So 2010, I spent a good chunk of my time working on Monopoly Streets. I got to do a lot of fun concept; buildings, character and general look-and-feel type of stuff. I character stuff was probably the funnest stuff to do, but the most satisfying stuff was doing architectural and building design. Here are a couple pieces I worked on that I really liked. I’ll post some stuff that actually ended up in-game later. The piece above was an early look-and-feel exploration while we were still exploring the concept of playing Monopoly in an actual growing city. Early on with dabbled with the idea of the game-board progressing through the century as you advanced. It was decided pretty quickly that that would be a bit too much to try and accomplish within our time frame. It was a fun piece to work on none-the-less. Below is the first of a couple of early house designs for Park Place and Boardwalk. The idea was to design something that felt like a high-end city dwelling.
I first did a rough sketch with blue pencil. You can see that after I scanned it in and dropped in a perspective grid, my freehand perspective mistakes became obvious.
Here’s the rough inks after fixing some of the perspective problems. The digital inking was done in Painter. I still prefer the line quality I get in painter to that of Photoshop. Sadly, its the only thing I use Painter for.
Final color done in Photoshop. Here are the inks for the Boardwalk concept. The perspective and line-work on this is a bit better.
With final color.
Unfortunately, neither of these concepts ended up being used in the final game. Thus is the life of a concept artist. Oddly enough, not having a concept used in the final game doesn’t disappoint me, as long as I was still able to do work I was proud of. Case in point: With the time restriction of real-world game design, you don’t always have the time (or the need) for a fully rendered concept. Below is an quick thumbnail I did for Free Parking. I didn’t take the concept any farther than this, and it ended up being used in the game. Not something I’d put in my portfolio, but that’s how it works sometimes. Next time I’ll post some stuff that I got to render out AND was used in the final game.
Well, 2010 has been a crazy year to say the least. I did a little bit of traveling, trying to figure out the convention scene and to promote Green Monk.
The high light of this traveling was meeting all of the awesome artists and radical comic book fans all over the country, and discovering that there are quite a few in my own backyard. I tried some things out that were fun but didn’t quite work like writing a weekly theory blog and doing live art demos. I even found a little bit of time to complete a short story.
Lastly, I ended this year saying goodbye to my dear mother, Susan Dayton, after a courageous battle with breast cancer.
I’ve gained some insights on where I want to go this year as I’ve reflected on this last year and particularly as I’ve reflected on the good life that my mother lived.
The main thing is that I want to refocus on my life’s work. Seeing the fragility of life has been a stark reminder of that things that are most important. I would like to do something everyday of my life, that I can look back on and be proud of when my time here is done. I dedicated much of my time in 2009 to complete a book that was the beginning of my journey in to comic storytelling. In 2010 I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what to do with the finished book. This year I want to return my focus to doing the work of making art and telling stories.
I’m cutting back on the conventions. I’m cutting back on writing about theory and I don’t plan on doing any regular video demos. Instead, I’m going to be spending my time at the drawing table working on the follow up to Green Monk (I’ll also spend some time trying to pick up a publisher). On top of this, I’m going to be posting to my blog at least once a week, and it will always be a post with art in it.
That being said, I want to finish this post with a couple of rough pages for Green Monk Volume 1. I hope you all have a great 2011.
Just finished up with an exhausting weekend at the CTN-X in Burbank. By far, the best part of the expo was all the awesome people I got to meet, but a distant second was doing the live painting demos.
I got to do four demos, but I only had an hour of time for each demo. The first two demos were pretty manageable, so I was happy with the end results. The last two demos we’re a bit more involved so I didn’t really take them to a finished enough state for my liking. So, I’m not going to show you the last two I did, but I’ll show you the first two. Hope you like ‘em!
I’m planning on making a much bigger post about this later this month, but I wanted to show a quick preview of some of the character design I did for Monopoly Streets. Sadly, this geezer didn’t make the cut, but I had some fun art that did. Stay tuned!
I started doing some character design and thumbnails last week, and tonight I just finished the first rough page of Green Monk Chapter 1.
This time around I’m going to try and rough it out on big, cheap paper, scan it in, print it out on bristol, clean it up and then ink it. Hopefully it’ll make for tighter artwork.
I’m not going to make a habit out of scanning each individual page. I just thought this would be a nice way to kick things off.
Here’s the raw ink work on Rainmagic pages 2 and 3. I’m working a bit more on page 4 tonight.
I’m trying a couple of new things on these pages:
I’m trying to use more blacks. If you’ve seen Green Monk, you’ll know that it’s mostly linear. I want to create more shapes out of lights and darks. I’m finding I need to plan things out much more carefully in the penciling stage to get the lights and darks to balance out correctly.
I’m trying to figure out how to draw a dang forest. The most difficult stuff is the stuff in the mid-ground. It’s not close enough that I want to draw every little detail, but it’s not far away enough that I can just create a big mass and call it leaves.
I’m using a brush pen for all of this. The brush creates beautiful lines, but it requires more page turning to get the right angle. You also have to wait for it to dry, and oddly enough it puts more strain on my hand than using a micron. I think that because it does not have a rigid tip, I have to use my hand more for stability, and thus: hand-strain.
For last night’s artcast I did a little bit or digital painting again. This time a bit of concept art for a friend. I spent a bit too much time setting up a perspective grid that I never used, and I’d like to spend a couple more hours on this to refine the shapes and add detail, but all in all, it turned out okay.
