Manga Studio

I picked up Manga Studio on offer the other day and decided to give it a quick try this evening. Some of the brushes are really nice and capture the look of traditional media. I'll need to have a play with this and test it out for future projects.

For now, here's a test based on something poignant a friend once said.

30 Movies #5 - Fight Scene

I passed on some grander and more memorable cinema fights in favour of this scene from TMNT. This rooftop fight scene made the movie for me. I don't know that I'd have given it a second watch if it didn't have this scene in it. It also gave me a good excuse to draw the Turtles. Despite being from the 2007 movie I decided to draw Leo the way I've always drawn the Turtles. I prefer the classic look to some of the more recent styles. I think the original live action movie was the high water mark for me.

30 Movies #4 - A Famous Character had They Aged in Real Time

30 Movies #3 - Scary Movie

No film has ever been scarier to me than the remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers starring Donald Sutherland. Granted I was only 4 years old when I saw it (I can't remember how that happened) but it's still a scary film. This end scene in particular has stayed with me. It wasn't just the horrific pose and scream, nor the idea of being surrounded by evil aliens, but - even at that age - I found the notion of being the only human left on Earth scary. The fear, the loneliness, the total isolation... terrifying.

30 Movies #2 - Minimalist Movie Poster

30 Movies #1 - Animated Movie

The Sketchgroup is back together! Some of us, are at least. We've decided to borrow our weekly topics from Jeff Victor's 30 Day Drawing Challenge - Movie Edition (due to work loads the group have decided against trying it as a 30 day challenge). The first topic was "animated movie" so I've chosen Princess Mononoke, one of my all time favourite animated features and just a through-and-through beautiful film.

Positronic Brain Revisited

The Positronic Brain is one of my favourite pieces of work, however one bit has always been bugging me. The brain. When it came time to create the chrome casing of the brain it became apparent I'd need to actually create some kind of environment. I  came up with a slightly-futuristic room for the sake of creating realistic reflections, at the time not realising how prominent it would be in the final piece. At first it seemed to work, but when I really started to look at it afterwards I grew to dislike it. It really spoiled the scene for me. It detracted from the mood. The environment wasn't right. It was like seeing the sound stage and craft services table reflected in C-3P0. So tonight I finally got around to reworking it and spent a few hours crafting a more apt environment.

A picture tells and a story, and God is in the details.

To see the original version of this picture and where it came from, and read about what this picture means to me, check out this post.

Hulk

I drew the Hulk for the sketchjam topic "monster". I like him because he's part Frankenstein, part Mr. Hyde. Two cool monsters for the price of one. When I was a kid I was a fan of the Bill Bixby Hulk series, but I never saw another screen adaptation that really satisfied until The Avengers. Marvel's The Incredible Hulk did do a good job with Bruce Banner and his struggle, but the rest let it down. Now, if the next Hulk movie can mix the tragedy of Banner's existence with the emotion of Edward Norton, while at the same time keeping the passive aggression of Mark Ruffalo and the look/sound/humour of the his Hulk, then, well, they can take my money now.

Positronic Brain

EDIT: There is an updated version of this work here.

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I'm a big fan of Asimov's robot stories and I particularly like the concept of the positronic brain (meaingless as the name was), which has since made it into several other science fiction titles. I like the idea that truly effective humanoid robots would need something beyond programming; that they would need something more complex and even more physical to achieve the level of interaction (and even learning) needed for societal integration. It bridges the gap between robots/computers and a living, organic mind. It offers a much greater chance to unplanned or unpredicted behaviour. It begins to bridge the gap between soulless machine and life.

The picture was based on this previous piece I did, only this time I wanted to go for a more realistic look. It gave me a chance to try creating different kinds of metal surface, which was challenging and fun.

Close-ups of my original drawing.

Ben

The weekly sketch jam has been a bit quiet lately, most members have been busy, but I shall try to get something of my own done this week for the sake of keeping up my drawing, once today's work is done. In the meantime, here's a doodle. Maybe a rival London 2012 Mascot? I don't know. But it's iconic, chibi and has a catchy name. Not that I'm at all against those terrifying monsters Wenlock and Mandeville...

Come out to the coast, we'll get together, have a few laughs

I don't do this kind of painting very often so it's always an experimentation. Same goes for caricature. There's still things I'd like to try and improve but I've spent too many hours on it now, I'm just going to call it complete. The good bits outweigh the bad bits for me.

Development sketches. Bruce is hard to capture in a drawing.

Elwoovatar

Will-o'-the-wisp

NOT THE BEES

For the theme "Worst. Movie. Ever." I couldn't think of any movies that fit into that category that I also wanted to draw, so I decided to invent a sequel to a bad yet hilarious film.

I can't lie - it was impossible not to make bee noises when drawing a swarm that large.

No Escape

My pic for this week's Sketch Jam topic "The Game". If you don't know what "the game" is, read this.

This Little Hand

My entry for this week's Sketch Jam topic "Shakespeare", based on one of my favourite scenes.

Originally it was going to be all monotone, then a red spot colour to really punctuate the blood. A bit Sin City. But it seemed a bit flat and harsh on the eye, so at the risk of reducing the impact of the blood, I added more colour.

Yoshis, Fight!

This week's sketchjam theme was "fight". I was in a bit of a retro games mood the other day and thought "hey, there's lots of fights in computer games!" and since I so rarely do any kind of fan art I thought this would be a good opportunity. So this is inspired by one of my favourite games of all time, Yoshi's Island for the SNES. Yoshis are fun to draw. Except that yellow one, he came out looking a bit odd.

And here's a few scribbles I did in MS Paint that led up to the final. Post-it notes and MS Paint are the freest mediums for me when it comes to sketching ideas.

Flight

Haunted Planet

Astronauts would tell tales of witnessing ghosts in the vicinity of Kepler 22b, that would appear at the windows of their ships, scratch on the glass and even float down the corridors. But of course, they're only stories, right?

I haven't drawn Trooper in a while, so here we go. An episode of The X-Files taught me that extra-terrestrial ghosts are scarier than human ghosts. It's like, two kinds of scary.

Reynard

Loosely based on Reynard the trickster fox. About 3-4 hours work.