Saturday, December 11, 2010

A Devil in DoozelDorf

The current table top that Im playing is Pathfinder (all of the good of D&D none of the bad). The campaign that Im running is called "A Devil in DoozelDorf", DoozelDorf being the moutain villiage that the campaign started in. Without going into the story itself, DoozelDorf has turned out to be a fun town to illustrate and flesh out for the group.

Ive decided to undertake a very large project that will basically illustrate every building in DoozelDorf as well as every floor and make it all interactive in Flash. That said, Im going to start posting the work as its done. That said, here is one of the various homes from the town:

Pencil


Painted

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Tengu Troll

From a D&D campaign that we had 2 years ago that my group still talks about. To sum up the campagin, it was an asian setting. The group had recieved orders from a daimyo to infiltraite and observe a subject in a fortress that bordered his domain. On their way through the forest, they had a random encounter that ended up being the theme of the night. James, a player whos character is on the ground in this image was actually killed (twice) but at the complaining of my players I had to un-write him back to life. Not something I like to have to do in a game. In the end however that nights game was a lot of fun, even if I had a rewrite and so I drew this in memorial of it. Its been sitting in my portfolio for 2 years now and so I wanted to finally finish it so that it would have the color I hopefully showed them with it.


Sunday, November 28, 2010

Icons Project 1

For a long time, Ive been a huge fan of Chuck Close. In Close's work the basic theme is pixilation. Downgrading an image to the point where it seems irrelevant, ideally skirting the line between when exactly an image is and when it is not.


That said, I find his work profound and in the air of all artists, I intend to take the idea and run with it. Among the Icons that I will be painting will be his Holiness the Dali Lama, whom I have a great appreciation of.

In the piece that Im working on, of what the belong is just the digital preliminary work, I chose to stay with the original photographs black and whites as the photo uses the Grey tones as an example of the symbolic ethics of Buddhism that he represents. Grey being the middle path between white and black.

The below, as always goes from oldest to most recent, but in this case, shows the progression of grid and numbers into pixel image. click and then reclick the images as they open in a new window so you can understand the size. When this project is done it will be 4'x5.5'

 

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Geta

Ive been training at a taiko dojo, as mentioned in another post at two different places. RyuShu Taiko is my favorite and I have a great deal of respect for the sensei Gerald and Horiko.

For christmas Ive made them these: (project start to finish)

Draft

Mock up 1
Mock up

Finished Top
Finished Bottom

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Taiko Tides Update:

So I did get the contract and not only that, but Im being asked to create an all-flash version of the site. I think Im going to have to put up a tab for my corporate graphic work as well....

Stay tuned for that.

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Taiko Logo

I belong to two different Taiko Dojo. RyuShuTaiko and the StonyBrook Taiko Tides.

The tides are busy developing a website that's professional. Here is the Index page with their logo which I am working on for their approval.

Taiko Tides original logo:



Updated Taiko Tides logo:



Index Page and new round design for their site, set as a rollover image: (image before rollover)



image after roll over:


Unfortunately for now, I can't post the main page as apparently the print screen function on my laptop has decided to stop functioning. So it wont be possible to show but to give a quick description:

Basically it would be the same taiko drum head without the Mon (logo) in the middle with an invisible table inset on the drum head itself. The title font for "taiko tides" would be larger and moved to the top of the drum head but still present on the "canvas" background. The entirety of the site would be placed directly on top of the drum head itself.

Sunday, October 31, 2010

Un-Were Wolves

While I haven't gone into a great deal of detail about the campaigns and stories that myself and my group of gamers go through, a great deal (like 98%) of my illustration comes directly out of those games. That said, the following illustration and the series that its from (that are in various stages of color at the moment) come from the second of the stories that we all played through.

In this case, the story revolved around a central theme and interest of mine in creative writing; classic monsters used in unclassic ways. Im not going to bore you with the details suffice to say that this particular tale involved one of my very favorite of the classic monsters, the werewolf. Except that for the story to keep from being stale and feel different for the players, it needed to have the roles reversed in it. So a quick summery of the story-line myth might help:

Were Wolves originally were not the semi-wolf/part-man beasts that are popular in today's retelling of the myth. At first they were either men that had gone crazy (think somewhere between Mario and the native American Wendigo) OR men whom transformed, momentarily INTO wolves. Today's werewolves lack the mysterious punch that their mythological ancestors had in tales from the dark ages because we insist on removing the magic from the tale. However, considering that there is no such thing as werewolves to begin with, removing the fun magic from the tale is at very best boring and at very worst illogical. Therefore for my myth men transform completely into wolves.

So if thats the case, than the question has to be asked: If monkeys transform into dogs, do dogs transform into men? The answer, in this story is a resounding yes. Basically, were children are wolves that transform into men. Werewolves retain the intellect, in most stories, of their awaiting former human selves, so by that same logic were children must retain their wolf sense of self and are therefore feral. Now this may not sound all that entertaining for a story until you hear the back story and hook that makes the story interesting.

To sum that up for you: A young woman was raped by a were man whilest he was in his cycle. Obviously the creature had human form and therefore human hormones so therefore had the instinct to breed with people, but as he was only human for a moment, it made the rape that much worse. Thresha, the character raped by said half-beast was unaware of that, what would come to be the father of her soon-to-be-"children" was a were child. She didn't come to have this knowledge until she gave birth to puppies. YaddaYaddaYadda there's a story line, etc etc and every cycle of the moon her puppies, whom age in human years, turn into little feral children.

Obviously the bite of which can cause man to become beast and visa versa.

without further a due, I will post the images, early illustration and mistakes first finishing up with the final finished piece as per usual.