The Final Fron-tea-ier

I'll promise I'll get better.I swear.

Merry Christmas!

Lettering : Using the Ames Lettering Guide

Thanks to the convience of digital fonts, creating perfect lettering can appear seemless knowing that you have selected a suitable font. However, sometimes there's something unique and personal when it comes to creating hand lettered words for speech bubbles. It gives off another vibe that compliments the artwork and can take ideas further by exploring certain moods or concepts within the confines of the story.

For those interested in hand lettering or improving upon it, this post is mainly going to be about your new best buddy, The Ames Lettering Guide!

 a/s/l?

The Ames Lettering Guide is a nifty looking tool used mainly by architects and makes it so hand lettering is neat and legible. They're quite cheap but can be a bit of a nuisance to track down. I had to purchase mine online after checking out every art shop I could find. I got mine from Quint Graphics on Amazon.

So what you'll need is the guide, a H pencil and a T square.

Dili Dali

Dali and his faithful ocelot,Babou.Another Illustration Friday pic.The word was 'whiskers.'

By the way...

If you're not up to much on the 28th of next month,head on down to Fibbers to see Spittin Bones! (Also I did the poster...but nevermind that..)

Odin Hungover At The End Of Time

Just a sketch that I did for last weeks Illustration Friday that I just got around editing.The word in question was 'Tree.'

Alternative title, 'Nagginarok.'

Comic Featured in Zombie Hi #7

Cover by Kevin Logue. 

I have a short comic featured in the latest issue of 'Zombies Hi ' by the good folks of Uproar Comics!

 I've been working on this for the past month or so and it's been a great learning experience collaborating with writer Rowan Davidson and editor Danny Mc Laughlin on bringing you,'The Honeymoon!'

  

The Issue will be out both digitally and physically with a retail release in Forbidden Planet soon.

Get em' while their festering!

Zombomb

Had alternative motives for this piece but they fell through.Happy All Hallows everyone!

Soon....

Get some shtuff at Redbubble!

Here it is! You can now acquire some of my monstrosities that is my artwork!

I've been wanting to have this option on the blog since the redesign and so I decided to try my hand with the folks over at redbubble to try this out.I would have revealed this a little earlier than expected but I waited to see how this stuff is presented and rest assured,it is delivered with great care and quality.I should mention though, it does take a while for this stuff to get here.Mine didn't arrive for two weeks but it was worth the wait.

So to begin with in the shop, I have postcards, posters/prints and a shirt available.I made it so I have a low - mid price range across.Postcards are €3,with personalised cards a little more.Posters are about €18 with the option of prints and t shirts are about €22.My first series is based on the Breaking Bad pieces I've done recently and I've also included the design "Chemical Hazards" as a postcard and a shirt!

I'll have more updates on whats available on the shop as soon as it hits.Feel free to let me know what you think and if you have a redbubble of your own,let me know!

Oh,your still here?

Go here http://www.redbubble.com/people/burkyshtuff

Jesse

The final part on my series on Breaking Bad characters concludes with the ever so verbose Jesse Pinkman.

Apologies for the lack of content in the past while.It's been quite a month between working as a TV extra and on two projects that I can't say much about at the moment.The latter is to do with a project that I hope to begin within the next few months which is something that I've been itching to do for a while.It's still much in the preliminary stages currently but more will be revealed once I've finally got something to show.

What I can say for now is that I will have a new feature up on the blog in the next update so keep your fingers peeled for that!

Get it here at

http://www.redbubble.com/people/burkyshtuff/works/9356605-jesse-pinkman?c=159183-breaking-bad-collection

Sangre Por Sangre

Ding?

Ding ding ding ding

http://www.redbubble.com/people/burkyshtuff/works/9356625-hector-salamanca?c=159183-breaking-bad-collection

Flattening an Image

So a while ago I was asked about a subject that is a constant problem when it comes to watercolour...and that is warping.

Anyone familiar with watercolour or any form of wet based media knows what I'm talking about and has the scars from attempting to claw your face off to prove it. It's unavoidable sometimes depending on how much water you used and it's such a shame when a piece you've been working on for a good length of time ends up with those ugly, bumpy areas that just can't be solved. It becomes a nightmare when it comes to scanning and then it leads to conducting a post mortem on photoshop.

Depending on how strong the medium you used and as long as it's just a wash or two,you can do something about it and there's a very handy process I like to use when it comes to flattening an image.

1. Once your image is completely dry, face up, lay two sheets of paper covering the entire image. Make sure that the bottom page is moist before applying the dry piece on top of it.
   
2. When that's done, place weight on the image using books,boxes etc. on the pages and leave it overnight.
   
   
3. If you did it correctly, your image should be completely flattened and ready to scan!

I heard you can also iron instead of the weight and it's quicker but I haven't tried that to be honest! (Recommend you read up on that before you try! )

This is a method I found online that I've used for the past while and it has served me well. If you know of any other techniques or alternative ways you approach this method, feel free to share below.

Face Off

Following last years Walt on the blog, I decided that I'm going to this as a bit of a series for now.First off is the brilliant but corpse-like Gus Fring.

Get it here at

http://www.redbubble.com/people/burkyshtuff/works/9356628-gus-fring?c=159183-breaking-bad-collection

Yikes

Just playing around with photoshop. Original drawings from the pits of my mind dungeons.

Pinching a NERV

Hello again! I've been uncharacteristically absent recently but I should be getting back to my regular pace again soon. Good to be back in Dublin after spending the last 8 months in Wales.Anyway here's a pic of Unit 01 from Evangelion, not the best of anime but I really did like the episode were it goes berserk and eats one of the Angels.Too bad I can't say the same about the end of the series...

Still,the designs of the units and the Angels are sweet.

Cage

 

So here is my final end of year comic.Originally this was 22 pages but here I'm going to put up what I considered the best of the work I produced.I also included some panels aswell that worked well with the style that I was aiming for.

(Click to embiggen.)

The basic premise is about a man who just got out of prison and is trying to rebuild his life.Along the way he meets fragments of himself that reflect parts that he needs to dispose of in order to forgive himself. This was merely the first part that I intended to do which is him arriving and meeting one of the fragments. Mainly I wanted to see how this particular style would work in comic format and what problems I would have in making this.I learned quite a lot from making this comic including use of medium, simplifying colour and application and how to letter.

20 Twelve Degree Show

Another year, another group show! The 20 Twelve end of year degree show took place this past Friday at the North Wales School of Art and Design and runs till the 6th of June. It featured work from all the third year students that ranged from Illustration, Graphic Design, Animation, Fine Art, Applied Art, Photography and Film. Enough to cover whatever you're into! The turnout was massive which I wasn't expecting and I was really impressed with the level of preparation at some of the displays. That's all I have to say, can't believe it's all done now.Just going to dump a bunch of images here so enjoy!

Some of my comic pages framed (w/ business card)

  

 Displays of work from Andrew Thomas, Ted Brandt and Daisy Hillyard

Brogan Kingsley's display

Almost there! Also, hey.

Apologies for being unusually quiet with updates lately.I've spent the past month writing a paper about a formula on the probability of women mentioning pets in a conversation  regardless of context and the factors that cause this ( Dogwin's Law ™). I've also been pointing at things and learning what it's like to be the colour green but enough about that,lets get to the reason why I've been fibbing in the above text.

So here are some finished inks sans lettering that I've been putting together.(Only had an A4 scanner at the time which is why it's in bad quality). As I'm writing this I have the majority of the comic done in watercolour w/text which I'm editing for the end of year degree show.Still have a little bit more left to do but should have everything underwraps finally by the end of the week! Until next time...

Creative Futures Week 2012

A bit of a different post than the usual pictorials.As part of my modules in uni,I had to attend Creative Futures week back in March,an annual event in the college were industry professionals from all over the UK came in and gave talks about what they do and how they approached companies and agencies.These varied from illustrators,animators,game designers and comic book artists.All in all,it was quite an informative take as with all the talks,you could actively collate what information you found useful and could apply it to how you plan on getting your name out to the world.

You can read more of my bludgeoned attempt at writing here.





Also here's something rough (again) I'm working on.Wasn't going to leave you hanging there.

Laters!

Post 100!

Looks like I've finally made 100 posts on this blog you are now peep'n.It's certainly changed a lot since I first started in which I had as a side thing when I first started illustration.My tastes and styles have varied a lot in the past three years and here's hoping that I'm much closer to being somewhat satisfied with what I can create.

Speaking of change,expect some new developments,new approaches and more importantly - a new blog design soon (I need to get rid of those damn eyes!!)

The images here are rough pencils which are part of a minicomic I'm working on.It'll be A5 and something I can use as a promotional item for gatherings/cons.I'll have more to say once I get everything done for college.

It's about bears btw...

Beliebe

Hope you had a Good Easter! I heard a voice that inspired me to do an illustration of David Liebe Hart and Albert Hermann in better times on one of their many Bible lesson adventures!

The truth is out there!

Roughs continued