CHOBLE

www.choble.com

2006-01-17T23:05:00.000-06:00

Choble has moved! You can now find my art blog at www.choble.com.

My domain and hosting services expired this month so I decided to move choble to its own domain. I was able to import all my blogger posts and comments to WordPress.

Above is the new header art. Anyway, I will leave this blogger here, but will only be updating my art blog at www.choble.com.

See you at the new site :)

Illustration Friday: Sea

2006-01-06T22:12:00.000-06:00

The above piece is 4 3/4" x 6 1/2 and was created with acrylic, gouache and sakura pen on watercolour paper.

I was excited by this weeks Illustration Friday topic and so decided to create something. I have always loved the sea, I think in part because I grew up in a small seaside town in Wales (the town is called Burry Port and you can see some pics of the harbour here, Burry Port on BBC Wales). One of my fondest childhood memories is of going to the Burry Port beach with my Gran, my brother and our Gran's blue bucket. We would go to the rock pools and my Gran would turn over the stones for my brother and I to catch the crabs which we would unceremoniously place in the bucket and then swish off home...

I also thought that having a specific topic might help me push my color choice in a new direction. If left to my own devices I tend to repeat my colour palette. So I spent some time researching in some of my National Geographic mags until I found these two images. From these images I settled on a blue/orange colour scheme.

From here I spent some time drawing and came up with a tentative design, as shown below, top left.

If anyone has any suggestions and/or tips on how they push their colour palette, please let me know :)

Have a good night and weekend.

Springtime

2006-01-05T23:37:00.000-06:00

I thought I would change the scale a bit for this one, but it didn't quite turn out as I had hoped.

Created with acrylic, gouache, coloured pencil and sakura pens
(5 1/2" x 5")

Orange Dig-Me

2006-01-04T17:45:00.000-06:00

I'm trying to do a painting a day, even if only on a small scale. I'm also trying to pay attention to my edges and work on tighter brushwork.

Made with acrylic, gouache and sakura pens on watercolour paper
(5 1/2" x 4")

Here on the Island

2006-01-03T17:43:00.000-06:00

Made with acrylic, gouache, coloured pencil and sakura pens.

Why 'We heart Katamari'

2006-01-02T22:37:00.000-06:00

We just bought 'We heart Katamari,' the sequel to 'Katamari Damacy,' and it really is a very beautiful and fun game (above is the game box illustration). I am so in love with the visuals of this game that I thought I would write a short review/description of the game and game world.

The world of Katamari has a playful aesthetic and is populated by colourful and quirky characters. The premise behind the game is that your father, the King of the Cosmos, accidentally destroyed the stars of the Cosmos and so he tasks you, his prince, to roll up objects on earth on a sticky Katamari. Everything can potentially 'stick' to the Katamari, although only similar sized objects, relative to your Katamari's size, will actually 'stick.' During the game your Katamari will roll up pins, ants, buttons, batteries, butterflies, slugs, frogs, magnets, candy, fruit, plants, school children, your princely cousins, sofas, etc. The king tasks you with creating Katamaris of a specific size within a given time limit. If you successfully roll up enough objects within the time limit, the King throws the katamari out into the Cosmos to become new planets and/or stars.

The game is delightfully simple but very engaging and clever. And loads of fun! It even has a two player co-op mode whereby you can partner up with a friend (or your loved one :) and each player controls the Katamari.

Similar to the game play, the world of katamari is simple, vibrant, bold and enchanting. The whole game, from the interface, to the characters, to the animations are all very beautiful and all these elements create a rich world and gameplay experience like no other game (in my opinion). The audio is also full of catchy little tunes that are simple yet exotic.

I highly recommend this game if you like quirky/alternative games and I even think its worth renting just to see and hear its unique game world.

The following images are from the game book which is full of brilliant art work.

To find out more about Katamari, you can visit the official website at, katamari.namco.com

All artwork (c) Namco

Happy New Year

2006-01-01T13:43:00.000-06:00

Happy New Year to all of you, my friends and family (that's Mr. Squeaky Beak above).

I had a good year and the best part of 2005 was being with Angie (you're the best, gorgeous :)

Orange Robots

2005-12-29T23:47:00.000-06:00

Some orange robots I made as an image for my website. Made with Illustrator.

Grrrlies

2005-12-28T15:30:00.000-06:00

I received a set of Prismacolour brush markers for Christmas and created a set of drawings that were inspired by Smook's marker drawings (http://reddotblog.blogspot.com/).

I really like the painterly quality of the markers and the blending that happens when you lay colours on top of one another.

These images are all drawn from photos. I'm still trying to learn how to use the markers.

This one turned a bit dark.

These were my attempt at caricatures.

I Dream of Rabbits

2005-12-27T17:49:00.000-06:00

Created with Sakura Microns, coloured pencils, watercolour, gouache and paper collage.

Here's a pic of the Sakuras I use :)

Happy Christmas

2005-12-26T13:26:00.000-06:00

Above is the Tim Biskup book, '100 Paintings' (ISBN : 1-59307-051-9) I received as a Christmas present from my brother Allister. The book is a collection of 100 small format paintings, 3 1/2 inches by 3 1/2 inches, reproduced at actual size. It's an excellent book and I highly recommend it if you're a Biskup fan. To find out more about Tim Biskup, visit his website at www.timbiskup.com.

Also here's a photo of my brother's daughter Vienna in her Christmas best surrounded by some of her gifts.

I hope everyone had an excellent Christmas. Will post something new soon :)

Bloc Party Poster

2005-12-22T21:34:00.000-06:00

I've been itching to make a poster so I decided to make one for a band I like called Bloc Party. The poster references the song 'So Here We Are' off the album Silent Alarm. I created all the line work in Freehand and Illustrator and then coloured the design in Photoshop.

To find out more about Bloc Party you can check out their official website at www.blocparty.com.

Christmas Card

2005-12-21T09:26:00.000-06:00

This is my Christmas Card design for this year. I began the card design with acrylic paint on watercolour paper. I haven't painted in a while so this project seemed like a good place to start.

The image below is the original acrylic painting.

I wasn't really happy with my colours or edges in the original painting so I scanned the painting and reworked the design in Illustrator.

If anyone would like to use this design as a Christmas Card you can download a zipped tif image from the link below. Just click on the link and save the file to your computer.

Click here to download the Christmas Card image.

Marmaduck

2005-12-19T19:28:00.000-06:00

Here’s the opening adventure of Marmaduck.

This is my first finished comic strip of a character from my sketchbook. I tried to keep things simple for my first strip, hence no text bubbles and only four panels. I have always loved Double Fine's comics (go to www.doublefine.com to view) and thought that their four strip panel sets were a good minimum number. Despite keeping things simple it was harder than I thought, but I really had fun creating the Marmuduck panels and it was an excellent new challenge for me. If anyone has any advice on how I can improve my comic skills for the next set, please let me know.

I was also inspired by Pete Fowler’s great little comic strips from his ‘Ken’s Mysterious World’ series. I’ve included a scan below.

I actually created this comic panel for my redesigned web site (which you can view at www.gilestimms.com, though it’s still being updated). I thought that it might make the home page more interesting to have something different every so often, hence the comic. Hopefully I can create a new set every fortnight, especially if I keep things simple with the vector format.

Anyway, this was entirely created in Illustrator.

Christmas Labels

2005-12-15T10:20:00.000-06:00

These are the designs for my Christmas labels (for presents). The owl was drawn with Freehand's Calligraphic brush tool (I think I really like this tool) and then color was added in photoshop.

Also, if anyone would like to use these labels I'm providing a link (see below) to a tiff image that you can download and print. I designed the labels so that they would fit on 4" x 6" borderless glossy photo paper (such as Epson's S041727 product).

Click here to download a zipped tif image of the labels

Change

2005-12-13T17:10:00.000-06:00

A lot has happened in the month since I posted last; I resigned at my job, sold my house and decided to apply to a few MFA programs. Anyway, thanks to my family and friends for all the encouragement and support I’ve received recently during this transition.

The image above is derived from a childhood photo of me, my older brother, my mother and our pet bird (called Starsky, after...Starsky and Hutch). My Dad took the photo and I’ve always been really fond of it. The final image is the product of Freehand, Photoshop and Painter.

Billy Match Head

2005-11-07T23:18:00.000-06:00

This is Billy Match Head standing on a grassy knoll. The kids always try and light the matches that sprout quite elegantly from his head. He doesn't like it when they do that.

Created with Illustrator and Photoshop. It went through several stages before I was happy with it.

Illustration Friday: Night

2005-11-04T13:18:00.000-06:00

Two unblinking Diggles, at night.

I wanted to keep this Friday's image as simple as possible (so that I could get it done in time) and I also wanted to do a bold black and white image. The Diggle is a design from my sketchbook which I redrew in Illustrator with the pen tool and then assembled the piece in Photoshop.

Lizard in Capris

2005-11-02T22:52:00.000-06:00

Over the past few years I have taught myself how to model in 3D with 3DS Max (for both work and pleasure) and love the ability to realise characters in 3D.

This character is lizard inspired and I think this was the first 'proper' model sheet I created. She was to have been a low-poly, real-time model, but unfortunately I never got the chance to model her.

This image is copyright pullUin software, 2002.

More Ghastlies

2005-11-01T13:51:00.000-06:00

A few more pen drawings, some old and some new, inspired by Edward Gorey. These are all drawn with various sizes of Sakura Micron pens.

Illustration Friday: Broken

2005-10-28T14:05:00.000-05:00

Another Illustration Friday image, these characters originated from my sketchbook.

The original sketchbook character designs were drawn in pen and I am still trying to figure out the best way to create digital line work that I like and that has that pen quality…perhaps it isn’t possible. Anyway, I gave Freehand a go this time and started the image off with Freehand’s variable stroke pen. From there I took the line work into Illustrator and added areas of color with the pen tool and then finally copied the image over to Photoshop where I tweaked the colours and added the swath of yellow. The colours are bolder than I would typically use, but I wanted to try a different palette.

Have a good weekend.

Tentacled Theresa

2005-10-26T14:19:00.000-05:00

Drawn with Sakura Microns and coloured with pencils.

Harriette's Homunculus

2005-10-26T13:04:00.000-05:00

Harriette with her Homunculous 'hat.' Drawn with Sakura Micron pens.

Elizabeth Lizard Breath

2005-10-26T00:52:00.000-05:00

Another Ghastly Child drawn with Sakura Microns and inspired by the Racinet book.

Ghastly Boys and Girls

2005-10-24T19:53:00.000-05:00

With Halloween coming up I was inspired to create some Ghastly Children. This is Grinning Gilbert complete with ice pick and bone saw…

This was drawn with Sakura Microns.

I am an Edward Gorey fan so these children are also inspired by Gorey’s character designs. For inspirational reference I also used Albert Racinet’s, ‘The Historical Encyclopedia of Costumes,' with the specific plate shown below. This is a really good book that depicts lots of great costumes.

Illustration Friday: Remote

2005-10-21T15:29:00.000-05:00

I decided to participate in the 'Illustration Friday' Blog event. This is my submission for the current topic, 'Remote.'

This is an Illustrator image, derived from my sketchbook. Usually I color the Illustrator line work in Photoshop, but I decided to color this image in Illustrator because I'm trying to improve my Illustrator skills.

Mr. Jagoo's Brisk Adventure

2005-10-20T16:20:00.000-05:00

One of the geometric style characters from my sketch book.

Dubu and Wobby

2005-10-20T13:40:00.000-05:00

This is Dubu and Wobby on a plane of grass.

Another Illustrator and Photoshop image.

Love Bunny

2005-10-19T21:01:00.000-05:00

This is an animool card I made for my love bunny of one year...it was our anniversary on Sunday, October 16th.

Gronky in Autumn

2005-10-19T20:27:00.000-05:00

I've started to make simple 3D creatures to create 3D vignettes with. This is one of the vignettes with 'Gronky.' The above image shows some of the states that Gronky went through in texturing.

Below is the final rendered image.

BittyBot

2005-10-19T15:47:00.000-05:00

This is BittyBot wandering the oasis.

Another Illustrator and Photoshop image based upon a design in my sketchbook. I wanted to keep the shapes and colors simple and bold.

Pixel Art Alien

2005-10-19T10:29:00.000-05:00

Where would this blog be without a pixel art alien that blinks?

PopBot goes 'pop'

2005-10-18T16:34:00.000-05:00

This is PopBot inked with a 'pop' palette.

PopBot in neutrals

2005-10-18T16:23:00.000-05:00

This is PopBot from my digital sketchbook; created in Ilustrator and Photoshop. I wanted to work with simple shapes and areas of flat color.