Atlas, Mathew, and Dave

It’s been almost 2 weeks since I have posted. And that just seems wrong… Anyways, here is a sketch.

With this drawing I was thinking about Atlas from Greek mythology and decided to go with a more mechanized version for holding up the sky. I threw in the little figure for a bit of scale, and I was just having fun with some of the more glyph type designs around the eyes.

 

As you can all probably tell by now I tend to like to doodle faces, a lot. So here are more faces.

I’m debating posting some of the work in progress on the animated projects I’m working on right now (Boards, WIP pieces, design documents) but I’m not sure if you would be into that, so let me know.

Also my friend Aaron has a new webcomic Mathew’s Wurld http://www.theooniverse.com/daveswurld/index.php?date=2013-09-15 You should check it out, and tell your friends and all that jazz. If for some reason you haven’t read his previous comic Dave’s Wurld (It is already a complete story) just click “first page” when you go to the link.

Follow my art page on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/JamesMarontateArt and Twitter https://twitter.com/JamesMarontate

Monochromaticism

Been doing some more monochromatic stuff to work on my value relationships and such.

I’ve been pretty busy with a new project that I will be talking about in more detail soon.

Also if you are a fan of Say Anything or Eisley then you need to check out the new Perma track http://blog.equalvision.com/post/60287306159/say-anythings-max-bemis-and-eisleys-sherri

Have a good one!

Games Make Me Art

Today I’ve got a new character from the daily challenge as well as a piece I did of Sonic 2, so the theme for today I guess is video games.

So with Eddy here I took a lot of influence from Edmund McMillen’s artistic design choices. I always tend to admire how he is able to take extremely simplistic and otherwise cute characters and make them into brutally distorted monstrosities. Also whenever I want to make something creepy I tend to put eyes where there shouldn’t be eyes. If for some reason you don’t know who Edmund McMillen is or his body of work you should pick up a copy of Super Meat Boy and The Binding of Isaac.

So while I was thinking about games my mind brought me back to my childhood and the fond memories associated with the first game I ever remember playing and beating by myself, Sonic 2 for the Sega Genesis. I would play the game over and over making slight progress each time and memorizing the traps that would kill me (Like the pit in Mystic Cave). Anyways I always struggled to beat the boss of Metropolis Zone and couldn’t pass it for a very long time (In hindsight I blame stupid child reflexes). So here are the inks I made of Robotnik from Metropolis Zone

And the colour version, which I’m not very happy with, I really need to work on my colouring.

So hopefully you enjoyed these images and didn’t mind the nostalgia-fueled rant.

More Characters!

Colossal Bro is my favourite thing ever, I’m not sure why. Anyways, here are some more characters.

Darker Designs

Some new character designs, got a little darker with these for some reason.

Also I picked up a new graphic novel (new for me) yesterday and I need to talk about it. The Underwater Welder by Jeff Lemire, it was an awesome twilight zone-ish story, and I don’t know what I can say about it without spoiling the amazingness that is this book. Read it if you get the chance http://www.amazon.ca/Underwater-Welder-Jeff-Lemire/dp/1603090746/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375924678&sr=8-1&keywords=the+underwater+welder

 

Characters

I don’t have many words today, here are some more characters.

 

Warming up

Today’s post is just an assortment of various practice doodles and such. I guess I’ll explain a little bit about what I do when I practice. Usually I’ll start the morning off with a series of random doodles about no particular content, whatever comes out, no particular direction or point, just getting my pencil (stylus) moving. Then I will usually try and focus on something more specific and skill or technique based; For instance last month the 30-day palette challenge, or something like this.

With this image I was working on playing around with the shapes and design choices that make something appear ‘Good or Evil’ and using one constant animal in this case a rabbit. (I got the idea to do this challenge based on a video on the CTRL Paint website http://ctrlpaint.com/).

With this one I was just playing with the concept of curve vs rigidity, because I like to make generally disturbing content (lots of eyes, and malformed bodies) but keep that oddly cute look to it.

 

And finally I just started messing around with brushes that have no anti-aliasing for potential application in future projects.

Even though it seems pretty scatter-brained this is my usual warm-up strategy, trying to draw while also working on building up principles and technical aspects.

And I would like to thank everyone again who follows this blog and my facebook page https://www.facebook.com/JamesMarontateArt