Trojan Workshop
It’s mandatory for me after every workshop to come to my blog and write about it and hopefully, convince a few people who don’t know about these sort of events or are skeptical about them to give them a try. Of course there might be some not so successful workshops out there but I’m glad so far all I attended were extremely inspiring and THU 2014 was not only that, but even more.
The location of the event is great, a little peninsula with a few hotels, houses restaurants and shops ideal to feel for a few days like being in a city exclusive to artists. Unfortunately this year we didn’t have the best weather, quite unusual in the area but still good enough. If you want to see everything in the schedule you don’t have time to go to the beach anyway.
I was lucky to arrive to Portugal with some friends a few days earlier. The first day, the main head behind the event Andre Lourenço gave us a warm welcome and invited us to join dinner with his team. From first moment you could see their dedication, I feel grateful to them for not only organizing the event but managing it so nicely and well.
2 days before the official start most people arrived to the peninsula and we were able to have dinner with some of the speakers. It was good time to introduce yourself to new people and exchange stories with them. The day after with even more people arriving to Troia the networking kept going, specially with the hour reserved in the evening with free beer and wine before watching “Gramma Wray” by Loic Zimmermann in premiere, a movie/documentary on the painter’s journey of William Wray.
And then the official 1st day of the workshop, as mentioned before, the schedule covered a time frame from 9am in the morning till 2am at night, when the party in the casino would start! In my case I was going to sleep at 4am every night and get up at 8am. I was extremely tired when I got back home but it was worth.
First thing in the mornings were the workshops. You had to sign up for those because there were limited seats and the difference with other lectures were the “interaction” since some of them required you to take your laptop or buy clay to sculpt! At the same time for those not interested or unlucky in the workshops Life drawing with suicide girls. I had to skip a couple of hours of my workshop to go and draw them. I miss the life drawing sessions I was attending early this year every week.
After that, for 2 hours before lunch a few lectures/demos/talks in parallel in 3 different rooms. You can still check the list of guests on the website
https://trojan-unicorn.com/pages/speakers
Overall the talks were very inspiring and went from the background of the artists to current situation of the industry, tips and many more subjects. There weren’t many demos but people already suggested that and I know the organizer took good note of that (get ready because next year might be even better).
After lunch another 2 hours on the same line and then happy hour! One hour to socialize with beer and wine. It was very funny how Andre kept encouraging us to drink. IT was a good hour to talk and hang out with old and new friends. Sometimes you could be just listening to fascinating stories.
Once the bar was closed time for the mentorship. Same as the morning workshops you had to sign up and wait to see if you were fortunate to be part of one. I personally think it was a good idea the way the mentorships worked, every mentor (over 10 in total) had 10 people around and would go wherever they wanted to sit for a bit and have a talk about the industry, experience, something else, portfolio review, anything. It was a friendly environment specially for those beginners who sometimes are shy to talk to the pros here you had no scape because the pro would ask you straight.
And then the legend’s time, with everyone in the theater (unless you decided to join a side private group somewhere else as I did during one of the sessions and was still greats) split in 2 sessions with a break for dinner in between.
With everyone fed of inspiration and being midnight, art battles! It was such fun and stressing thing. Also embarrassing to me for losing both days I took part of. Basically there were 2 cintiqs and 2 captains. 10 people from the audience would join each captain and the teams would have to paint or model something together, having 5 minutes each member, and 10 the captains. Aside from being fun, made me think of a few things when it comes to teamwork and time management.
All the people who survived to all said before were still hanging out in the casino till the close of it at 3am. I also must mention the accommodation options in the peninsula were great, near and comfortable, very convenient to get good sleep and recover energies for next day. Only issue in our hotel the wifi only worked at the lobby and was extremely slow.
I think with that I pretty much covered everything, I met friends I’ve been talking to for years online, I made new friends, I met some professionals I’ve been following for long, got an important job offer, got inspired by all the talks, and bought a super cool hoodie I’m gonna be wearing this winter.
If I get a job in Japan I’m not sure if I’ll make it to the next edition, but will definitely ask because I wouldn’t like to miss it!!
Panorama workshop
Tomorrow I’m flying to Portugal to attend The Trojan Horse was a Unicorn workshop, but before that, I wanted to write a post here about the other workshop I attended a couple of weeks back in London but couldn’t before because I’ve been enjoying my time in Romania.
With an impressive list of instructors (Levi Petterfy, Jon McCoy, Emrah Elmasli, Bjorn Hürri, Jama Jurabaev, Jonas de Ro, etc.) working for some of the top companies in the video game and film industry the event was speaking by itself but the organization and the environment felt being there is what pushed the success. The price of the ticket was 180GBP for the early bird (if I’m not wrong because I purchased it later) and 250GBP for the normal ticket. In my opinion, it was absolutely worth.
There were 2 venues for the lectures, quite wide rooms but the amount of people attending (I would say over 200) made them quite cozy sometimes. There was also a cafe with free coffee, tea and water all the day and we were getting a delicious and heavy breakfast every morning. At the end of the day most people to head to a pub nearby to keep hanging out with all the lovely people around. There were also a few restaurants, bars, supermarkets in the area but a tight schedule didn’t allow you to spend much time on that if you didn’t want to miss anything.
The lectures were about 2 hours with a Q&A round at the end and on the side a silent demo by another artist. You could approach the instructors at any moment and I saw many people getting portfolio reviews though that wasn’t included in the schedule.It was interesting to see the work of some instructors I wasn’t familiar with, but after their lectures and hanging out with them for a bit I’m going to keep an eye on them from now because what they do is truly inspiring.
We also had a couple of life drawings sessions directed by Kan Muftic like I’ve never seen before (and I’ve been to many in different places). He really made us think about how we approach life drawing and at the same time was really fun.
Every day ended with a 1h Q&A session with all the instructors while free beer was being provided, really friendly environment and interesting to get a variety of answers from all those years of experience in the industry.
I would have loved to speak to every single person in there but, while I made some new contacts, the nicest thing to me was to be able to see again some friends in the community, some I never met before in person and others I haven’t seen in years. At my first workshop was all about making new contacts, and though I still do that of course and I’ll continue, it makes you very happy to feel part of the community by having friends there and being able to hug them in these events.
I’m pretty sure (or at least I hope!) there will be another one next year, so I encourage everyone to attend, and to keep an eye on the news related and show your interest. You can get an idea of the environment seen by looking at this collection of pictures I took.
Working, studying and getting ready for an epic last third of the year
As usual, here I am posting a long update on how things are going.
I’d like to start this post mentioning early in June I went to b’Ars, an international VFX fair aimed for both professionals and students, with special focus on the artistic side of the film-making process and cloud VFX production. An event full of master classes, conferences, job-fair, etc. located in a beautiful Area of Barcelona. It’s funny how I always keep an eye on international events overseas and if it wasn’t because a friend of mine from Germany told me about this I would have probably never known about it. The list of guests was great and the conferences very interesting. Nikolai Lockertsen painting an environment piece on his iPad, Jonathan Opgenhaffen showing his Matte painting process at Double negative, Marco di Lucca and his self portrait, Nico Scapel from Framestore showing making of Gravity, Virginie Bourdin talking about successful creative decisions and many others. But there was one artist invited who I could easily say was the main reason I attended the event, and that was Ryan Church who came to first talk about design to previs with Daniel Gregoire and the next day about film design. He has been a big inspiration for me on environment design since first I saw his concepts for the Star Wars movies and then watched his GNOMON videos, it was very nice talking to him.
Since last update I’ve been busy with some freelance stuff, illustrations for card games and environment designs for a theme park, which was a very interesting experience giving for the first time a different use to my concept art. Unfortunately I can’t show any of that.
Another thing that kept me busy was a little personal project for N0DEWORLD, I started it as part of a challenge a friend of mine was running on concept art.org where you had to work on a personal project for 100 days posting every single day an update and with the goal of having 10 finished pieces at the end, but tight deadlines made me drop after a month there. I still want to continue working on this but might get a little bit more delayed.
Another challenge I have going on with some friends is, I think I already mentioned it before, to draw 100 line drawings. I’ve done 85 so far, very close to the goal, and while we try to keep it private for now because we might give them a very special use here are a few I already put in public for some reason.
Another habit I keep is the spit paints, it’s been over a year since I joined this group and I have over 260 done already, it’s a good daily reminder of things to improve or a challenge to paint thing otherwise I would never do.
LAst year on one of my blog updates I mentioned the project substrata, a dark fantasy art book including artworks from over 80 professional artists. The book has finally been released and I just got my copy a few days ago, I’m very happy to be included in such book with so many great artists, some of them friends.
Last thing but not less important, studies, some done for personal/professional pieces and some others done for this Facebook group called virtual plain air where you paint a study using google maps. It was really fun and learned a lot.
And not virtual but real plain air studies
And speaking of studies, in all this time I could only go to one more life drawing session with model, I miss it when I can’t go, but anyway here are the drawings.
To close this post, I have to mention once again the upcoming workshops in London and Troia, it’s less than a month left before I fly, it’s going to be very inspiring and fun. Between the workshops I’m going to Romania and after them I’m moving to Japan for 3 months to look for a job there.
Next blog update will probably be after the workshops, with lots of pictures as usually, until then, keep it up! Thanks for reading
Blog update Spring edition
Hi everyone,
here’s another massive update showing what I’ve been working on since last update.
First of all a couple of environments with Japan as the main theme though not connected because the first one is in the feudal time and the second one some sort of post apocalyptic scenario in a very near future inspired by, The last of us and the backgrounds you see in some anime movies. I painted the second one after the studies I posted in the last update and that allowed me to learn a lot.
In the previous update I mentioned I was working on something for my friend Jonathan’s IP ‘RAIJIN’. For several reasons I had to put eat over and over again on stand by but I was able to finally finish and I can’t be happier with the result. Remember to check his stuff on his page.
These are the thumbnails I painted to establish the shot.
And another personal piece for the portfolio, painting a spaceship for a spitpaint I realized it’s a subject I didn’t cover in a long time so I decided to take some time to paint one properly.
This is some freelance work I’ve done for IHMAN 3D School, a couple of set of designs for their courses. They are a spanish online school and I might be teaching there in the future, which is quite exciting, but right now I have other priorities since I’d like to get more concept art freelance work or even moving for another in-house position. Wouldn’t mind going back to the UK for the summer.
I promised my friend Emerson a few months back I would be drawing more mechs “soon” but for some reason or another it took me quite longer. Inspired by his drawings, or all the ones I see in the many japanese books I have I started drawing some and adding this quick shading first thinking because it was cool and made them easy to read but I was actually hiding some weak points.
I then drew a few more and even not just mechs and I started what I’m happy now to say it’s a habit of drawing one line sketch everyday. Here are some I already showed, but there are many more, thought you will have to be patient because I’m thinking of something special for them. 
But not only sketched drawing, some painting too, inspired by the very painterly approach of Jong won park.
Another collection of spitpaints and failures, they are still fun, because it’s a constant reminder of several points I want to improve in my work.
And all the drawings done in the life drawing sessions with model since last update. Still having lots of fun with them, unfortunately they have been cancelled this month for not enough attendants, guess people prefer the outside in Spring.
Some drawings from cafe sketch meetings.
April 23rd, Sant Jordi, is one of the most important days of the year in Catalonia, but I almost forgot. Fortunately as soon as I heard of it I decided to go for a walk around the center of the Barcelona city. Roses for women and books for men, the place was overflown by people, weather was good but still wanted to go the same cafe I always go to draw though alone this time. For my surprise, I found this old library open to the public due to the special day, and I felt I had to draw there, just some sort of study yeah, but motivating to do it in such beautiful place. It wasn’t easy with people taking pictures of me (they might have thought I was part of the visit), children breathing on my ears and other people telling me “good job, you’re so talented!” and getting angry whenever I said “you know, it’s just practice” It was a nice day anyway!
Finally, if in the previous update I was announcing I would be attending The Trojan Horse was a Unicorn workshop in Portugal, now I’m very happy to announce I will be in London too by the end of August for the Industry Workshops.
Battery full, please unplug procastination to work hard again.
Hi all,
it’s been exactly two months since last update and many might be wondering what I’ve been up to. Unfortunately this is not all the exciting post I’d like to be writing, but a good one to write in my humble opinion for keeping moving forward after bad times.
First of all I’d like to mention something I forgot in my last update, as you know I left Rare in December and got back to Barcelona to get better and chase other opportunities probably giving freelance a try. In order to kinda clean and start over I also left the project I was working on with some buddies, ‘Isis’, but I’d like to show the last few pieces of work I was producing thought they are not finished, and will probably never be.
The last couple of years since the Massive Black workshop in 2011 have been pretty intense with a lot of things going on and a lot of hard work, so after the last workshop in LA I thought I was ready to keep pushing, improve get new jobs and all that but in reality it’s been 2 months mostly charging batteries. I guess I burned up myself, I even made a pretty hardcore schedule called “10 daily goals” but didn’t help.
First thing to care about was health because I started feeling quite weak. I started working out every second day and it’s been 6 weeks already. I also put down the amount of caffeine (last year had too many energy drinks and that’s not good at all) and sweets. I feel much better now but just yesterday coincidence or not was my most productive day in a while having 3 coffees and a good amount of chocolate. I guess the perfect balance of health and extreme productivity is a utopia for me.
In all this time another thing I’ve been skipping was watching movies so early this year I ordered quite a few to catch up, after all, it’s another part of the industry I’d like to work at. It’s been good to feed myself with more stories, inspiration, visuals and others. I also finally watched game of thrones! I was happy waiting till that day in the future when the whole series were over but with the new season coming out soon and my fear for spoilers I got the 3 seasons pack and Oh Lord such a good show. All of this have been motivating me to ellaborate a bit more the story for my IP ‘Space Lotus’, can’t wait to start defining more the characters and their connections and all the locations.
It’s been very interesting to watch different genres to open my mind a bit more, but also got to check again some japanese animation and get a little bit of nostalgia because it’s the stuff I grew up with. After watching movies like ‘A letter to Momo’ or ‘Summer wars’, bringing me memories from my trips to Japan years ago I painted these studies and soon should be able to finish a similar painting I started after them to apply the studies.
Nostalgia is a powerful but dangerous feeling. I’ve been trying to remove the dust on my japanese because I might apply to some japanese companies in the future.
Speaking of missing things, probably the thing I missed the most in the UK was my library, I’ve been adding a few more books and organizing it, its very likely that, unless I find a good studio offer I’ll be freelancing for a while, and my library is an important part of my workflow for inspiration and references.
Blocks are never good, and I know some artists who never suffered one, which is great, but I wanted to write this here for those who might be going through one, it’s alright, you will get out of it with the right attitude and not giving up, might take longer or shorter but just find the right motivation, inspiration or rest required to put your batteries to the max again and recover the eye of the tiger (yeah the whole Rocky collection pumped me up quite a bit too :D).
Back from the UK my friend Jaume organized a sketch meeting and it was so good to be able to draw again while hanging out in a cafe or the street with other people
He me if I’d like to join again the life drawing sessions with model I used to go a year ago and didn’t need more than a second to say yes. I was missing it, more than because I learn or practice I just have fun drawing the human body from life, it’s so relaxing. Here’s the result of the 5 session’s done so far. We draw poses in 5 or 10 minutes after a few one minute gestures.
Another habit I somehow managed to keep going is the daily spitpaints. Though I’m not very proud of them, here’s a compilation of all done since last compilation.
Remember to check the tumblr page for the work we do in the group
As concept artist I like working on different subject matter but it’s hard to find time to paint a bit of everything. Creatures/characters is one of the subjects I didn’t work on much recently so here are a few of them.
My friend Jonathan’s been working on his own personal IP ‘Raijin’ and I asked him if I could design an environment for it. I started it and here are some early sketches in perspective but had to put it in stand by for a bit, going to get back to it soon tho.
I had a conversation with him about mechs and how important the joints are. Inspired by an exercise recommended by John Park on his workshop at Concept Design Academy I grabbed a bunch of friends and we’ve been doing a weekly session of joint designs. These are mostly from imagination and a few studies, need to study more to make more interesting and functional designs but the practice’s been fun and useful so far.
And here are a couple more perspective drawings tho not related to that. The ‘How to draw’ book by Scott Robertson made me want to get back to this sort of drawings.
The scorpion was a study for another design I have work in progress but hopefully will continue at some point.
In September last year I designed a big dark fantasy statue for a book project called Substrata. The book’s been finally announced and will be published later this year, it’s very exciting because the book contains a lot of great artworks. I already pre-ordered my copy of such an inspiring book, take a look
I’d like to mention is in September I’m going to the Trojan Horse was a Unicorn workshop in Portugal. I’m really excited about it from my experience at the workshops, because the one last year seemed to be awesome and because the list of people going keep growing and sounds great so far.
Trojan horse was a unicorn Official site
Trojan horse was a unicorn facebook page
Can’t wait to get inspired by the instructors, see some friends and any of you there, it’s going to be a lot of fun!
I think that’s all for now, this update is very important because puts end to two months I’d probably like to forget, but since I can’t I’ll just take the very few good things they had and will keep moving forward. I’m going to be more active again online, and will check what everyone’s been up to too, been a bit disconnected.
The place I keep updated the most is my facebook page and then this blog, but I’ll keep updating the other places as well as much as possible, stay tuned, hope I can keep feeding you with more and more artworks from now 🙂 Oh and by the way, many people keep asking why I don’t stream anymore, well my computer is very limited and when I stream it uses the max of the specs so I’m trying to take care of this laptop to not have to update the machine for now.
Thanks for reading and let’s keep rocking! :
Last post of 2013. Happy New Year!
Environment design for the Alien World Contest, some thumbnails, sketches and Xmas drawing.
Massive Black Workshop LA 2013
In 2011 I went to the Massive Black workshop in San Francisco and it kinda was the beginning of where I am today and where I want to be someday. By that time I didn’t know absolutely anyone apart from the instructors seen in books, magazines or the internet and nobody knew me. It was such a great experience that not only helped me to push it for 2 years but also to make some good friends.
As soon as I saw it announced back in September I had no doubt I wanted to be there (even the price was cheaper than ever! 250$ is nothing for what you get in exchange), meet people I met 2 years ago, others I’ve been talking to online but never in person, get inspired by the mind blowing list of instructors and so. Workshops are one of the best experiences anyone can have as part of the community, and after blaming on myself for missing some others where my friends went, I couldn’t miss this one. I didn’t, and it was awesome.
Actually my second trip to America had a pretty bad start, my train to the airport got delayed for an hour because a person got hit by a train making me run at the airport to not miss the flight, which was delayed for 5 hours due to a “minor technical issue”, and then delayed again because a person wasn’t feeling good and even puked inside the plane and we had to wait till he felt better. The good thing is I met Chris Bjors at the airport because we were at the same flight, such a coincidence, and a good one because some company is appreciated in those moments. We arrived to the hotel at 3am and only slept for a few hours before the workshop. If at any point anyone saw me struggling to stay awake, the time difference and that were part responsible.
The first day was very exciting and full of hugs for everyone. The instructors introduced themselves and the line seemed to never end. I liked a lot the layout of this workshop, so many lectures at the same time makes you want to clone yourself but being that impossible, I appreciate they arranged the different rooms in the same place separated by curtains, which made it very easy to move around. I still missed a lot it would have been worth checking from what I heard from my friends but still I feel I got fed enough.
For 3 days you could move around checking the main area with 6 big screens where some of the instructors were doing demos and answering the questions you had, jump from one room to another (or even being in two rooms at the same time if you found the right spot) or enjoy some traditional air in the area where digital was forbidden. And all of this watched by Kim Jun Gi from the skies.
The presence of the korean artist was one of the most iconic elements of this workshop, only the long lines of hundreds of people waiting for hours to get his books signed is a good example of how everyone loves him. His presentation was great having the translator around because it turned into a Q&A with lots on interesting answers from an artist not only good at what he does but with good sense of humor. He was also involved in a “pictionary” session with Marko, Wes and Ian where people from the audience suggested topics and they had to draw them in the time given. Though the pressure they seemed to be having lots of fun (same as us watching them)
There was good variety of subject matter along the classes and demos, going for sci-fi, fantasy, realism, stylization, characters, creatures, environments, 2D, 3D, tips to make it in the industry, jokes, and much more. You can still see on the website the schedule and the list of the instructors, though sadly some of them dropped at the end. I already knew the workflow of some of them from livestream, videotutorials or courses but still feel like I learnt quite a few things I can´t wait to use for my work.
http://massiveblack.com/workshop
It was sweet to see people I met 2 years ago again, I was surprised some people remembered me for just a few minutes talking back then! The workshop was great again to do networking, it´s the place to exchange business cards. I put up to date everyone about my current situation there and promised I´ll try to stay more active again from now because I lost a bit of activity with my full time job, and after making more friends will be even more motivated. I even managed to talk to some people who looked familiar to me from the previous workshop but didn´t have a chance to talk before. I wish I had talk to more people because everyone´s so cool but there will be more workshops.
Everyday after the workshop the socialization continues having dinner with mates or people you just met for the first time ever, having some drinks and stay together till it´s time to go to bed, some earlier than others.
The last day as usual is for portfolio reviews, things get serious and you have to be ready for the critics. In my case were very useful and same as 2 years ago, was very interesting to see that everyone was pointing out the same flags in my portfolio, different professionals with that in common can only mean I need to work on that as soon as possible.
Again, I can only recommend going to these events if you´re part of this industry no matter if you just started (I was there 2 years ago!) or you are a professional with years of experience. The only sad thing of it was the time to say bye to everyone (more hugs everywhere!) I will try to go next year again, with a whole new portfolio improved. I hope to see everyone there, till then, keep it up!!
This last awesome photo is by Phil Holland
Environment Design 2 finished
This is the last week at CGMA, 2 months went so fast. It was good experience and I’m glad I could get back to Space Lotus after so long and take a look at it with fresh eyes to keep making the universe I want to build bigger and better. I need to re visit all the pieces I did because with the studio job and the workshop I didn’t have much time to push the quality of them.
Megapost from the UK 3
It’s been more than 3 months since last update, sorry but I’ve been pretty busy with the job at Rare and all the stuff I’ve been doing at home and I’m going to show here. I know it’s not excuse because inside me I was telling constantly “I should update I should update” but I was always waiting for something else to add.
Anyway, first of all right after the last update I went to London in August to attend a Schoolism workshop about creature design with Terryl Witlatch. She’s been one of my favorite creature designers for quite a while and learning from her was very inspiring. I told my self I would take that inspiration to work more on creatures but in fact I haven’t done any proper design since then because I’ve been focusing on other stuff. I also managed to get a drawing by Bobby Chiu on my sketchbook.
That same week I did a few more sketches from life.
Speaking of workshops, after missing so many cool ones included the one just finished in Bali, when I saw Massive Black announced their 2013 edition in September I couldn’t resist anymore and sorted everything quickly to be able to go there, see some friends I made 2 years ago in San Francisco, others I’ve made in the last 2 years online, and learn and get inspired by everyone included in the mind blowing instructors list.
If you didn’t notice, I love mechs,a ll kinds of and whenever I feel stressed or down this is probably the thing that most relaxes and motivates me. Here are a couple of new designs I’ve done, and I will try to find time to do these more often reason why I decided to include a new tab on my site focused on mechs/vehicles.
I took last week of August off to go back home and spend it in Barcelona with family and friends, but what was going to be my holiday ended up being another week of intense work. I saw Marta Nael organized a contest to include some artworks inspired by her creations on her new book (already out) and I couldn’t stay away from it considering how supportive Marta was with me when they included my work on that book compiling spanish artists. I decided to take as inspiration his cyborg elves because I love mixing sci-fi and Fantasy and thought was an interesting concept. This is the result which was finally included in the book.
On my previous post I showed an environment concept art I did for substrata. I wasn’t happy with the result so I wanted to take the opportunity of the deadline extension to rework the concept from scratch, but at then end I only had time to design what was going to be the main element of my environment, this big badass statue as tribute to all those statues we find in this genre. They’r looking for a publisher at the moment, can’t wait to have this book in my hands with all the amazing works from so many artists.
Another thing I mentioned in the previous post was the daily spitpaintings. We made a facebook group considering the amount of requests we were getting to join the group so we would post the topics every day and people could pick one (or more or even mixing them) and paint their spitpaintings. With a humble success in the beginning a few weeks ago the group exploded and now it has over 15000 members. It’s incredible and enormously inspiring to see lots of professionals joining and painting stunning pieces in just 30 minutes but also beginners who enjoy the exercise. I still have a lot to improve and I’m not happy with most of them but here’s the collections of all I’ve done since then.
http://spitpainting.tumblr.com/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1402563099961950/
A few months ago Alejandro Mirabal invited me and a few more guys such as Long Pham and Jonathan Gonzalez to join a group to develop our own personal project, after weeks of exploration brainstorming ISIS came out. I felt bad for not being able to produce as much work as the other guys were but working on it has been very motivating and allowed me to work on some challenging designs for me. Some of the concepts here won’t make it into the game or are still WIP but hope you like them and make sure you check the work from the other members in the group.
Working on Isis made me thought how much I missed working on my own IP, Space Lotus, left in stand by after moving to the UK. And also since I attended the first class of environment design with James Paick early last year I’ve been waiting for the right moment to join the second class. So I registered for the class, started last month and I managed to, not without some adjustments, bring back Space Lotus and work on the environments for the IP in the course. I´m enjoying it a lot, but when I attended the first class I had all the time possible because I didn’t have a job, but now working full time every day makes things pretty intense (not to mention the week I was sick), thats why I want to refine all the pieces after the course because now they look loose lacking the time to push them.
The first week of the course was kind of a warm up so we could paint anything we wanted. I still wanted to finish that environment concept I had in mind for substrata, so now not attached to the brief of dark fantasy as a genre I had a little bit more freedom and went for more asian-fantasy-colorful theme.
This is an Art test I did for a company in the UK. First I did some quick sketches/studies and then the final shot. Was challenging a lot of fun looking for more realism than the usual in my works. I don’t know if I´ll get the job but I’m pretty excited about it.
Just to finish this long post, finally LMS Killbook of a bounty hunter, is out! I just received my copy yesterday and the book is massive! I heard from a lot of people it was big but never imagined like this. The layout of the book is very unique and full of details, deep in story and high quality artworks. It’s definitely a must have in my opinion and recommended to everyone. Dan‘s work has been very inspiring for the community and how you can make a successful thing of a personal project, and proof of that inspiration was the massive response of people painting LMS artworks with many of them included in the last pages of the book. It’s a honor for me to have a piece in there and I’m very grateful for that. It’s also a good coincidence and makes me very happy to share page with Sickbrush.
I hope it wasn’t too boring, and again, if you’re going to the workshop next month and you see me around and want to hang out for a bit don’t hesitate, it’s going to be a lot of fun 🙂
Been a while, but still alive in England
It’s been a while since the last post. After that one I painted a few more things that some of you probably saw on facebook, but had a few weeks lacking motivation at home for some reasons.
But motivation is back! And the last few weeks I’ve been painting, sketching, studying, networking and so as much as I could in my free time (still working full time).
I started doing 30 minutes speed paints at work with my workmates and also joined a group with a few friends to do more speed paintings every day and also studies from life.
You can check the work of the other people here
http://spitpainting.tumblr.com/
http://hardonforstudies.tumblr.com/
I knew about substrata a bit too late and only had 2 days to work on my entry, fortunately they extended the deadline and now I will have time to rework on this or do something else
First post from England
It’s already been more than 3 weeks since I moved to England to work at Rare. Thing are going pretty well so far but focusing on my job and with some time spent on some things you usually do when you start a new job in other country I haven’t had much time for personal stuff. So basically I´ve just been sketching (with the exception of a few studies), mostly digital and sometimes on paper with pen when going outside.
I keep updated my facebook page as soon as I finish something so probably some people already saw these images, but I compiled most of the work done in England (everything personal of course, job is confidential) so far.
Great news + tons of sketches
The last 2 weeks have really been crazy, I got a job as in-house concept artist in England and I’m moving tomorrow to be there for the next 3 months! This is very exciting as well as a bit scary to finally face the job I’ve been training for in the last 2 years. But if I keep doing what I’ve been doing, work hard and give my best, I think everything will be fine.
Busy getting things ready I didn’t have time to paint or design something very refined, so it was a great opportunity to sketch a lot every free moment I found, hope you like it : )
Bloodsports
Here’s some stuff done for the two last bloodsports. For those who don’t know bloodsports are challenges in the Crimson Daggers community and are a great exercise to improve, and feel part of the community, it’s totally worth and I recommend anyone to give it a try 🙂
http://crimsonbloodsports.blogspot.com
Bloodsport #13: Time travelers final piece, wip and sketches/studies
Bloodsport #14 Beastmasters Final piece, wips, sketches and studies
LMS and Mech World Contest
I painted this illustration for the reprint of LMS killbook of a bounty hunter by Danny Luvisi, so happy my work will be in the book together with a lot of great artists.
This transport mech/vehicle design was my entry for the Mech World Contest, shame I didn’t have time to paint an environment (2 entries were allowed) because I was quite excited about it.
New deathline and other stuff
Hi everyone, it’s been a while since last post I properly wrote, so beware of long text and chances of boredom.
I’d like to start this post explaining my current situation, but for that, I need to get back to 3 months ago when I started working on a few designs for my portfolio, initially to compensate some lack of design before applying for studios as a concept artist. The thing is, when I started the job hunt early this year, those designs became my own project, my own world, IP, call it what you want, so after much thinking decided to focus on my project for a little bit more, first for myself, second to show it as experience once I apply to some studios I have in mind, and third because, well, maybe I make something else of it.
I have so many ideas for Space Lotus, but there’s just a few I’m working on before I show more stuff. I was trying to finish it as soon as possible but had to slow down a bit to keep a good quality in it.
In the meanwhile a did some other stuff you can see at the bottom of this post. And now I’m also working on a piece of fan art for Danny Luvisi’s LMS. The book will be reprinted later this year and I’m very happy that my artwork will be included in the book, it’s a honor for me, and a lot of my buddies will be in it too. As you know it’s very very rare that I paint fan art, but this is special because it’s for someone I know and admire. Similar to what happened with the contest Anthony Jones organized (you can see my entry below).
I’m also considering to paint a couple of illustrations and push them because all my mates working at Applibot make me so jelaous with the awesome stuff they do there.
All this plan can change if I receive a good offer of course.
Last year around this date, I wrote here a post called DEATHLINE (http://isrartistic.com/2012/02/19/deathline/) where I set for myself 3 goals for the 365 days after.
I don’t know if the 1st goal was a success or not, it’s sure I only kept the daily painting studies for 2-3 months livestreaming them but that doesn’t mean I didn’t study anything else after that because I think I did just in different ways, if not painting, drawing, learning fundamentals, reading…
I kinda failed in my second goal too, I didn’t get the job I wanted, but to be honest, I didn’t even try to apply for it because I kept practicing trying to get better, and that’s sure, in one year I have a whole new portfolio with much better quality work in it.
At least the 3rd goal, the exercise was a success, running for half an hour twice every week, (only missed 3 sessions and was in Singapore) worked extremely well, now I don’t feel as “dead” and staying a bit healthier helped me in my work.
So it’s about time to start a new deathline. I had several things in mind, as to add another day of exercise to my routine or learn a new language, but at the end this is what I came up with:
1. 1 hour of reading every day. It’s hard to explain, but I feel like I waste my time reading because I’m not drawing. I read, but only when it’s related to a design I’m working on, but I want to do it as daily basis, and include novels, because everything I read now is about culture, architecture, science etc, but I want to read more novels.
2. 2 hours of sketching or studies everyday. One of my mistakes with the way I took the studies last year was spending too much time on them, limiting my time for personal stuff. So I prefer this time to take it as quicker but smarter studies. Also, when I work on something and focus so much on it I barely sketch something unrelated to it, I want to change that to keep my creativity and variety fresh.
3. Again, I’m going to set as one of the goals keep working on improvement, to work as a concept artist as my first choice, and illustrator as second, and to never forget that I want to keep creating exciting worlds for me, and for other people.
Obviously if eventually I’m under very tight deadlines I will give priority to work but while working on personal points 1 and 2 were something I want to add to my routine.
That’s all for now, apologies if the text was too painful to read, hopefully it was interesting enough for some people.
And here are some paintings, sketches, designs from the last few weeks.
Space Lotus
During the last 2 months of 2012 I was working on this personal IP (though not exclusively dedicated to it because I was painting other stuff you already saw here and studying), to make a set of designs for the portfolio. There are more designs I didn’t finish yet, basically environments and characters but I wanted to post these since I’m already looking for jobs.
Depends on my situation in the weeks coming you will see eventually those environments and characters…..or they will never be seen …
November sketches
Here’s a compilation of all the daily traditional sketches I did this month. One page everyday spending 1-2 hours on each.
Isra Carrion 