.:: Still Goin' ::.

[Brendan N]

Really cool book you have here sir. Last one is particularly cool. Think you need to "fool around" more, if that's what it was - actually looks like there was a good deal of thought invested in it. See how those trees in the background the vertical strokes make the whole thing feel more tense? Makes it eerie. It wouldn't have had the same feel if it didn't have those vertical lines in it colliding with the horizon. Think all it need is for the signature to be in the same colour as the horns - just to balance it.

But thanks for stopping by my book - keep the good stuff coming!

PS Oh, and B&W is for sissies and bedwetters; Real Men use Real Colour!

[BludHund]

Oh yeah......OH YEAH...OH YEAAHHHH!!!

As Black Frog would say "You're Doing Eet!"

I see you've locked on to what you're doing wrong / should be doing more of. Right on.
Now, tempo: spend enough time, concentrate your efforts, produce.

You have a fairly serious case of 'beautiful-study-itis'. Remember, studies don't need to
look good, they need to teach.

Failure is a necessity. Don't copy, analyze. Do exercises to develop your imagination,
and to identify weak points. Do projects and garner criticism on them to stretch your
limits and improve your process.

In other words...duh. You know.

Quote:

"I have always like black and white art the most. I actually had no care in the world
for painting with colours until I realized that I kind of have to...
Anyway, I enjoy B&W so I'm gonna try do more of it."

Supposedly Frank Reilly said something like:

"80 percent of the picture depends on getting the values correct, 20 percent on correct
chroma, and hue doesn't matter much at all."

I don't think you'll ever regret honing your black-and-white sensitivity. Although
you may want to invest / experiment with darkgrey-and-white.

Of course, you do have to cater to the expectations and needs of the market, so full
color rendering is still a necessary skill. Again, duh. Just keep up the tempo, don't slack
or fall into a comfort zone.

Cthulhu is friggin awesome, one of the best interpretations I've seen. More stuff like this
man, show us what we haven't seen before, and what we've seen before, but in way that
we've never seen it. 'Create'.

[fionkell]

For fooling around with a study, that sure turned out a great illustration!

[HunterKiller_]

Brendan N: Don't be dissin' black and white fooooo!
Thanks for the tips. If I said any of that stuff was my conscious decision I would be lying, haha.
I'm really quite clueless about these graphical/compositional languages, embarrassingly.
This piece was purely experimental which started off as a simple figure study. There were some thoughts put into it for sure, but mostly just making it up as I went.
I tend to seized up if I moil over my thoughts too much about a picture, so I'm finding it more fun to just dive in.

BludHund: Thanks for the detailed crit, man.
I am quite pedantic by nature, but you probably figured that.
Truth be told, the work you see in this thread is, I would say about sixty percent of my drawings. The other forty percent is too embarrassing to show or I just can't be bothered scanning, but mostly the former.

I am in agreement about the the importance of tones (I don't think any representation artist in their right mind would disagree).
However, I've taken more interest in pure black and white work, bold graphical stylizations à la Mignola. Of course this still has implications to colour painting, but it's probably further removed than grayscale.

fionkell: Cheers buddy!

Drawing my DnD character

[monotony]

LOTS of great new stuff, hunter! this newest character feels awesome-
so do the floating half-nude spaceman and the study with deerskull.

Don't have anything useful to say at the moment so I'm just going with motivation:
yay, you're working it, man! rock on!



seriously though...

[seetsy]

last character is looking good, its cool to see you turning the studies into illustrations, mixing it up, good to see. I agree i think value is really the most important part in paintings, so its good that you are concentrating on it. I think doing black and white, you really have to analyse the shadows, and i guess its the most limited pallette to work in, as you only have two tones to describe the forms, so yea its good training.. keep it up dude

[BludHund]

DnD char looking pretty sweet. I'd say get a bit of ref for the hand, it looks not quite right...like the fingers
should be angled downward more, maybe his thumb should be running along the shaft instead of wrapping it.
Hands gripping things...dammit I need to break down and shoot some ref photos myself and stop trollling the
interwebs to no point...

Quote: "I'm really quite clueless about these graphical/compositional languages, embarrassingly"

Loomis's 'Creative Illustration' is chock-full of stuff on this subject. A good overview of Graphic Design or
Layout principles might help, but I can't think of really a awesome one off the top my head (terrible) You
should study the works (and commentaries on works) of the old masters of composition like Caravaggio, plus
anybody that made a killing illustrating book covers. James Gurney also has ton of posts on this subject in his blog.

Diving in is just fine for the development stage, where you want your thoughts to flow freely, just remember to
do some thumbnails for composition, before spending marathon hours on a final delivery.

Quote: "I've taken more interest in pure black and white work, bold graphical stylizations à la Mignola" You
could do worse than be like Mignola I've got quite the Hellboy addiction myself.

I guess what I'm saying is, that by being sensitive to the absolute most simplistic of value relationships (black
and white), you are, in fact reducing things to their essence. This is a positive thing, since every value scheme
is, at its heart, a distinction between a lit and unlit portion. The only added principle in tonal work is edges,
which are damned hard to do with black and white...but not impossible.

Plussss....B&W means: graphic novel work, interior illustration work, spot illustration work (hello 3rd party /
independant RPG market!). You mentioned DnD. Do you realize how many 'D20 system' spinoffs and add-ons are
out there waiting for you to blow their minds with your soon-to-be-kickass portfolio?

Keep lovin' what you do, man.

[rumpenstiltzkin]

oh boy this is good stuff!
great drawings, love your studies alot

[The Sceptical Saint]

Cool Cthulu boss, you have skills. Skills that I covet. Skills, perhap, obtained from this "local art forum" you speak of?
yeah, I get abit cartoon-villiany sometimes. It's the relative lack of skills.
Anyways, I'd be intreasted in scoping out a NZ-based art forum. So could you drop me a link?

[Pigeonkill]

Nice Argonautica, it has that old retro Buck Rogers feel to it. Unique design. Good to see you back

[HunterKiller_]

Hai gais
Sorry for the long absence (again).
Good news is this time it wasn't because I had PMS, but because I got a job!

I've been working full time at an animation studio for past 6 months and it has been great.
Feel like I've given myself too much lenience in my spare time, so it's time to fire up the sketchbook once again!

Just a few scraps to get the ball rolling...

[BludHund]

LOL PMS.

good to have you back!

Which animation studio?

Daily scribbles would be a good thing to keep a journal of, and why not on CA

[~FPudiU~]

I see improvements here, not mediocre thingy you said.

Anyway, I'm studying animation now What kind of animation do you do?

[cout<mecha]

Nice to see an update from you HK, you are doing animation now!? Is it CG or hand drawn?

[Clean3d]

So glad you're back, because I hadn't looked through every single page of your SB and now I have! Awesome stuff, sir. Makes me want to draaaaaaw!

And so I shall. Thanks for motivating me to get off my lazy bum and do something!

[~KJK~]

nice stuff there! its odd that i have never visited your sketchbook before (or so i think lol) great studies and sketches, keep up!

[kingkostas]

awesome mate, congrats on the job.Keep it up mate

[monstertree]

Nice, love the sketches! Congrats on the studio job too

[HunterKiller_]

[b]BludHund/b] Hey bud. A little local studio, working on our own IP. Lucky find since most studios here (or anywhere) are contractors.

~FPudiU~ Thanks. I'm doing traditional 2D animation, albeit in Flash with a tablet.

cout<mecha Hey man. Doing digital hand-drawn animation.

Clean3d Flattered to be able to motivate anyone with my junk, thanks!

Parsakoira Thanks for droppin' in.

kingkostas Cheers king!

monstertree Thanks dude.

A small dump



Studies, coz' pelvis are on hard mode.




Haven't done digital painting for months. Really failed on the strip-mine enviro

[BludHund]

+1 pelvis studies.

Pew pew indeed. You know what else makes me think of that...(well everything, I suppose) but definitely: animal skulls.

Keep postinggg

[cout<mecha]

Nice studies this time around and look forward to seeing the animation when your done!

[kingkostas]

great improvement!!!

[AustenFM]

Neat sketchbook here! Exceptional progress from page 1, i dig your pencil work very much so, you should experiment more with those ink brushes too, they look really nice. No real critiques at the moment, things are looking nice proportion and design wise, time will polish the rest out. Keep it up!

Also, the pelvis ships made me laugh out loud, nice~

[Dana_T]

Thanks for stopping by my sketchbook! I find that involving myself in a project helps ease the confusion and what-not. But still it's all like, megh :p

Sweet work! I love that pelvic bone space ship so much xDD

[CrookedHorn]

the page of you ink studies of womens faces on page 17 is probably my favorite. really tight work man! rocking that ink like a boss!

[HunterKiller_]

Cheers for the support, guys!

Only have a few bits and pieces for now.

Last page is interpretations of Mignola designs for Atlantis, which were unused.

[FightingSeraph]

Excellent as always, HK. By the way, I sympathize with you on the whole "still living with mom and dad" scenario. (I'm 26 and still live with them, but if given the chance; I'd move in with a stripper.) As for flash animation, I would like to see you post some of them. (I happen to do frame-by-frame in flash as well.)

[JakehC]

those grayscale studies are pretty righteous

[monstertree]

The minimal lines on the bird studies are great, the one with his back to us is especially good

[HunterKiller_]

FightingSeraph: Thanks man. I'm in the process of moving out with a friend now, but finding a rental right now over here is quite a trudge.

lolbbq: Thanks guy.

monstertree: Cheers bud.

value/environment/composition study. Too much at once? Yes.


A WIP I had forgotten about.