Tifa Lockhart - Final Fantasy 7 Brainstorm Challenge 15

Barret was a lot of fun, I had to do Tifa. It was a personal hurdle for me, especially dealing with female characters but I'm pretty happy with the outcome! Unfortunately, the Brainstorm challenge on FB has already ended. If time permits, I might do more, but real work comes first though!

Barret Wallace - Final Fantasy 7 Brainstorm Challenge 15

A little something for the Brainstorm group on Facebook. I usually refrain from such things, simply because the amount of talent in there is just crazy, but I had this simple idea that I felt like attempting. Final Fantasy 7 will always be a landmark moment in my gaming youth, so I was even more compelled. And since I love chunky characters, Barret was naturally the first choice!

Process GIF below:

Aladdin Reimagined - Jasmine

Moving ahead with my Aladdin project, it was time to redesign Jasmine. I have to admit, it was quite a challenge. Ideally, I wanted to portray her as an equal to Aladdin and as a rebellious princess who's curious about the world.

Designing clothes isn't one of my strongest suits, but it was interesting nonetheless. I had to try and achieve a balance between royalty and being an active outgoing female.

Had fun with the tiger proportions though!

Aladdin Reimagined - Aladdin

This was an assignment we used to do back in school. I remember it being one of the more enjoyable ones as it involved taking a children's book and giving it our own spin. Here's my take on Aladdin, in a futuristic Agrabah setting. At this point, I'm probably sticking to Disney's version of the story for its simplicity. Hoping to develop more from here on :)

My partner-in-crime, Anastasia Catherine, is also working on a similar project. Look out for her work soon!

Kaiju Slayer

A commissioned piece for a friend of mine, based on a custom toy he designed. He's a big Guyver fan, as you can probably tell. Working on somebody else's design is a pretty scary endeavour, but I enjoyed lighting him up here.

Haven't done this painted look in a while.

Brass-Arm Butch

Dug this really old piece out from almost a full year ago, when I was trying to make characters for a space cowboy story of sorts. I took a look at my lines and realize that I can probably do better now, so I fixed up some stuff.

I  also had the opportunity (thanks Clogtwo!) to attend the START 2014 conference in the last 2 days. Needless to say, all the speakers were inspirational and I hope those little notes and anecdotes stick with me throughout my entire journey :)

I'm still experimenting with my approach right now, but I think this was pretty fun to do. Here's the progress:

Serving the Nation

So my brother's enlistment day has finally arrived and I thought I'd do a quick sketch to mark the occasion. I wish you all the best, Fariz. Take good care of yourself and be safe, always.

Wish I could have spent more time on the sketch.

Companion

2014 still proves to be a hectic year indeed, but hopefully that's no excuse for slowing down. Here's a little engineer girl with her best friend.

Mechanical Revolt - Miroslav

February and March turned out to be a super busy time at work. Hopefully, I'll be able to show some of the stuff I've done with Magma Studios soon.

In the meantime, I'm glad I managed to sneak some time in for this new bot.

Mechanical Revolt - Zoran

Wanted to take a break from all those studies, and get back to doing some lines. Might draw more of these guys in the future.

En Garde Part 2

Another piece that has been in my work-in-progress folder for far too long. This one also received some feedback from the mentors at the Bali Illustration Workshop, reminding me of the areas that I really need to work on in my art and design.

I remember telling myself to be more a bit more expressive when I started this piece.

Take a look at my process below.

En Garde Part 1

Something that I worked on before leaving for the Bali Illustration Workshop. Touched it up after some comments from the mentors.

The workshop was great! It was also a big reminder that I still have such a long way to go in this art journey. Made new friends and met up with some old ones. Huge thanks to Alejandro Mirabal and his wife for putting such an event together. I hope there's more to come :)

Now, back to the grind for me.

Back to Work

I've been distracted, lazy, unmotivated and discouraged. On top of that, military obligations and freelance took up a chunk of my time. I'm hoping to get back into it soon enough..

Covert Tactical Suit

My knowledge of tactical gear is pretty limited. Nevertheless, this was my attempt, inspired by watching the MGS V trailers way too many times. Tried to avoid rendering everything this time round and I guess the finishing looks slightly better this way, hopefully.

July has been a pretty rough month, financially and emotionally as an artist. Probably the lowest point of 2013. Times when you ask yourself why you're actually doing this. But I guess everybody goes through phases like these.

Nowhere else to go, but up.

King Arthur and the Knights of Justice

Accuracy aside, these were largely inspired by an awesome cartoon I used to watch as a kid (King Arthur and the Knights of Justice). It was about a high school football team that went back in time and became Knights of the Round Table with special powers.

Doing 3 variations of something just like the good old school days, I realize how slow I actually am. Took way too long on these, going the slow route via linework. But I think it was a fruitful exercise, especially since I rarely do these armour things. Glad to have some feedback from friends on these and realizing how far I'm lagging from everyone else!

On a side note, I've always been impressed by John Liew's work so I tried to achieve that level of finish and detail. Despite missing the mark, it was a good gauge of how far I can push right now.

Watch the awesome introduction sequence to this cartoon here.

Cosmic Girl

Another character in my Space Cowboy universe, this here is Miss Magnolia Cassidy aka Cosmic Girl. She's a spy who sometimes has to partner up with our protagonist, Marshal Flint Cooper. I'm having some fun with these, especially since I'm not familiar with the Western genre.

If my motivation doesn't die on me, I might expand this further.

Return of the Space Cowboy

Technically, this is the first time I'm doing a Space Cowboy but I just needed to sneak that Jamiroquai line in somehow. So with this guy I tried deviating from my usual direct top down lighting and also tried to push the render a bit more near the head area. I believe I've never used so much rim light before. I probably spent more time than I should have on this.

Also went the safe route and did some linework beforehand, seen below. Fleshing out this sci-fi western world might be pretty interesting. Perhaps I'll call him Marshal Flint Cooper, of Sector 13.

Lone Desert Wanderer

In the previous post, I mentioned something about breakthrough. Well, this piece felt a little bit like one for me. I think I managed to overcome some obstacles that were somehow blocking my flow and affecting the way I thought about making art. I hope I can keep this up and keep moving forward.

Anyway, I imagined this robotic guy to be a lone wanderer who does not want to be found by the general public. However, he'll put up a fight when threatened!

I've made a little GIF of my process, in case anyone's interested. Have a good weekend everyone!

Persian Soldier

Here's another one that started out as a study and eventually evolved into something stylized and cartoony. I also played around with the armour references found on the internet and mixed it up a little. Since I'm not good with faces, I thought I'd throw in one just for kicks.

Time to hit the sack!

Twenty Eight

Just a little sketch without too much thought or design. These things are usually fun to do because there's practically no pressure me to hit it out of the park. Not that I've hit any out of the park!

In other news, I turn 28 today. I guess it's a good time to look back and see how little or much I've progressed.

Bummer.