pulp sci fi sky

 Hey everybody, I'm finally getting back to being able to make work after a particularly busy last week and I've been wanting to add some new work to my portfolio that deals more in specific genres, like science fiction, while embracing what I love visually about those genres. And so, this came about.
Originally I just wanted to do something with lots of atmosphere that embraced the look of old pulp science fiction art like that of Frank R. Paul. This is a far cry from Paul's work but I am in love with the bold graphic yellow backgrounds of those old covers and was interested to see if I could adapt it to a more contemporary look. Anyways, this is what happens after I tinker with it for a bit.

1.5 hours in PainterX.

This second image is a sketch that I did when the idea for the coral hive trees struck me. I quite often find myself coming up with ideas purely because of the way I imagine light would interact with it. Shape is, of course, extremely important, but sometimes I just want to see color shifts.

I'm really interested in exploring more of this pulp material to see how one could adapt monsters from that era so they would fit into a present day sci-fi horror film! Soon to come...
eth.

matte painting

This is something I forgot to post from a bit ago. I got to do a little bit of matte painting this past semester for a friend. Here's my work...I had my work cut out for me because I was limited in what areas I could paint due to the footage being very busy.

eth.

pen and pencil

Here's a bunch of sketchbook pages I scanned today. They very in date. One I did two days ago but the rest are pretty old...from April. Yep!

eth.

71512_funny little experiments

These two funny little experiments I was working on today...didn't quite get to finishing, though. I've been making new brushes in painter lately, definitely struggling a bit as well. I've been feeling like all of my paintings have a sense of sameness in the brushwork, which I cannot quite live with.

I particularly admire the work of Sergey Kolesov and Jaime Jones. They are both tremendously fantastic painters. Jaime also recently wrote a blog post about his process with images to accompany it. It's really fascinating to see the way in which other people work. I felt a strange reassurance from seeing that post because I often feel like my own process is a little backwards or unconventional by digital painting standards. I tend to be very direct in my paintings and often times I only work on one layer, which means no going back. I think I might try to construct something of a process video of my own since I can imagine it's constructive for the artist as well.

In any event I've been considering dedicating myself to a personal project for a bit...or several. I find that it's very difficult for me to make work when I don't have a prompt, or limitations. I'd like to make my work more self-indulgent. We shall see where it goes from here. Thanks for reading.

eth.

071412_sketchbook pages

Hey everybody! This is what I draw in my sketchbook. Not exactly recent things, but I haven't gotten around to scanning lately and I still wanted to share. I'll do my best to post more regularly. 

This last one is a series of 15 min studies I did because these are the things I struggle with. Early morning atmosphere. Foggy midday weather and diffuse lighting. Hard edged objects.

Thank you for looking!

eth.

MK12 concept art

I've had a very busy recent few weeks, partially because of my current internship as a concept artist at MK12! It's a fantastic Kansas City-based studio full of very smart, very talented people that do some awesome work. Definitely do take a look at their new reel if you want to be just plain visually inspired. It's all wonderfully bold, graphic and sharp. They have a great sensitivity toward the use of color in their work that can't be beat!

What I have been doing there has absolutely nothing to do with those pieces though, I am a part of a new short film project that they're working on that I've had the pleasure of doing concept art for. 

Here are a handful of images I'm allowed to share for the time being.

You can see more of how they work and what they do, as well as these images on their blog.

Thanks for taking a look, more things to come...

eth.