Bounty Hunters - Color Comp 02

So here's the prep for the painting, and yeah...I went whole hog on the washes for the characters.  It's pretty dark, but I think it'll hold up with the colors, I'm going to be trying a thinner mix this time as well.  But the background...

...not so much.  I thought up a combination of two blotting techniques that I was going to try...and then totally forgot about it...and started filling in the blacks.  Whoops...so I just stopped and smoothed it out a little with some more sprayed black.  I'll set up a smaller canvas to try out that nebula blending deal I was thinking of, and just focus on the palette for the characters for now...

Bounty Hunters - Color Comp 01

Here's the pencil drawing for the color test...much smaller than even the individual sketches, so detail is at a minimum, but this is more for choosing a color palette.

While I'm getting this one prepped for paint, I'm going to experiment with washes, just to see how that works with the overspray from the airbrush.  I did that in a few places on the Oz color comps, and it came out pretty well, so I'm going to go whole hog to see what does and doesn't work...

Back to Disneyland - Moonliner 01

All right, one last one - the Moonliner.  This is an image to try to develop some more ambiance techniques, with the clouds of steam and smoke, blending the platform, rocket, and the starry background into the scene...

Back to Disneyland - Big Thunder Mountain 01

This is an easy view to remember, you always pass it on your way to Storybookland, on your way out the Old West.  I've always loved how the light never seems to get into that dark cave, it's one of my favorite spots in Disneyland.  It's on a bridge, and on the opposite side of the bridge there's an opening to a mine shaft, in front of the pond the bridge stands over, with fish jumping every now and again.  I'll try to keep the colors very warm and saturated with this one, but see if I can figure out how to do a dreamy haze or blur of some sort, to get that relaxed vibe.

It's a nice spot to sit a spell, I reckon...

Back to Disneyland - Haunted Mansion 01

Look out!  Ghosts!

I'm not sure how I'm going to handle this one, maybe a gloomy morning mist?  If I do nighttime lighting, I might end up not serving the purpose of this one to work on my foliage, by making them black to suit the coloring...I might do a some test passes in photoshop just to see what works...

Back to Disneyland - Jungle Cruise 01

You know why the Jungle Cruise is so awesome?  You get to sit for awhile, after not waiting in too long of a line.  And the new-ish piranhas they added in are sublime.

I do wish they'd re-envision the ride a bit though - the modern satirical take on the Cruise has evolved from being self-knowingly funny, to the Guides sounding just bored as they rush through the 'jokes.'  There are still a few guides who know how to pull off that kind of line delivery, but they've seemed few and far between the couple of years...less 'Disney Magic' and more 'Universal Acting.'

Anyways, leaves and wood textures are the purpose of this one...

Back to Disneyland - Space Mountain 01

Dude, I thought you were going to be studying organic shapes and solutions for your painting, so what's this?

Yeah, yeah...I know.  But I love Space Mountain, and I'm including stars and nebulae as an organic excuse to do this one.  And I'll say structural lighting while I'm at it.  Since it's an all white building, it'll be fun to add contrasting surface to space colors to it.

I fooled around with the composition a bit, I want it to look like a massive city, rather than a small dome that houses a ride, and I added and moved around some of the additional decorative structures to fill in the spaces...

Back to Disneyland - Mainstreet Carriage 01

So I went back to Diz, and this time remembered to bring my camera!  I've been doing pretty good with likenesses and hard surfaces, but I still haven't really delved into the more organic and landscape areas with the painting.  It's also something I manage to avoid professionally as well, and it's something I really need to bring up to the levels of my character work.

Now this is not quite an organic shot, but it's something that I wanted to do from those initial round of sketches from back in March...so it's included in the six or so images I want to tackle.  I've sucked at drawing horses since I was a little kid, and the carriage is not something I'm used to, like a spaceship or a car, so I think there's a lot for me to learn in this composition.

Working on an update for the site...

I've been so busy these last couple of weeks, I haven't really had time to work any more on the Oz or Bounty Hunter pieces, so I'm throwing up something I have lying around...and since I passed out biz cards at E3 with the new design, I might as well preview it here:

I'm still putting together all the images, and figuring out how the gallery will work with whatever I decide to put up there, so I'm still a few months out from actually getting the update posted...but here's how the design is going to look!

Bounty Hunters -Sketches Comp Final

All right, that old comp wasn't sitting right with me, it seemed too over-balanced on the left side, so I sat down with it again to recompose.  I played around with the sizes and tilts of the characters more, and got it assembled into a much better composition.  Instead of focusing on the details around the drawings, I approached it with a 'big picture' aspect - not worrying about what detail got covered up, or how tightly they fit together - I wanted more energy, and I can fill in the gaps later.  I feel this arrangement has more balance, and I can use the background to further balance it out with some starshine or something...

In doing a bit of moving some junk around, I found this old sketchbook, that coincidentally held the original Bounty Hunters idea, from 12-13 YEARS ago.  I had the big idea, but I think this was the only drawing I ever did for it, up until a couple weeks ago.  Crazy...

Bounty Hunters -Sketches Comp 01

Here's 'a' comp - I'm in kind of a rush this week, busy with E3 shenanigans, so I don't think this is quite there yet.  I think I'm in love with certain pieces of different costumes, and I'm trying to show that stuff to the detriment of the overall design.  I'll let this sit while I go downtown to play video games, and see how it looks when I get back....

Bounty Hunters -Boba Fett

The Man.

Now on to throwing these guys together in a composition...

Bounty Hunters - Dengar

Imperially sanctioned bounty hunter Dengar.  Had bio-mechanical surgery enhancement.  Has a grudge against Solo.  Partially armored in Stormtrooper gear.  Also shows up in Jedi.

A little bit chubby.

Bounty Hunters - IG-88

What is this thing?!?  It stood stiff legged in the back of the Bounty Hunter line-up scene, being all menacing and sh!t...but it looked like it could barely move!  I think the Kenner action figure had more articulation than this character prop.  Not until the Clone Wars toon did we see how badass the IG series really could be.

I worked some magic to try to get him to look like he could actually clasp his hand/claws together to grip that blaster - think it came out OK....

Bounty Hunters - Bossk

All right, here's the Trandoshan Baddie.  Trandoshan, you ask?  Yeah, I watch the Clone Wars, and they learn me stuff.  Bossk made his Clone Wars debut for the season 2 finale, and he looked great, I would even buy an action figure of that version of him...so hurry up Hasbro, I hear it's on it's way, maybe I'll see it at Comic Con...

I have a thing for Bossk; cool costume, didn't take any crap from the Imperials in the movie, the first mail away action figure I got when I was a kid, his modern action figure is awesome - great design, and fun to draw, and I'm looking forward to painting those creepy scales...

Bounty Hunters - 4-LOM

And here's the droid companion to Zuckuss, 4-LOM.  He'll shoot ya too.  I always assumed this was just a repainted C-3PO, but other than the arms, he's pretty different.

All right, on to the next one...

Bounty Hunters - Zuckuss

With just the transfer of the Oz comp being a massively time consuming process, I decided to get a head start on the Bounty Hunters piece, so I could have some stuff to draw while watching the tube with my honey.

As with all the paintings I decide to work on, I'll start with a drawing of all the elements separately, to get a feel for that certain element.  Then, of course, I'll take all those images and compose the final in good old photoshop.  Does ANYBODY remember the days when you had to use a photocopier to set your rough comp?

It's possible I've not seriously drawn Zuckuss in YEARS, so it was kind of fun to take a crack at him with lots more experience under my belt.

Going back to Oz - Dorothy 02

Success.  Mostly.  You know I have to be hard on myself!  I am very pleased the under pencils merged so well with the paint, it came out very saturated and warm.  Also, I tried to changed her expression a little bit, but I think for the final I'm going to go back to the wide-eyed wonder from my original source image.

Final!  A couple accidents occurred with this one though...we've lost power off and on this week, and while I had time in between feedback on my work project, I grabbed this one to finally finish with no power, just the sunlight.  And I kinda messed it up around the lips, following the wrong line with a dark pencil...I managed to erase most of that out and re-do it, but it's still no quite right.  Then I grabbed it and rubbed my hand across it on the way out to get spray fixed!  I smeared a line from her lip..oh well...all the work had been done, colors cataloged, etc.

I didn't bother to create soft highlights, or make a nice background or anything, so accidents aren't a big deal...but if mess up on the big one, I'll take the time to fix stuff like that.

So that's it for OZ for now...I'm in the middle of the transfer process, so progress is being made...but it might be awhile before I get the whole series put together culminating with a final.  So for now, you can probably look forward to some more development on those pesky Bounty Hunters!

Going back to Oz - Off to See the Wizard 02

This was a fun AND challenging one.  I had four characters that were all differently colored, but I had to maintain a level where they all hang together, and at a small size.  Of all of these, I suspect this one to be at 1:1 size to the final, about 8.5 inches across, hand to elbow.

It's always amazing to me how much the pencils bring out the forms, from a dark and unfocused paint wash, to forms and details...and it's a lot of fun to do it.

Overall this one should go through the same process on the final canvas, but Dorothy's likeness didn't come quite across...it's so small, so that's OK, but it should at least FEEL like it's her.  I think a small change to the mouth and nose would solve that problem.

On to the last one...

By the way, I fixed the Cap costume.

You can find the original here; 
http://www.aintitcool.com/node/45326

What the hell, man?  Why do they try to diminsh the designs that make these characters iconic?  They did it with that dumbass Superman costume a few years ago, and now they're messing with Cap.  What I did was - Bigger A, bigger Star, red stripes around the torso, bring out the red more in the boots and gloves, and add some gosh darn wings to the helmet.

I think they needed some Adi Granov to help out with this one, too.

Going back to Oz - Flying Monkeys 02

Good color mixes for this, I was really happy how the paint came out.  But, uh-oh, I forgot my plan, and messed something up.  I had meant to have the red of the lips painted in first, since the bottom lips on both meet up against the black, I was just going to carry the spray over from one lapel to the other, and hit the lips in the middle.  I did not do that, I put in the blues first, and filled in the whole head.

Whoops.  So I went over it a little bit with the red, and tried to avoid creating a purple, and hope for the best with the pencils.

Look out!  Flying Monkeys!  Creepy little buggers...

Again, as these are smaller background characters, I was a little looser with the pencil rendering, going for a bit more of 'representational energy,' than smooth subtlety.

So that's that for the monkeys, paint and pencil colors cataloged and set for the final piece.

Going back to Oz - Doorman 02

And here's the paints for the Doorman.  It really paid off in the green areas, the under drawing with the dark green maintained a really saturated color.  Two paints were used, a mix of a light green, then I added some blue and a tiny tiny tiny bit of black to get the dark green.

Unfortunately, while the greens paid off, the dark brown in the face did not - I should have used blacks to pencil in the figure.  The colors blended a little TOO well, and I lost some of the feature details.  I certainly happy with the paint colors I mixed, but for the final, I'll stick with the 8B pencil.

Final!  Again, happy with the colors, but I lost some likeness around the eyes and the mouth, the paint covered up what was too lightly drawing in.  Oh well, something take in the final.  All the of colors are chosen though, so mission accomplished!