zondag 9 december 2012

Meanwhile, in Rotterdam...

This is the fruit of my efforts to come up with a style, both in terms of colouring and stylizing.
I recently went to the Mcbess exhibition in the Hague, were I really feel like something got triggered, and several portraits later, I finally came up with a grasp on my own style (the colouring part is just part natural result of effort and part discovering the Gamut mask, making those quicky fanart thingies helped).

About the page itself, it's a school assignment (make a comic page about Rotterdam, anything goes) and in case it's not clear, guy A (sailor) is chasing guy B (not an asian, if he was asian I wouldn't have made him that hysterical shade of yellow) over the erasmus bridge except guy B escapes via giant flying jellyfish.

woensdag 28 november 2012

Assorted fanart


 

Various small pieces of fanart I made/will be making as part of my everlasting quest for improvement.

zondag 25 november 2012

Illustrator rules

Last year I received lessons by Danai (a really unpunctual guy filled with knowledge and insights) who told us all sorts of useful stuff, but, off course, it's easy to forget that stuff when life and everything else is tugging at you from all sides and you don't write it down immediatetly, so here's some of the stuff I really should always keep in mind and try to work towards.

- Just like how a good comedian can make even the phonebook sound funny and interesting, a good illustrator should be able to make even the most boring and mundane seem visually appealing.

- Just having one way of illustrating isn't good, because that means you only have one solution to problems, and some problems require different solutions.

- Don't overestimate technique. Lot's of published illustrators get by fine without being the best artist in the world, it's the idea behind the illustration that's the key to having something fun to look at.

- Don't underestimate technique either. Even if you have a good idea, noone likes looking at garbage.

That's all I can remember right now, but it's good to keep in mind, especially for me because I have a bad habit of staying away from depicting the mundane because I find it so boring.
This means that whenever the stituation demands I depict the mundane it ends up being even less interesting than reality.
It's unrealistic to expect to be able to just do exactly and only what you're interested in and still earn a living.
And who earns more respect? The guy who's only good at what he likes or the guy who can make even a chair or couch seem interesting?
Let's work towards being that other guy!

Shockwaves


Fun times. 
Making up for the lack of quality in the underwater animated gif, I made a cover-band in a stadium.
They play their own versions of ACDC, Queen and Bananarama songs.
Sometimes they play Fire Bomber.

woensdag 21 november 2012

Special training

Last summer holiday I decided I was definitely not good enough for anything skill-wise, so I decided to make a drawing a day based on snes or genesis games for as long as the vacation lasted as a way to try out techniques, keep myself busy and have something fun to do. In the end I came out all new and improved like (the samurai ghost thing I posted earlier is kind of like the fruit of my newly gained experiences), so I can really recommend doing something like this.
What follows are some of the more noteworthy results, maybe you'll recognise something.




























While not exactly fantastic (to be fair though, I did make em in like two or three hours a piece), I really feel like doing this helped develop me, so that's that (for now).

dinsdag 20 november 2012

Sunlight Yellow OD

As proof that I can post whatever the hell I wanna post on my own blog, here's some (reasonable) fanart I made in an hour and a half of the first main character, Jonathan Joestar, of the best Japanese comic ever, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, by Hirohiko Araki!
And because I like listening to it so much, here's an awesome 8-bit rendition of a certain Beatles' song that isn't entirely unrelated. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGnedql63YU check this guy's stuff out (and JBA while you're at it).

Horrible nights, filled with curses













I while ago I made a book trailer as a school assignment, and while the end result didn't exactly impress the teachers, I'm pretty proud of the stills if nothing else.
The stylistic clash between the characters and the backgrounds is because of technical problems and time management, and the video in question you'll find right here: 
http://vimeo.com/52532680

maandag 19 november 2012

Blues









Let's dump some neet old stuff. Mostly stuff from my portfolio. The top two are pretty much the only things typographical in my portfolio, I should definitely do something about that.
For the rest its mostly school stuff. The comic page was something that I wanted to more with, but when I realised I made the panels waaay too small for any substantial sort of text I kind of lost steam.
The samurai skeleton is called Korosuke Akugawa, I had a lot of fun coming up with his name. The rest are all school assignments (except the kung-fu robots).