Art
From Digital Alterity Wiki
Hulk Feel Pretty
Time Spent: 1 hours
Tools Used: 0.5 mm HB mechanical pencil, Strathmore drawing paper (medium tooth), Strathmore smooth Bristol board, Pitt Artist Pens (all sizes)
Comments: Someone on the CGS boards requested a cross-dressing Hulk. This was the result..
Doctor Strange
Time Spent: 1.5 hours
Tools Used: 0.5 mm HB mechanical pencil, Strathmore drawing paper (medium tooth), Strathmore smooth Bristol board, Pitt Artist Pens (all sizes)
Comments: Sketch of Doctor Strange for a CGS forum thread.
MODOK
Time Spent: 1.5 hours
Tools Used: 0.5 mm HB mechanical pencil, Strathmore drawing paper (medium tooth)
Comments: Sketch of MODOK for a CGS forum thread.
Paul Kirk, Manhunter
Time Spent: 1.5 hours
Tools Used: 0.5 mm HB mechanical pencil, Strathmore drawing paper (medium tooth)
Comments: Sketch of the Paul Kirk Manhunter for a CGS forum thread.
Daredevil Cityscape
Time Spent: 3 hours
Tools Used: 0.5 mm HB mechanical pencil, copy paper, Strathmore smooth Bristol board, Pitt Artist Pens (all sizes)
Comments: A quick sketch I did of Daredevil for a Comic Geek Speak thread.
That's Incredible
Time Spent: 1 hour
Tools Used: 0.5 mm HB mechanical pencil, copy paper, Strathmore smooth Bristol board, Pitt Artist Pens (all sizes)
Comments: A quick sketch I did of the Incredible Hulk for a Comic Geek Speak thread.
Coffee Is Like Sweet Magic
Time Spent: 1 hour
Tools Used: 0.5 mm HB mechanical pencil, copy paper, Strathmore smooth Bristol board, S Pitt Artist Pen
Comments: The first strip of a comic-making exercise that I'm calling Fish for the Vegans. This is what many mornings are like here in the Haskell home.
Marvel Ultimate Alliance DLC
Time Spent: 20 minutes
Tools Used: 0.5 mm HB mechanical pencil
Comments: A quick lunchtime sketch to show how the Marvel Ultimate Alliance Heroes and Villains delay made me feel.
Make Mine Marvel
Time Spent: 4 hours
Tools Used: HB pencil, Signo RT Gel pen, Photoshop 7
Comments: A comic I did back when I was playing Marvel Ultimate Alliance all the time.
Allyson in Manhattan
Time Spent: 2 hours
Tools Used: HB and 4B pencils
Comments: Pencil sketch of Allyson during our trip to NYC.
Self-Portrait
Time Spent: 2.5 hours
Tools Used: HB and 4B pencils
Comments: Self-portrait after instruction from Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain.
Armed Female Nude
Time Spent: 1 hour
Tools Used: HB pencil
Comments: Sketch that I did to practice female figure drawing and light/shadow work.
Grande Soy No-Whip Peppermint Mocha
Time Spent: 20 minutes
Tools Used: HB pencil
Comments: Sketch of my Grande Soy No-Whip Peppermint Mocha.
Inking Weiringo Spider-Man
Time Spent: 1 hour
Tools Used: Mike Weiringo's pencil work, Speedball nib pen with #102 tip, Speedball India ink
Comments: My first ever attempt at inking with a nib pen. I used Mike Weiringo's pencils so that I was practicing with good starting material.
A Dark Knight
Time Spent: 1 hour
Tools Used: 2H and HB pecils, reference sketch
Comments: A pencil sketch of Batman I did based on someone else's sketch.
Black Wizard
Time Spent: 2-3 hours
Tools Used: Illustrator 10 and Photoshop 7
Comments: I drew the original sketch for this little interpretation of a Black Mage/Wizard from the Final Fantasy series while looking at the black mage sprite from the original NES version. After a quick scan into Photoshop, I started redoing it as vector in Illustrator.
Cthulhu Dreams
Time Spent: 2-3 Hours
Tools Used: Illustrator 10, InDesign 2.0, Photoshop 7.0 (scan)
Comments: Upon reading "The Call of Cthulhu" by H.P. Lovecraft, I had a neat t-shirt idea. My idea was to have a little cartoon kawaii Cthulhu sleeping in a bed with a little night cap and teddy bear with the text "In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming" underneath. I sketched my idea out in pencil, scanned in that rough sketch, and then re-did the whole thing in Illustrator as vector. I finished up the design for print output in InDesign because InDesign r0X0Rz.
Comic Allyson
Time Spent: 2-3 hours
Tools Used: Pencil, Pitt Artist Pens, Photoshop 7
Comments: I've been tinkering with the whole web comic idea again recently, and this is the first concept sketch/illustration for the Allyson character. This is the first female character I've ever drawn that didn't look like a third-world transsexual. The original sketch was done in pencil with inking using the super fine Pitt Artist Pens (which are amazingly wonderful). Colors were done after a scan into Photoshop.
Hello Kitty Starry Angel
Time Spent: 3-4 Hours
Tools Used: Illustrator 10
Comments: Starting with an image of Hello Kitty as an angel, I used the pen tool to create the outlines I needed to turn this into vector. From there, I just added the starry background.
Johnny Cash
Time Spent: 1-2 Hours
Tools Used: Illustrator 10
Comments: I was motivated to create this as kind of a tribute when Johnny Cash died. I used a pic of Mr. Cash that I found courtesy of Google Image Search and did all of the outlining with the pen tool while zoomed in to about 400%. The quote (which you probably can't read in this little thumbnail) is a quote from Bono of U2. It reads "Every man is a sissy compared to Johnny Cash." This particular illustration was used to promote Train of Love, a Johnny Cash tribute at the Raue Center for the Arts.
Love Sheep
Time Spent: 2-3 hours
Tools Used: Illustrator 10 and Photoshop 7
Comments: This little illustration started as a doodle that Allyson did while sitting idly. I absolutely loved her little sketch and decided that I simply had to do it up in Illustrator. Only bits of fanciness are that the ram's horns are each actually two pieces to get that three-dimensional in-front-of-the-other-part effect and the sun is a basic yellow semi-circle with a copy of the same run through the Gaussian blur effect behind the original.
Mario
Time Spent: 4 Hours
Tools Used: Photoshop 7 and Illustrator 10
Comments: This illustration started with a pencil sketch that I did using an old Nintendo Power as a reference. After scanning it in, I re-did the whole thing in Illustrator with the pen tool. I toyed around with various backgrounds for a while but, in the end, chose to post it here with just surrounding white space.
Moogle
Time Spent: 2 Hours
Tools Used: Photoshop 7 and Illustrator 10
Comments: Using a couple of different source images of moogles garnered from Google Image Search, I sketched out this moogle in Illustrator using the pen tool. I added the rounded rectangle and stars for a little bit of decoration and then exported the whole thing as a 600 DPI TIFF file, which I used Photoshop to scale down for the web.
Ninja
Time Spent: 6-7 Hours
Tools Used: Illustrator 10
Comments: I found an image of an Asian male model courtesy of Google Image Search and traced his outline to make a convincing silhouette for my ninja. I created the eyes and eyebrows from scratch using a combination of the pen tool and the transform palette. The rising sun took took the longest time. After experimenting with a number of methods, I finally just traced an image of the flag in question and just "cropped" it with the pathfinder as I saw fit.
Pikachu (Original)
Time Spent: 10-12 Hours
Tools Used: Illustrator 10
Comments: Starting with a grainy 100 pixel GIF, I traced Pikachu with the pen tool and then added shading to him. The next day, I created the background from scratch, applying a slight gradient to the hill and a feather effect to the clouds to make them actually cloud-like. I unfortunately lost the original Illustrator files for this when my iBook's hard drive died. The only proof I have that I did this is a series of desktop wallpapers that I made from the vector work. This is a major, major bummer. Remember to back up your work!
Pikachu (Updated)
Time Spent: 4 Hours
Tools Used: Photoshop 7 and Illustrator 10
Comments: I lost my original illustration of Pikachu when my laptop's hard drive crashed. This really sucked because the Pikachu illustration was my first real stab at using Illustrator and it was arguably the best of my illustrations. Using one of the desktop wallpaper images I had made from the illustration, I recreated the whole thing in Illustrator, using Photoshop's eyedropper tool to determine the proper colors. The whole process was a rather interesting exercise actually. I found it much easier to create Pikachu this time around with a better understanding of Illustrator under my belt. In fact, the vector line work is done a lot more intelligently now.
Reagan
Time Spent: 5-6 hours
Tools Used: Illustrator 10
Comments: A long time ago, I had this brain-dead idea that I should start a web comic full of all the random silly garbage that shoots through my head. One of the recurring characters in this comic was going to be Ronald Reagan. The basic premise was that Reagan would kill the Communists with his Capitalist eye lasers. In any event, I searched the archives for royalty-free images of Reagan, found one that I liked, and then tinkered with it over the span of about six months. I'm extremely proud of the end result because the fact that I did this using an actual photograph as my reference makes me feel more like an actual artist than, say, copying the lines on a pikachu.
Slytherin Seal
Time Spent: 5-6 Hours
Tools Used: Illustrator 10
Comments: I've been reading the Harry Potter books, and I thought I'd try my hand at making one of the house insignias for Hogwarts. Slytherin seemed like the most fun to try for this project since I have a soft spot for cunning and ruthless characters. The illustration is loosely based on an image I found while searching for Harry Potter desktop backgrounds (though I've take so many liberties with my seal that the two images don't really look alike). The checkerboard inset is actually a pattern that I made to serve as a fill.
Smug Mac User
Time Spent: 4 Hours
Tools Used: Photoshop 7 and Illustrator 10
Comments: I made this to serve as a label for my desk/cubicle when a co-worker noted that I no longer looked like my previous label after a hundred pounds of weight loss. The picture of me is masked via a pen-drawn vector mask. The bottom image is a separate picture that I took which has been desaturated. I created the Apple logo in Illustrator and placed/rasterized it in Photoshop.
Soccer Moogle
Time Spent: 4 Hours
Tools Used: Photoshop 7 and Illustrator 10
Comments: Who knew that Mog was an Arsenal supporter? Using my original moogle illustration and a couple of images of Arsenal's away kit for this season, I added the uniform to the moogle. The sponsors logo is warped using an envelope distort to appear as though it is actually part of the shirt. The soccer ball was the biggest challege since the tessellation on a soccer ball only works on a round object. I finally created it using a flat represenation of a soccer ball pattern along with a "fisheye" envelope distort which I then constrained to a circle using a vector mask. As per my current MO, I exported the whole thing as a 600 DPI TIFF file, which I used Photoshop to scale down for the web.
