Oh so many things ...

back on DA for the first time in forever. Did a tattoo design for a friend, and it turned out killer. Another friend has commissioned me for a tattoo design now, and it's a challenging concept. I needed to get practiced up on my drawing skills to do the concept justice. Nothing holds my attention better than an amazing set of curves, so I turned to DA's "artistic nudes" photography section and tried a few. I spent a lot of time on them, measured and re-measured everything a dozen times. There's some problems with proportion in both of them, but they're fairly minor and I don't think they ruin the image. I'm really happy with the results, two of my best drawings.

While I was working on the drawings I started diving through the massive archive of amazing lifedrawing reference, so many amazing shots, great poses, pro lighting, and gorgeous models are on this site. Model linked to a photographer, who would in turn have great work and a bunch more in the favs section ..

I left deviantart because of the horrible anime and the legions of talentless furries who fav anything with tits and a tail, but I've come back for the photography.

Some photographers are very militant with "MY ART IS NOT YOUR STOCK" warnings and threats to sue for possession of your firstborn if you use their work, so I hope that my drawings won't piss off the creators of the stuff I reference. It'm not making money here, this is just practice. I doubt I'd even add this stuff to my demo reel, drawings from photos don't "count" the same way drawing a live model does.

I'm tempted to keep going on drawing models from photo, but I really should get started on the tattoo ... I've got some ref collected. It'll involve smoke and crows wrapping around the guys arm, so laying out the drawing is a challenge. I'm trying to think of how to arrange things so they'll wrap around the muscles properly and still have room to fit everything in there.

I'm also working on writing a large story setting that I hope to turn into videogames and short films, but that project is fairly daunting at times. My theory is "bite off more than you can chew, then chew it" and it's worked so far. Every project I set for myself for the past three years has been outside of my abilities, but they've come together with some success.

The drawing "vancity" was the first jump. Went crazy finishing that thing on time. Was never quite happy with the amount of detail though, I just hit a wall of being unable to make lines tiny enough. I'd like to attempt a larger version of such a drawing, like a square meter sized canvas of the whole planet in that type of warped perspective, with caricatured cities, military battles, nukes, space stations and the moon. I've done some rough stuff on this idea, but abandoned it in favor of writing the story of that world.

Been writing a lot lately. So far I've got about thirty pages of material for this world setting, dubbed "Project Dystopia" for the time being. If I keep going at this rate, in four months I hope to have the whole timeline done, along with written planning for the first game or two to be set in this world (XBLA titles hopefully), then I'll be able to start designing and drawing everything. Archetecture, airplanes, ships, tanks, vehicles of all kinds, guns, armor, space ships, bunkers, costume design, everything. This base of writing will give me a platform for every type of design imaginable, so as I learn painting and such, I can base all my project on one growing idea. Hopefully within two years I'll have enough stuff down on paper that I'll be able to make a real game pitch to some big studios.

If that doesn't work, I'm considering a more independent rout. There are now a handful of distribution methods that could allow me to circumvent the traditional publishing methods, opting for pure digital distribution has worked for plenty of games on XBLA, the Playstation Network, and Steam, and Sony is turning the PSP into a purely online platform, hopefully the DS will move in the same direction.

I've played several digital distribution titles and been blown away. Geometry wars, Trials HD, Braid, Super Puzzle Fighter 2 HD, Castle Crashers, Flow, Flower, TF2, Battlefield 1943 ...

Digital distribution is an amazing thing. It looks like games are becomeing more and more accessable to the artist, with more options to get the product out there. We still rely on beurocracy to some degree, and always will. Call me misty eyed, but I feel we're truly in an age of artistic reneisance like no other. For the first time artists can collaborate across the globe instantly, share our work with millions instantly, gather reference of all types instantly, it's fucking beautiful!

Combined with the introduction of gaming as an interactive art platform (Flower, Braid, Pixeljunk Eden) and you've got a truly amazing time to be an artist. There are more artists alive now than ever before in history, we have generations of inspiration and instruction available practically for free, magic boxes of silicon capable of creating CG graphics that would have burned the retinas out of previous generations, and screens capable of displaying color that is impossible to achieve with natural materials ....

okay I should stop geeking out and get to work on something!

The revolution is happening all around us, I just hope my generation isn't so spoiled and jaded as to let such opportunity slip through our fingers