Naked Man

Game in the City

So I visited Game in the City this week on friday, was pretty neat. Most notable lecture of the day was the keynote by the awesome Keita Takahashi, former designer of Katamari Damacy and Nobi Nobi Boy. While most lectures were about business tactics and technology, his was about three things foremost: Love, world peace and cars. A very inspiring and uplifting speech. Most surprising was that he had not only been unemployed and on welfare until quite recently, he had also left the videogame industry by choice, often feeling like he didn't belong there. We all feel like that sometimes. These days he was working on a children's playground in Nottingham. 

I found him afterwards, complemented him on his lecture and asked for an autograph. Luckily he obliged: I haven't even played his games, but his lecture was the best. 

big shocker MORE LIFE DRAWING

Wacom

Up until now I've done all my digital work with a Wacom Volito tablet:

It was already outdated when I got it as a gift, but for the past six years it served me well. I learned the basics of digital painting on this thing and always took good care of it. Time wasn't kind on this thing though, after a while it started making straight lines look like ECG's. Not only that, after working on a college Intuos3 for my graduation project I went back to the Volito realising that it's pressure sensitivity required me to work like I was trying to carve my name in with a Q-tip. Time for an upgrade I reckoned. And what an upgrade:

AWW YEAH. I'm starting to get the hang of it, and I'm hoping to get some great works done with this baby as well!

As long as Fallout New Vegas doesn't distract me too much, oh god.

Drawing workshop

A few weeks ago I was at a local elementary school, doing comic drawing workshops for two classes. It was a hoot.

Among other things (and drawing lots of requests) I taught them the basics of visual storytelling:

How to draw basic expressions instead of having to say how your characters are feeling:

 And a gorilla.

Liefeld's Michelangelo

A doodle of one of the greatest statues of all time

Reinvented as an homage to one of the most EXTREME artists of all time.

Tada!

YOU CAN NEVER HAVE ENOUGH POUCHES

Even more life drawing

Also check out my sweet new header!

And it isn't even Sunday yet.

Life drawing again

Warming-Up Sketch

Ehm

Whiteboard Drawing

More life drawing

So I graduated last week: Bachelor of Arts and Technology, Game Design and Development. I succesfully completed my graduation project, which I'll also be showing at our graduation exposition in September. But who cares, here's some life drawings I made last tuesday. All were done in 15 minutes. From top to bottom: mechanical pencil, quill & calligraphy pen:

WAKKA WAKKA WAKKA

Graduation project's going good. But here's what's also been happening.

A week ago we had a series of lectures related to XNA, in a big Microsoft-sponsored event. Most of it wasn't interesting. There was a guy named Rob Miles though, from the university of Hull. He was interesting.

He ended his lecture with a pop quiz with four questions we were already told the answers too, just for the heck of it. The winners of each question got an XNA-programming related book. Here's mine. I don't even program :I

Last thursday was the Festival of Games in Utrecht, so I visited the career expo, did some networking. Coolest of all, I ran into Tõru Iwatani, creater of Pac-Man, who was there to do a keynote at the conferences. This is his face.

I shook his hand, I got my picture taken with him, and he signed my pass.

I feel like a whore.

Concept art, backgrounds

Here's a mood drawing I did a while ago, it's meant to visualise a section of our game that we're finalising at the moment.

More importantly, here's some (nearly) finished backgrounds for our game. We're just now implementing them into the game.

Figure Drawing

Last tuesday I went figure drawing with a friend of mine. Haven't done that in about three years. Here's the result:

First, these were 3 minute poses done with pencils:

15 minute pose with pencils:

15 minute pose with quill:

15 minute pose with Pilot parallel pen:

And two 15 minute poses with ink wash: