.
Image Hosted by ImageShack.us

Funnily enough I didn't use Sketchup as part of my process on last week's post, which looks like a prime candidate. Sometimes I find the models really helpful, other times they can be millstones. Funny old world.

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Sunday Guest Post - Kev Levell!

Special treat for us this Sunday as rising illustration star Kev Levell drops in with a superb illustration. Take it away Kev...


Hi, I'm Kev Levell... There is nothing remotely Scottish about me, I don't qualify in any way... So, in an attempt to make up for my Gaelically challenged nature, I've submitted a pin-up of the Joker's sexy sidekick and would-be girlfriend, Harley Quinn - I hope it is enough to act as a sort of visa waiver for me.

My life-long dream, other than being an honourary Scot, of course, is to draw comics professionally. I've recently completed a couple of strips for Zarjaz and Dogbreath (the 2000AD fanzines) and those will be out later in the year. In the meantime, please feel free to check out my blog, or my newly refreshed website where you can see some of my more usual illustration work.


Many thanks Kev, be sure to drop by his sites for more work. His blog is one to bookmark and he regularly shows work in progress as well as finished work.

And remember that you can take part too, click here to read how to become a guest and an adopted Scotsman!

Friday, July 17, 2009

Phew! Disney time




Still Friday - just!
Manic week, late nights on the day job and a seven week old baby who has decided that night time is awake time. Probably not the best idea to try out another new style this week - but anyhoo too late now. It's a wee bit rushed due to the circumstances -but close enough to finished. As ever the initial pencils are posted below.

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Mega City One vista.



Apologies for anyone who has seen this image online at BleedingCool.com. Richard Johnston was quick off the mark to notice my own Saturday posting of this image (but with hardly anyone reading my blog regularly I figured it would go unnoticed by the comics' community! ;) and it was the surprise closing highlight for Monday's BleedingCool.com entry.

Anyways... here it is. Mega City One. A version at least. I set myself a task of creating the image in a day (with Saturday F1 qualifying included) so speed was of the essence. My digital sketch references some familiar buildings and I was trying to capture the sheer scale of the city with one sweeping image. The Sergio Leone close up of Dredd is a deliberate attempt to force a contrast of scale to the image and there is more than a passing nod to Blade Runner, Fifth Element and AKIRA too. A bit of work trying to pull in all the seperate elements and lots of colour correcting and fixing of perspectives but done for the day. Pleased with the final version and not bad considering it was completed over a Saturday afternoon and early evening.

Given the extra time (and commision) I would have put in a few more radically different future buildings and vehicles. A little more time and I would have gone further into the city and lower levels. As an experiment, a success. Would I do it again? Try and stop me! Next up, Dredd's bike. Definitely needs a make-over!


Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Wednesday again!

Wow, how time flies.  Some folio work today, trying out a different approach to work with this one - very flat simple colours over a sparse line drawing.  Mostly photoshop, this one, rather than mostly painter IX, my usual weapon of choice.  I wish I had more time to play around with work and try out different styles and techniques more often - clearly my time management needs some adjustment :)

A loooooong time a go I was a big fan of Gunsmith Cats, and you might see an influence or two in the subject matter there - the opening credits of the animated version left a big impression on me.  Maybe.  Enjoy!

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Sec and destroy!

I used to paint all the time, in fact that was all I used to do. I didn't sketch or ink line drawings, I just sat and painted day in and out. When I was at college I had a fantastic turnaround on paintings and absolutely no fear at approaching a canvas. Then I got a job and my working life with Photoshop began, first with photographic retouching but quickly I started using it for illustration work. And with that came the ability to undo any major mistakes you might have made, even before the Command Z option in Photoshop was available you could always save an illustration as you went along and so go back a generation or two of saved files to be free of any mistakes.

And so I stopped painting traditionally and everything went onto the computer. In the last fifteen years I've finished two pictures using a paint brush and paints on a board, only two! I tried about two years ago to get back into painting traditionally but it was like there was a block on how to do it, every time I started I'd hit a wall and become frustrated. But now I'm going to start again, slowly and hopefully I'll be able to get back to a stage where I'm happy to attack the canvas with vigour again.

Graeme Neil Reid,Doctor Who,Sci-fi,Dalek,Painting

To begin I'm going to paint up some sketches I produced previously and just see what happens. So this week it's a fairly straight forward portrait painting of a Doctor Who villain, the hybrid Dalek Sec. This is painted onto A4 sized paper with acrylic inks and was completed in two hours, which I'm not sure is a good thing or bad, certainly got a lot to re-learn. Fell back on a few old tricks rather than trying something completely new and I've also discovered that I need a lot of new paint and paint brushes so a trip to the art shop is due. I like acrylic ink but its more like solid watercolour than a thick paint. Time allowing I'll have another new quick painting next week, practice makes perfect or so they say.

Monday, July 13, 2009

Monday =Jonday

Welcome to the start of the week!
Its fake Scotsman Jon here. 

So today I can show the piece I wanted to begin with - the cover for a role playing games supplent, Friends of Foes. This book will provide extra material for the recently reissued classic Brit rpg Dragon Warriors.

I had a mare with the palette on this one.  Which is pretty funny when it turned out in my usual earth tones. But I came to that predictable conclusion via a very different route than normal, so I felt some progress was made! And that grey green is pretty different for me, and for added otherworldly atmospherics the whole scene being in quite unnatural colours. Local colour oot the windae! 



Image Hosted by ImageShack.us

(C)2009 Jon Hodgson and Magnum Opus Press


To see it bigger have a bit of a click on this one:

This is the sixth or seventh cover (I lose count!) I've provided for Dragon Warriors, and a narrative is building surrounding several iconic characters. In this scene we see our heroes after a dismal defeat that occured in this one: http://JonHodgson.deviantart.com/art/Dragon-Warriors-Bestiary-99496884

A mysterious female knight has resuced/captured our iconic knight (he laid over the mule back there) and now our barabrian chum is negotiating his release in his own inimitable fashion... Meanwhile the locals get busy earning a crust off the rich adventurers.


This one was made with ArtRage, Painter and Foatyshop.

Thanks for looking!

Sunday, July 12, 2009

Sunday Guest Post - Chatri!


Our pleas for contributions haven't fallen on deaf ears and the exciting art of Chatri saves the day.

Hi,

My name is Chatri, I live in Eastbourne at the opposite end of the country, which is almost like living in scotland, but not. This illustration was for a comic a friend wrote but was never seen. The comic was called Straydogs, this was one of the bad guys. I have more work on my deviant art http://chatriart.deviantart.com/

Thanks,
Chatri


Many thanks Chatri and be sure to look over his deviant art site for a wicked Godzilla piece.

Click here to read how to become a guest and an adopted Scotsman!

Sunday Guest Post - where are you?

After the exuberance of two posts last weekend we find ourselves with nothing to show this weekend, so its a brilliant time to remind everyone that you can be involved too. The Sunday Guest post is open to anybody and everyone, even if you haven't picked up a pencil in years we still want you to have a go. Send us your drawings and get involved!

Click here to read how to become a guest and an adopted Scotsman!

Friday, July 10, 2009

In memory of Jacko


Thought i would do something a bit out of my normal comfort zone this week, both in terms of content and how i approached the colouring. The inspiration for this one is pretty obvious with Jacksons funeral being this week.

The initial pencil version is shown below


Thursday, July 9, 2009

Second Post - Batman.

Another Thursday. Another post.



After the positive response to the Dredd piece last week I thought that Batman would be an appropriate follow up. The caped crusader profile was done on the same day as the Dredd colour test and was a direct response to the convention sketch version I have been doing for the last few shows. Again, for speed and reference, a couple of photos were taken and used as the base colour layer for this image. I worked up the texture of the leather cowl (still not quite right) and chiselled the chin into a suitablely heroic profile. Digital painting finished the piece off and overall I am very happy with the final composition. Not bad for a three hour turnaround.

Would a background help? Almost certainly, but too many choices confuse me and I would eventually spend longer deciding on a background than on completing the actual painting. Sometimes the simplest choice is the best. Having said that, next Thursday's post may well feature the Batman with a cityscape behind (same with Dredd!) Stay tuned...

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

One week down

We come 'round to the successful end of the first week on Scotch Corner, and now I'm regretting leaping into it, over enthusiastic, and posting a broadside of three images...  But lucky for me, a new product is released by Alderac Entertainment this month, a card set for Legend of The Five Rings.  I also leapt off half cocked, and didn't really introduce myself.  I grew up in Dundee, but live and work in Edinburgh now as a freelance illustrator, mostly working in the fantasy art field, but with some diversion into educational illustration and concepting for animation.

A simple character image, a Unicorn Clan warrior woman.  I normally use Painter 9 and a little bit of photoshop, but tried out Artrage for the underpainting of this image, which proved to be a handy program to work with - some very nice chunky oil impasto effects which its good at (though they were mostly overpainted later).  Don't use Artrage as much as I should across the board though, but I'd recommend it as a very affordable digital painting tool.  Enjoy!

Image (C) Alderac Entertainment 2009
Right click and open pic in a new window for larger image



Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Journey into Space

It's the seventh day of Scotch Corner which makes me the last of the group (well until the sixth member appears) to post and say hello. So, very much in the style of an AA meeting...

"Hello, I'm Graeme Neil Reid and I'm a freelance illustrator". I worked in the advertising and marketing industry for a long time and six years ago became freelance with a view to stop wasting my time and pursue a career as an illustrator. It seems to be working. You can see some samples of my work at my website gnreid.co.uk and more work and textual blethering at my blog site.

Since I became freelance I pretty much developed a style that I consistently use but art itself is forever evolving and I hope to use Scotch Corner as an opportunity to try different approaches and experiment with my work. I'll not always be able to show something new (borrowed or blue) so on those days I'll dip back into my archive.

Photobucket

To begin its an illustration I completed a couple of weeks back for the magazine Radio Times. It was for the radio listings for a 'Play for the Day' on BBC Radio 4 of the long running sci-fi serial 'Journey into Space'. The brief called for an 'episode specific' illustration rather than a generic representation of Journey into Space, so we have the main character, Jet Morgan, and his crew mates in cryo-sleep about to be awoken by the distress call from a mysteriously abandoned space freighter, oooohhh! A lot of fun to draw.

Next week I'm going to step back in time for me and paint something traditionally. And by that I mean with a paint brush and paints and not with a stylus pen and Photoshop. I'm all ready worried about the outcome!

Monday, July 6, 2009

Monday = Jon Hodgson

Hey All,
First post, long time listener, first time caller all that jazz.

I'm Jon Hodgson, I'm a full time freelance illustrator working out of Falkirk. I work mainly in the genre niches of fantasy and scifi, producing work for pen and paper games of various kinds, along with a whole bunch of stuff like magazines, educational artwork, art for beer labels, all that good stuff. I have a site at http://www.jonhodgson.com

So I haven't been able to secure permission in time to post my latest painting, but hopefully I can secure that for next week's slot, so stay tuned. Instead I'll fall back on my favourite most recently published.  This is a cityscape I painted for Paizo Publishing for their Pathfinder line.

Image Hosted by ImageShack.us
(C)2009 Paizo Publishing

Click this one to see it a little larger:

Sunday, July 5, 2009

Sunday Guest Post - Leigh Gallagher

If you are a regular reader of the UK comic 2000ad you'll have no doubt been mesmerised by the amazing work of artist Leigh Gallagher. Not only is Leigh probably the sexiest guy working in the comic industry (he has a swooning lady per 10 square metre ratio) he's also an extremely nice guy. So when Scotch Corner contacted him and insisted that he endorse our humble blog he was more than happy to comply.

Leigh also wrote as a message and for legal reasons we have to mention that some portions of the following statement are purely the thoughts and opinions of Leigh Gallagher and in no way represents the views held by Scotch Corner (especially the last bit).

Hi, my name's Leigh Gallagher. When I'm not standing around looking dreamy, I like to look dreamy whilst drawing comic books.

I've worked on a variety of projects for DC Comics, most notably Justice League Unlimited and the toy based comic, Lego Bionicle, of which I was the artist throughout 2008. For the last 3 years I've been illustrating Defoe for 2000AD--a 17th century zombie hunter written by 2000AD's daddy, Pat Mills. It's a dream job for me, as I now use a style inspired by my early love for 1980's black and white comic strips like Scream, Eagle, and of course 2000AD.

Book 3 of Defoe is currently running in 2000AD, with the graphic novel (Defoe 1666) collecting the first two books together, is out August 15th! Write it on your forehead so you won't forget!

You can find me being generally dreamy and my work on my bloggy at http://leighgallagherart.blogspot.com/

The attached picture is a drawing I did for a nice chap who emailed me out the blue all the way from Mexico a year or so ago. He asked for either Defoe or Dredd, so I thought "what the hell" and decided to do both.I honestly have no idea why I've never put it on my own blog, but I'm happy for you guys to have it. Dredd in particular was fun to do--I really like drawing faces with character. Thinking I may bug the Mighty Tharg to let me do a Dredd story one day, but if I have to, I'll kidnap his alien dog--apparently it's got a retractable leg so it can leap up at you better, and instead of a mouth it's got four arses...

Finally, I'd like to say what a genuine honour it is to be invited as a guest by the ridiculously talented blokes of Scotch Corner, even though I'm not remotely Scottish. I do however enjoy eating porridge, and I'm a big fan of the Scottish dad in So I Married an Axe Murderer (Och, wudya looook at that heeead....it's like an orange on a toooothpick!). Are you all like that?

Have those girls at Electic Mick's invited me to their bloody blog??? Nooooo....and you know why? Because I'm taller than them,and have better hair. So you know what, Electic Micks can SUCK IT!!! (I'm sorry guys, I didn't mean that, please let me on your blog, please, please, please...I promise I'll crouch down when I speak to you...)

Ok, bye.


Another great guest post and a big thank you to Leigh. Remember that anybody can take part in Scotch Corner just go here to find out how!

Saturday, July 4, 2009

Sunday (on a Saturday) Guest Post - Jon Haward!

The sixth member of Scotch Corner isn't yet available to join in so while we wait (and because we can) we'll get started on some guest posts!

What a start we've had to the blog, some fantastic work on show and then to start our 'Guest Post' off we where thrilled to receive a sketch and message from comic artist Jon Haward:

Hi chaps thought i'd drop you a line,

I'm a member of SCCAM (remember that), visited Scotland loads of times, have lots of Scot friends, worked on Northern Lightz and Wasted and drawn the Scottish play Macbeth, so I feel very Scottish although I'm English... any way here's my sketch for you to put up if you want, plus my blog address: http://hawardarthouse.blogspot.com/

Just finished the Tempest graphic novel with Gary Erskine inking it and I'm art directing Hamlet for Classical Comics and drawing Judge Dredd for 2000ad at the moment.

Cheers

Jon Haward
http://www.jonhawardart.com


Many thanks for getting us started Jon with this great Conan sketch! Be sure to drop by Jon's websites and check out some of his amazing award winning work. And also remember that you can also take part in Scotch Corner, send us your drawings and become an adopted Scot!

Friday, July 3, 2009

Resident Zombie



Hi. As this is my first entry i'll say a wee bit about myself. Currently I am a digital graphic designer by day - primarily working on websites and multimedia projects for all kinds of clients. It's quite a varied job as i can be doing exhibition graphics for the SECC one minute and visual effects for video the next. Unfortunately illustration generally isn't a big part of the role (and certainly not comic art, which has been my passion since i was a toddler) so i freelance where and when possible in that field.

Anyway, on to the art. Initially i wasn't sure what to create for my first post, but after clearing out some old playstation games and doing an all nighter on an old Resident Evil game, i decided on a Zombie illustration as i hadn't done one for a while and they are always good fun to do.

The initial pencil drawing (also posted below for reference) was scanned into photoshop and digitally 'painted' there. Click on the images to view larger higher res versions. All comments are welcome.

Thursday, July 2, 2009

First post - Dredd!

I thought I would take the opportunity with the first post to introduce myself to the readers and followers of this blog. Makes sense to know who's art you're going to be looking over and hopefully commenting on.

Been drawing professionally now for nearly twenty years and have worked for Marvel Comics, DC and Vertigo Comics, Dark Horse, and Image amongst others (some since departed and no more) and contributed character designs and storyboards for television, commercials and games development working on licensed properties such as Star Wars, Terminator, The Mask, Dreamworks characters (including Shrek and Madagascar) and for Sony. You can keep in touch with my current events and travels on my blog at http://www.garyerskine.blogspot.com/ or by visiting my Facebook Fan Page.



For my first post I thought you might like to see a personal colour piece from last month. Still learning to use Photoshop for colour and must admit to being very cautious initially. It has been so long since I last painted anything (with acrylics) and a digital pen and mouse is hardly intuitive to me. This image of Dredd is something I had wanted to do for ages and is an unashamed steal from the 70s movie Straw Dogs (directed by Sam Peckinpah and starring Dustin Hoffman and Susan George) Thought it would make for an iconic Dredd image or cover. The close cropping works especially well in creating a claustrophobic urgency to the overall image (motion blur helps too) and there is a hard confrontational attitude to Dredd with the close proximity of his face. The original image features a whole helmeted Dredd head (allowing for a more traditional view if prefered) and the base colour layer was taken from a photograph of my own face (but with a helluva lot of editing) The nose is smaller and the chin much bigger for Dredd. Additional filtering and over painting was necessary to finish the piece. The final lens flare (placed for this blog only) was a very guilty pleasure.

My favourite part of this image is the fact that you can see Dredd's eye through the cracked visor without revealing his identity. It kinda humanises the character in a way that most Dredd images don't. The sense of a previous menace or conflict also heightens the drama.

Anyways. That's all for my first post. Hope you like the Dredd cover and look forward to tomorrow's blog by Thomas Crielly.

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

First Post is the hardest...


Its Andy Wednesday!  So lets trawl the vault, see what's no longer NDA'd, what represents the current jobs I'm on...

Pics aside I'm currently working as art-lead on a chunk of work for Alderac Entertainment (a US Card, role-play and board-game company) on a new product line - all very hush hush you know, but its great to have a lot of artistic control and input into a project.  Character design, setting design and cover art all in the pipeline.

Today we go back a couple of months, to a couple of characters from White Wolf books Scroll of Heroes, and Dancers in the Dusk (for the Exalted and Changeling product lines respectively).  Hey, see them 'shrooms in the changeling image?  Thats where my title bar came from!

These images (C) WhiteWolf 2009