The PHATandy Tome of Daily Updates.

[Sebastian Gromann]

hm, donno why, i dig it again, my friend. nice designs in those shapes.
I'm curious about the next you are jumbing in!

[TheGnoll]

dude, you're f*cking machine!

really liked the big-ass spaceship landing, nice composition, would deserve to be pushed forward.The steampunk c3po is really well painted.I probably would have exaggerated the proportions a little bit to make the design more interesting and pushed the rendering on the metal bitsto make it feel less "velvety".All the guns look super time and professionaly executed, and i would love to see more work on that steampunk beach-station.Would look great with the same palette of HL2 beach level!.
Always cool to see what you've been up to, keep up the good work!

[dan liimatta]

Awesome work Andy - love the mechanical designs

& been too long since I was around, but its a pleasure to see all the productivity you have had.

[PHATandy]

Sebastian Glad you like it, theres just a lot of it that I find boring. Very simple angular boxy designs. Nothing exciting. TY though.
Ryan Yeess, that HL2 pallette would be pretty sweet. I always loved the feeling they created with those areas, great stuff. And thanks man, glad you like my shit as always.
Dan Thanks a lot man, glad to see you posting again recently too. Some good shit going on!

Working on another Steampunk commision. This is built on a 3d model base. The 'specifications' were decided for me, so 2 sets of tri-plane wings and the amount of guns and so on. The first one was my first attempt, but I needed another pass on it to make it feel a bit more unique, chunky and steampunk. Still have some changes to make, but I'll be painting soon.

[PHATandy]

Heyy-yooo
Got some more guns I worked up.

Did some reading into railguns and came up with my own little ideas. Built them around the current bases of weapons to give them a realistic feel/size. The rifle is built around a AWP sniper and the other just around a normal small pistol. Open sides help reduce the heat problems. Friction is also a problem with them, so theoretically, I thought if you had rotating magnets you could essentially have the projectile hover in the middle, thus the rails dont wear out. Its a bit of a wishy washy idea though.

It would make for an interesting weapon though, game-wise. You have to spin up the magnets and then the ideas of reloading both battery and ammo. Railguns are interesting too because you don't need gunpowder when firing so you can have way more bullets in a magazine. Or potentially have larger calibre rounds in smaller guns. It would depend on how strong a force the magnets could produce though. From current science I dont think it works at all on a small weapon size. They've only been able to experiment with really big calibre stuff.

Also painted up that flying fortress thing.

[John T]

Good work-I think if there is one thing I would suggest, it is to play up some color temperature changes more. Fortunately, this is a very easy thing to do in digital art! Your work seems to tend toward a slightly drab feel, and I suspect if you did a slight wash of warm/cool gradating over the piece, it would make things feel a bit more alive... there are a ton of ways to do this, be it a "photo filter" color overlay mask that you could erase on to lessen the effect where you don't want it, a "soft light" layer pass with some soft brushes, or even tossing another image on top and setting the blending mode to something that works, then erasing out the parts that don't look good-anything that could add a subtle bit of flavor to the hue temperature!

[ThomasM]

Nice last couple of pieces Andy, I like those railguns a lot.

I would just crit on this plane that there are a few parts which the perspective is a little off. The front window for example doesnt look like its wrapping round a form (viewed form above). The sharpness of the core shadow also doesnt really match up with the smoothness of the change from light-dark on the window.

Also, the three near gun turrets in front of the first wing (close to us) have a strange shadow arrangement there. From what it looks like in terms of light direction, the rear one (and possible the second along too) would be in shadow. Anyway, something to think about perhaps.

Secondly, another crit would be to watch those ellipses on the cylinders. As you know I´m sure, the widest part of the ellipse should be perpendicular to the centre line of the cylinder. If this isn´t true then perspective always looks off. Thats just a little thing, but a couple are very slightly off, and it does reduce the effect of the image slightly.

Finally, edges, cough. haha soften some of those of low contrast, particularly on the underside of plane and it would really help place it in its environment. I know you know them, but remember that edges are softer in distance, areas of low contrast, soft materials, parts which you want to draw focus from, etc etc. I dont mean to be a pest, but its always worth a reminder.

Hope that helps-

[ThomasM]

Oh, and I forgot to mention, all edges in movement are softened too, which is very important for this piece - cheers

[PHATandy]

JohnT and Tom
I really appreciate all these crits guys. I've been reworking it and pretty much changing everything you guys have said, so thank you so much. I wasn't quite finished but now with all these changes its looking a lot better.
Thanks a lot, I mean it.


I got a job. Which has me all like WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.
If all goes to plan I will be working in like 3-4 weeks.
So in the mean time I have bust my balls, so I'm going to be trying to put out some sort of speed painting or study out every day. I feel like I need to work on being able to tackle anything, and do it more quickly.

About 1 hour;

[Obstfelder]

That is a lot of quality for an hour of work.

Really like your sketchbook, especially your gun designs.

and congrats on getting a job!

[PHATandy]

Thanks a lot Obstfelder. Glad you enjoy some of my shit.

Another quick speed painting. About an hour I guess, but I did spend a good 20 minutes messing with his overall shape, but ended up making something boring anyways :/ Just trying to experiment a bit with getting stuff down, and refining it into something. Using more hard edge brushes and getting colour in quickly.

[JakehC]

ur dope as fuck.

[MacTire]

Marvellous stuff Andy, congrats on getting the job!

Can't really think of anything to crit. Maybe adjust the position of the backpack details to the right of that soldier's head, a little left and lower to match the torso perspective. Though I realise that was a quick experiment so you may not be interested in correcting it.

Anyway, looking forward to more from you!

[PHATandy]

Your dope as fuck too Aryeh, you to Mactire. Thanks guys.

Another quickie, about an hour.
Not really thinking, but there in lies the problem. I get caught up in the process of painting and discovering 'something' in it, that what comes out is kind of boring. Some nice things come about, but a lot of the time I feel my work always misses that something unique that should be special about every design or painting. I feel like I need to be able to find something special, even when working from nothing, every time. Otherwise my work has no purpose other than being just another practice piece on technique. I'm making this differentiation as wanting to be a concept artist. The purpose of my painting should be the idea itself really.

So.. yeah...;

[Mark Tarrisse]

Man you've got some great stuff here, I'm not too sure about the plane you did, but except that your enviros are really cool, and that last character came great too !

[Marian Rowling]

Hey Andy just wanted to say well done on getting a job, a no how hard it is to get any kind of work at the moment, so well done you. Is it art related or just something to help pay the bills and fund your art studies?

[ThomasM]

I hear you about the environments Andy, and I know this is a crit that I'm sure you dont want to hear, but do you ever do any thumbnails for them, or just dive straight in?

I get the feeling that a lot of people just REFUSE to accept that whipping out 50 thumnails in half an hour is a good use of time, mostly because its kind of delayed gratification in terms of painting. In my experience thats the ONE thing that has helped me most with landscapes.

Just a thought anyway

[walnut]

@ThomasM: My thoughts exactly. Sometimes you need to dig around for the right idea and composition. Which is not to say i don't like what you've been doing in the last couple pages.

[PHATandy]

Mark Thanks man, I'm not sure about the plane either. I rushed into working with a certain design before I had something unique worked out. Its super boring imo. Cheers.

Marian Its full time, it will pay the bills, but the best part, its at a video game studio in London. I'm super pumped. I just gotta make sure I don't suck though, I'm super nervous about being around some REALLY great artists.

Tom GODDAMNIT TOM, Seriously, I wish I could have a little version of you on my desk, so I can be like "Mini-Tom, what am I going to do wrong this time so I can avoid it?". You always hit thinks of the head. I did a bit more searching with this picture before I commited myself, and its better for it.

A little bit of the old generic but; some kind of infantry based combat mech.

[wreck]

Like!

[Marian Rowling]

Marian Its full time, it will pay the bills, but the best part, its at a video game studio in London. I'm super pumped. I just gotta make sure I don't suck though, I'm super nervous about being around some REALLY great artists.

That sounds fantastic Andy, have to say well done again, and remember when you get those nervous moments that they wouldn't have employed you if they
didn't see something good in your art. You're going to progress so quickly with such good artists around you, I hope you still find time to post.

[ThomasM]

no worries man, glad to hear that helped a bit. And again, congrats on the job - just arrived back in England and looking forward to churning out some art!

[PHATandy]

Wreck Like your like!

Marian I sure hope so, I really don't want to dissapoint anyone. I have this weird fear that they saw something in my portfolio that is something I can't do, or that my portfolio makes me look better than I am. Fingers crossed.

Tom Thanks a lot man, and good shit! Get going!

Some more bits and bobs. The second two pieces were me just experimenting with painting over the top of some photos to try and create something.

[Saurabhinator]

http://www.conceptart.org/forums/att...1&d=1337108336
this one is wicked sick

[PeterPrime]

Fantastic use of colors and awesome compositions you have here.

Your latest enviros are wicked!

[Dile_]

oh my! Your concepts on the last few pages are so ace! I think i've said that before, but you're really improving on all fronts here!

(I'm really loving this btw: http://www.conceptart.org/forums/att...1&d=1335395207 , also your illustration work is getting so strong! )

Sweeet! keep it up I'm trying to learn 3D too, takes a lot of patience but it looks so good when you can combine both of them to show off your concepts and ideas and you seem to have gotten the hang of that!

[ceddo]

Beautiful artwork Andy, I especially like your mech concepts on the last couple of pages and your spaceship scenes! Thank you as well for your direction, I've been doing one hour color studies like you said (mostly) every day and they have been really really useful so far! All the best man, hope to hear about your game studio experiences soon!!

[jNeumann]

Really great environment studies man, keep at it!

[JakehC]

You shouldnt be so critical about your work. 99% percent of the problems you will ever see in your work are going to be completely looked over by most people.

Just enjoy the process and keep being awesome. You are already performing at a higher level than most concept artist. As long as you dont become complacent you'll do fine with your trajectory.

(on the sketch with the green ceiling and the red floor, i feel like the floor should be less saturated beneath the green light and more saturated/darker-value towards the edges of the frame as it moves away from the light.)

[sourgasm]

It's all so sexy!