Ancient Trader, finally submitted to XNA !

It was some time I posted :) We have been finishing the Ancient Trader game and we finally submitted it for xna yesterday. I hope it will get online soon :)

As I am postmorting it (already) at quarter to three forums I got a little nostalgic and found a scan of an old paper prototype of the game.

Reviews of PC version:

http://sugarfreegamer.com/?p=693

http://www.gamersdailynews.com/article-2442-Ancient-Trader-Review-PC-Gamersgate.html

http://fidgit.com/archives/2010/04/ancient_trader.php

Hey I am back! :)

I has been a crazy time, I was sick 2x then there was a tax return time, my dog Ein underwent surgery and is still getting better. Anyway hopefully everything will be great now and I will have more time for drawing and modeling :) And comic, and games :D

Here is the latest progress shot of my ninja turtle :)

I have finaly started working on my TMNT model in Zbrush. It's tons of fun, hope you like it :)

Fantasy Cartooning by Ben Caldwell

This is a great book and its lot of fun to draw from it :) I am taking the break from Anatomy Dojo and enjoying my free time on the weekends drawing from it.

Link to the book on Amazon.com

What a nice surprise this morning: Our "Bug" DVD is now featured product on CGPro store :) Good work Tomy! ;)

Zbrush 3.5! :)

I have just recieved my copy of Zbrush. The software improoved a lot from the time I first played with beta of Zbrush 1 :) I am thinking about not only becoming the true artist but also a sculptor. Its very exciting. I am planing on creating one bad ass Turtle Ninja as my first sculpture ;)

Drawing again! :)

Here is my latest drawing from anatomy Dojo. Check the thread here: Anatomy Dojo on Cgtalk ^_^

Calligraphy of our Dojo Master

He is very Old School, he still uses brush instead of pencil. He is kind of clumsy and fat, don't you think? Anyway, I hope he will not find this post :P

How to Draw Manga Anatomy

Thanks to my friend J I was able to get this beautiful book, its' style looks very similar to style of an artist that illustrated my favorite game "Advance Wars" Is it the same one? Anyway, here is my first copy, I am looking forward to adding screen tones ^_^

Anatomy Drawing Dojo ! The way of the pencil.

I have enrolled myself in an imaginary Anatomy Drawing Dojo today. We train really hard every day to perfect our drawing skills and to become True Anatomy Artists. I am looking for classmates to join me :)

Here are the Dojo rules:

1. Only serious students should apply. A real martial arts master would make you sit 3 days and 3 nights in front of the dojo to prove that you are serious enough. But I will pretend you already did :D

2. Choose one Anatomy or Comic book you like as you will be redrawing all the anatomy pictures from it till its finished.

3. Practice every day is recommended. You should decide the amount of time you are going to spend, get a kitchen timer and set it so that you can focus 100% percent of your attention on drawing during your training. Prepare a drink and background music up front, turn off your skype etc. You don't want the Dojo Master to catch you while checking your email! Trust me on this :) Last time he did I had to clean the dishes for all the other students for a month.

4. Introduce yourself, write why you want to become true anatomy artist, which book you are going to use and why you chose that one.

5. Post your progress every day.

You can join here: CGtalk thread or Conceptart thread

I am reading Street Fighter 3 manga and I like Ryu's quest to become real martial artist. I wanna setup a training for me to become real manga artist :) I think I will start with seting up 2 hours per day to redraw Burne Hogarth anatomy. This is my first anatomy book ever, my mum bought it for me 20 years ago! :O I am getting old :) Anyway its really good, and I am looking forward to it. I will start today.

Capcom's Kung Fu Panda :)

We watched Kung Fu Panda today, and I was wondering what would Po looks like if he was made by Capcom for a Street Fighter game :) He looks kind of mean...

We are working on a new tutorial website and it seems our first video tutorial is going to be head modeling and texturing with very talented Kostas Yiatilis. Here is an character model sheet

I created for this tutorial, I hope you like it :)

Onigiri

This is what I would eat every day for a breakfast during my stay in Tokyo, I have a lot of pleasant memories of that and I actually like it a lot so I tried to prepare it at home. This is my last masterpiece :) Yami!

Muramasa Fanart

I have been playing Muramasa a lot recently :) It is definitely the most beautifull game on Wii and probably also on any other platform. I printed screenshot from game, the character was exactly 90 pixels high :) However it was really easy to draw the shapes into it referencing details from another artworks. Then I inked it with my new Manga pen :) and added screentones in Photoshop. I can see many mistakes I did but I learned a lot and it was fun ^_^ I hope you like it.

Muramasa The Demon Blade Official Site

Yay! I've just recieved Manga University Home Study Course ^_^

It contains 6 lessons on USB stick, manga pen, sketch book and "A 3-page personalized critique and re-drawing of your artwork by one of Manga University's professional Japanese manga artists".

Looks pretty cool, T-shirt not included :)

link:Manga University Home Study Course

My 1st "Excelent" rating on Alvin Lee Course

I am really happy about this, I spent a lot of time with redrawing it so it is as good as possible. Now I will work even harder! :) Ganbari Mas! ^_^

Modern Japanese Art with Traditional Brush Technique

This is a fantastic gallery of my friend Kouhei, he has a great talent for painting the modern anime in traditional brush technique. Be sure to check it out ;)

Kouhei Yamauchi Gallery

Assignment from Lesson 3

I am getting faster, that's good. I feel happy about the progress :)

I recieved Darksiders Artbook today!

I am pretty excited about it, I bought it on e-bay just 3 days ago and now it's here :) Cant wait to recieve the actual game. I just love the way Madureira do stuff. Imagine Zelda and God of War inspired game all made in cool Madureira comic art influenced by Darkstalkers. Can there be anything more cool? :)

Seems I have a good selection for tomorrows sketch :)

Wednesday Chun Li copy

Last year news :)

This is kind of old but I would feel really sorry not to put it in my blog, he he :) On October 19 IGN Daily Fix video with Jessica Chobot pirated my pirate design to illustrate the story of Microsoft fighting the piracy :D. Here is the video. I asked IGN for signed photo of Jess as an compensation. She was very cool and sent me this picture. Keep up the good work Jess! Your Daily Fix help me to wake up in the morning :)

Links:

My pirate cat T shirt

IGN Daily Fix video

Monday Chun Li

Chun Li Head a Day :)

Chun Li copy

This is my 1st copy of Chun Li from the book Street Fighter - Eternal Chalenge (Thanks again J ;)). It's not perfect but I had lot of fun and I learned a thing or 2 :)

2nd Assignment from Alvin Lee course

2nd Alvin Lee assignment. I drew the eyes too big and too close to each other. So what would a good and lazy Photoshop artist as me do? I just scaled and moved them till it looked ok :D (in case you are not sure this is supossed to be a good version :D)

Best way to learn drawing?

I ve been reserching the best way to learn drawing for several years by now (I know I should have been drawing instead :)) And I had a big revelation yesterday. Till now I would try to learn something from an anatomy book or any book on drawing and then try to draw something myself. As I am quite critical (=realistic) to my own work I ended up with something that I really don't like and this would discourage and frustrate me. Then it came to me. Shouldn't drawing be fun? Shouldn't each picture you draw motivate you to draw more? I bet that people like Joe Madureira or Frank Frazzeta started as a kids drawing from their favorite comic books!!! Think about it, it is much easier to draw something cool if you are copying something that is already cool. It's not only fun to do that, you actualy learn a lot by doing it and it keeps you comming back for more. And the more you draw the better you get!

To sum it up: Redraw pictures, characters and comic books you love. Than check the anatomy books, perspective etc just so you better understand what you doing and you can redraw it better next time. Once you draw enough you will start to create and draw your own characters and they will be cool :) And the most important part: you will enjoy the whole process. As one smart person said: "What is the point of doing it if its not fun?"

PS: I did some research and found the old copy of Joe Madureira website that is no longer online. Here is excerpt from his Art Advice FAQ:

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....I would say I learned to draw from comics about 75% and books only about 25%. First my anatomy was based off John Byrne figures, then Art adams, Jim Lee, whatever. The anatomy books only helped me to understand what THEY were doing, because up until that point I was just copying what I saw, and didn't really know what I was doing. It was like an amazing discovery, finally learning " Wow, that big lump that Byrne draws on the back of someone's arm is called a tricep! "

.....If you want to draw comics though, there is no better place to learn from than another comic artist. Period. Everything you study afterwards, you can incorporate into your work, but you'll have a better grasp on how to apply it.
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I wish I would have got it firs time I read it :D

Links:
Joe Madureira official fan page: www.joemadfan.com
John Byrne website
Art Adam's fan page
Jim Lee Gallery