Macmillan Images Pt2

Here are a few more images from the educational book I was working on.
Again unfortunately there simply wasn't the time to do proper realised drawings of ships and their equipment and to fix/redraw things wholly from the roughs. So its the dream of a ship and the dream of a ships compass(in the same way as my gingerbread man and fox is the dream of afox and a piece of dancing gingerbread.)
Which is a shame but thats the reality of the time/money/quality thing.
Still its much more elaborate than I think they were expecting.

Faster Pussycat, Colour! Colour!

Here are a few images from the educational reader I've done for Macmillan.
The images aren't as refined and tight as I would like,- but in a way they had to be rough because to do highly polished realistic images would have been way over 'budget'.
Perhaps if I owned a copy of painter or used textured brushes or layered texture over the images to help bamboozle(the way they do) it might bind the brushstrokes together and sell the simplicity better. The faux perspective is a result of translating the roughs as is,-I fixed ones(not these) where it was noticably wrong. It would be nice to have proper time to do research and studies of everything beforehand,- mind you tall ships are hard to find in queensland.
Hopefully(more importantly) the feeling and the story is right despite all of that.

Made it

Well I made it to that creative masters forum featuring Ron Cobb, and I very nearly didn't.
I was struck down by some sort of virus on the days before.
Simple pleasures like keeping your food down and not having to crawl back and forth between the bath and the toilet are often overlooked.
I made it in the end though.
I had imagined I might find a few familiar faces when I arrived(still ill) on the registration/ opening night- not so, and it seemed I was the only person from Queensland there.
There is nothing so depressing as free drinks and nibbles when you can't eat.
I think I recognised a few names from the DLF but couldn't remember where they worked(scott wilcox?)- (none of the name tags had who they were what they did).
Oddly enough though I found myself standing next to Ron while the wacom rep and others barraged him with questions.
Ron actually looks a lot like santa claus, minus the suit .....and his beard is a bit short and too neat...still.
Actually the questions people asked were like the small rocks that create an avalanche, and Ron was ful of interesting recollections etc. Far more interesting though is when you get him talking about the technology he's tried to imbue into his design(s), he really lights up and you can see how that excitement drives things artwise especially things to do with space.
I got my photo taken with Ron and a few others that night so who know where that might turn up.
I chatted to and hung out with Mark Woszczalski( who teaches and also runs Metaldog productions in rural NSW).
The name does sound like the one eyed green guy out of Monsters inc(but of course it wasn't), and I was compelled to joke about the street he works in ("Bong Bong St.").
We watched the documentary they had created for Ron(called a 'Ronologue' because once he starts talking....they basically just pointed a camera at him). Fortunately he's so interesting he could carry that sortof close camera scrutiny for 40 minutes. Then there was a short animation about a metal dog befriending a robot ('Tin Can Heart'). I didn't quite get it sadly- at least the significance of photos at the begining and end, but the texture on certain hero scenes and characters were very nice. in was only when they rescreening it the next day that I scrutinised it and saw all the rough edges/things they hope you won't notice. (Like texture mapping problems, animated geometry self intersecting, composited characters kind of floating WRT walking surface, texture/bumbs swimming). That said I can completely sympathise with this sort of thing slipping to final.
After I was lucky enough to share a cab (and not pay) back toward my hotel, and escape the Arctic weather of Sydney(and the desolation of fox studios precinct on a monday night.).
The next morning I had coffee and breakfast with Mark and of all people Ron Cobb- we all turned up at the same cafe. That morning and for quite a bit at the closing drinks was spent talking/listening to him.
One of the things he said was that he felt he'd bluffed his way through everything,( ie people had faith in him and appointed him in various roles although he had no prior experience or qualification.).Some of the things he talked about in the presentation were his involvement in Alien, Conan, The Last Starfighter,The Abyss, Star Wars and how he didn't end up directing a film that eventually became ET(actually the thing he was going to do and ET were chalk and cheese really).
Funnily enough while he was talking about the Et saga on one of his Starwars cantina images- lo and behold the spitting image of ET's face on one of his cantina guys.
Speaking of spitting images I met Frantz Kantor that day too. He was sitting a row in front of me and looks like John Hurt, and so i was wondering if Ron(having worked on Alien) would remark on it.
It was only during the drinks that afternoon that I found some other concept artists(I'd been sitting at then conference all day - and from the questions various audience members were asking I could tell that they weren't concept artists). They were from animal logic, one of them was a fellow Queenslander- Brad Greenwood (who apparently knew Pete Mullins and the like).
They didn't know me but they knew the job I'd left as some of them had tried to apply for it- funny that.
So there you go.
Also looking at someof Ron's drawings as he brought them out- the Last Starfighter drawing looked vey much in pencil style like Mr Matt Brady.

Forget atom smashing

What those scientists need to be working on is an 'undo button'.

Here are two watercolours- as yet unretouched(like the others I guess- but then its not major work needed. Santy is there because its getting close to christmas so i thought I'd get in early.
The girly with the mysterious monster friends- well I'm not sure,- where's the monsters right arm- not sure either but then in those sort of montage images I guess anything is allowed. She'll get a flower or some adornment in her hair and something on her wrist but I haven't quite decided.

As for the previous post, what were they about? The girly with the impressive gaffer tape and the rat were for the Illustrators Australia 9x5 exhibition. Both were sort of last minute images.
I think originally i had a page or two of grand Ideas but at the last minute I just did whatever came to mind on the "Year of the Rat" theme. I'm not sure if it was my brushes but to me I might as well have painted them with my fingers. After fiddling with watercolour the last month or two it felt like mud painting but they sort of turned out. I should have put some gesso or something for the boards they were on but I didn't have any and it was a Sunday night- just a small set of acrylics my wife had given me 2 years ago but which had duly hoarded away.
Rat girly initially didn't have any gaffer tape and it was with a heavy heart I made her decent.
The green dinosaur is a very quick play with watercolour canvas with a plan to sell it and more like it,- the trouble though is although it was touted as watercolour canvas the watercolour just sits on top and doesn't really bond onto the canvas- so I've had to go and by some toxic spray to seal the damn thing.

On the business side we're about to get cards and stuff printed, I'm going to go a short run initially because the images will change.
Also I've sort of started an educational book for Macmillian in NZ- I say sort of because theres a fair process/amount of work goes on before they even send a contract(which is in fact close to now.)
Also on the book front I've just about finished that first book "A monkey in the Camp".
Thatis its done until I recieve any further word that anything more needs doing.
I think its only now though that I'm a lot more comfortable with the painting and now I'd be more inclined to paint and not just colour in if you know what i mean. So If theres another one you can be sure it'll be far superior.

Also I've decided to attend both the 'Creative Masters Forum" (featuring Ron Cobb) and that Conceptart.org Wellington Workshop.
After constantly feeling 'old school' amongst the very young new employees of where I used to work- it will be hope inspiring to be in the presence of someone even 'older schoolerer' but still brilliant such as Ron. I still have my old battered copy of 'The Book of Alien' and you can see that designwise Foss's work is of the 70's - wheres(but for the rendering style) Cobb's could have been done yesterday.
The Wellington Workshop is another matter entirely- and I anticipate being surrounded by hip ,pretty young emo things with pens strapped to their wrists. Still hopefully it should be good despite the 'funk of wank' that pervades (at least in their video of the last workshop).
So leading up to those event's I'll be trying to do more concept art style stuff.

The scribble that dreamed

Note to self- get the idea, sort the construction- figure out how sternum and pit of neck ought to shade.
And do a proper expression.
Next time.
Still... although it sort of ended up a bit Louis Royo or whatever his name is... which is a bad thing,

Should I add the band across her eyes? looks a bit better that way.

- I'll give the idea another shot.