Hey look, more steampunk

In my Game Illustration class, we're doing a class-wide reskinning of the card game Dominion with a post-apocalyptic steampunk spin. The card I chose/was assigned to was The Mafia/Mob (A group of citizens trying to exert influence through violence). I thought they'd be pretty tough with a big robot buddy, so I gave them one. Hopefully they come off as aggressive and intimidating as intended. This is one of the rare times where I have more than one figure in a composition so I should probably do more like this. Pretty happy with how it turned out. This is the 'tight sketch', final piece due on Thursday. 

Lots of things

Been very busy! I got into the illustration major at school which ended up being good and bad. Good because my degree will be worth a bit more to me and I get a better chance of getting into the classes I want, but bad because it delays my graduation. Oh well. 

I also got into the game design class I wanted. I thought we would be working in the genre of game art, but we're actually making games. Project 1 is a board game which I'll write more about later. Project 2 is a  card game, and the final project is a Flash sidescroller. I'm pretty excited about all this, though some of my classmates are disappointed in the class. I'm happy because I actually have something to focus on. I want to work on my board game beyond the bounds of the class and hopefully use it for my grad project. 

I started working on the characters yesterday. I hammered out some silhouettes and now rendering them out.

The Snob

The Collector 

Silhouettes - not labeled - The Gamer

D10 practice painting

School's back

Still trying to figure out my schedule.

Edit: I ended up with class on Thursday and Friday, both mornings, but Thursday is a 6 hour class.
I ended up getting into the Game Illustration class which is pretty cool because it actually has me focusing on things, and inspired me towards a topic I'm interested in. Class direction itself is a bit meh because the students are on different levels of understanding.

I also have Editorial Illustration with visiting artist Calef Brown. The critiques in this class are actually pretty helpful, and the one-on-one feedback is good. The overall skill level in the class is much higher than other illustration and general classes I've taken at Emily Carr. My friend Sinan is also in the class, so it's good to know someone there.

Unfortunately, class time isn't used effectively in either class. In Game Illustration, we've spent a bunch of class time playtesting eachother's games or playing published games to get a feel for their mechanics. This really shouldn't be done during class time, and I wish we were actually learning things, like maybe a lecture on game theory or something, or discussion of the gaming industry. Editorial has had a bunch of wasted time as well. Day one, class let out after about an hour. The past two classes weren't very productive either, as we waited for the teacher to come give individual feedback. There wasn't clear direction on what to work while we waited. The semester seems to generally be a letdown. I've already accepted that things are pretty crappy. The money has already been paid, and complaints to administration tend to result in responses like "if you don't like it, you can leave."

new hovernote banner

I made a new banner for the hovernote Facebook page. Speaking of, it's on version 1.3 now and includes exciting features like an improved settings panel, autosaving and recent notes list, and automatic bullets for making lists. Notes can also be collapsed to an icon for quickly hiding and bringing back notes without having to use the notification panel.

And in context:

On the note of Android, I also recently got a Nexus 7 tablet and it's really exciting and will save me from lugging my laptop around on days I don't really need to. Convenient too, since my phone's earpiece decided to stop working about a week ago, defeating just about all of the purpose of having a phone- at least the screen didn't break or anything...

foundation book entry

My contribution for a collaborative project my friend organized. We’re putting together an 8 page full color book based around the key locations incoming ECUAD students need to know.   Even if they don’t enjoy the activity, they’ve got a sweet little book filled with creative, original illustrations. 

The location I chose was the print card machine and here we have a new student, nervously trying to figure it out. 

birthday doodle

Business cards

Finally got my cards back from Jukebox and they look nice. I also acquired a working printer from Mike to replace the POS printer I got for free off someone's lawn last year. With my resume finally out of the way and business cards to boot, I guess it's about time I start actively applying for things. I'm a bit hesitant at the same time though, with school resuming in about a month. I don't want to potentially get hired only to tell them I won't be available full time, nor do I want to disclose something like that at the time of my application lest that deter me from employment. I'm only going to be taking classes Monday and Tuesday though, so I hope to come up with something, preferably a print shop.

food

Thinking about a food blog or just putting photos of things I cook and bake here. Just a thought.

Resume

Working on my resume again. It's starting to look like something. The difficulty has been settling on one style to sell myself with. Now that I got the business cards out of the way, I have a launching point for the resume and possible web identities to match.

On that note, I made a separate Tumblr for my art portfolio and I may end up pointing my domain at that unless I figure out something else.

Edit: Finally finished with it and I think it looks great.

EIN PORTAL

I made this a few months ago.
He's going a bit fast...

Will reupload sometime soon.

traffic cat

Everyone hates traffic but everyone loves cats.

shaved ice

Available in Red and Blue.

Business Cards!

Right now, I'm working out a business card design which can hopefully be tied into resume and website. I also have to throw together a few signs for the Summer Festival which is in a few days!

I placed an order for 1000 business cards for 18 bucks. Really excited for this. 

Some more things.

dogs

sleeping puddles

octodude

I don't have a name for him so Octodude it is. I doodled this guy at Sunny Shah's art show and felt like painting him.

canyon

I have appropriately named this file holyfuck.psd.
Working from imagination- no ref whatsoever, so I'm pretty happy with this.

Update woohoo

I am really happy with this progress. Plan on making a gif for this one like I did for the teapot still life.

New Banner! (and layout)

I forgot to customize this place so here ya go.
I have two new things to post, probably tomorrow. Goodnight.

bottle doodle

Drew this at friend's birthday and he asked to keep it. Wine bottle in paper bag.

Legend of Korra plate extensions

Seth assigned me to do plate extensions of some Korra screenshots. Originals within box.

still life

Still life in Photoshop. Worked a while on this until a barista cleared the table.

Summer Festival

I also finished the Summer Festival flyers/posters. We're using Jukebox Print because they're both local and affordable for the quality. Got back the flyers and I'm impressed, placing poster order on Monday during business hours.

Posters came back and they look fantastic. Onto distribution! Definitely a pleasure working with Jukebox. 

Banner for Hovernote

Here's the market banner for hovernote. I think it's still a bit rough, but definitely better than alot of what else I've seen on Google Play. Hopefully this helps the app to get noticed more.
New update releasing soon adding a whole bunch of functionality like a working file browser and autosave. Quick layout in illustrator using ICS blue (#33B5E5) and the Android font Roboto. 

In other news, I'm working on my resume, mainly content right now. Hopefully tomorrow I can make it look fancy and appealing. I got my work permit and my social insurance number and I'm almost ready for the job market.

Been busy. Really busy.
Helping out with design and testing of hovernote as well as creating visual assets and laying out promotional material for it.

Last week, I managed to last-minute plow through my final paper for the summer class I'm taking.
~2600 words in two days- I'm quite proud of myself. Just two more classes left and then I start my job hunt. Oh boy.

Hovernote Icon

So this is the launcher/market icon I made for my boyfriend's Android app hovernote available for download on Google Play. It's a floating notepad app that sits on top of other fullscreen apps and lets you jot things down without having to interrupt your workflow. You can store the notes as notifications, or share them to other apps like Dropbox.

Made in Illustrator

It's been a while

but I haven't forgotten about this. I've been pretty busy lately with school and other projects.
Since my last post, I designed a band logo for a friend back home, put together a poster for the ARC Summer Festival at SFU in July, and made a logo and illustration for a floating notepad Android app my boyfriend is working on. I also have a few things to scan, like some quick watercolors I did at the beach a few weeks ago and a collaboration piece or two to show. I will probably be busy for the next little while with scrambling to put together a paper for my summer class, due relatively soon.

Some pugz I drew in class yesterday.

My dad's girlfriend's dog Bindi has a tumor and he asked me to paint a picture of her with her dog.

Still working on this.

Speedpainting Collabs

Yesterday I participated in a collaborative speedpainting activity with a few friends. We started off with this image and had to do something with it, either inspired by in some way or painted over or whatever, for 20 minutes, flatten it, and save it to DropBox. Next person does something more to the file, flattens and saves it, and so on. The theme was underworld. 

Original

Cody's base

Molly's base

My base

Seth's base

Sunny's base

Here’s an art


This is a Pallas’s cat or a manul, a really stout wildcat from Central Asia. They have very stocky bodies and broad faces with short, compressed noses. Their long fur and short legs make them look very fat.ref

Money

Looks like I've got a few jobs lined up.

Poster and other print/web material for friend's film Quintipus
Album cover
Selling my skate deck
Logo design

More Ether!
Photoshop

Some people at Kafka's
painted in Photoshop

Later that day, I attended life drawing at school. The scheduled model couldn't make it so Seth dressed up like a pirate.