From traditional to digital

[jorvaa]

I LOVE the dragon composition. Just awesome.

[Suncut]

rumpenstiltzkin: thanks!
jorvaa: thanks!

I know I've been really neglecting this sketchbook, but here's some new stuff again.

I thought I posted here about the workshop I went to, but maybe I didn't? I didn't see a post about it now that I looked. I was at the northernlights workshop in.. may? And I got some really helpful pointers there. And got to meet some awesome artists!

Here's my workshop piece, still a wip though, and a another wip where I tried to apply what I learned. They got left to the wayside a bit after I had a bit of work to do, and a new project. I'll get back to them though.





Here's a few characters for the game hay day, out on ios now.



A piece for the art order, I probably haven't posted either.



Cool stuff for my new game project, we're participating in the SomethingAwful forums yearly gamedev challenge for July. Our game is a ballsim where the guests will be very troublesome. 20 days to go!

We're blogging the progress over at http://www.freeholdentertainment.com...ll/?page_id=59 if anyone wants to follow along, I've made quite a few posts about developing the art already.

[Suncut]

Game getting ready! Three days to deadline, sheesh.

[Suncut]

Game got done, and we took home double victory from both the judges and the public, which is pretty cool.
Screenshot of the final. Yes the lazyass programmer failed to add shadows under the characters.



I finished some stuff finally.




I started something as a quick halloween thing, but realized I'm probably not that good at catching the spirit of halloween. Maybe I'll do something with it anyway.



Did I mention earlier we started a new game? Here's some development stuff on it, not everything will appear in the final but it was fun. And I love spriter, it's the best program ever.







Some more character art for supercell.



Not a lot of sketches I'm sorry to say, now that the uploading is so easy maybe I'll get on and scan some stuff.

[The1CalledTess]

I love your colors and concepts!

[Suncut]

The1CalledTess: thanks!

Now OBVIOUSLY everyone has participated in the selfportrait day and seen this in the thread already, but I'm posting it here just to be complete!

Also, I made page for myself on facebook! http://www.facebook.com/JHeiskaIllustration
Now I just need to figure out what to post there, judging from my sketchbook frequency it's going to have to be something besides sketches.

I had really grand ideas, but they didn't really work out. Maybe next self portrait will be awesome! Doing this in tones took me exactly as long as doing one in color would have taken, maybe even longer. Need to practice restrictive value ranges from life more.

[Wretched]

That portrait looks wonderful, tone is so much more flattering than full color anyway mine was rushed and ended horribly.
So hey, thank you for coming by my wip thread, I appreciate your input. I remember you from the TAD portfolio critiques, you had some lovely work to show, I seem to recall John English speaking quite highly of it through the review. Learned so much from those, I wish they'd keep going with them. Also didn't know you were involved in indie development, a very late congrats on win. I'd love to get involved in an independent game project, were they contacts you made here?? Been looking for something to focus me. All the art I do is listless, meandering experimentation, a collaboration might be a really great experience.

Anyway, just wanted to check out your sketchbook and say hi ...and thanks again for the support

[Suncut]

Wretched: Thanks! Yeah John English was wonderful, I got so much out of his critique. Now I just need to work harder on applying it.

I found my indie team on the SomethingAwful forums, I just posted on the thread about the game competition and told them I was looking for a team and explained what kind of games I like to make. I got a few people interested, and picked the team that had the best idea and the best people! They were people who didn't have professional game development experience, but had done hobby projects and had a lot of other experience. We decided to regard the game competition as a tryout to see if we liked making games together, and then continue with the intent to publish if we did.

If you wanted to find people interested in making games together you could always participate in the biweekly game jams as an artist and see how you like it and if you can find some people who you work well with. If things don't work out you still get art and experience out of it, so if you got the time it can be great fun. The next bigger game competition will likely launch next summer, and there will be more complete games made for that.

I'm sure there are other similar activities on other forums and communities I don't know about. I think it's a good idea to start with a smaller contained project with people you don't know and have no experience working with, so there won't be so much disappointment if things don't work out.

And just so I won't be boring and post with no art, I'll post boring art. My attempts to study the skeleton, need more work.

[vices]

That game looks pretty sweet, are you thinking about making app games?

And i'm in love with that house on the cliff, gorgeous~~~

[Suncut]

vices: Thanks! Yeah we're mainly targeting ios and android tablets at first, while trying to make sure the game is at least theoretically compatible with phones too. We might release for computer eventually, time will tell.

Here's a sketch I will be putting paint on live at Aethercon, booth times fri noon to 3 pm EST sat 5 – 8 pm GMT +2 sun 5 – 8 pm GMT +2. You can join and watch live through the aethercon artist booth, I'm at booth 3.

[Alex Eh]

Rahhh nice sketchbook! And the games your helping develop are looking quiet cool form the screenshots. Hope it's a pleassure to make them! Nice personal stuff too, keep it up o___o Something I noticed about the recent portrait was the eyes were a little disproportion.

[Wingal]

Enjoyed looking through your sketchbook! Such fun work to look at! Especially your game art =)

[Suncut]

Alex Eh: Thanks! You're so right about the eyes, I hate it when I still make stupid mistakes like those. I love doing my game stuff, there's nothing like totally hands off approach to graphics from the rest of the team!
Wingal: Thanks! Lots more game art to come!

So my streaming happened, and I managed to get pretty far into the sketch in the three hours, though I'm sure I wasn't exactly a brilliant speaker. This is where my sketch is now, with about 15 mins of adjustments after the end of the stream. You can still catch the stream in my youtube account if anyone actually wants to watch through 3 hours of painting. http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiNM...g?feature=mhee A new stream will start pretty soon too, if anyone wants to watch, this time I'll try to speak more clearly I promise! I think I'll continue on the sketch, or talk about my game stuff, nobody present seemed interested in tiling last night.

[kevin_]

you have a great style and you have the colors to back it up! great stuff , keep it up!

[BlackDelphin]

Your skeleton studies from post #218 are really nice, I think I'll be doing a few myself.
Nice sketchbook overall so far, i enjoy browsing it.

[Suncut]

kevin_: thanks!
BlackDelphin: Thanks, I'll try and fit in more studies into my schedule too!

Last day of streaming!
Today I'll be talking about making art assets for mobile games, since I am lazy and I have some assets that need doing. In honor of that here's a few animations I've finished with Spriter, and also an update on the painting I was doing yesterday. The animations run a bit fast on the browser, as I can't exactly make the timings match with the actual animations in Spriter.

Stream on will start on youtube at 10 am EST / 5 pm GMT +2
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiN...pDQjAHWYS2PKjg

[lionheartGFX]

such an enjoyable skethbook, and an amazing progression of talent, keep on posting i really like your ideas and storytelling

[Suncut]

lionheartGFX: Thanks!
Here's some progress on the con sketch, I'm working hard to actually bring it to some kind of finish because I like it. Ended up completely redoing the background.

[humboldt squid]

Oh cool, I've done the SA gamedev challenge before too! I wasn't able to find the time last summer, but I worked on "citizen's inc" the summer before and "you can't evolve" and "you have no arms" the year before (the latter one actually won iirc). It's a lot of fun! I'll have to try out spriter if I participate next year, I did all my spriting in PS and it was a bit of a pain.

Anyway I really admire your grasp of light and color (and your studio space :p )

[Suncut]

humboldt squid: Thanks! This year was the first year I checked out the gamedev, but I did play a bit of "You have no arms" as I went through the previous years! It was such great fun to take part, but took a huge time commitment! I think your admiration of my studio space might be misplaced, here in the city it's tiny!

Here's finally the finish from the picture started on the streams! I did a fun thing where I printed it out, scrippled pencil all over it and then scanned it back in ans used it as texture. I actually really like the effect.

[Fallenangel]

I really like the colors in the last one, but i'm not sure about her arm and shoulder...even for a snake like creature they look as they are bent too much.
Overall, it's really cool to see your works!

Keep up with the great job! And keep posting great art.
Cheers,
Fallen.

[Suncut]

Fallenangel: I think I can see what you mean about the shoulder, it is quite bendy. I'm not sure about the arm though, the pose there seems quite achievable to me even for a quite unbendy person. Maybe you can elaborate?

Here's some animations for our first boss thing, I find him horribly cute. He's a mash up of slime monsters that appear before the player gets to him. And he has eaten a mushroom. Animation timings are slightly off again etc.

[LeaderOfZombies]

After seeing your work, I totally get what you mean by getting the colors right. Very inspiring stuff!

[Suncut]

LeaderOfZombies: Great!

I started a new portfolio piece, based on the novel Sixty-eight Rooms. Still very messy.




Christmas crafting! I may not be able to have a real Christmas tree, but nothing will stop me from having plenty of small ones! I still need to figure out how I'm gonna glue everything together.

[Fallenangel]

Fallenangel: I think I can see what you mean about the shoulder, it is quite bendy. I'm not sure about the arm though, the pose there seems quite achievable to me even for a quite unbendy person. Maybe you can elaborate?

Yeah you are right, the arm itself seems to be ok.
However, combined with that "bent"/"twisted" shoulder it looks as if her arm is pulled/forced artificially backwards and up.

Hope this explains it a bit better.

Cheers,
Fallen.