Valiant Return

OK, so to the impartial observer it may seem as if I’ve been lazy and haven’t updated this blog in over half a year. To such individuals I would say this; while you may be technically correct in your assertion of the lateness of this post, your assumption of my laziness is not only incorrect but hurtful. I have been incredibly busy. Incredibly busy. I would love to tell you why, but unfortunately I cannot, because I am lying.

Well, now we’ve got that out the way, let’s get on with some HARDCORE ART.

At the tail-end of last summer, I decided to try my hand at Tshirt designs. It was fun, but incredibly difficult to come up with a bold, witty design. Y’know, the kind of design that people would actually want on a Tshirt. And then I got a job and kind of forgot about doing them (incredibly busy). But here are the ones I managed to get to a near-finished state.

This is the first design I attempted, and is probably my favourite. Opium’s coming back in a big way.

This one went through a few revisions before I was happy with it. The tricky thing about designing with the possibility of print in mind is that there are often colour limitations (I submitted most of these through Threadless, which require a limit of 8 colours, including black and white). Mind you, the benefit of this is that it really makes you think about what colours are necessary, and what colours go together.

Unfortunately, the Mega Drive didn’t output in a high enough resolution to depict such realistic visions of Sonic’s demise. This Tshirt is an attempt to rectify that.

This one wasn’t actually finished, as I was going to change the hands, and possibly swap the newspaper for something else. But, you get the idea. HE’S A SPIDER HAHAHAHA

FIRST POST-GRADUATION POST

Ah, to be a graduate. I’ve really earned the blissful emptiness of these days; the freedom to lounge and relax; the gentle caress of the sun on my face and a light breeze on my skin. These summer afternoons are my reward for three years of hard work.

…

OH GOD I’M SO BONE-ACHINGLY BORED

But look, I was productive and motivated once! Here’s all the stuff I did in the last few months of uni! I’M NOT A LAZY ASS, honest

First off, comeeeks. I made one for each issue of my student paper, for the whole year I was games editor. I'll post the first one again for good measure, but other than that, these are all new to this blog (as always, click for full-size):


TA-DA. I think you’ll all agree that my little mini-series ended with a striking commentary on the state of modern student life. Plus there were aliens. Badass aliens.

Let’s move on to some of the Fuse covers I did. You may recognise a certain character in two of them; this is because I’m too lazy to think of more experimenting with different styles. Yeah.

And here’s a header I composed for my friend’s blog, The Deadly Rhythm. He said I could do what I liked with the design, so naturally, I thought of a bizarre flesh-forged guitar headstock bursting forth from a man’s chest while a French lady looks on with an unexplained sexual lust. What can I say? My brain is a complex place.

Oh, and here’s a sneak peek at a Tshirt design I’m working on at the moment. It involves a Victorian gentleman and copious amounts of opium. I'll leave you with his creepy, smacked-out face as a kind of final mark of punctuation for this blog post. HE CAN SEE YOUR SHAME

Belated Christmassy Update 2: Comic Bewk.

Okay, so in my last blog post I said I’d make a follow-up update ‘probably on Boxing Day or something’. It’s now, um, April 2011. Time flies, huh?

In the meantime, I’ve not been up to much. Other than, y’know, FREAKING OUT about my dissertation. Note that I don’t say I’ve been writing it – this would be incorrect – I’ve been freaking out. There’s quite a big difference.

Anyway, last term I was doing this great English module, Dystopias and Utopias. Apart from being really fun in of itself, one of the assessments was a creative project to be undertaken in a group. So our group came up with The Anglican Republic:



Pretty cool, huh? In addition to contributing to the general development of the idea, most of the photoshopped images in the video above were done by yours truly (oh, and I’m in the damn thing, obviously). But what I put the most amount of time into was a comic supplement, which you can find in its entirety below:


Page 1
Page 2
Page 3
Page 4
Page 5
Page 6
Page 7
Page 8
Page 9
Page 10
Page 11
Page 12
Page 13
Page 14
Page 15
Page 16
Page 17
Page 18
Page 19
Page 20
Page 21
Page 22
Page 23
Front and Back Cover
Introduction / Interview
Civil Defense Info

I was really proud of this, as it took fucking ages. It’s not perfect – I particularly dislike almost all of the dialogue in the first half, and the drawings are rushed due to time constraints – but it felt so good to actually hold a bundle of A5 comic books you’d made yourself. If I didn’t need a looming deadline to actually get anything done ever, I’d probably do another comic sometime in my free time, but really make it perfect. Unfortunately, all I really seem to do with my free time is waste it. Oh, and hunt for secret Nazi treasure all over the world, obviously.

Christmassy Update 1: Space Invaded

Phew, so that’s the penultimate term of my final year over! A few more months and I’ll be cast out into the real world, forced to scrape a living from society’s great, shit-covered boot.

I’ve been hugely busy lately, so there’s a lot to show and tell. Rather than compiling a colossal blog post to rival the splendour of gods, I think I’ll break up my recent work into a few updates.

First up, we have Space Invaders in my uni living room. Basically, I made a giant Space Invader with random cassette tapes and sprinkled a few smaller, Hama-bead ones around it. There’s something strangely ominous about a descending UFO comprised of Michael Jackson singles and Tina Turner’s greatest hits.

A few weeks ago I wrote a couple of introductory gaming features for my student paper, on Fallout and Minecraft. Check them out below - I’m pretty pleased with how they came out.

Anyway, I’ll post another update soon with more stuff from my student paper (probably on Boxing Day or something). Try not to get too excited that you forget all about Christmas tomorrow – I’d hate for my blog update to overshadow a festive event.

Anyways, Merry Christmas to one and all, etc!

The Death of Summer

Oh, hello! Long time no see. This place has gotten pretty desolate of late seeing as I’ve been so negligent with updating it. I had to prune back a wall of ivy just to get into the admin area, and I swear I saw a badger in the ‘about me’ section.

The main reason for the lack of updates is because I’ve been in Brighton for the summer, and I did sweet flip all with regards to artwork. Of course, now that I’m back Shef-side and the weather is returning to its naturally bleak and drizzly state I’m sure I’ll be a lot more productive.

First up, I did a Fuse cover for the final issue of Forge Press before the summer holidays. I was trying to make it a tiny bit more stylised (hence the ridiculous proportions of the policeman and the slight blush on the girl’s joints). All done in Photoshop, of course:


The latest cover I designed – for the first Fuse of this university year - was slightly different, as I pencilled and inked the drawing on two sheets of A4 before scanning them in and colouring the whole thing in Photoshop. I liked how the colourised buildings turned out; I think they look a lot better stylistically than my last attempt at depicting Sheffield structures.


Most recently I’ve started writing and drawing a fortnightly comic to go in the back of Fuse. The first one is a six-panel introductory comic, whilst the second – and all further updates – will be short, three panel jokes.

I really like the look of the characters, design wise. I tried to make them unique both in the shapes of their figure and the colours involved in their appearance, and I think they all balance each other quite well. The most challenging thing is the writing – making a comic funny is harder than you’d think. Whilst the first one is okay, I’m not really pleased with the humour in the second strip as it lacks a satisfying punchline. As with anything, however, there is a learning curve and I’m sure I’ll improve as the comic progresses.

Finally, here’s a poster I made on the request of my girlfriend. It’s based on the ‘Get Excited and Make Things’ poster, which in turn is a variation of ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’.


I may also make an update in a while based on the recent feature pages I’ve been designing for Fuse and Forge Press, as not only is the role of games editor keeping be busy with Indesign but I was recently duty co-editor of the whole of Fuse. It’s probably not that interesting, but I figure that I don’t really have any readers to lose (seeing as I have no readers in the first place).

Pandas, Pripyat and Prettiness

First up; prettiness. My custom N64 was featured on Kotaku. That makes me famous and awesome and stuff.
Next, Pandas.


This is a picture I made for my girlfriend's birthday - it now rests, posterfied and glossified, on her wall. The theme, as you can no doubt see, was 'pandas fighting scantily-clad women'. Her idea.

Finally, Pripyat. As the new games editor for Forge Press / its 'Fuse' pullout, I decided to run a little experiment involving S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat, in which I explored playing the game with no saving, loading or checkpoints. You can read the first part of the article here, whilst the feature pullout (which is going in the next issue) is below:


With the exception of the map and the Stalker figure, everything was compiled from photographs I took in and around my house. I quite like the depiction of the ruined Arts Tower, myself.

Having the main Fuse feature also meant I could do the cover:


...and I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. I was trying a new colouring technique whereby I actually tried to use Photoshop properly. Crazy, I know! I don't think it looks as good as it could, but if anything that just shows that I'm still improving.

Anyways, I'm off to sleep. x

Spring Clean

Hmm, the thick layer of dust building on my last blog post seems to imply an update is in order. So, here’s a couple of things I’ve been working on recently:



The above is a pixel art piece I did for the cover of Fuse, in Forge Press. Anyone from Sheffield should recognise the IC and the Arts Tower – digitalising them such a crude and isometric manner took far too long. The IC, for instance, took literally hours. I have immense newfound respect for any pixel artist, because I now realise the religious-like devotion these people have for their craft (because it is a craft – you are not painting, you are building, square by square). I can only imagine there is some intangible pixel deity to whom they pray, as I cannot see another reason why you would devote so much of your life and sanity to mere artistic achievement.

The article to which the picture is related can be found here; it’s an attempt to catalogue some of the best freeware games you can get from the internet, and I wrote most of the summaries. Unfortunately I didn’t have much room for flair in my writing, because we needed to keep the wordcount to a bare minimum to fit as many games into the feature as possible.



This is a little animation I’m working on for my friends’ club night, JUNK. I really enjoyed making it – animating melting flesh is more fun than it would seem. It’s not finished, and to be honest I’m not really sure what we’re going to do with it anyway (perhaps chuck it on a website?), but I’m quite proud of it.