Rakugaki (FEB 2ND) 14:54

[Undertow]

I've been getting hassled to start a DSB for a while now.. I've been putting it off for quite some time because I told myself I wouldn't do it unless I could keep up with it. Well, I've decided that I can keep up with it so here's my introductory images to give everyone a feel for the kind of work that I do. Either way, thx for taking a look
-Mike

[Phuzion]

yeah Mike! rockin' it. Great work man. The only crit I have is to maybe work on faces a little more, but it's all looking mui excellante! I'm keeping an eye on you. Peace

-Daniel

[Plagu£]

Great work, it looks like it just gets better and better. You should draw more action shots, realy like the guy doing the back flip. Also good work on the creatures, the detail is top notch.

Keep on postin, looks good

[Undertow]

Daniel: Thanks for the compliment Your stuff rocks all over the place, hopefully keeping up with a DSB will have my work improving by leaps in bounds over the next few months. Regarding faces, I'll try to work on them more.. I have a bad tendancy of just drawing in a face as filler and not caring much about how it looks.

Plague: thanks for the compliments.. especially on the creatures I hadn't even started drawing things like mecha, creatures, or tech work until the past year. I'm really starting to develop a style of my own right now so there are going to be allot of inconsistancies in my work for this DSB. I'm hoping that when someone sees something that they like out of my sketchbook that I can start bringing out more of what I did in that piece and start incorporating it into the rest of my work. My biggest problem is that I'm having trouble seeing what I'm doing right so I keep changing things. Hopefully more people will be harder on me through here than they are in person.

Anyhow.. back to work

[Sok N. Wett]

HAAAADOOOOKEEEENNNN!!!!! Excellent stuff Mike, finally you started one of these badboys, definately one to keep an eye on. Can't wait to go to the SF workshop.

[jetpack42]

yeah man, good to see you in the mix. this stuff is great, i'm totally digging it already.

its about time.

[Bojee]

Yeah bro, keep them coming.

[Undertow]

Sok: Hey dude, thx for the compliments.. it's always nice to hear good things about the my work. In seriousness though, feel free to be hard on me, I could use the constructive criticism, lord knows I don't know as much as I should.
Mike: Thx for giving me a hard time about doing this, I know that I need to produce more and because I've been so out of practice this forces me to draw constantly which will only improve my artwork almost daily. As per what I said to Sok, rip me a new one whenever you feel it's necessary too. I haven't really produced anything that could be considered "It's finally done" worthy material yet so this will be my stepping stone.
Alan: Happy belated birthday! Thx for the support man. I've missed so many sketch nights.. really wish I lived farther south. Kekai was mentioning us maybe having one a little further north as a field trip of sorts. That'd be sweet. So when were you supposed to start MICA, was it spring or winter semester?
Anyhow, here's my update for Monday.


And something from back in 99 that I found a crappy photo copy of that was stuffed in a sketch book. The image was cropped incorrectly and I had planne on throwing it out.. the original is in VA with my portfolio otherwise I'd scan it up. It doesn't suck, but it gives you a good idea of the work I used to produce.

[skrubbles]

Its about time you got off your ass and posted some stuff Awesome stuff man. Wish you would post more from your sketchbook cause that stuff is kickin... well, that's if you're allowed to that is.

KEEP IT UP

[jetpack42]

even though ive seen these, i still think they're great. same goes for you buddy, anytime you see something in my work you think sucks, fire away. good to see you posting...its only upward from here! can't wait to see whats coming!

[xia]

Sweet shits! Post more Bro!

[auden100]

Hell yeah. This is tight. I'm rolling through this sketch thread with a smile on my face wondering what wicked lines you'll laying down next. Keep it up. I want to see more.

[Plagu£]

Nice job on the new sketches. Love the head on the first one, also like how you keep it fairly simple. Only crits is they look kinda bored standing there, try having them in action next time. Other then that still looks great!

*Tool kicks so much ass* (assuming you got your name from them..)

[Sanby]

Wow, their is so much awesome stuff here. I love it all.

Sanby

[Undertow]

First off thanks for the support guys. Second of all, I appologize for not writing individual responses of thx. I will reply to everyone individually tomorrow.. I'm too tired and frustrated right now.. it has not been a good day Anyhow, here's my daily update. The second image is still under construction, I'm getting incredibly frustrated trying to come up with a half way decent design and I'll try to finish it tomorrow.
-Mike

[JadeDragon]

Hi Mike!

Im glad somebody hassled you to post this...you've got some really great stuff going on here! Dig the comicbook influence. From monsters to mech to hero stuff, really looks like you are going for a nice well rounded design portfolio. Looking good so far!

I'll definitely be keeping an eye on ya...I get the feeling this will be a thread to watch! Excellent...

Seeya on the updates!~~~JadeDragon

[PHATandy]

wow.. excellent work man.. im really loving all ure work.. especially ure tool sticker on the dudes briefcase..

keep up the good work

[Phuzion]

Wuuuuuurd! right on Mike. These are lookin' good. I like the marker one with the Hell Boy lookin' gun. Cool shit all around, just keep 'em comin'. Peace homez

-Daniel

[Undertow]

As promised the individual responses.. and there will be sketch book updates every night.

Lou: What do you think half of this stuff is? Technically I shouldn't be showing most of these sketches because they are covered in my NDA.. shit all of my work is property of WildFire, as long as I'm not giving away the important stuff that's o.k. After all, this is concept art, not the finished pieces, and the images are all copywritten. BTW, we're on for Thursday.

Mike: sorry about the weak update... and the pizza

Xia: and thank you. Diggin your sketch book as well, remind me to give you props in your thread

Auden: thx man, greatly appreciated. I promise to do an update a night. My biggest problem is keeping it loose right now. Once I figure that out, I'll be o.k. I keep focussing on tight line work from back in my comic penciller wannabe days.

Plague: Thx for the compliment The reason why most of these are static poses is due to the fact that I have a list of 40+ items that I have to supply concept sketches for by the end of the month. WIth that being said I don't have a hell of allot of time to be able to do dynamic poses showing the figures in motion without obscuring the details of the design, hence the 3/4 character angle for each of them. I would love to be able to break each figure down into a hyper dynamic, force perspective pose but I'll save that for the interior illos. Being that I only have about 2 hrs. of free time every night in between art direction and business management work to draw I have to keep it simple for speed purposes. On the whole Tool front.. yup, that's where I got my name, been using it since 97. There's even more history behind it than that though.. maybe I'll go into it later

Sanby: thx!

JadeDragon: Thank you for the compliments they are greatly appreciated Almost all of the work you see here is actually concept sketches for a table top RPG that I'm the art lead on. I'll make sure to show some of the more finished illustrations once I'm done all these damn sketches. Unfortunately it's my night job so I don't get to dedicate nearly as much time to it as I'd like BTW, nice work over at Top Cow are you still working for them or are you strictly freelance right now?

PHATandy: Thx bro! That dude is me, the briefcase is actually my portfolio, and yes, it does have a Tool sticker on it. That piece was part of my concept art portfolio submission for the Microsoft X-Box team back in 2000 when I was looking for work. They liked my work allot, they just didn't have anything available for me at the time.. I ended up getting sick of waiting by the phone so I joined the Navy.

Daniel: Thanks bro.. it's too bad you're not going to be at the SF workshop. I owe you a beer for all the praise you're giving me.. gotta bribe you somehow right? That marker sketch is 5 years old I can't wait until I'm done all these damn sketches so I can start doing more finished work for a change Nothing drives me more insane than showing half assed sketch book material and giving the impression that that's all that I'm capable of.. or at least, some might believe.. I'm not pointing any fingers at any particular CA member from Seattle or anything.. *cough*

[Undertow]

I'm taking the night off to let my brain melt. (a.k.a.) drinkin' 40's and playing Halo 2 with a friend of mine since the wife is out of town. So here's a weak update, something old, something new, something borrowed, and nothing blue.
-Mike

[Sanby]

First words that came to my head : "O man, that fucking rocks!"

The figure poses are great, and the robot...wow.

Time for me to go back to the drawing board

Sanby

[JoshuaTheJames]

Cool stuff dude...


-Joshua James

[Sok N. Wett]

GAWD ZOGZ I love that last one, it's so compelling to see that one in your sketchbook remember when I was stating about the whole Travis Charest influence, man I see it, and I love it.

[Undertow]

Some life drawing from this weekend.

[jungsangchoe]

hey dude... some wicked stuff you have here... love them monsters and botty stuffz... i really hope to see more coming from ya.. peace

[Sok N. Wett]

Life study is so cool, I'll have to start doing some as well. I need to get on par with your artwork.

[Undertow]

thx guys. Hopefully I'll learn a thing or 2 when I'm down in San Fran in January. As a disclaimer, I can't post everything in my sketchbook due to NDA with WildFire. I do post what I can though. Update to follow in a few hours.

JoshuatheJames: I appreciate the compiment, hopefully I'll keep it up and you'll never have a reason to ban me.
Sok: Thx man.. I try not to be a Travis clone. hopefully you meant that it seems like there's an influence but not an overbearing resemblance. That piece is actually the scrapped book cover for CthulhuTech. I'm in layout on the new one now... read disclaimer above as to why my posts are so stale.

-Mike

[jetpack42]

sup dood, cool to see your drawings at the zoo. i was suprised at first to see how tightly rendered they were. cool how you approach it so differently. i would have liked to watch you do these. and as before, lovin that old book cover....mmmmmm

[Undertow]

Hey Mike, I didn't really spend any more than 4 or 5 minutes doing the life drawing. Little kids and parents talking to me kind of slowed down progress on a few of them. I wanted to try and grab the shadows and a bit of the texture on each of the zoo animals in case I have to draw them again some time. I spent the most amount of time on the Piranha. My scanner sucks with grey scale images so allot of my pencil work is lost in scanning unless I work really tight.

no updates until at the earliest this weekend.. nasty deadline looming.
_mike

[dadamafia]

cool stuff. we cant wait until the weekend, we want more NOW!