infinitedoodles

Mech Joints Study

2011-10-11T13:11:00.000-07:00

Im just trying to build my visual library and better understand how mechanical joints and pivots work.

Weekend Studies

2011-10-11T00:55:00.000-07:00

i had some time to do a few more studies and experiments, still just trying to get used to the "no-lines" thing.

This week's studies

2011-10-09T00:18:00.000-07:00

I know these might not look like much, but they were really hard for me, because i was doing them without using lines to figure them out ahead of time. I figured its time to put on my big boy pants, and start learning to paint with shapes. Im beginning to feel addicted to going outside my comfort zone. Anyway, more coming soon.

Lighting

2011-10-04T23:55:00.000-07:00

a quick study i did tonight. good learnin, i can feel my brain expanding!

A Few More

2011-09-28T21:44:00.000-07:00

Heres a bulldozer, and some vacuums! I know, i know, SUPER EXCITING subject matter!

Finally, an update!

2011-09-27T19:04:00.000-07:00

Wow! Sorry for the long absence, since i posted last, i have accepted an environment artist position at Trion Worlds in Redwood City CA. So thats where im at currently. Between moving, working and being lazy, i havent found the time to update. So without further ado, here is some life drawing, some hard surface studies and some production sketching studies.

a few more studies

2011-06-30T18:17:00.000-07:00

hey guys heres two more enviro studies. learnin lots!

Enviro Concept

2011-06-23T21:19:00.000-07:00

So ive been playin a little too much RIFT, and i felt like paintin an environment. Here it is, crits welcome. Thanks to Tyler for the feedback (it really helped)! Hope you enjoy.

BrookProcess

2011-06-14T17:39:00.000-07:00

I wanted to see if all this studying was paying off, so i decided to do a made-up enviro ( i used plenty of ref!) here is the process. Im still not happy with it, but its waaayyy better than i coulda done a week and a half ago! Hahaha!

Enviro Studies again

2011-06-14T17:23:00.000-07:00

Heres some more. Im stoked to finish this batch because looking at it along side the last batch, i see an improvement. Im still nowhere near where i wanna be, but im on my way! WOOT.

Enviro Studies

2011-06-08T20:21:00.000-07:00

Whats up peeps? Been doing some enviro studies. They were between 1 and 2 hrs each. Learning!! Enjoy.

and some props.....

2011-06-01T16:51:00.000-07:00

Hunted Enviro Art

2011-06-01T16:12:00.000-07:00

Whats crackin everybody? Im pleased to say that after almost three years, "Hunted - The DemonsForge" has finally released!! WOOT! I had great time working with all the awesome people that contributed to this title. While working on Hunted i was responsible for: Asset Creation (Static and Dynamic), Texture and Material Creation, Level Building, Lighting, Rigging and Animation (Not Characters),Physics simulations for destructible assets, and level and asset optimization for performance.

StudyCompilation

2011-05-27T18:37:00.000-07:00

Here are the studies i did this week. I thought id post them all in this compilation rather than one at a time. Learning lots!!! More on the way!!.

Speed Illo

2011-05-21T17:02:00.000-07:00

So i did the Tron Illo i wanted to do, it has a lot of issues, but over all im happy with how it came out considering how long it took. More studies coming up.

Hair Studies Round Two!

2011-05-19T00:01:00.000-07:00

Just some more hair studies. Ya prolly wont see any more of these, i got what i needed out of it.

HairStoodies

2011-05-16T00:46:00.000-07:00

Here's the first Batch of Hair studies as promised! I attached faces to my hair studies, but dont mind those. I wanted to do more but we got kinda busy this weekend, and i got kinda lazy. Hope everyone had a good weekend, its back to the grind tomorrow.

Tonights Sketch

2011-05-15T00:12:00.000-07:00

My buddy Rob showed me this awesome Orc design he did, and i havent been able to get orcs outta my head since! I figured id sketch one and then maybe i could get back to studyin. This guy was a quickie (mostly cuz im sooooo tired).

Designs

2011-05-13T23:17:00.000-07:00

I want to do an illustration with a female Tron protecting a child "ISO". These are the design explorations for the "femaTron". i wanted to show more skin than the tron designs did. If you havent seen that movie GO SEE IT. Prolly some hair studies and material studies coming up, then the full Illo.

Learned Somethin

2011-05-10T23:26:00.000-07:00

i definitely feel like i learned something from all those studies. This piece went quickly and i felt confidant and in control the whole time (which was a nice change for once!) Im not saying its a great piece or anything, the design is half-assed, but the values were my focus, and im happy with them. Crits welcome.

Guess what? More Studies!

2011-05-09T23:24:00.001-07:00

Here is a quick set of arm studies followed by three Cast studies. BUT one of the cast studies is completely from imagination (no Ref), can you tell which one? If not, then i learned something, and if you can - kudos! Coming up next will be a value Centric sketch to solidify what ive been studying.

2 Studies 1 Day

2011-05-08T00:01:00.001-07:00

WHAT!? another study already? Damn i love Saturdays! haha. This was a real quick interior study from photo ref, i learned ALOT from this badboy! Im also working on a formula for studying (if that can be done) to get the most out of each study. The perspective is all "Janky" (thanks paul for letting me borrow that one!) but it was a quickie so im ok with it. Many more to come.

Second L.D. Austin Study

2011-05-07T19:55:00.000-07:00

This is a portrait from imagination that i used to study LD Austin's rendering. halfway through the study my friends AJ and Paul taught me some things about color variation, so i mixed that into this study also. i like the way it turned out. Also, i just recently finished the last of my freelance, so now im gonna hit the studying HARD!! so expect to see tons of those coming up.

Sketches

2011-04-18T00:37:00.000-07:00

Here are some sketches i found on my comp. They were all done at different times and were discarded for whatever reason. i may go back and finish em.

Tryin Some Stuff out

2011-04-01T12:03:00.001-07:00

No Lines

2011-03-12T16:53:00.000-08:00

Ive decided to start posting studies, i do tons of studies but they never see the light of day. So, a really talented artist named Gino Whitehall (http://whitehallstudios.blogspot.com/) gave me some really great advice on how to break away from lines, doing studies without using lines. One of these was like 30 - 40 min, and the other was several hours. Right now its REALLY uncomfortable for me, but im sure the more i do the more comfortable i will be with it. Ive really learned alot with just these two! imma do way more, so keep an eye out.

Pencil Heads

2011-03-09T20:08:00.000-08:00

These are some pencil head studies. I just do a search on chrome for "Portraits" then i go to town! These are about 20 min each. Imma do TONS of these! its a great way to build a visual library.

FaerieCollector Final

2011-02-09T20:25:00.000-08:00

This piece was done for the Gnomon Online Competition that is held every month. The january theme was: "The Collector". My beautiful and brilliant wife came up with an idea of a fantasy entomologist (i hope i spelled that correctly) . Many thanks to Gavin Rich, Anthony Jones, Gino Whitehall, Mike Marscicano, and Edgar Cardona for their critiques and advice!I had a great time painting this one! I also included my intial sketch in black and white.

FaerieCollector Process

2011-02-09T20:22:00.000-08:00

i posted my process on my last piece, but this time i wanted to show the steps a little more in depth.

Heart_Collector

2011-01-14T22:26:00.000-08:00

This Chick Lures men in with the promise of sex, ties them up, and extracts their hearts. She collects the hearts and stores them in jars under her bed as trophies.

Beauty and the Beast

2011-01-11T00:21:00.000-08:00

So the Gnomon Website does a 2D competition every month, and December's theme was Beauty and the Beast which sounded fun so i entered. I finished the one of them fighting, and im pleased to say it got second place! The second one i didnt finish by the deadline, but i thought id post it here. I also included a breakdown of my current process for anyone who's interested.

Cleansing of the Lost Halls

2011-01-11T00:06:00.000-08:00

This was an idea i had about a Dwarven strike team that would go and reclaim the mines of moria, (now that gandalf had killed the Balrog). the team consists of a Runelord, Ironbreaker, Ranger, Berserker, Hammerer, and a Paladin who leads them.

Thumbs

2011-01-10T23:50:00.000-08:00

These were some designs for a potential bad guy for a project my buddy was doing.

CentaurWoodCut

2011-01-10T23:43:00.000-08:00

I have really been getting into black and white Illustrations.

SketchPage01

2011-01-10T23:37:00.000-08:00

Here's a Page outta my sketchbook that i liked. (im a terrible photographer, sorry.)

MetalStudy

2011-01-10T23:16:00.000-08:00

I wanted to do a metal study, but you cant have reflections without an environment so i painted one of those too.

Gladiator Studies

2011-01-10T23:08:00.000-08:00

These are Studies from the awesome film, Gladiator. Each one was between 10 and 20 min. I learned alot, and i plan on doing many more!

Snow Enviro

2011-01-10T22:42:00.000-08:00

This was a quick enviro practice i did in April of 2010.

Orc Redesign

2011-01-10T22:40:00.001-08:00

So i wanted to do my own Orc ( cause there's not enough interpretations of them on the webbernets already!) here he is. I also designed a mount for him too, maybe that'll show up on here down the road! Obviously hes not finished, but that is the bottom jaw of some giant creature he's wearing on his back!

Survivors WIP

2011-01-10T22:34:00.001-08:00

Well you cant have a Zombie Outbreak without some Survivors. This was done in Feb/Mar of 2010. I had some story for these two but it was so long ago that i dont remember now, i guess you could make up ur own.

UberZombieRenders

2011-01-10T22:26:00.000-08:00

Here are some Renders of the Uber Zombie, one i did back in Feb of 2010, and one in Nov of 2010.

uber-zombie dude

2010-02-01T23:18:00.000-08:00

This was a really fun one to do! i read this book "The Zombie Survival Guide" (great read by the way!) and it inspired me to do these uber-zombies! I was thinking that they would have been the first people infected by the zombie virus, but not by being bitten, they were exposed to the virus in its liquid concentrate form! So the virus being more potent, made them more adept at hunting humans! Their vertebrae can disconnect to allow for farther bite distances and their arms are longer to facilitate farther reach and better grabbing. Also their bone structure has mutated slightly for better protection against attacks.

I unno

2010-02-01T23:13:00.000-08:00

This dude stabs people with his own bones! crazy! And he has a giant brazier that he walks around with and hits people with that too! dunno what i was doing when i did this guy, i just started with a black silhouette and went wherever the painting took me. Good fun.

Merman

2010-02-01T23:08:00.000-08:00

These are really old! I was gonna do this whole Merman illustration and stuff but i bailed on that. so here is what i did do!

DemonHead

2010-02-01T23:05:00.000-08:00

This was an activity with some guys at work. It was good learning, i started understanding faster techniques on this guy, and i tried to stay loose until the end, ( i usually start rendering way before i should!)

Some Portraits

2010-02-01T23:01:00.001-08:00

I Figured i sucked at faces, and its always good to do studies so here are some. One of the fat guys i did from my head without ref to see how close i could get to an obese person's chracteristics and the other i studied from a photo, can you guess which one is which?

Yet Another Dwarf Painting

2009-12-04T21:31:00.000-08:00

This piece was a lot of fun, but i didnt do enough pre-planning and thats why the values are jacked. it was originally just a dwarf drawing that i tried to turn into an illustration that makes sense. It needs alot more work, but i feel like moving on and learning some new things. Enough excuse making, hope you enjoy and critiques are always welcome. Thanks to Rob, Kurt and Tyler for all your suggestions

African Dwarf

2009-10-28T13:40:00.000-07:00

This was a really fun piece that i worked on during my lunches for a week or two. He's the king of An African Tribe of Dwarves. His beard comes down and out through the armor of his breastplate, because in dwarven culture, the beard is the sign of your prestige. he is also wearing hyena pelts because Hyenas are one of the few natural enemies of the lion besides man. His main weapons are the claws of an ancient giant lion that he starps to his hands.

Some Quick Head Doodles

2009-10-18T13:55:00.000-07:00

These were some fun head doodles to warm up. They were all around 45 min to an hour, im really trying to focus on staying loose and letting fewer strokes do more work (but its really hard!) Any resemblances to real people living or dead is purely coincidence! Jk, anyways thanks for lookin.

Has Anyone Seen My Arm?

2009-10-10T22:56:00.000-07:00

This was a really fun piece to do, it started out as a lunch sketch. He is an Irish Dwarf who is a retired warrior and is trying to keep his nose out of trouble by being a farmer, but those pesky goblins just wont stay off his land. Anyway, thanks to Tyler for the advice on values! Critiques are always welcome. Oh, and sorry for the crazy long absence!

Cameron the Cat Hunter

2009-07-19T20:26:00.001-07:00

In a world without adults, children have had to fend for themselves. Their main source of food: ...... Cats! These are truly barbaric times and no feline is safe with "Cameron the Cat Hunter" on the prowl!

This is a fun little painting I wanted to do of my son Cameron. He is the most destructive little boy on earth! ( But i still love him to death!) The version on the right just has some quick color overlays, to see what could happen. Critiques are always welcome.

Another light Study

2009-06-20T22:25:00.000-07:00

First just let me say that i know the anatomy on the drawing sucks hardcore! I just grabbed the first drawing i had sitting around and scanned it in. My focus during this exercise was to better understand lighting and how to use it to describe form. If any of you know any better exercises to learn lighting please share them with me! I would be most grateful. By the way, I just want to say thanks to AJ and Edgar for their help! Also Critiques on the lighting is most welcome.

Done but not Finished.

2009-06-09T21:43:00.000-07:00

This piece was inspired by my friends Jason Hill, and AJ who both did some kick-ass female characters. I figured i would try my hand at it and this is what i came up with. It feels to me like a student painting and that's not good! I did learn alot though so its hard to be totally bumbed out about it. Anyway, here it is, smash on it good. I need some critiques (that means you AJ, Edgar, and Tyler!) More coming soon, sorry for the long silence.

Look how much I Suck

2009-05-15T22:35:00.000-07:00

I was doing another turtle concept at Concept club and my buddie AJ totally kicked my ass about design and making better decisions early on in the piece. He walked over and was like "Here dude, check this out." And ten minutes later my mind hole was blown off! The one on the left is mine before he pimped all over it, and the one on the right is his. I truly appreciate it AJ, if you're reading this, you really opened my eyes. This helped me a lot and its gonna suck if you go to scotland.

Caricature2

2009-05-13T23:45:00.001-07:00

Hey there, here is my new piece for the week. Talk about issues, could my lack of color knowledge be any more evident!? But its ok because i learned a bunch! The image below my painting is my inspiration/ref. I just found this man interesting and wanted to do a caricature. Anyway, thanks for viewing, and critiques are always awesome.

Interesting Face 01

2009-05-04T21:11:00.001-07:00

This is the first in a bunch of portraits that im going to do to help me get better at faces. I want to find interesting faces and do a painting of them in a slightly different angle, if i can do this and it still looks like the original person, then i am understanding the forms (hypothetically,... i just make it up as i go!) In this one i was trying to use the fewest amount of values possible and still make it readable and descriptive. There are tons of issues with this one, but its the first and i did it on my lunch hour so its okay. As always crits are most appreciated.

Life drawing01

2009-04-28T21:20:00.001-07:00

I attend a Life drawing group every saturday and my goal is to get one piece per week that is "good enough" to put up here, this is the one for this week I think it was around 7-10 minutes. More on their way! The neck feels really Long. Any Comments or critiques are encouraged! (I love to learn!)

Caricature Practice

2009-04-22T23:18:00.000-07:00

This was a caricature practice inspired by a buddy named Anthony Jones (AJ) who has a bunch of nice caricatures on his blog (www.robotpencildesign.blogspot.com) I highly recomend checking it out! I feel as though some of the movement and rhythm was lost between the linework and the final render, this is something that I will have to be aware of next time. This piece took about an hour and a half. I want to keep track of how long it takes me because I want to get faster as well as BETTER! Critiques are most encouraged. Thnx.

Turd 01

2009-04-18T22:20:00.000-07:00

So i'm working on a turtle monster as a personal project and here is one of the early designs. There will be more coming soon, trust me! I want to eventually model this monster in 3D, but i'm more concerned with the design journey than with the final result.

2009-04-18T22:16:00.000-07:00

This was an exercise using the woodcut technique that my coworker Tyler uses (hes an amazing artist btw! www.artofty.com) The woodcut technique is an awesome way to start a piece because it is quick and it focuses on readability (i think).

Facefail!

2009-04-18T22:12:00.000-07:00

I was practicing painting faces, this one was probably the best out of the group and it has all kinds of issues! I need to stop worrying about anatomy setup and start with a readable caricature, then layer in any anatomy knowledge. (I think!)

Quick Sketch

2009-04-18T22:10:00.000-07:00

just a quick sketch

Practice

2009-04-18T21:42:00.000-07:00

This was a quick lighting test, i just doodled a head and tried lighting it from different directions, i guess the next step would be to practice lighting it with multiple lights on each head.

The awkward first post.

2009-04-18T21:34:00.000-07:00

So here goes nothin. i wanted to start a blog to help keep me motivated and also to somewhat track my improvement. Just some info on me: I am a 3D trained artist working at InXile Entertainment as an Environment Artist, here's my website link if you want to look: www.danielmcgowanart.com.
What I am trying to do now is bring my 2D abilities up to par with my 3D abilities. hope everyone enjoys watching me learn, and hopefully i dont get worse!