This blog...

...was initially for pieces done on a computer, but has since become a free-for-all. Here you'll find process work (digital and otherwise), sketch pages and studies, sometimes with commentary.

You can see the rest of my work here.

Remember kids : if you can't make pretty designs, at least make pretty lines!

-Paul

Saturday, January 29, 2011

Blasphemous - further development

So...devil girl's portal phallus is organic/dark to contrast with angelic girl's ethereal light-dong.  Also, I'm thinking demon girl will speak in subtitled sigils, and angel girl's dialog balloons will be scrolls.



Bonus whatsits...




lifedrawing log - 01.29.11

Thursday, January 27, 2011

lifedrawing log - 01.27.11

Clement Sauve - In Memoriam

I met Clement Sauve once in person at San Diego Comic Con -- had no knowledge of his work prior.  Needless to say, I was blown away, and he immediately skyrocketed to the top of my influence list.  In the coming year, I began a correspondence with him, and was amazed by how giving, insightful and encouraging a person he was.

Clem, I learned today, recently died of cancer.  He was 33.

Below are some snippets of things he wrote to me, which I feel are good for the community read in order to better understand his work and how he went about executing it so deftly.  You can tell by his tone that he was as good humored and humble as he was driven.  It's my hope that, as we mourn this substantial loss, other resources will emerge to help those of us who didn't know him nearly well enough in life become better acquainted with the artist and the man.


My name is pronounced SO-VEY, but don't feel bad, nobody manages to pronounce it correctly. And yes, I get Suave a LOT, including in credits, con badges and checks....


There's not exactly a big design industry here since Ubisoft and EA have only been around for the last few years and all my friends and the local artists I know work in comics in the US and Europe, so I'm slowly figuring out how to do this on my own, and I've only started doing color work for designs last year. I wouldn't say that the couple of years I spent penciling comics have been misspent, but I wish I had fallen in the design industry sooner because it's helped me grow a lot quicker than comics have.


I do work from enlarged thumbnails, and you're not the first one to be surprised by how loose the end result ends up despite me "tracing" thumbnails, but there's no big secret behind it.  I just don't do the thumbnails tight enough that I could trace them.  I just do the basic shape and pose of the character, and I leave myself a whole lot of room for actual object and details.  It allows me to fill entire 11 by 17 pages of little designs really quick, then just blow up and print the ones I want. I started doing that for the Transformers gig, cause they wanted a lot more variations than i was used to, and I needed to find a quick way to figure out if a design worked or not. I thought the technique worked well, so I've been using it since then. As for the designs themselves, they're a direct results of reading "making of" Star Wars books and listening to commentaries for animated series and movies.  Basically, I want the design to be unique enough that you could recognize it just by looking at an outline drawing of it. It works well for Star Wars ships and Simpsons characters, so I use the same principle. Of course sometimes, sadly, the clients don't allow enough freedom to do that, as you surely know, but I still try to muscle in as much input as I can.


...my friends were singing the praises of Manga Studio's inking tools. The best I could come up with was "I don't want something that flattens out every single imperfection. I'm illustrating an idea, no making a Kanye West record."


Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Monday, January 17, 2011

"Blasphemous" development // sketches

Did a bit more work on my Blasphemous concept. The designs are now simple enough to be drawn and redrawn ad infinitum, though there's still some minor kinks to work out.  i.e. I'm thinking of making the demonette small-chested for contrast.  Oh, also, I need to give them names.



Color study...


Bonus sketches from this weekend...

Saturday, January 15, 2011

lifedrawing log - 01.15.11

Today was yet another reminder that girls are the best subject matter for drawing ever.  And holy shit, I had the privilege of drawing in the same room as Dean Yeagle!  (I wonder if I can interview him for Babe Lab...in time, in time...)



Tamara "Firstkeeper" Bakhlycheva joined. Here's a snapshot of her and her husband Vadim from this week's Sketch Squat.  So focused!


They filled in some missing gaps in my Allods art book.

Saturday, January 8, 2011

more pretty girl hair

Nothing overly ambitious, but it's what I felt like drawing.

Sunday, January 2, 2011

color studies -- Dan

Today, Pio Ravago gave me a little crash course in color thumbnailing and avoiding "muddy color." To demonstrate, he used a drawing by our mutual friend Dan Beaulieu. It was such fun, I had to go home and do some of my own.  Thank you, Pio.  Thank you, Dan!

Saturday, January 1, 2011