Young Hanuman

First post of 2013! Started this one in December and it took a little longer than expected (don't they usually), but we're done! More Ramayana work, this is Hanuman, one of Rama's closest friends and a Hindu deity himself.

Death Prophet

Finished! And with her new DOTA2 colors.

Death Prophet (wip)

Taking a break from interiors :) EDIT because I got to work and realized my PC's monitor needs some calibration :P

Channels and Screenprinting

I had another one of those discoveries that reminds you exactly why Photoshop is a several-hundred dollar program. I've always believed that it's shortsighted to assume you've "learned everything you need to know" when it comes to that program... there's always a better way to do something, or a trick that you can use to make your work better, or in this case, a completely new approach that opens up tons of possibilities.

At Capt. Jerry's, most of my work is taking someone else's art into Illustrator and outputting it into film separations. The very basic explanation is that each color has its own film, so you have to keep your colors separate when you create art for screenprinting. Naturally, this doesn't work as well with digital paintings.

EXCEPT... just recently I've discovered how to properly use alpha channels for exporting selections... which prompted my coworker Ian Jackson and I to start thinking. He discovered how to properly create channels from scratch, and I painted an image in channels just to see how it would work. Basic two color.



So there's some things that need to be finessed (other than my lacking photography skills) - lightening up the layers so that when they are printed as a halftone they don't get too opaque, you can see in the red especially...

But it's pretty exciting realizing that I can digitally paint films for screenprinting. Makes me want to go all out and make a several color image - or just a baller one like the amazing Batman: Arkham City shirts. I actually have a shirt from this series, and it's just another 2 color, red and black on white - and it looks amazing. And being a screenprint, it's incredibly durable.

Ideas, ideas, ideas!

Spectacle Obscura Posters

Cleaned up jpegs of each of the five posters I designed for "Spectacle Obscura." The last one is a bit of an easter egg for those in the company - we all love Tarsem Singh's work.

You can see all of these at my website which has also gotten a little cleaned up. Check it out!

Spectacle Obscura, part 3

Almost finished.

Come see "Spectacle Obscura," an aerial show October 13-16 in MICA's BBOX."

Spectacle Obscura, part 2

They continue to progress nicely, but have I mentioned these are huge?

Buy tickets online for my aerial show, "Spectacle Obscura."

Spectacle Obscura

For the set of DNA Theatre's upcoming show, "Spectacle Obscura," I was asked to create five old fashioned circus posters to decorate the set with. Rather than print them out full and in color, we would print them ourselves, on 11x17 sheets of paper, b/w, to be painted afterward. I vectorized all of my drawings so that they could be indefinitely scaled to fit Kel's needs. The posters you see here are in the process of being painted, and are very large - that first one being 4.25'x4.5.' It's a time consuming process, but cheaper, and the end result has a nice quality.

I have other work of a completely different nature, but I'll save it for the next blog post. :)

Pam

Kristin Bauer van Straten as Pam from HBO's "True Blood." Haven't worked with ink and more-or-less flat color in a long time, so I wanted to revisit.

I have a lot of work I'll be sure to put up soon, some stuff for DNA Theatre's new show, "Spectacle Obscura." I'm in it, so if you're in Baltimore you should check it out!

Game of Thrones: Daenerys WIP

Been so long since I posted! I actually have been working, but it's all stuff I can't show - what's nice about having an influx of work is that it motivates you to make your own. I've recently been watching Game of Thrones on HBO, which I love - have never read the books, but I bought the first one to read as soon as the show ends. I can't help it if I love being surprised while watching!



I'm planning a triptych of the Targaryan/Dothraki: currently I'm working on Daenerys. I'm not sure if she's my favorite character, but I'm having fun with it all the same. I haven't decided yet if I'm going with the show's interpretation of her with green eyes, or the book's where the Targaryans have violet eyes.

Hope everyone's having a great summer! I'm moving at the end of the month to my new apartment which I'll hopefully be staying in for a good long time, I'm so done with packing and unpacking!

Okamiden Fanart

Just a little something for fun. Don't actually have the game (yet?), but still excited for it.

Hope everyone's having a good spring break!

Orochimaru / 'Zine Submission

I've never seen Naruto, but the illustration seniors were organizing a 'zine for Naruto fanart. A few years ago I might have gotten all uppity about the idea, but at the moment I was grateful for a) an excuse to reignite my love affair with sumi, and b) a break from thesis!

Also, in researching the characters to decide which one to do, I was like, I'll watch one scene with Orochu-whoever and see what he's like! It turned out to be the scene where he and Sasuke fight. In trying to describe exactly what this first impression was like, I've told people that it's like wanting to see some hot lesbian sex, so going to see this movie you heard someone talking about called "Black Swan."

Advanced Photoshop final

Advanced Photoshop final, originally uploaded by Ntkufreak.

So, this was originally supposed to be a diptych, and eventually it still will be -- Gackt as Genji with Gaga beside him being the other poster, so they would be a set. But I couldn't get that one painted in time, so this one remains for my final.

Lady Gaga as Eve/Lilith/Serpent, Gackt as Adam, the story of Genesis. Promo material for a fake concert featuring the two. Also a pin-up. Experimented with linework+painting and Mucha style.

It was fun. I'm sleepy though. This WILL be revisited, I want to add text and of course the other piece, but for now I'm happy with it.

Leaving Home

Leaving Home, originally uploaded by Ntkufreak.

So I'm pretty sure I'm going to go back to this and PAINT it, but I had a lot of fun with the drawing. I decided to slightly cartoon a boy. Then I put him on a boat. Then I gave him a dragon companion.

...Shrug!

I think it turned out pretty cute though. I ALWAYS heavily thumbnail and plan things out for formal projects, so it was nice to let a project just literally develop on its own, without any forethought.

And I had fun with colors and textures, but I'm still probably going to paint it. Would still love your input.

Words on Wheels

Words on Wheels, originally uploaded by Ntkufreak.

My Words on Wheels entry... the poem was chosen for me. Purple Snow... very fitting, considering the week I was working on it was the snowpocalyse, and of course... I love the color purple. This is for my Concepts 2 class, not a Photoshop class assignment! Astonishing.

Heather Christian

Heather Christian - Jewel Case, originally uploaded by Ntkufreak.

Heather Christian - Label, originally uploaded by Ntkufreak.

Heather Christian - Postcard, originally uploaded by Ntkufreak.

Heather Christian - Poster, originally uploaded by Ntkufreak.

An Advanced Photoshop Techniques assignment where we had to make a postcard, poster, jewel case and CD label using templates and paying attention to the bleed, trim, and safety designations of the PDF. It was a lot of fun.

The artist's name is Heather Christian. Check out her music! She's quite snazzy. And the first classy Myspace page I've seen in years!

http://www.myspace.com/heatherchristian

Versus

Versus, originally uploaded by Ntkufreak.

An octopus man. I want to go back and fix this because I had a lot of issues with Photoshop crashing and having to restart it -- thus I had to rush. A few edges look really bad up close. But overall I'm pretty pleasantly surprised with it.

I love painting this character -- he's created by a friend, though I help conceptualize him sometimes. Tentacles are awesome. You just put them where you need more compositional shapes. Like, what more do you need.

From Fall 2008; Re: Fall 2009

Ariel Screenprint, originally uploaded by Ntkufreak.

It's looking like another busy semester.

MON: Illustration Concepts 1 with Jose
TUE: Critical Studies
WED: Eros with Jose; Independent Study [Illustration 2] with Daniel Krall; Screenwriting Workshop
THU: ----
FRI: Life Drawing with Economous

18 credits? Am I a complete and utter fool or what?

Anyway, I was uploading things for my portfolio and stumbled across this. I was never that keen on screenprinting, and the scan kills the colors here a bit, but c'est la vie, yeah?