A Link between...two...Links?

Cel Shaded Link

Painted Link

So I thought of an exercise that I wanted to try out.  I had the urge to both draw Link and do a picture with cartoony cel shades (which I'd never really done before).

What I ended up doing was finishing the picture on top in that style - using 100% opacity on my brush, leaving all the line work, and not blending anything together.  The process was kind of annoying at times because of the limitation of not blending, mainly because it was outside of my comfort zone.  Because of all that, I thought it might be cool to repost the picture with a paintover in a more realistic style (and some slight editing on the background).  That's the one on the bottom.

I like both styles in different ways - the one on the left is more storybook/cartoon looking, and the one on the right has greater contrast and pops certain things out more.

Daddy's Home

Everybody's got a soft spot - even nasty looking dwarves!  This started out as just a portrait of an old wrinkly guy, and it kept changing to what it is now.  I liked the idea of juxtaposing a huge burly man with a little baby.  Judging by the last several pictures I've done (with the exception of a couple), I guess I like using lots of blues and oranges.  Oh well!  I'm happy with the result, let me know what you guys think.

PS CS5
Wacom Bamboo tablet

Sunset Storm

We saw a really cool sunset right when a storm was rolling in - it was so colorful I tried to recreate it!

I haven't done a legitimate landscape in a long time, and this one kind of made me want to do a lot more.  We'll see.

I'm happy with the way the colors work together - I think it shows a lot of growth from past choices I've made in other pictures.

- Photoshop CS5

- Wacom Bamboo Tablet

A Boy and His Minion

 

Yet another movie still study - this one is from Megamind!  I hope you've seen this movie.  If not, watch it.  Now!   Your life will be at least 20% happier.  Go ahead, try it.

 

I haven't done anything cutesy like this (you know, with the beaming eyes and all) in a long time, so it was fun. I really liked the lighting and the effects in this shot, so I decided to paint it. This one helped me to learn even more about blending skin colors and doing better textures.  Right now I think I'll take a break to do some original pictures and see what I've learned before I try more screenshot exercises.

The King

This is another movie still exercise - I thought a certain Lord of the Rings shot of Aragorn was pretty cool, so I painted it. It was much more time consuming than I originally thought it would be. I started out thinking I wasn't going to put in much detail, but then I got into it! I learned a lot about picking the right colors, texture, etc.  Getting the likeness 100% is always a big challenge, but I think this one turned out nicely.

Gone Fishin' Repost

Ok, here we are - I got some tips from my brother on how to improve this one.  This time around I added some more depth/design to the water so it would flow better. I also darkened the mountains so that the contrast would not compete with the foreground as much.  I like how it turned out!

Gone Fishin'

For those of you that have been following the blog, anxious for another post, the wait is over!  I apologize, school kind of kept me a little too busy as of late.  This is a project I had started about 4 months ago.  Recently, I finally had time to finish it up.  I mainly had the urge to practice painting water/reflections - this is what I came up with.  It was fun to work on, but I sure am glad to be done with it.  I've posted a couple of different versions because I couldn't decide if I liked a cooler or warmer feel for the color scheme.

I'll be posting a lot more regularly in the near future, so stay tuned!

Smog City

Alright, check it out - we did an exercise where we painted a cityscape in under 45 minutes.  The theme was "ventilation," so I filled mine with all kinds of vents, fans, pipes, hoses, etc.  I liked how mine started out, so I went on to throw on some colors and other finishing touches.  Below is the finished product:

Basically what I took away from all of this was more commitment in line weight.  I had fun using thick dark lines in this one - I'm going to experiment with it a lot more later.

Noel Gallagher!

so I started doodling the other day and it slowly turned into a caricature of Noel Gallagher. Maybe I was listening to Oasis or something at the time, I don't know.  I thought it might be fun to color it up and see how it would look.

Attack of the Demon Bunny

Yeah, I know it's horrifying. Here's the deal - I was given the task of mashing up 3 random pictures. Here are the links for the 3.

#1 -  http://chaes1126.egloos.com/photo/album/72645/1758980
#2 -  http://chicho21net.deviantart.com/art/Killer-Rabbit-100685977
#3-   https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif4c6xjwF7aOwMAVXYG86DsD1aDci3s5WyZj2S3_srqWGKdfwNdPpL29xQq7ELVlyHmnjvpNhh1dar2WaKdq0ab2HpWo3KMVTz5VvgnO_7xQ2pjeAQDzhjMySY5bkppJEDT-bLa8GlSx8/s1600/PG1_3.gif

I mixed the fire beast thing with the evil bunny, and the guy with the sword from #3 became the protagonist. The composition is loosely based on #2. I'll probably tweak the background shortly, but at this point I wanted to move on to my next project - so I decided to post it. I had lots of fun with this thing. Kind of reminds me of a boss in Zelda.

edit: 9/28/2012 - changed the background and cleaned things up like I said I would. Hope you like it.

why so serious, Eminem?

Uh oh, Eminem's been possessed by the Joker...

Think about his nickname "Slim Shady" - it's just an alter ego he used in order to clown around and say all kinds of controversial stuff. Its purpose was to protect him as a person. He would always say it was just a character and that he really didn't believe the things Slim Shady said. Pretty clever!

Rainy Days

This thing kind of gradually pieced itself together as I went along. I pretty much started by putting in a stairway and some hills - I knew I wanted that much, but the rest wasn't planned out at all. I only had the urge to do some sort of mountainous scene. It probably ended up all stormy due to some wishful thinking on my part. It feels like my whole state is burning up because of wild fires! We've got too much smoke in the air, and haven't had any storms to blow that junk away. It's driving me nuts! Anyway, hope y'all like the result.

Lost Woods, Master Sword

When I finished that last post, I felt like drawing a forest scene.  It started out as a speed painting, and as I was fine tuning the thing it seemed like the Master Sword should be there because it reminded me of the Lost Woods from Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.  So this was the end result!

Frog / Glenn

Did this while I was playing Chrono Trigger.  So what if the game is 16 years old?  I think we should make it a law to play through it at least one time a year - that's how great it is.  They just don't make 'em like they used to, that's for sure.  Here's Frog with the Masamune....'nuff said.

Tupac and Snoop Dogg

Alright, so Tupac Shakur wanted to change his professional name to Makaveli in 1996.  It was a reference to Niccolo Machiavelli, an Italian philsopher/writer.  Fun fact: The Black Panthers based some of their ideas on his writing, that's where their "by any means necessary" motto comes from.  That's probably why Tupac came up with the new name.  Anyway, I thought it would be cool to try and mix the two together - ol' 2pac looking like a guy from the Renaissance period.  Oh yeah, and Snoop Dogg over there was definitely a no-brainer, heh heh

KRS-One: The Blastmaster

 

Here comes another one, KRS-One!  The guy has the nickname of "The Blastmaster" because of the way he would win rap battles.  When I first heard the nickname, Ironman instantly popped into my head.  Yeah, THAT guy fits the description pretty well.  So, lo and behold, Krs-One in an Ironman-esque super suit!

Rakim: The Microphone Fiend

A couple of months ago I was reading about all of these rappers with clever nicknames, and I came up with a new idea.  I thought it'd be entertaining to draw some of these guys and kind of mix their respective nicknames into their character in a literal sense.  This is the first one - Rakim.  He always loved to call himself the "Microphone Fiend".  He probably wasn't prepared for this, however.  I turned him into a REAL demon/fiend, yet I still let him keep his rapper look a little bit.  I've done this with 2 other rappers and I'll get them posted soon. At the moment I'm actually working an Eminem one.  Stay tuned, everyone...

Bear Chopper

The bear biker is back!  Just thought I'd color it up because I enjoyed doing the design so much.  In reality, I had to meet a really cut and dry deadline with this one and I had to blaze right through it.  Of course, I'm tempted off and on to go back and polish something up over there, tweak something over here, etc., etc.  There are tons of things that I have wanted to do it, especially with the things I know now, but I decided I wouldn't touch it again.  Keeping it like this makes it feel more loose/free, and I like that.

[Photoshop CS5, Wacom Bamboo tablet] 

Abed Nadir caricature

Abed from Community!  What a great show - if you haven't seen it, I definitely recommend it.  The main goal here was to try and get some good sinister looking light effects on him to make him look evil.  He's not really evil in the show (or is he?), but if his Abed-powers were turned to the dark side he would surely be a force to be reckoned with.

[Photoshop CS5, Wacom Bamboo tablet] 

Bullet Time!

Man, that last file dump was exhausting.

Alright, here's what I'll do from hereon in:  I'll update with maybe one or two each day until I'm all caught up with the stuff I've got as of today.  No more sketches, time to start posting some digital paintings.

I learned a lot when I did this one - about atmospheric perspective, textures, and color choice.  I stuck with warm colors to draw the eye towards the main focal point (the dude's face), and cooler colors to gradually push everything else back to create some depth.  Happy bullet dodging, my friends!

[Photoshop CS5, Wacom Bamboo tablet]