I'm back

Back to Haifa, Israel, the city I lived in for 24 of the 31 years I've been on this planet. Living with mom again is now picnic, with the constant requests, questions and planning on my behalf. I didn't fly here straight from California, though, first flying to Toronto to visit family, then Germany for 8 days to volunteer at GDC Europe, which gave me access to Gamescom, and I had an amazing time meeting other hopefuls and pros, generating interest around my portfolio, sitting through interesting sessions, collecting swag and playing the newest games. I want to find an industry job more than ever, and contribute my share to creating these amazing pieces of entertainment software, as well as having the financial ability to play them, even if they say I'll have less time to do so, but I'm sure I'll manage to squeeze some in, it's not like I have a girlfriend to distract me :P I installed the trail of Photoshop CS6 on the PC I now have access to, and started playing around, trying to find my way back to producing art, and the constant drive to improve my portfolio. Here are some of the first paintings I worked on.

Skrejgib fashion

Concepts for Skrejgib costumes, and my final decision on the look of these fox like alien antagonists.

Skrejgib anatomy

Having finally hit a direction I'm happy with, I expanded the bust into full body studies of Skrejgib anatomy. Before I did the bodies, I tried a quick color test, concluding that I need to do more of those, and tried out the "fool the Captain into doing our bidding" expression.

I also did some concept art for Scrappy over the past week, experimenting with terraforming as per our new background story.

Skrejgib bluesky

I started tackling the main antagonists in Captain Comic, the foxlike Skrejgib. Tried out a few different techniques to come up with ideas, at first trying to design them clothed. These felt too much like sticking fox heads on human bodies, so I tried to focus on their bodies, but got a similar result. Switching technique to a shaky line drawing type deal, focusing on the bust, yielded much more interesting results, which I will expand to the whole body. I gleaned some nuggets from all of these studies.

Less than 2 weeks to go, finish as much as possible and get it printed for an update to the portfolio, take out things I've done in school.

Monument Valley

Pushed the concept I thought fit best to the point I felt I was just noodling with the details of the rocks, which had little effect on the overall impact. Also felt I had lost clarity in the direction of lighting. Next one I do will be better, right? ;)

I think I have less than 10 hours total on it. I don't see how I could put as many hours as I do with traditional media, but I know some people do. I think I'll go back to the Blastola Cola Blaster next. Finish as much as possible before I fly off to Toronto and later Germany. I've been approved as CA for GDC Europe. It's going to be great. :D

CC: Surface Color Studies

Getting back to working on Captain Comic. Now that I've actually seen the complete (sort of) walkthrough of the game, I learned that it ended with the Skrejgib stealing the Captain's space cruiser and the treasures onboard, living him stuck on a planet without space faring technology. They do have the time machine the Captain built, and he uses it to travel 1000 years into the future, hoping the technology has advanced far enough to let him leave. No one else who tried going through returned, which makes us suspects something's up. Accordingly, I have changed the name of the project to "Stranded on Chronia" and have to consider this back story in future work, which isn't a huge stretch really. On to the art: Picked my favorite bits and pieces from the value thumbnails, and tried some color studies out. Color picking always seems to work better than trying to come up with my own palette, just like using any other kind of reference in that regard, but less awkward. ;)

Cliff Castle

Remembering that I had few business cards left, and that I have yet to create a new back for them, I took a small detour to make this. Unlike my former effort, this environment should get a good read without me being there to explain what it is, and also works to show off what I can do in the area concept artists are most needed and often reluctant to do. Wanted to go the fantasy route this time, and keep plenty of space for writing things down. I also thought it would be a good idea to make it a cover photo for facebook, google+ and this blog, so I made it extra long, which caused me some trouble later on, and I eventually created different configurations for each application.