More Character Stuff

Again, no speedpaints but hey, at least it an update!

Not speedpaint number 11

The speedpaints have stalled a little this week, I just need a break from them to get some ideas again. In the meantime I had to do this at work and I'm suprised by how much fun I had with this. More retro stuff soon perhaps

Speedpaint Challenge 10/20

WOOOT half way there, man, its taking longer than I anticipated but its proving its worth I think.

Speedpaint Challenge 9/20

This was the inevitable slump after the success (i believe) of SP 8. Always happens, perhaps its misplaced confidence or maybe its the need ot lack there of, proving something to oneself. Oh well, its a little early to get existential . Nearly at the half way point and I must say its taking longer than I expected. Good job I never plumped for the 50! speedpaints I initially considered. I am finding the numerical commitment very motivating though and Im sure I'll use it again with different subject matters but smaller more focused numbers though.

Speedpaint Challenge 8/20

Something a little inspired by assassins creed, I must stress I didnt copy this was dont with some first hand ref of muslim streets

Speedpaint Challenge 7/20

This was just an hour and half, its pretty uninspiring but I was/in a dry spell so something is better than nothing and all that. I think it has a more controlled palette and the flow and composition is working okay. Hopefullt something a little more inspiring next time.

Speedpaint Challenge 6/20

Right, more pseudo sci fi .... sorry

Speedpaint Challenge 5/20

Hey! here is the fifth. Quarter of the way through now. I'll try and make a point of critiquing the work so far in order to take positives and lessons from them. Afterall there is little point of practising if you dont learn from them.

Speedpaint Challenge 4/20

and another, at speed paint 5 i'll critique them.

Speedpaint Challenge 3/20

....And another

Speedpaint Challenge 2/20

Here's another....

Speedpaint Challenge 1/20

Right, In order to get some confidence and more importantly a method to speedpainting and general colour work I'm going to try and do 20 paints in the next few weeks. The max time limit for these is 2 hours and I'm going to try and make it all up on the fly in order to learn to be more spananeous and to sometimes let the painting evolve rather than me forcing it. Some/most will be dodgy but thats not really the point. Hopefully there'll be a couple of gems but its for development purposes.

Here's the first, I was going to have some some air craft in here but I ran out of time. Stay tuned for another by the end of the weekend.

Speedpaint

Here is hopefully the first of quite a few speedpaints. I need to get my groove back where painting is concerned so here's to a few more

More pages from the little black book

These are more from my mind than life but thought id share seeing as I have a scanner handy on my desk at the minute

Sketchbookery

Soz for the lack colourful musings, but here some pages from my sketchbook to tide you by ..tsk like you care...

Work in Progress

Im trying to break down my work process in order to clarify certain things to myself and also to see where my skills fall over. So this is the 'value' sketch, hopefully I'll colour this bad boy up. Im on hols to Thailand and Malayasia tomorrow so I'll be taking my sketchbook and try and keep doodling just to keep my eye in. See you in a coupla weeks!

New Paint

This may not be the final version but it'll do for now. Not really sure how I feel about it really.

Space port type thing

Sponateous Design

Here is a speedpaint design of a creature. I like this as it was completely off the cuff which isnt something I normally do.

Hmmm

Well I did something, It's oookkkaaayy I guess but kinda looks overworked, which I guess is natural seeing I was trying quite hard.

Help!..

I am suffering from chronic 'subject matter ideation disfunction' yeah that's right I dont know what to draw, well not to the extent that I persevere with something to a near complete state. I have tried for what can be about 5 hours on and off to come up with something more spontaneous be it a creature or vehicle design and I just cant come up with anything at the minute and god knows I've stared lots of things only to bin it, That indeed maybe my problem. But I am trying and I rekon once I get over this 'hump' I'll get back into the zone baby.

40 Min lunchtime sketch

'Invasion'

Hi Peeps, sorry for the lack of action in the last couple of weeks, I've been doing ALOT of drawing and crayoning pretty pictures but alas, cannot post them up at the moment due to the project not being announced. Normally I'm not one to tow the party line on such matters but knowing my luck this one would bit in the arse (or ass for our american cousins).

Anyway, my daily stuff is a little cutesy, vibrant and quite clean so in typical knee jerk reaction I am trying to 'up' my 'concepty' stuff and add more Sci Fi subject matter. Hey it may not be original but it does tick boxes on a portfolio!

"There's somebody at the door...."

Okay, all that's missing is Rod Hull and Emu .....enough with the TV Cream style editorial!! Here is a Stylized windmill.

1 Year on....

Approximatly a year ago my wife just had eachother in Australia. We were marking time until we came home to England. We'd made up our mind that Australia wasnt for us for reasons I wont bore you all with, though feel free to read about it here .

http://jaycedownunder.blogspot.com/

though its not exactly the most uplifting of reading. You have been warned :)

It was on the quiet boring nights that I picked up the virtual pencil and paper (wacom and laptop to you and me) and started redeveloping my 2D skills. Afterall I had time of my hands and thus this blog was born. I quickly found that my real passion lies with 2D work. I'm a fairly accomplished 3D artist and still enjoy it but I think that 2D requires a real talent and flair that couldnt be learnt rather than the technical nous of modelling which can be achieved with little artist ability.

So a year on and my wife and I are back in England and I've been flirting with the freelance scene for a few months. As much as I like the ups, I cannot enjoy them for fear of the inevitable downs that accompany them. With this in mind I began a search for the dreaded fulltime job. I start my new position on Monday. Its a concept art position but doing 3D work when there is a lull in the 2D stuff. Fingers crossed this should keep me busy and interested for some time to come but as my wife will testify I can be quite pedantic when it comes to my work life.

So in short, after year of posting stuff on this blog site I am now of a standard where I am employable for my 2D work yay! I'll still keep my hand in the 3D work as I like to keep my options open and it moves so fast I have to stay current.

Its a week until I start my new job and sods law has struck. I'm trying to do some doodles to get me back in the 'zone' and for some reason I cant draw or paint for toffee, also somewhat ironic as seeing as its a year on I wanted to show some new cool work to say 'hey! look how I've improved' and I have a block.

Anyway here is my doodle, didnt know what I was gonna draw until it happened. Its some kinda a 'concepty-robot-alien' thing.

New Composition

Brrraaainnnnss

This is an experiment to see if I can *do* gritty. The second one was to a brief. Comments and crit all well recieved especially as this isnt my normal fair.

"Leaves on the track"

Just an apology in the lack of 'owt new recently. My head hasnt been in the right place for in as I've got a gazillion things on the go - Redecorating the house (Bathroom, garden and kitchen ouch!) plus I need to get some work freelance or fulltime so I'm kinda stressing at the minute hence the lack of concetration and thus, new work.

I have a few things half done so their maybe a glut of stuff soon :)

Product Design - Kettle

In order to illustrate to prospective clients some of my 'skillz' I decided to go back to my product design roots and design a kettle. Not very glam I know, but it shows that I can do high res meshes as well as decent rendering, so here we have it.

I'll be getting down and dirty with mental ray in the forthcoming weeks so the renders should get better, plus this was done in 'Max' which I have limited knowledge of the renderer, lights and materials etc...thats my excuse and Im sticking to it.

By the way I feel I should tell you that im doing this as an agent told me my concept stuff was strong enough but my 3d needed different types of stuff to make me more 'marketable' to an array of industries.

Expect some loose pretty painting as a direct back lash to this :)

'The Summoning'

This is a 'speed' paint I did for a dragon jam on drawingboard.org - It wasn't that speedy but I'm pretty happy with it .... for now.

Vikings are the new black FACT!

Well there seems to be a lot of ‘Viking’ presence on various art sites nowadays so I thought I'd jump on a bandwagon seeing as it was passing. I thought I'd try and push a 'cartoon network' style concentrating on bold shapes and details that don’t break the shapes' boundary.

Ta - Daaaa....

Okay I know I've been quiet of late, but I've been freelancing doing some outsource work AND some teaching which is very cool but very scary as you just never know what is going to happen.

So when I've not been trekking into the London I've redesigned my webiste. I've tried to keep it clean and simple and easy to add/replace new works.

www.jasonpickthall.com

Most of the new stuff is the content from this blog but there are some examples of my 3d game work and other miscellaneous stuff.

Li'l Gods - Ares

Here is a preliminary design for Ares the main villain of the piece

Li'l Gods - 3D Cyclops WIP

Here is a 3D Interpretation on the cyclops design I did a few months ago. This is not to say that the whole thing is now 3D but I just used it as an excercise in familiarizing myself 3D Max again. Also once I have Mudbox on my machine i'll use to practice adding surface detail.

It's like a jungle sometimes....

About 2 hours worth, Im pretty chuffed with it, well, for the next 10 mins at least.

3D - RP7 Rocket Launcher

I know there is some 3D stuff creeping in here but I thought I'd post it as a means of almost justifying my lack of fresh 2D work. This was a freelance paid job for a 'next gen' game. Not inspirational but hey, it pays the bills.

I'm almost sad to put this up here as it really jars with some of the more stylized and innocent things I've posted here....hmmm

20 Second Scribbles

Okay, I know these won't win any prizes but they were done in china, on the fly, and in probably 20 ish seconds so, y'know, be kind. PLUS they were done with a real biro on real paper, practically stone age technology I know, Tsk madness I tells ya

I know it's 3D ...Sorry...

This the initial 3D work up - some extra stroke work will be done in flash to keep a tighter sense of control. As I say I know it's not sketch work, but I thought it was only fair to introduce the culprit thats kept me from my beloved 2D stuff :)

Introducing...Reece Deceased

This is a pet project of my friend Meechy. It's an episodic flash cartoon that can be found at...http://www.reecedeceased.com/ - I've been working on some 3D tests for him to make his work with vectors a litter easier.