One from the Vault

I did this one a couple years ago for a game company. Don't think anything became of this project but it was fun to work on it. I am mostly a character guy, but here is the layout for one of the environments I did for this project. It was a magical forest that separated our world from their world, I don't know who "their" is but I will post the color of this one later on.


Update: I have 6 preorders so only 4 more orders for a free sketches guys. I just picked up the test print today and I am excited to start mailing these bad boys out!

SOTD 03/29/10

Here is the finished reinterpretation of one of the classics I grew up with entitled, " HERE COMES A NEW CHALLENGER". I have been wanting to do this piece for a few months now and finally knocked it out last week. Hopefully it will bring back the good ole days to all you other oldies out there.



I will have prints of these available in a week but I will be taking preorders and the first 10 to preorder will get a free sketch from me along with their purchase. The size will be 13 inches x 10 inches and will be $20 plus shipping and handling. For more details please shoot me an email at:

patrick.ballesteros@gmail.com



Lastly, this is a page of studies form my sketchbook. I am doing a redesign of the Phantom of the Opera for a character design competition so I am just going through iterations of head shape, proportions and mask variation. Most people these days use Photoshop to do all this. This will end up in the computer but I still like to search for the shapes by hand, it still feels more organic to me and I do not have the crutch of command + Z at my fingertips. Makes for a few more happy accidents I think.

Enjoy!

****Update, I already have 3 orders so 7 more to go for a free sketch!******

SOTD 03/26/10

Yesterday I spent quite some time at the coffees shop while my wife was in a meeting. Thank goodness I had the trusty old sketchbook to keep me sane. A lot of students ask me how do I come up with different shapes and what do I look at. I do the following: 1) studying old masters to see what they have done in the past helps and 2) look at nature. Now when I say nature its basically studying life, people in reality have different shapes to their bodies and heads which aids in showing a bit of their personality. Before I would just sit in a coffee shop and draw out of my imagination which is fun and really important to do as well. However, now I spend the first half hour or so studying people and shapes to add to my vocabulary and creature variety in my drawings from imagination. A rule my teacher once explained to me was that its quite difficult to make up what you do not understand.



Now here are my sketches from imagination. Combining shapes from my studies with my imagination I started to do some thumbnails and character designs for a new illustration I am working on. This one was supposed to be for a CG Society Challenge, unfortunately, I missed the deadline but I am still going to continue with my Zombie School Kid piece. Here are some studies for the kids and for some of the scenes I plan to use.



For complex illustrations I really after establishing the overall thumbnail I move around and do studies of the the characters and main action areas to keep the rhythm and flow moving. This is where I really figure out the shapes I want to use as well. I will be posting more progress of this in future posts.

SOTD 03/23/10

So a while back I posted a progress shot of the ogre I was working on for my sculpture class. Recently, we made plaster molds of them and sadly, it was destroyed in that process. But to remember it in all its glory I was able to snap a quick pic before its timely demise. I put in quite a few hours into this, there are still some problems with it but out of this whole process I was able to see what I did not know in regards to the human form.




Here are my prep sketches for the sculpture, doing these really helped in the beginning and preplanning pays dividends.




Lastly, here is another sneak peak at the piece I am 99 percent done with and will have prints available once it is completed. I'm excited for this one and can't wait to show all of you the whole thing!

SOTD 03/22/10

So I have one more week in more sculpture class left, its been a real blast learning from such a passionate artist like Jordu. Well, this past weekend we started on our maquettes and I am hoping to get a lot done on it this week. Here are my comp sketches for the character design, I pray it comes out close to what I drew.




And here is the start of the maquette before I start adding more sculpey to the armature. Hope this works out ok, cross my fingers!

SOTD 03/19/10

Here's another shape exercise. This one was pretty random, while checking Facebook I noticed an ad on the side of my homepage. I only saw it from the corner of my so I did not see any details. At first I thought it was an ad for a sumo wrestler, but upon further inspection it was a cupcake with chocolate chips on it. Well, I did not draw a cupcake but this is what I saw when I just looked at the overall shape of it.



Here is the actual ad next to my rendition. Again, I broke it up into parts so you can see what I was thinking. Mainly, get the overall big shape working, then sculpt smaller forms into it and add secondary forms atop of that for more specifics about the character. Sometimes people ask I how I come up with these characters or is there anything specific in mind when you do these shape exercises. Here's a short answer, the whole creative process is very spontaneous at times regarding what I see and my interpretation of them. This is something artists continually work at and for some it comes easier than others. However, once you open this door of creativity it is very hard to shut it off.


Now execution is another thing, it is more deliberate and this is where the artist's training kicks in. The more training in anatomy, perspective, figure drawing, color, etc... a person has, the more their ideas will come to life, closer to what they see in their head. Does that make sense?
I sure hope so.

Lastly, here is a quick screen shot of my desktop as I work on this samurai with sprinkles. Enjoy!

SOTD 03/18/10

Sorry for the delay in posts, its tax season and I've been trying to handle all of that so I can get down to some drawing business dang-nabbit. Anyways, below is a character study for an illustration I am planning for a CGSociety Challenge. His name is George and he will be one of my protagonists in my zombie illustration I plan to do...yes my friends, I said zombie.




Next up is a little step by step process for my new web page splash page. I am about 80% done with it but here it is thus far.


Step 1: Clean lineart, worked out the design and incorporated a lot of my past character designs from several personal illustrations.



Step 2: Using Photoshop I color my drawing, I usually lay in flat colors at first and then build the forms with light and shadow atop.



Step 3: Redefining shapes and introducing a light source. I use a few layers, nothing too fancy though.



Step 4: This is the finish but as you can see it is not yet done, so I will be posting this step at a later phase.

Finally here is a sneak peak at the newest piece I am trying to finish up next week, can you guess?



So proof I have been productive, I will get back on the SOTD ban wagon and have some more stuff to show in the future. Thanks for stopping bay all!

SOTD 3/11/10

So I know I said I would draw more female but I couldn't help it with this one. A little change of pace from my normal sketches of the day. While I was at a sushi place with Kay, I sketch as I usually do, but while I was looking around the restaurant I saw a soy sauce bottle and never realized what a cool shape it was. That soy sauce bottle was the inspiration for this little astronaut sketch below for the shape and color language. Also, below the astronaut are some color comps for a my new website header that I am working on.




Next is what I was thinking and how I approached my Astro-Kikomanaut. As you can see, when I saw the bottle I broke it down into two major shapes, 1 for the head (the main focal area) and 2 for the body which I will carve and add onto it. For the head you can see how I used the nozzle for the nose and hair shape of my character.



3-I carve the legs into the big body shape because I need my character to have weight and balance. 4-I add the arms to finish off the character design and 5-I add the helmet shape to finish off the design as a whole.

For the colors I used the green cap of the bottle as my main color palette and just added a cool background with warms in the face and on his iron-man-esque chest plate.

Hope that gives some of you some insight into how my brain works.

SOTD 03/10/10

Just having some fun with shapes, I think I need to draw more females, too much machismo on here. So I think the next few will be some female characters, maybe an environment? Who knows, its March and Comicon is fast approaching...woohooo! Random thoughts I know but on to the sketch!

NEW PIECE

Here is a new piece I have been working on, I just finished the lineart yesterday which was a beast in itself. I have had this piece in mind for a few months but freelance and the artshow last year kind of wiped me out and since this turned out to be such a complex layout I wanted to sneak up. But now that I look at it, man, that's a lot.





I plan on doing some color comps this week and hopefully wrap up with the whole piece within the next couple of weeks. Wish me luck!


And here is a quick color test I did on a study last week.

SOTD 03/02/10

SOTD AND OTHER STUFF

Been watching more zombie movies as I work, guess it helps my work flow cause I have seen these movies a thousand times but it never gets old to me and its not a distraction...until a big zombie scene hits then I take my 5 minute break of course.

Hey, when the zombie epidemic hits you will be knocking on my door for advice so don't hate.




Also, I have started taking a sculpture class with Jordu Schell, if you guy's do not know him he was the lead creature designer for Avatar and he's worked on countless creature designs in film over the years. Total badass and funny as hell.

Here is my attempt at sculpture, just a regular old ogre. This stage is mainly finding the forms and I wanted to start out simple to get used to the medium and make something at least descent looking. In the next few weeks I will be posting my progress along this journey. Thanks for joining me!