ENBE - Creative Interlude

Crusty Council

2012-02-29T14:38:00.000-08:00

Another couple of paints based of the symmetry imagery i made. Basically just head shots of foreign delegates of the intergalactic crustacean council or something to that effect.

Elemental symmetry

2012-02-22T12:26:00.000-08:00

Starting to make use of some of the reference imagery that I created last year with a simple little app that takes photos with an elected axis of symmetry.

This is my first usage of it to make some Fire & Water elementals.

Mariner's Call

2012-02-20T14:17:00.000-08:00

It's well into 2012 and Ive only now managed to squeeze out a personal scribble due to a hectic couple of months at work.

This one is simply a therapeutic exercise and just started with an old 5min BW thumb and just working into it and finding some story in there.

Glacial shapes aka lasso, smear & highlight

2011-12-07T19:46:00.000-08:00

Here's a little lunchtime waster. Just tried to establish a soft fantasy style for depicting a glacial tundra using some random compositions I painted into. I also attached a visual example of the process.

Steampunk City

2011-11-23T11:29:00.000-08:00

Current work art jam is Steampunk and considering I was a no show on the last jam I had best make an effort. So here it is, the basic premise is that with all that steam born from coal the air would be dense and polluted so the crazy steam obsessed victorians had created large brass 'lungs' to help purify the air. Didn't really want to use a standard figure to set the scene so I went with a horse and cart, nah.

What a Tool

2011-11-03T12:41:00.000-07:00

Being absolutely besotted by Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen series I decided to pay homage to one of my favourite characters I've met thus far. He is Onos T'oolan the former First Sword of the undead race the T'lan Imass. Tried to stay fairly true to the descriptions I have found throughout the books.
Anyway I'll be hopefully have more to come from this series as its a great world of inspiration.

Sweet Relief

2011-10-16T00:57:00.000-07:00

A few landscape studies from the past week. With a production extension at work I can fit it some personal work which is great.
So still finding my way a bit with trying to utilise the shapes tool and painting into it. I'll get there but in the mean time here they are:

Sunday bloody sunday

2011-09-25T03:57:00.000-07:00

Just a quick hangover induced one using the the custom shapes technique and an experiment at taking it a bit further. 2hrs of boozy scribbling

Hand n' eye

2011-09-24T15:28:00.000-07:00

Using a cintiq at home has really impaired my ability to step on to a intous at work and sketch something sufficiently. So this week over a few lunch breaks I thought I'd do a quick sketch to get a bit of familiarity back with not drawing directly on screen. The theme is as the previous post, looking for the source/origin.

Jamapocalypse

2011-09-18T04:58:00.000-07:00

This months art jam theme was post-apocalyptic. I wanted to play on the romantic idea of travelling across a barren landscape on an adventure to find the source/answer (the BW layout was a quick comp that was abandoned early on). I also did a quick head study of some mutated colonel :)

Cryptic Chasm

2011-09-03T22:26:00.000-07:00

Just a quick enviro concept, trying to utilize reference imagery to work up detail in a fast fashion. I have posted a wip to illustrate.

It's a Trap......Door

2011-08-21T01:21:00.000-07:00

Another art jam for work, with the topic being 80's TV. I chose to do an ode to the british claymation favourite, TrapDoor. I have fond memories of Bert's plight when watching as a kid and looking back I'm really impressed with the amount of storytelling that came from a limited set. So that was my focus in this background matte.

** An interesting fact is that one of the co-creators of this show went on to be a key animator for Aardman Animation, developers of Wallace & Gromit and many awesome others.

Just Shaping

2011-07-31T03:45:00.000-07:00

Just can't get enough. If I get a chance I'll try and introduce some more hard surfaces, flowing shapes & figures. Then it will be time to take some to the next level and introduce some colour and paint into.
And just for reference sake, each thumb is taking no longer than 20min.

Shaping Down?

2011-07-30T21:16:00.000-07:00

Too much fun. So I managed to get another few thumbs out on Sunday in-between going on a solid bike ride n going to see the smokin' flick 'Hanna'.
Anyway here is a second set of shape based comps.

Shaping Up

2011-07-29T23:42:00.000-07:00

Thanks to stumbling on a great workflow technique by the master concept artist Sparth I spent the last few days this week creating a custom shapes library to use for creating quick compositions.
The immediate benefits are simply finding shapes that by simply painting traditionally you may not find and the versatility of the tool in being vector based comes to the fore very quickly.
Anyhow here is my 1/2 hr lazy Saturday trial. I will be doing five comps each day this week to try and build a heap of thumbs to work up at a later point. Really enjoying this fresh approach and only having to concentrate on positive/negative.

Monkey Jam 1 - Alice in Wonderland

2011-07-19T14:04:00.000-07:00

Well in an effort to keep everyone pushing their creativity, my works AD Dan Tonkin has championed a new in-house monthly art challenge.
The first theme was Alice in Wonderland which is a real challenge as its a fairly well worn idea. So I thought it would be good to do a paint over of an old sculpt of Tweedle Dee with some strong romantic lighting and the second was just an attempt to make something out of nothing which can be seen in the wip.
Looking forward to seeing everyone else's & I'll try and link that stuff when I can.

*Edit* added the 'Knave of Hearts' profile sketch so I had something unseen for Mondays submission.

N+ NB = Fanart First

2011-06-23T03:38:00.000-07:00

Its funny to think that I have been a practising artist for a few years now and never really sat down and done a fan art. Its not that I hadn't found anything that I enjoyed so much as to do an ode, I guess skills have always gotten in the way. Well a couple of weeks ago while waiting for surf I whipped out the DS and got stuck into a favourite of mine, N+.
Anyway I have always enjoyed the simplicity and due to that I wondered what all that pixel art would like with a lil depth. So here it is, admittedly it was a fine line getting the look I wanted mainly due to trying to keep the core shapes but I managed to get there. Thanks for the inspiration Metanet Software, and here is my pic alongside your tasty dual-screenshot.

Purple Haze

2011-06-10T19:40:00.000-07:00

Been busy on The Run and haven't been able to get anything new out this week. So I'd thought I would archive a few oldies that never really got to see the light of day. As in the title the common theme is a hue of purple and variants on cel shading too.

No more Gnomes

2011-06-10T19:33:00.000-07:00

Awhile ago I was charged with, designing looks for a potential team based game revolving around the mythos of gnomes. While the game eventually went no where, it still gave me some 'team' design experience.
Anyways here are few variants on team style aesthetics. Main thing was to push it in different directions and see what stuck, turns out nothing in the end, ha ha them's the breaks.

Your coming Downtown

2011-06-05T00:52:00.000-07:00

Another speed sculpt to vary from the day to day work I'm up to. Kinda going for the ol' mug shots of sketchy characters. Character design was originally sourced from the uber impressive Paul Richards, wonder whether he'd enjoy were I took it.

Return to the digital Chisel

2011-05-04T14:53:00.000-07:00

Going to try and keep my sculpting skills in check again. It will still play second fiddle to my 2D but its fun for sure.
Just a quick sketch (5hrs) inc paint up.

Another day, another new port of call

2011-04-25T00:02:00.000-07:00

Been changing up employment of late and have been lucky to find myself at Iron Monkey/ EA back in games dev and hopefully I can bring the goods for em.

In the mean time here is a quick speedy of some hooligans letting off flares, kind of pushed the absurd saturation that flares emit.

Easy does it, again?

2011-03-08T01:24:00.000-08:00

Been very busy helping wrap the feature film i have been apart of since early October, and its been a great experience to get a solid foundation in a vfx pipeline over quite a few different facets.

So my personal work has been suffering a bit but i have had 1/2 hr blocks here or there were i can have a quick paint. I have been enjoying painting landscapes with opaque colour values compared to working in BW then converting as it becomes more about warm/cool than light dark for me. Here's a few:

Morning Matte

2011-01-16T01:09:00.000-08:00

Got time today to finish of a quick photo based matte painting. Few things i think could be adjusted but sometimes its best to move on and make note for next time. I enjoyed and i learnt a real nice balance between clone vs patching.

* Also posted the base plate which i took at the Olgas last year.

**Watched 'Salt' while i was working, when did the Russians become the bad guys again? Anyway it was decent even though had a very linear progression.

Easy does it

2011-01-14T22:27:00.000-08:00

New Year has already been pretty eventful, but its been making it hard to get my personal work out.

To prove I still been putting pen to paper this is a quick collage of a few punk head I have done over the past week on the train. Used a really decent ball point i got in the States at The Society of Illustrators for em.

Read some 'Hard Boiled' this week on the train so the influence is obvious.

I should start putting some personal matte work up soon that will be fun and challenging as always.

December Drawings 8

2010-12-30T15:04:00.001-08:00

Scanned in some of my sketchbook pages from the last 6-7 weeks, this stuff is again a way of keeping my hand n eye in. My 'ideabook' is a separate book where i dream up ideas but they are just ramblings and not worth the scan, maybe one day

December Drawings 5

2010-12-30T14:51:00.000-08:00

Just a couple of work sketches that i did when i was frustrated by particularly frustrating shots. Can you tell which one was subliminally inspired by Star Wars.

Happy Snaps

2010-12-30T14:47:00.000-08:00

Had an amazing trip to North America earlier this year, its a big place but we had a great taste.( Rhyming like Biggie)

December Drawings 4

2010-12-27T14:17:00.000-08:00

Oh yeah at some point this month I turned in a CHOW on the bombshell Barbarella, tried to go down a different road and present her in cartoon form. Certainly got my penchant for using the path tool appeased.

Decembers Drawings 3

2010-12-26T15:39:00.000-08:00

Week leading up to Christmas is always hectic so just kept the drawing simple with a few speed sketches when i got home. 3min time limits keep it pretty chill and i don't get bogged down in questions of 'what if'.
The first set of panels are a different story, they consisted of 25min to try and nail a bit of the atmosphere found in the series 'Boardwalk Empire'.

*Also got myself a Canon 550d, tasty camera and should help with my future matte painting endeavours. Awesome HD video too!

Decembers Drawings 2

2010-12-26T15:29:00.000-08:00

Second week held a EOW and just another quick speed paint. Will really need to focus some time on Enviro's next year to get some decent panorama's in my kit.

In terms of times the EOW was about 6hrs inc thumbs(not shown) while the speed was just a couple of.

Decembers Drawings

2010-12-26T15:20:00.000-08:00

After starting work at iloura i quickly realised that it was time to put some pedal to the metal on my 2D work at home to keep it up to scratch but also try and build a decent start to a career concentrated in that area.

So December has been a month of chilling on the end of a stylus just scribbling and planning some nice projects for 2011.
The first week included a CHOW and just a quick speed from tru blood.

Hitting Refresh

2010-12-25T20:40:00.000-08:00

I had a blog a few years ago and its gone to the big blog graveyard, so instead of digging it up I've planted another. Wish me Luck

Here's my portfolio site to get to grips with my range of scribbles thus far:
http://nathanbarnes.carbonmade.com/