Zub Tales

Hard working weekend, but the end is in sight. All weekend was painting and working, pushing to get the Dungeon artwork all finished. My original schedule had me finished up yesterday night with today as relaxation and/or a buffer day in case I didn’t get done. It’s a good thing I worked that extra day into the calendar. The painting I tried to finish Friday bled into Saturday, pushing everything forward one day so I’ll be doing the last pic today instead.

Saw Ong Bak on Saturday. I borrowed a subtitled version of it (it’s been out in Asia for over a year) instead of hitting the movie theatre due to my time constraints. Overall it was physically impressive, but the hype I’d gotten about it from my friends was too much and in the end I was disappointed. I don’t expect a deep story from this kind of martial arts film, but any time the action wasn’t cooking the movie was really quite terrible. When people talk about the movie being one of the greatest martial arts films of all time or that Tony Jaa is “the next Bruce Lee” it blows things way out of proportion. Watching half a dozen old Jackie Chan movies where he’s doing the impossible time and time again was a better judge of Jackie’s abilities. Let’s see what comes next from Tony Jaa instead of handing this 28 year old the title right off the bat.

There’s a Mnemovore interview with our pal Dr. Drave up at Comic Book Resources. E-mail DC and tell them that the issue #2 cover would make an amazing poster.

Here’s last night’s illo, as usual… click on either to see a larger version:

Line Art

Colors

Waves of tired hitting me now. I’m just gonna post this and then go to bed.

Today went weirdly melancholy, but I couldn’t honestly tell you anything specific that really stood out as the catalyst for why it seemed bad. An expensive and crappy tasting lunch comes to mind. Stagnation on some projects. Sore body and exhausted mind. Thinking too much about things I have no control over.

Life drawing was a wash out. The model took very boring poses and had a body that lacked good definition or strong waypoints to draw from. Fat people, thin people, muscular or not… it doesn’t matter as long as they have some dynamic posing and good angles to plot from. This guy was muscled, but they all seemed soft and were hard to plot. Very boring posing made drawing even more of a chore. That coupled with my exhaustion equaled a whole lot of wasted paper just trying to get into a groove that never came.

The only piece worth posting came when the model took a break and I doodled in the skeleton from memory over one of my gestures to try and get some of that structural knowledge in there and improve the sense of form. The rest of the pieces were woefully incomplete, lacking energy and filled with hesitant lines.

Fighting traffic and sleepiness, I went to the preview screening of Constantine. Overall the movie was pretty good. I could nitpick things about it – things changed from the comics for no real reason or ways they could have improved the pacing, but I don’t have the energy. It didn’t rock me to the core, but there were definitely some entertaining visuals and concepts. It’s not a horror movie at all and had about as many scares as one of the Blade flicks. The actress playing Gabriel the angel was sharp. The guy playing Lucifer was good too, though he’s a departure from the Vertigo comic vision of that character.

It’s also not really an R-rated flick. Other than the heavy religious overtones (which are really the only R-rated element I can figure – the MPAA must not like Christianity being bandied about with good guys and bad guys), there’s minimal swearing, barely any gore and zero nudity. I’m not saying that it had to have those things, but it seemed odd walking out of the theatre and trying to figure out what made it R-worthy.

Following up on the rancid sushi post, photos are here.

I’ve been on an art tear, in a good way. This week feels like I’ve burst through to a more confident painting approach. That mixed with better line art and life drawing bodes well for Jimbo’s art in 2005. I have 9 illustrations due by February 15th for the next issue of Dungeon Magazine. 5 are painting over Chad’s kick ass line art, the other 4 are all mine… so Dungeon #122 will be a Zub-centric kinda issue.

Plugging away on all that material, I’ve had the itch to back away from it and ask one of the other Udon guys to help me out. The Art Director asked me to tackle these, but even still I’ve felt the fear of not being able to step up to the plate and wanting to call in the calvary. I’ve resisted the urge and it’s turning out to be a good thing. Like the Dragon attack pic from last year though, when the art pressure is on, my brain seems to cope with the stress pretty well.

My color choices are getting better, the paint strokes are getting more confident. More mood too. Here’s two for now… more as I get the others finished. Click on either of the pics below to see a larger version.

Khurbok and His Allies – Line Art by Chad Du Lac, Coloring by Zub

Chamber of Faces – by Zub

I actually took screenshots of my progress through the Khurbok one, so I’ll try to post that up as a tutorial this weekend.

I was up until 4:30 am painting last night and it looks like around 1:30 am tonight… it’s gonna be hard to wake up in time for Life Drawing tomorrow, but I’ll try my damndest to make it there.

This is why my job is amusing and odd… I’m working away on line art when Brian from White Wolf messages me the following:

——————–
Brian Glass: Chad ate 9 pieces of sushi that expired on January 23rd for $63.50.

Zub: And how is he?

Brian Glass: Fine right now. We’ll see what happens in 20 minutes.

Zub: How did it taste?

Brian Glass: It smelled like an old fishtank and tasted horrible. The rice was almost crunchy. He tried to hide the flavor with wasabi and soy sauce.

Brian Glass: Phil and Fred took pictures. Once we have some sent around the office, I’ll forward them to you.
——————–
This is the company I work with… no wonder my brain is so damn twisted now.

Photos of the event will be added later today. Check back for the terror.

More confident line art with increased senstivity. Better posing. Strong understanding of light and dark that creates a mood and good composition. Yup, I want to keep doing pieces like this. I want to reach the next plateau in my work and stay there.

My latest Exalted artwork (for Book of Bone & Ebony and Autocthonians) also reflects what I want from my artwork. I’m currently up to my eyeballs in Dungeon Magazine artwork (in a good way, though it is intimidating) and I’ll post some of that as soon as I can.

Erik even complimented me on my artwork, something which he’s almost never done. Gal and I think he keeps any praise under wraps because he worries about losing me as an effective manager if I take on too many art projects. Even still, he’s been vocal about being impressed with the new stuff I’m doing and that means a lot coming from him.

Cultist Assassin done for the Secret of Zir’An.


I was given free passes to go see Constantine on Thursday. I wasn’t intending to check it out originally, but free is up my alley so we’ll see how it goes. 🙂

Stressed with work and still trying to get my sleep patterns back under control since the fire alarm night earlier this week, I dashed out the door early this morning so I could make sure that I got to school in time for life drawing. Even if it’s less than an hour, at least I’m pushing my skills along and analyzing my understanding of the figure.

When I arrived and finally got set up to draw, I had a great moment. Instead of life drawing being a stressful hassle, it was the calm in my day. I pushed away all the problems, schedules, fears and emotions and just drew. For about 45 minutes everything else took a backseat while I concentrated on gesture, anatomy and form. It felt good and even though the session was short I think the best pieces of the day reflect an improvement in my work. A month back into it and I can see changes in the way I’m thinking and drawing. Cool.

The people in my life, the projects I manage and the students I work with are very important to me. But if I let them completely invade my ability to improve my art and be creative then I’ll have lost something very valuable to me. Balance is the key and I’m doing my best to find that.

I’ll post up more RPG-centric artwork tomorrow if I can.

More pics behind the cut…

Peeled awake at 1am by the fire alarm screeching here at the apartment building. It took a minute or two before we realized what it was, groggily got shoes and jackets on and headed down the stairs to the lobby just in case it was genuine.

Firefighters waltzing in the front door made me wonder if the night was going to be more memorable than I’d like, but it did turn out to be false after all. It was a strange mix of irritation and relief really.

I also realized that once people leave grade school, they have no idea what to do during a fire alarm and/or no one telling them to go outside. There was a pitifully low number of people in the lobby or outside compared with how many actually live in the building. Maybe a dozen out of the 200+ who live here. Of those who were there, half of them used the elevators to get down (obviously a big fire no-no).

Adults are never tested on fire safety or chastised for not taking it seriously. It was a false alarm, so they’ll feel vindicated that they stayed in bed, stayed in their apartments or took the elevator down instead of the stairs. It sets a bad internal precident and if there was ever a real fire, these people would be crispy critters.

Being violently woken up from a deep sleep was irritating enough, but realizing we’re surrounded by idiots made it even more unimpressive. Now my brain’s awake even while a headache is pulsing in my brain and my body feels like it’s moving through jello from exhaustion. It’s the first day I’ve gone to bed before midnight this year and now I’m awake anyways.

Ugh.

I’ve been mulling over a forum thread for a few days, wondering if it was proper to post a reply. A smart person told me to cool off and another one told me to post in my Livejournal instead. Posting in the forum creates the type of situation that seems lose-lose. Either people feel like they’ve got a clear target for slinging mud or I come off like a jerk. Like I’ve said before, pros are supposed to take their lumps with a smile or never communicate online at all. Anything else makes them ungrateful or jackasses apparently.

On the other hand, I loathe reading this stuff without commenting and leaving people with the idea that I don’t care. That’s really the point of this post, when it all comes down to it. I really love Exalted and White Wolf. Love the games and the people that work there. When I came on board Udon and was asked to work with Brian on Exalted, I was ecstatic because it gave me a chance to be involved with a company whose products I’ve enjoyed a lot while I was growing up.

The studio produces a lot of artwork for a host of clients day in and day out. I’d be lying if I said that every single piece we did was jaw-dropping amazing. Things happen in this business behind the scenes that fans have no idea about: deadlines get crunched, descriptions get changed, artists get sick and schedules get muddy.

There have been times when Udon has stepped in to do work under the gun in order to make sure clients hit their print deadline. These weren’t pieces we were originally assigned, but we’ve stepped up to complete them because we were asked, it needed to get done and they trust that we can deliver what we say we will. Even the Exalted: Fair Folk cover was done under a crazy deadline because the artist that Brian had intended to have on board was unable to sign on. Even under that kind of pressure I think we delivered one of our best covers ever.

The original artists who screwed their deadlines to the wall are left untouched as far as the fans are concerned and we get kicked a bit because it’s not considered up to snuff. It’s a weird mix of pride and annoyance that comes with something like that. I’m proud that we can be the “go-to” guys when stuff hits the fan. The fans are 95% of the time amazing, but occasionally sling shit without knowing what’s actually going on.

I’m not saying that every artist other than the Udon crew screws up deadlines or that every piece has been done at breakneck speed. I think every artist could look at their work and see some pieces that aren’t as strong as they’d like them to be.

Below are two versions of line art. The left one was done over a year ago. The right one is the redone version that will actually be used in the card game. I redid it even though the first one was approved because I wanted to make sure that I was proud of the final version. That’s worth my time and effort.

We started the Exalted card game artwork when the original playtest began and I wanted to take care of the Harmonious Jade pic because of my nerdy excitement for the project and the line. I don’t think the old one’s a terrible piece, but I also knew that my artwork has improved a lot since then and the new one reflects the Exalted style much better. I told Brian a few months ago I was going to redo it and I wish I’d done it up again before they’d reposted that pic on the official site.

I used to wonder why I knew so many artists who hated their old artwork no matter how good it was… I understand it now more than ever. The person evolves but the old artwork hangs around. You have to accept that, look for ways to improve and get back to the ol’ drawing board.

THEN

NOW

The past few weeks feel like an improvement, artwise. I can’t wait until my new pieces are finally in print.

Busy, busy…

Yesterday was breakneck paced, but quite decent too. Dashing into Life Drawing in the morning, I patted myself on the back that I’ve gone three weeks in a row now and I’m not going to stop. The forms came together faster and the structure is starting to balance with the gesture a bit more. I know that at some point I’m going to have a stall in quality and it’ll irritate me, but right now it seems to be helping my confidence and RPG artwork as well.

I tried a couple different techniques for drawing the figure, some with loose heavy lines and a couple with very sensitive thin lines. Varying the approach can yield new approaches and give you a different outlook on what you’re seeing. Being able to do that at my own whim rather than under an instructor’s marking sheet is quite nice. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s very important to receive instruction and I asked for feedback from the instructor, but knowing that I’m not gunning for a portfolio or end of the term mark is a lot more relaxing.

More pics behind the cut…

Here’s the initial rough image for the Evil Hag and her T-Rex pet I talked about in my last post. The hag’s body was all built around that tilt in her shoulders and pelvis, giving her a confident stance with some attitude. Her Tim Burton-esque hair should be fun to paint too. The dinosaur is as much built around what you don’t see as what’s there. Its massive bulk pushing it right out the side of the pic accentuates how big it is compared to her. In the background, a couple swooping lines of the cave help keep the viewer’s eye focused on the characters. I’ve been starting my roughs looser, trying to get more of that gesture-energy that I want in my pieces instead of stiffening up too much. I took the gesture straight into Corel Painter and loosely put some tone in with the Simple Watercolor brush to define the forms better. The three tones grey give me a “road map” of sorts for the image that I can carry on through to the final. At least, that’s the plan anyways 🙂