Cooldown

Here's a little thing of sketches I did once I finished my work for the day. Always good to unwind and just let your mind wander.

Tuesday's Warmup

Here's Tuesday's warmup. Guess I'm on some kind of alien kick, huh?

These stretches are pretty good for me, I think. Hopefully it'll help me in my digital painting skills as time wears on, but time will be the only judge, eh?

A murder perhaps?!

Who knows?! This is a rejected cover from the comic pitch I just handed off to the writers. In truth, looking at this again, even though I like it, could you ever imagine it on a comic shelf? Maybe not. At least not until the trade. The other cover we went with I think fits it much nicer. Thanks to all the folk that helped me with my type dillemma!

Morning Warm up

Here's a warm-up I did this morning before I go to hit the art desk. Got to get to work on another comic pitch (for those that didn't know, and I can't remember mentioning it before, I was working on a pitch for a comic book that hopefully I'll hear some news about soon.) In the meantime, if you want an idea of what the next pitch contains, check out the zombie and the tree Troll thing in the previous post. Yeah, we use those kinds of critters in this one. Should be a blast!

Also, I sent out my portfolio to the big 3 animation companies this weekend. Here's hoping something comes outta that...

Some more Dumps!

Sketchdump! Watchout!

Unloading from ye olde sketchbook.

Muppet!

So here's the result of the drawing jam from this week. You can see I took ALL the time in the world on it *cough cough*. I think it looks odd enough to work as a muppet, and since it's in clothing that any Scaddite would recognize me in, it ought to work.

Thumbnails...

So here's some thumbnails I've doodled the past day of environments. They were just little sketches, at best 2 x 3 inches in width and height, but they were nice little things to overlook detail and focus on the big shapes and values. I might take one of these to a finished piece, more because I feel it might help my painting jitters I get with having something a lot more solid than what I normally do before I go jumping in.

Whoops...

And I just realized that was a WIP I posted. So here's what I actually came up with at the end. Seriously, for real.

Drawing Jam! Update

So here's what I've got at the end of the jam. Yeah, I know, it's not done, quit yer complainin'.

In all seriousness, it was one of those moments of "biting off more than you can chew and not finishing it, but learning a lot as a result." I'm actually fairly happy with the enclosure aspect of the painting, but the viewing area was giving me major trouble. Super huge trouble. And let's not even talk about starting on the dinosaurs.

Well, this week's jam ought to be not as bad though, since it's not as complicated. Here's to next week!

Drawing Jam!

So this week, I have a challenge before me: My good friend Dustin Johnson who has a blog over here, suggested that the two of us should start doing a weekly jam to keep our skills sharp. We used to do this sort of thing back in college, and quite frankly, I miss the times of sitting around with some chums, someone gives a ridiculous concept, and we all start drawing. Anywho, I decided to start us off with our first jam, and since I went to the zoo this past week (I'll probably post up photos soon of that,) I decided to do something along that line.

So our challenge this week is to do a drawing/painting of a zoo-type dinosaur enclosure. Things to keep in mind is that we have to be able to show the dinosaur, have people in the scene, and at least suggest how the dinosaur is enclosed (moat, glass like how Tiger pens usually are or the Reptile house, netting, etc.) Should give us both a workout.

Here's what I have so far. I decided to do my favorite dinosaur family, the Dromeosaurids, and do up a pen for those little vicious buggers. Once this is done I may put up a progress post just to show the steps I took to this, but for now, this is all you get.

Ach! Too long!

For anyone that reads this blog, I'm sorry it's been so long between posts. My girlfriend and I recently moved to Atlanta, so the past couple of weeks have been unpacking, and just getting situated. On top of that, I hadn't drawn in ages, so I've been slogging along trying to get back into the groove of things.

To hopefully rekindle the timeliness of this blog, here's some new and old sketches outta the ol' book. And hopefully new stuff will be a lot more frequent than before.

Really Long time...

Wow. I feel really guilty about neglecting this blog for so long...but it wasn't intentional! These past couple of weeks have been hectic since the girlfriend and I have moved up to Atlanta now for a graphic design job she got. In the meantime, I've been unpacking, doodling, and working on a project that I can't really say what it is yet...

In the meantime, here's a painting I did for Conceptart.org's C.O.W. (creature of the week) challenge. It was arctic dinosaur, so I couldn't pass it up. I learned a good amount of painting techniques with this one, but to be honestly, I think it's a bit of a fail in terms of actual concept, compared to some of the stuff people pumped out. Unfortunately, the next challenge was Catapult Creature, and during that challenge I wasn't able to get to internet or a computer to paint it. But I think I'll still complete it later just for more practice.

Been away for a while...

And I apologize! I'll try and be more regular with this. In da meantime, here's some new sketches, outta a fresh sketchbook I started.

Sketches!

Here's two more little drawings. One is a blind lawyer (M.M anyone?) and the other is an Ahab concept. It's kinda neat, but I think I need to incorporate more of a nautical/sea motif in his armor. Plus, his face right now is a blank one, which for a character like Ahab seems like a design flaw. I still haven't found his "look" yet.

These are Superheroes!

So these are Daredevil and Spider-man.

Ahab!

Well, here's a bunch of sketches of, weirdly enough, Captain Ahab. This isn't a story idea, rather a challenge for me to conceptualize characters in a similar universe. So, I decided to go after Moby Dick, and throw it in deep-space, starting with Ahab. I think I'm gonna go after Ahab, Moby Dick, Ishmael, and Queeqeq (I think that's how his name is spelt?) as my choice of characters, as well as Ahab's ship, the Pequod.

Anywho, Ahab's idea is that he's a species of creature that survives (or has adapted to) inhabiting mostly in deep-space, hunting the beasts that make up the deep-space seas. I decided to go with an idea that he has this organic body armor that also works as a containment suit, and when he steps out into space, it seals up tightly, preventing decompression death and allowing him to work in the near vacuum that is space. I'm still tinkering with ideas, but I want to bring some sea theme to him for sure, so I've been exploring conch shells and other sorts of shells/crustaceans as inspiration.

He's hardly finished, so there'll be more to come!

Aw Crap.

Well, here's a hellboy poster I just whipped up. I've been enamored by the idea of a graphicy way of presenting something, and this just seemed to be appropriate subject matter to do so. At the moment, I'm gonna consider it done, but I might revisit it and tweak mainly the lineart...

This is Batman.

Duh da da DA daaaa!


I saw Dark Knight today...and was very, VERY impressed. This is quite possibly the best comic book movie created yet. But hell, I'm sure everyone's saying that.

New Website!

That's right folks! I finally got my stuff together and cobbled it into a coherent website! It's a lot of the same stuff on here, just more professional looking.

You can check it out right over here: Art of Andrew Sides

Enjoy folks, and spread it around like some bad disease!