How I Found My Footing

Today is the 5-year anniversary of my wife and I getting married, and so I've been doing a bit a reflection, which led me to writing this blog entry.  I was looking through some of my old art, and I decided that it would be cool to share it online!

I've been doodling my whole life, but it was a concentrated two-year effort that actually led to me finding an art style in which I could be productive on the scale and quality that I desired.

2009-2010:  Pen, Ink, and Watercolors

These pieces are typical of me 3-4 years ago.  I would use a fountain pen with indian ink to create an image, and then I would color it with watercolor paints.  I was very pleased with how these turned out, but, using this method, I took way too long to complete an image.  I needed to find a better, more efficient method to express my ideas.  On the way, I also created these fan images from some of my favorite games:

 The Legend of Zelda:  Link's Awakening

 Super Mario Bros 3:  Piranha Plants with Mario Power-Ups

2010-2011:  Trying Pixel Art on for Size

Considering that I had in mind to do big projects, I went from fully traditional art using a fountain pen and watercolors to another end of the spectrum, pixel art, thinking it would be fun and fast.  I was wrongish.

  NES Controller Stuff

 Green Soda, Feather, Toxic Sword, Saturn

 Betelgeuse, Gear Icon, Lenses into Gypsum Dunes

 Platypus, Tamandua

Pixels turned out to, indeed, be fun, but the constraints of it prevented me from getting across the ideas that I wanted.  I ended up just making a bunch of icons of things I liked or that I thought represented my ideals.  I also tried to see if using a ballpoint pen instead of a fountain pen could make we work faster traditionally.  THAT turned out to be a huge leap forward for me.  I also started to play around with some narratives that I had floating around in my head:

Monks (Andrus Doru, Mutho, and Za)

(This story may yet see light under the Orbital / Primeval project)

 Fishman

(The world this little guy comes form will most definitely see light under the Orbital / Primeval project)

Ball Point Pen and Water-Color:

 Fishman

 Evil Sea Birds, Alligator Wolf

 Fishmen

 Parasaur Priest, Evil Red Sorceress

2011-Present:  Sharpies + Digital Color

I REALLY enjoyed making the characters you see above, but it still irked me how long it took to color with watercolors.  Then I made my last leap forward with these pieces...

 Moonipede

 Saturn

 Dog Flying Through Space

...and these two that I've already posted (together with alternate color jobs):

 Lightning Dogs

 Minotwahs

You can see that I started to experiment with brighter, more shocking colors now that coloring took so little time.  This directly led to me beginning the Lightning Dog comic, and, the rest is history!  I was finally creating content at a high enough quality that I thought it looked cool, but it was also speedy enough for me to start completing projects.

I hope you enjoyed seeing a bit of my journey to what I'm making now!