2010 Demo Reel

So I captured this footage in August 2010 and haven't gotten around to editing it into a reel until just like.. two days ago.

I'll be capturing and cutting a more ~current one soon. Just though I'd put this one up though. Especially because I haven't updated this blog in ages.


Enjoy!

30 Day Sketch Challenge - Day 1

My dear friends Romina and Jenki have invited me to do a 30 day sketch challenge! Here's the list:



Aaand, here's day 1!



I did this piece in the style of Stanley Chow - an amazingly brilliant graphic artist. I only hope I did his style of work justice.

~ Stay tuned for more!

Bone Nazi

This was a phrase I heard while back here at Amazing Society, and for whatever reason, it stuck with me. (For those unaware, it refers to a mythical figure who puts a limit on the number of bones a character or prop can have without causing a problem for download size, frame rate, etc in the game).


He's a bit flamboyant, I think.

Notes

Hey, this isn't a real arty post, but I just wanted to pop in and remind everyone (all nineteen of you loyal readers) that I am not dead. And as a treat for you, a page of notes I drummed up the other day while building bundles and connecting to the asset server in Unity.


*actual notes have been omitted (must respect the NDA, after all).

I do a lot of bundling.

MGS Logo

Look what I found! A former co-worker of mine at Digital Kitchen, Chris Abbas, updated his reel. He's an amazing designer, and I thought I'd share my personal favorite piece that I saw (and actually helped on, a little!) in production at DK.



Check out the rest of his stuff! Really inspiring!

Edit: whoops, looks like vimeo plus won't let me embed. Here's the direct link.

Hero Up!

Been a while, but it's because I've been terribly busy SHIPPING MY FIRST GAME!

Marvel Super Hero Squad Online!


Proof:



Yep! Those are the credits, and that's me! Listed as an FX artist with my wonderful colleague, Jeff Selbig (who rarely updates his blog, sorry).

If you are so inclined, go to HeroUp.com and start playing!

I feel incredibly lucky that I got to work with a great team, and well within a year of working in the game industry (having graduated college in May, and started this job in September), I got to ship my very first game AND work on a LIVE team.

Sorry there's no art in this post (I mean, aside from the lovely UI and splash pages). More to come, for sure! Especially now that I can post a bunch of stuff from Digital Kitchen AND Amazing Society.

CHEERS!

Deadpyro

Concept art! Marvel character inspired by Team Fortress 2 concept art. Done in my off time after a sort of inspiring conversation with the Amazing Society's art guild about art styles.


I attempted (retro) Ms. Marvel in the style of the Medic, which was horrible, and Ironman in the style of the Soldier, which was also horrible. So I won't be showing those, haha. I just thought the ideas of them were cool.

Left My Heart in...

Headed to GDC tomorrow! Muy Excited.

Here's a little animation I'm working on (definitely still in progress):



It's harder than I anticipated to conform to a style and use repeating shapes. I usually just go where the shape of the fire takes me, but I thought I'd be fancy this time around. Definitely a cool and worthwhile exercise.

Close Your Eyes. Draw Batman.

Pretty self explanatory. Saw this done by the wonderful Yuko Ota of Johnny Wander fame. She said she got it from Emmy Cicierega!

Great fun!

Cool Down Time

Just got some bad news about student loans and things. So I took a little time to cool down and drew a picture.



It made me feel serene.

How are you doing today?

Elizabeth Sketch

Just a quick doodle that turned into something fancy.


I tried to show age progression. Although the kid's looking a little... first cousin-ey, I still like it well enough. Fun, cute, quick.

Toulouse Lautrec Variations

Here are a few other versions of the last piece I did.

Toulouse Lautrec

I was hanging out at DigiPen today, getting a little stifled by the project I was working on. So! I decided to do a little drawing in the style of Toulouse Lautrec. Specifically, a recreation of this piece:



Here she is!



I have a ton of iterations. And I could tweak this a bit more, but I am happy with it as is for now.

Snow

Hectic day today. Hectic and strangely quiet. It was a snow day. I got to work late, but nobody was there. So, I drew a picture of what was outside my window (with some liberties - I omitted the buildings and parking lot below) while Unity loaded and updated.

Karolina Revisit - Look and Feel

Man I've been busy. I've been trying to continue these mini projects I started before I began working at TAS, but it's really hard to keep up. Especially because I come back after weeks and weeks to discover that I don't like the initial direction.

Here's a reworking of the concept for Karolina's attack. I like this style better because the animation can stay really rough, but it still allows for hard edges to create negative space.

Halloween

This counts as a creative work, doesn't it?



Here's a better angle, since we're on the second floor...



And with the lights off!



Happy Halloween!

Selling Out

Since I've begun working at The Amazing Society, I haven't had a whole lot of time to work on projects I've started or do any free work of any kind. But now that I've entered a ~groove~ of sorts, I can get back to such leisurely activities.

I did a little drawing today, in fact!



I did a bunch of these a while back, and a good friend suggested I sell them.

I dunno about all that. She's the Etsy master and I'm just a doodler. But what do you think? Think you can picture a few of these hanging up in your house?

Karolina Rough

This is about an hour's worth of work done on Photoshop CS5 Extended.

There's a ton of issues I need to fix with these roughs, but I thought I'd document the progress I've made so far. I'll probably start on Nico before wrapping this up as well.

Styles

PAX was this weekend, and I was inspired. While waiting in lines, I read the sixth volume of Marvel's Runaways. And I got to play some really fun games that made me really want to delve in and produce more work for my portfolio. SO I thought I'd start with some pre production pieces inspired by some of my favorite Runaways Characters.

First there's Karolina Dean, aka Lucy in the Sky.


I've been staring at these images all weekend, so I thought I'd put them in at the top to show the reference I used. I broke down her color palette. Very soft pastel colors, with yellow being centric to the whole pattern. Then, I looked at her actual attacks and broke them into silhouettes. It's a bit like fire, water, and hair all mixed together. It knocks people down, grabs hold of them, acts as a shield. I'm not really sure what it would feel like if I touched it... but I have a feeling it depends on her mood/motivations. So, the silouettes described are: swirly, stretchy, and sparkly, haha. The attack breakdowns describe how it would look compared to her character... how it stretches across and next to that would be a "sample" frame of the animation I'll be doing.

Next up is Nico Minoru, aka Sister Grimm.


Oddly enough, I felt like the centric color in her palette (at least in her ~energy~ because I mainly focused on her big spreads and the panels where she was actually attacking something) was also yellow - but a more dark and dull yellow. I added variations, simply because her palette is fairly limited. Not many cool colors to speak of. A lot of the blue I found was actually the opposite of the rest of her general tone. So, I included a light, more saturated blue. The silhouettes describe the type of attack she deals. Karolina is an alien, but Nico is actually a witch - and her character has a gothic style. So, there's lots of fire - which is what the outer silhouettes describe. The middle silhouette actually describes lighting... which is often randomly interacting with her, her staff, and the environment as she attacks things.

The sample frame is her staff being enveloped by fire, lighting... and the attack itself is a frog. Simply because she has a wide variety of spells that she uses, so I thought I'd take a classic and fun approach to her attack.


2D Animations soon!! Time to bust out some CS5 and get to work!

Avoiding Unwrapping

Been incredibly busy this last week and a half. Meeting up with folks from Studio 343, havin' interviews with folks from Red 5. River Rafting on the Wenatchee with my family and lovely boyfriend. It's been fun!

This last week, I've been working on an FX Test for Red 5 Studios! It's a really cool studio way the hell in Orange County. I'm not sure how I feel about it. Excited, definitely. But torn, as well.

Anyway, I won't be posting the test or anything.

So here's something I was doing before I got the test.

All materials, all the time. Screw textures. Mostly screw unwrapping. If I don't have to, I will not unwrap.