Scifi Sketch

This is an unresolved painting I did for Key Frames class taught by Joshua James Shaw. Fun stuff. Great Class.

Cheers

Maori Badass

Something I did for Carlo's Class a while back. Supposed to be a Tifa redesign running with the idea of a kung fu chick but i went with a Polynesian martial arts to mix it up a bit. hahaha

An Alien Friend

Photoshop setup featuring Magic Picker by Anastasiy

Yo

I've been using this plugin for Photoshop that gives you a handy little color wheel in the corner of the screen and i must say its awesome. Paid the 14 bucks and never looked back. My buddy Ahmed Aldoori showed it to me back in Art Center and its become such an essential part of my work flow. I don't have to constantly open the standard color picker in photoshop shaving off a second or so off of every color choice which doesn't sound extremely helpful but anything that makes my pipeline more fluid is good. Having the color wheel on the side constantly when i paint also helps me visualize color harmonies and relationships easier. This color wheel helped me think more like a painter letting me practice understanding value and color together. Thats when I truly started playing with complementary colors as another layer of contrast on top of light and dark contrast. The process I was using prior to this color wheel was simply colorizing a greyscale painting. I haven't been able to find another color wheel that is as nice.

Here is the link to the site http://anastasiy.com/panels

Check it out! 

Heres a link to a youtube demo of the magi picker

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=3zAfu7xE-Jw

This version shows the basic color harmonies Complementary, Double Complementary, and Split Complementary (could be different names, not sure)

Also has RGB HSB sliders which is a common in the pipeline of many designers

I believe Jerad S Marantz uses the photoshop sliders so having this built in is pretty awesome too

The three biggest changes to my photoshop setup are the Magicpicker, changing the button on my Wacom pen to the alt key eyedropper, and saving out and editing down my tool presets to be simple and diverse for creature and character design as well as environment and key scene painting. I also use a gaming key pad at home so that i can have all my hotkeys mapped out to it at the click of a button. For example, Ctrl-Alt-Z becomes a single button. My teacher Joshua James Shaw, also an amazing artist, showed me his setup on his Nostromo Keypad. Is it necessary? no, but its so handy and again that extra bit of fluidity feels great.

Josh's keypad Nostromo N52, note that it is a Belkin and not the Razer follow up. Theres a clickwheel that you can map brush sizer to which is pretty amazing.

I ended up compromising on the click wheel to get the Orbweaver which doesn't have a clickwheel but has mechanical keys and more keys than the Nostromo which is nice.

I also game on this bad boy. I can sorta see people goin, "why you need dis?" I dunno...why not? Its great for gaming but honestly its amazing for photoshop. You can set so many profiles saved on a cloud. I haven't tried taking it elsewhere yet but that means its more portable. (also note, there is no mac support at the moment i think, but understandably few game on mac so...)

Med's work is really awesome 

http://medsketch.blogspot.com/

and check out Jerad's stuff

http://jeradsmarantz.blogspot.com/

aaaand Josh's stuff 

http://joshuathejames.blogspot.com/

I owe my photoshop setup and most of my overall design and painting pipeline to these good fellows.

Cheers!

Alex

Meg Mucklebones redesign

My take on Meg from the movie Legend. Cheers!

Alien Black Swan

A new year of work. I'm gonna start signing differently. WOOP WOOP

Satyr Tribe

Momentum

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/g-b/momentum-short-film-set-in-the-year-2043

This is the project kickstarter of a group of my good friends. I just want to promote the shit out of this project because it looks awesome and the people working on it are incredibly dedicated to putting out good story based design content.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/g-b/momentum-short-film-set-in-the-year-2043

Heres a link to Rob and Peggy's company so you can see all the awesome shit they've worked on.

http://www.gadget-bot.com/

More Creature stuff

Lizard Man

Day 10: A Badass Fashion Statement

I always thought that the penis sheath of the Koteka tribe should be incorporated into modern fashion but wtf do i know...

Day 9: Captain Native America

Gotta finish up this damn challenge...Me as a super hero.

Guanyin portrait

A painting i did recently to get back on track...

Day 8: Bland Spice Observer

the spice is too bland for this Observer.

Day 7: Everett Hitch

Gettin back on track with this challenge...

Day 6: The Fly

The 30 day drawing challenge is bringing up a lot of old memories for me. Last week i happened upon my Audubon Society Pocket Guide to Insects and Spiders that I have had since I was 7. Not many parents would let their kid sift through dirt and flip rocks looking for creatures but that was all I did in elementary school, that and handball. Thanks mom! Flash forward to Jerad Marantz's class in which one of the first assignments was to do a redesign of The Fly. Revisiting The Fly project is always kickass. Jerad's class was probably the most useful class I had when i started out and set me on the path i'm on today. Take it, take that class if you wanna do creature.

Day 5: Urban Zelda

Day 5 is something green so i thought i would work on an idea for Link inspired by artwork by Jon Lau.

Day 4: Dream

A dream i had a long time ago.

Day 3: Lunch

Day 3 is supposed to be what i had for lunch. I think i'm gonna be saying "supposed" alot.

Day 2: Yabusame

Day 2  is supposed to be an 80's movie so i chose Ran directed by Akira Kurosawa. There is an awesome Yabusame (Japanese Horse Archery) scene which led me to do this sketch. Couldn't find any good screen grabs of the scene so i just used reference from google.