WIP

Haven't posted anything in a long time, but with good reason (I always say that don't I?) In any case I haven't really had the energy to do much lately, been stuck in this dazed sort of funk. I have been working on two things though, a new comic and a drawing of the zombie cowgirl. It's not finished, so I'll refrain from posting it. Instead I'll post something that was rejected, it was a wine label design that the person who asked for it didn't like so they ended up not picking it. It's kinda abstract and not my best work, it's still charming in its own way.

A Good Birthday

It's been a long time since I posted, and an even longer time since I've done anything constructive. But I have my reasons. I stopped posting because it was finals around the middle of May. At the 28 of May I celebrated my birthday with my friends and family. We went cherry picking and had sushi. One of my better birthdays. It certainly sets the bar for how I will judge subsequent ones. I don't need any presents, just good company and they were. I got my favorite shoes dirty in the orchard and I don't even care. I'm gonna try really hard to work on models for my portfolio as it stands now I have a lot of free time I just hope I have the self control to not spend it all on wow.
Here's a concept drawing I did that got used as the base for the bar environment I made for my modeling/texturing class final:

Procrastinating

I have a ton of work to do and not much time to do it in, but for some reason I just feel like posting. Here are more concepts of Karen Blackwater. I like the one with the Poncho and Dagger.

Blackwater

I haven't posted in a while so I thought I'd share my latest project. It's an environment scene with a freaky western twist. It's the zombie version of the Wild West. Here's the drawing that inspired it:

I'll post more later when I have a bit more time. Working name for the figure is Karen Blackwater.

Job Hunting

I'm looking for some side jobs now, I think it's time. Dug around and hopefully I'll get something. Here are lots of example of my work.

Trying Out a New Background

I'm trying out this new background, it's a bit loud and ornate, but it'll do for now.

A Delicacy

I just finished a submitted a new comic to the new round of the WoW comic contest, I'm not holding back any punches this time. They will feel the full fury of my comic making skills! This time, I'm using techniques from Kazu Kibuishi, the creator of such great comics as Copper and Daisy Kutter. I don't yet share his wonderful sense of color design, but I'll just have to keep on trucking. Again, this time I use the knowledge of my previous comics to improve upon my latest one. Tell me if you notice a difference in quality.

Oh shit... I just notice some supertypos, even spelled my own name wrong! ARGH! This is what I get for staying up to do it. I'll fix it on my end, but it's too late to fix the version I already sent them, have to grin and bear it... sigh. The one on top as the fixes, the one on the bottom has the horrible typos.

More Comics to Come

My special edition Ipod arrived yesterday and I excitedly imported all the CDs I had (trust me it wasn't much). It certainly better than the bulky CD player I carried around. The package also included the complete Warcraft: Sunwell Trilogy, which I had fun reading as I waited for the songs to import. In the e-mail I got from Blizzard (I will work for this company one day I swear), they relayed that I could submit more comics and win again if I liked! This is great since I'm already half finished with penciling the next one. I also added a new banner of a ducky and lily pads at the bottom of the blog, isn't it cute?

Above is a sketch of Christian Bale that I did for a male figure study.

Drawing Cuties

I recently discovered the joys of watching Brothers and Sisters, the hit new ABC show. My favorite character is Kevin Walker portrayed by Matthew Rhys (Reece). I sat down and watched every episode, in fact, and is now officially enamored with the yummy star. In fact, I did a drawing of him, in color no less. Brothers and Sisters is the first thing in a long time to capture my attention and I actually stopped playing WoW to watch it, which is a testament to the greatness of the show. I'm glad to hear that they will be getting another season.

-Ray

In Other News

I won the comic contest! Yay, joy is me. Damn now I can't submit more comics to them. It was fun while it lasted, I regret not being more productive and making a crap load of comics and not posting here as much as I would like. I still have a few ideas for comics on my drafting board, maybe I'll finish them up.

Unexpected Business

Here's a screen shot on the environment I'm working on for my CG environment class. It's still in the super basic blocking out stage

In other news, I'm on spring break. In the meanwhile, I got a commission as rare as that is. I won't go into any details right now (I'll ask the client later if it's OK to publish the results here). However, if anyone needs a figurative artist for any commission work I welcome any chance to test my skills.

-Ray

The Pains of Slowness

I had my friend rebuild my computer, it runs fine except for one thing: he was out of ram. So for almost half a week now the damned thing has been sluggy as hell. And now I'm stuck in the labs on a computer that makes mines at home look like the Easter Bunny on coke. At least I got a stick of 512 mb ram in my backpack to upgrade my home computer with. However, there isn't much I can do about my current situation. I just have to suffer this until 6:30 and go to the zbursh workshop to get my project for tomorrow done. I have to get to posting more, but for now here's another concept sketch.

The Calm

I'm feeling the coming of a storm, its name is midterm. Only a few weeks before I have to sweep what I have done so far into something presentable (which is not much). Here's a sketch:

Third Time's a Charm

Ding ding ding I just submitted the third wow comic I did. As usual I will be posting it here early and here it is:I like the concept and I'm using some of the things I learned from the other comics, that really helped speed up the process and make it better than the other ones. The colors are vibrant and the forms are solid. The only problem I have with it is the hand in panel 2, it is kind of awkward and I didn't catch it during the refinement phase. Overall. I'm very happy with it and hopefully I'll finally win!

-Ray

Curses to Maya

Since Maya is being a royal bitch and is not letting me open 8.5 files on 8.0 I thought I'd be more active here and share some more of what I'm working on. Here's another perspective drawing for the Scrapyard.
This one got all smuggy but I thought I'd show it anyway. This part of the scrapyard is actually the arena and the setting is a near future where all the humans have died off and robots now run the show. The robots duke it out in the arena part of the scrapyard for supremecy as well as entertainment. I know that this is so very similar to the scrapyard from Battle Angel Alita, but I have a different vision. It's definitely more whimisical than the gritty scrapyard of Alita's world. I's say it's 80% whimsy and 20% gritty. The glowing cube suspended by the stick in the picture is an idea that my teacher said I should look into. Something along the lines of knowing the robot version of what a head on a stick is. I came up with a data cube that's been completely magnetized so that all it's data is destroyed.

The Scrapyard

I'm working on a scrapyard environment for my CG environments class. It's the "hard" class for this semester, hopefully I actually get something cool by the end of it. I'm kinda scared though because it's the 4th week already and we haven't even started modeling yet. We've been doing a ton of preproduction though, and I guess that doesn't hurt. Here is a sketch for the class.

A Little Time

It's the third week of school and I have been neglecting my posting again. Good news though I'm almost 70 on my mage, woot! I'm currently 69 and 1/3 hehe. I'm so close to spellsteal and a flying mount I can taste it. That's probably the biggest reason I haven't been posting or drawing. School have ignited my drawing again as it tends to do so here's a thumbnail sketch. I'll go into more detail of it as I post more drawings about the environment I'm doing.

Caught in a Rut

I'm caught is a tangled web. It's name is the WoW expansion pack: The Burning Crusade! Curse you why do you have to be so gosh darn fun! I haven't gotten anything done that I said I would. I also haven't been posting worth a damn. Oh well here's some more environmental sketches to look at.

Back in Business

OK computer is up and reconfigured and if I'm lucky I'm looking at a more powerful machine soon. Here's a quick doodle of a scene I just made up out of the blue.
It's lacking something but I cant put my finger on it.

I'm working on a drawing that I really like at the moment, it really shows off what I was able to pick up in ecroche class, but I prefer not to scan works in progress as doing that tend to throw me off, but I'll be sure to share the finished product.

-Ray

The Reason for Silence

Well it finally happened, I don't mean me going completely crazy cus that happened a long time ago. I mean my computer caught something bad and cut me off from my daily daily. This also wiped my buffer of work I scanned and did for the blog. I'll have to do that work all over again. In the meanwhile I'll just have to keep it going without posting pics with my posts. It's a real pain to have to reinstall and reconfigure my computer again, oh woe is me.

Here's a design I did for a friend, it seems like he's not gonna use it though so I have no problem with posting it here. It's still quite unrefined.