How a T.J. celebrates Christmas!

I hope everybody has a wonderful Christmas, or whatever related holiday you celebrate. Just have a damn good weekend folks!

And if you are stuck away from family and friends, just pick up a bottle of booze and rent a couple movies and have a blast all by yourself!

MERRY CHRISTMAS

Kingdom of Gnester Trailer

Now, I didn't work on this game, but a lot of friends did, at Another Castle studios.

KINGDOM OF GNESTER


Fun, addictive game for the Iphone and Ipod touch. It's a challenging, original mixup of the sidescroller we all know and love, with a puzzle game.

You have to play both at the same time, and it makes for some interesting moments.

You build up you're powers by playing the puzzle, and these powers are necessary to complete the challenges of the levels.

If you have either platform, I highly recommend picking this game up when it drops this season!

New Portfolio and Blog Theme

What do you guys think of the new portfolio title page and blog header? All comments and criticism welcomed.

3DS Max

So I'm teaching myself how to use 3DSmax, and today I modeled the Chest of Orion from Hammers of Tai. Tomorrow comes the unwrapping and texturing, if I get that far!

update: Today I started modeling a character. He's a knight, so he'll have a helmet and such. The base model itself is 496 polys.

More Hammers of Tai

Title Splash Screen for Hammers of Tai.

The Player navigates the options presented to them out of the magical Chest of Orion.

The image itself was created during the second week of development, so by this point there is quite a bit I'd like to redo, but in the end I'm happy enough with the image, since it serves the purpose it was meant to.

Also, An example of how an image goes from original thumbnail to first draft to final finished piece.

For the final image, although I had done all the work up till that point including design and pencils, Laura Blackbeard did the inking and gray toning for it. This was done to speed up the process as she had already done a few other of these panels detailing the introductory story for the game, so no extra effort had to be spent learning to ink and color in the same style, as we were approaching deadline. Hopefully she will post some more of the work on her blog.

Concerning Game Garage

Well, my Game Garage contract has ended and I want to jump right back into things. I'll be posting more work from the recent week as soon as I have access to the files again, hopefully by tomorrow. I don't want to put it off any longer than possible.

But first I would like to thank Telefilm and The Interactive Media Alliance for their support, as well as the team at Another Castle Studios for housing us and offering as much help as they could with their busy schedule. Everyone should check out their debut project, Kingdom of Gnester.

-------- In other news -----------

I'm looking for work, freelance or contract, instudio or from home.

I specialize in conceptual work, but am also a competent animator and designer.

I'm an advanced user of Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Flash, but can also work my way around most, if not all standard programs.

For game garage I was using Google Sketchup, Adobe Audition for sound editing, and Gimp to find coordinates for spritesheets to ease up the work load. (Such as the X, Y, W, and H values on a spritesheet because Gimp just makes it easier...hint hint Adobe)

I'm relearning 3DSmax all by my lonesome, so hopefully I'll have something to show soon if things don't pick up too quickly and I get some free time.

my current contact information:

primeyoucantdie@hotmail.com

902-314-5254

That is my PEI number, I'll be moving back to New Brunswick in the mean time so when the number changes, I'll put it up.

Please contact me by e-mail though.

Everybody have a good day!

-T.J.

Hammers of Tai Portfolio Pages

Oh, these old thangs?

Just some older work I had done for some enemy concepts for a game. None of these were used ingame so I decided I may as well put them up, even though they are old by now. But still fun, right?

another new character

The Savage Thloth's of the Dense Jungles of the Northern Wreckage are solitary, territorial, and ravenously carnivorous. They have been seen feasting on their catch often before it has even passed on, and are said to enjoy gulping the fluid of eyes that can still stare at them.


This was a quick study, and a lesson in capturing form without heavily relying on line, something that was very prevalent in the last character design I did (see the shark-man 2 posts down).

After I started working on the character, I realized it reminded me very much of the Ralph McQuarrie Star Wars concepts from the original trilogy way back in the 1520's. I havn't actually looked at his art in many moons, though I do recall trying to copy a lot of his drawings with a standard HB pencil and looseleaf back in middle school. I think one of the original concepts for Chewbacca might have been sloth like, though any similarities are coincidental.

I hope you guys like it, and I'd love to hear any critiques you guys have on how I can continue to improve my self to (at least) an entry level position in the industry!

Oh and I included a smaller version of the line art because I know I always like seeing other artists framework, and not to toot my own horn but I do like the way the lines themselves turned out for such a quick sketch.

-T.J.

happy halloween!

It's a self portrait of me as the Heaaaddlessss Hoooorsemaaann! OOOH BOOGIDY BOOGIDY BOO

new character

Well, I've been overwhelmingly inspired by the works of Doug Wildey and Alex Toth recently, masters that they were. This started with the intention to do something in the style of Marc Bagley originally, but I guess my subconcious decided to take it old school.

The shark man is a lean, deep swamp dweller, who hunts with a pack and is incredibly territorial.

Today, my goal was to create something with deep crisp lines that showcase form more than style, which was an old, bad habit of mine. I also wanted to demonstrate my ability to capture various styles of art with these last few posts of mine, and my willingness to learn and grow as a conceptual artist.

The sea theme to the weapons and armour, while light, was still a challenge to express as cleanly as possible. I had to google image a few images of sea shells to make sure I was getting them close to reality.

I have the full intention of finishing the final renderings of his gear.

What do you guys think?

edit - posted the finished character, as well as a quick color swap line up

some more fun

Because Gaudiness is next to Godliness

more color studies

Just a quick 1 hour sketch...I'm hoping to pick up the pace on these, because I need to strengthen my inner color theory and my internal conceptualizing demons.

Passion Fruit

So a few quick paintings..not something I do, work quick with color and multiple layers, greyscaling, highlighting, recoloring. Just playing around and seeing where it takes me I sappose.
Now this is something I'd love to have some hands on mentoring with, the whole digital quick concept painting world..

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

Hahaha, take that obnoxious titles.

I decided to have a bit of fun on this little detour from pressing duties.
Trying to capture a manga feel for the femme was a little tricky but I think it's all good.

For the colors, I used a fun, complementary scheme that seemed to jump out at me, and threw the colors together and used the Healing Brush(J) in photoshop to give them a sloppy but purposeful water color feel. After that, I simply applied a texture set to overlay of some rust, then slightly oversaturated the entire image.

Fun Fun :D

unused concepts

These are unused concepts from the Telefilm/IMA project I am working on. I'm only allowed to show concepts and unused material.

The Skeletortoise lost some color when being exported as a gif unfortunately. Also, some clipping occured, but again, this issues weren't a problem in game. The character would have been very tiny when viewed on screen, though bigger then the rest as he was going to be a boss.

All work is copywritten and trademarked 2009.

warmup sketches

Hey viewers! Been busy lately, but these are a just warm up sketches. I get started on these before focusing on the work I'm getting paid for, which unfortunately I'm not allowed to post yet, but you'll be seeing it when I can.

But where as these arn't focused or driven sketches, very few get pushed passed this level of completion.