I X'ed out of the Painting by Accident. - SotD 122

Today has been one of those days. Everything I touched was turning to crap before my eyes, but I kept pushing through, and I'm sure tomorrow it'll look better than I think it is, but to top it off I killed today's sketch with two misclicks in a row.

How the heck after using a computer heavily for, well, far too much of my life, I somehow not only clicked close instead of minimize, I then moused over too fast and clicked "don't save". It's happened so fast I didn't even realize what I did at first. I just entered this startled confusion. But I figured it out. Not a lot I could do at that point, so I sat there in silence for awhile with a stupid look on my face. I've had my fair share of crashes, corruptions, and failures... but so rarely is it 100% my own misdoing. And now I'm so frustrated I'm going to work on design stuff instead of drawing anymore today.

But I dug up some stuff I never posted, and you can feast your eyeballs on this, because I still owe art. I talked about this project a long time ago, but since it never really met the standard I wanted due to some time misspent, I never posted any of it. So here are some select picks from the 23 boards that the project spanned over.

Viking Battlemage Outtake - SotD 121

Well. There is a bunch in here that I love, but without some serious fixing I can't do a whole bunch more to it. So I'm considering this a bit of and outtake for now. So many things that still need drawn, redrawn, and painted to complete the idea to really bring it to even a painterly ending.

Anyway, I saw Thor, which was awesome, and felt the need to do some norse character. Thor was so much better than I thought it was going to be. The Mythical realms in it were just mind-blowing. Such great concept work. Although, the character development was so rushed it could have been a trilogy. Otherwise all the character changes felt like they were done out of convenience for the plot, than as actual development.

Start of the third week of sketches. I think I already broke my previous record. I'd like to thank podcasts and ambient music. But not terraria. That game was a mistake. A horrible, addictive mistake. It's a good thing that my partner in crime on that game is going to the netherlands for a month and a half. Definitely one of those, "well I'll hop in for an hour" and then suddenly it's been a week and you have a beard and animals living in your hair.

A Respite from Dark Things - SotD 120

Been listening to podcasts while working on stuff. Not sure how I got so far on just music. This is just multi tasking at it's best. Next step: Painting audiobooks.

I do so many dark things, I decided to do some cute creatures. This sort of thing... so hard to come up with something with any sort of uniqueness to it. So many creatives have attacked this problem that you really have to try to break away from the formula. but when you do, it kids way less kid friendly. I feel like now it's become a style race rather than a design race as far as happy-go-lucky designs go. Not saying I tried to do that. I just started sketching...

Step 1. Take an animal
Step 2. Add two big eyes
Step 3. Add hyper antics
Optional Extra: Snaggletooth
Step 4. Make millions.

Another Landscape - SotD 119

Another landscape today. Just some quick photoshop, but definitely more time spent than expected. I really need to dig up some texture/landscape brushes you tend to see other concept artists using. Don't have a whole bunch that can create a nice sharp line with some texture still in it. May come back and noodle at this one some more though. I kept finding myself throwing stuff at it instead of painting, but I definitely found out some stuff that I will be using in others.

Quick Landscape - SotD 118

Got some other things I need to do today, and needed a bit of landscape practice anyway since it's been awhile. So... here are some rocks in the ocean.

The Worst of Places - SotD 117

If I had put two more legs on this sucker I would have been entering into nightmare fuel territory. Cutting this one way closer to midnight than I ever intended, but some distractions and tasks seem to keep getting in the way. Have a feeling I have a landscape in me tomorrow, cause I am pretty sick of characters and monsters now.

Hope you enjoy these as much as I enjoy makin' em. At this point though, not sure how close to sketches they are.

Just Lurkin' Around - SotD 116

Painted up a monster. Not entirely sure where this one came from. It strikes me as something that would find it's home in a Resident Evil or Silent Hill game. I mean, it has chains from the ceiling and everything. But I've never really played those games. I'm hoping for a silent hill 2 play soon with a friend, but I think the only horror games I've tried to get through have been Amnesia and F.E.A.R.

Amnesia was a success in that I beat it with a friend and there was much rejoicing and the pumping out of chests.  Not so much a success that it had drilled into my deepest fears and turned me into a easily startled mess. "Storage"will never be a normal word to me again. It will not be a container of any sort. It will be the place that got a very true "I am going to die" throat tearing scream out of me. It is one of the best games I've ever played. But I will NEVER play it again. At least it wasn't as bad as this dude... (Not Work Safe due to really explicit language- and also, spoilers. So don't watch if you are ever going to play it) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loSzpvq73FY

You'll be thinking, what is wrong with this guy, but... he's just vocalizing exactly what is happening inside your head while you are at the controls. The build-up and mood of it is just... terrifyingly perfect. Everyone should play through it once.

Space Rooster - SotD 115

HEY YOU...

Ever wonder what a rooster from space would look like? Well consider this learning time, because this is what it looks like.

Considering my huge Donkey Kong rant ont he last post I'm gonna keep this nice and short. I went into photoshop and experimented a little. Nice change from the recent stuff to really get some color working. And lastly, as a reminder, no updates on the weekends for these. Only going to be posting Sketch-of-the-Days MTWthF. I may stil post bigger stuff, but these are reserved for weekdays.

A Vampire Lady 2/4 - SotD 114

Thinking I have two more vampire girls in me. I have never been one for pin-up art or anything like that, so while these are actually pretty challenging for me, still fun. I'm gonna be honest here, my strong points lie with drawing men and monsters. But this one took half the time the other did. So I'm gonna do two more, make it potential series layout in a 2x2 grid.

In the last few days it's come to my attention that you can play old Super Nintendo games online with a buddy using the right emulator, and I just want to say that I do not remember Donkey Kong Country being so freakin' hard to beat. I must have been one heck of a masochistic kid to have gotten just 90% on the first one. DK country 2 has been beaten, and me and my friend are gonna move onto DK 3. I didn't even know there was a third. It stars Dixie: a broken, hair swinging jerkface (and I say this because I played Diddy Kong), and some giant baby monkey. And since Diddy was replaced, guess who got the giant baby. Not quite sure what nintendo/rare were thinking about on this one, other than cashing in on an insanely popular franchise, but a BABY? And he controls like Donkey Kong from the first game, but... why not just use Donkey Kong? Also, where where the heck are these monkeys all coming from Rare? You have an island that is pretty much, Donkey Kong (worst first name ever btw), Diddy, Dixie, an old crotchety Gorilla, a game show host (probably some mental illness at work), and a nutjob that taped a barrel to some salvage yard airplane wings- which through the power of imagination and nintendo magic takes you from world to world.

What poor mother has to put up with all these jerks? I mean all they do is wander out into the jungle drunk on banana juice and kill hundreds of things just hanging out. For what? To get back some stolen bananas? I think I had a pen taken from me awhile back, I guess I'll go out and send them into a bottomless chasm. But on this island, with bananas everywhere, underwater even, this is like if Trump wondered out of his Golden apartment and begged on the streets for coins. It's just excessive. Monkeys... get some help.

A baby Rare? http://www.mariowiki.com/Kiddy_Kong 
And these games keep getting more kid like, but they are so difficult...

Log Boy is Lost - SotD 113

I made a sketch of Log Boy probably about over a year ago now, but I've always sort of wanted to color that sketch, and this is the result of finding that sketchbook and coloring that sketch. Quite liked working on this one, much more photo based than normal, was just a lot of fun to step outside my normal methods on this, even though you probably can't tell. Turned into a pretty involved sketch-a-day, so that is the reason for the late posting.

This was only really supposed to be filler until I could get a bit further on the Skyrim guy in the below post.   It was so hard to stop working on it though.

So I put him in the woods. Being a log, probably not the easiest missing persons to find.

Dark Elf/Skyrim - SotD 112 Part 1

Before I take this too far today, I figured I'd post it, and finish it up tommorrow, than not have anything today, as I ended up starting 3 sketches all at once and it really slowed me down. But this one will be finished up tommorrow. Or so I think.

EDIT:

So I wasn't happy with what I had at all, and was sort of just winging it without any sort of plan whatsoever. I took a step back, made a plan, and now I'm reworking it into something I like more. So here is an updated WIP. Lots of changes, but good ones. The lump there in the gap will be turning into a dragon peering through/passing. Next step is to make decisions on foreground elements, and to finish the drawing. Really backward, slow way to work on this one. Could have avoided quite a bit of time if I had just taken my time and known what I was gonna try to achieve.

Original Post:

A Vampire Lady - SotD 111

Well, I've recently installed geektool on my mac. So now, right there on my desktop now I have a To-Do list. I'm not exactly known for my organization. To be honest, most of the time I go to put something away, get distracted and just set whatever item that was down, and forget about it for a week. Which after a few trips doesn't make for the cleanest areas. So this little list is a big step towards a more organized existence. And one of the first things I added on there: Sketch-of-the-Day. So every morning, it's the first thing I see. So these should get pretty consistent - in theory. Although you'll probably see a bunch of boring failed studies along the way. But here is number one. But it says one-hundred and eleven up there, but I'm picking up from where I left off from the original run. Plan is to update with a sketch of the day MTWTh & F. Nothing on weekends. So if I do miss a day, I can still catch up reasonably.

Wouldn't believe the difference this little list has made. I knew I was scatterbrained from time to time, but man, all those all-nighters through school seemed to have taken their toll.