Did this a while back as a quick overnight fix for a magazine. Usually I’m not one for using Photoshop filters but for once it actually worked out pretty well. The article was about a indie punk band called Trigger Effect, and was mainly talking about how they tended to do a lot of their business independently, although they disliked the being associated with the term DIY. For visual sake though, I thought the 80′s DIY punk aesthetic made sense for the article.

I basically ran a stamp filter over a photo of the band and cobbled their heads together to make the record cover. Was trying to get it to look like a grainy black and white photocopy – actually tried drawing it but it looked too clean. All in all  I thought the experiment worked out pretty nicely.

My husband is an avid gamer and game reviewer. One of his passions is tackling the matter of narrative in games by examining their current state in the medium, and anticipating their development. This piece was done to accompany one such feature article in C&G Monthly, a Canadian pop culture magazine focusing on comics and video games.

Being married to someone who is passionate about games, it’s inevitable I suppose that I share some of his love for them. I’ll admit I’m much more of a backseat gamer than one that actually plays games, mostly because I don’t have the reflexes for many games and I tend to panic under the time-sensitive stresses that are core to the gameplay of most games. But I do enjoy watching the games that we buy, in  particular the ones that have good storylines.

Rough concepts for the illustration

To me, the current attitudes towards stories in games is similar to the attitude people had towards comics when I was growing up. Comics were viewed as this sub-par combination of badly drawn pictures and bland, 2-dimensional stories for children and no-too-bright adults. In recent years, thanks to successful movie adaptations (or so i think), the public has come to accept that it is possible to tell a deep, meaningful and engaging story through comics, and at some level  it’s more socially acceptable now. Games, in turn, have moved in to fill the spot vacated by comics to being the pariahs of  storytelling.

Which is a darn shame because while some games still have bad stories, there are some stories to be enjoyed in the still-developing medium.  Stories in games are uniquely experienced, both as gamer and observer, and the bottom line is that it’s a bit unfair for people to dismiss the stories or to simply say that there is no story to be had.

So, when my husband said he was doing a piece about narrative in games, I wanted to cook up something that helped illustrate the article in a nutshell, in a way that looked hopefully more mature and intelligent. It’s not much, but I hope that combining a thoughtful essay with a picture that isn’t just space marine/bikini warrior will help to eventually get people to realize the same thing they did about comics – that both comics and games don’t need to be stupid entertainment for kids, and that you can get some good stories out of both.

Finally had some time to do up the new batch of thank you cards for my clients. Will send them out tomorrow, hopefully.

Finally had some time yesterday to work on something not work related. Since God of War 3 is out today, I thought this was a suitable celebration.  Technically the image should be flipped to accommodate Kratos’ (the dude in the white circle) red tattoos on the other arm. I decided to make the color scheme orange instead of red, since  a lot of art based off the game features red and black. Orange seemed like something high energy which is something I wanted to emphasize over the violence and blood apparent in the game.

Top is final color work, bottom is the sketch on 8.5×11 paper.

I decided that this year, I was going to send clients something to thank them for their business once projects were wrapped. I was thinking about doing a printed card, but the idea of sending the same card to a client more than once didn’t seem nice, and I didn’t want to have several different designs lying about the house. I was also thinking of a Print Gocco thing but it’s an expensive little thing that is also pretty tedious if you’re just making one card.

Then I remembered that they sold little DIY cards at the art store and thought ‘why don’t I just paint cards for them?’. It’s great – my clients will get a little piece of real art, and I don’t have to worry about anyone getting a repeat design. And I’ve been meaning to paint more anyway, so it’s a nice way to sneak in a bit of painting now and then!

So here are the first two I’ve done that will be going out soon. The inks were done with a brush pen, with watercolors for color.

This was done for an art book collecting various artists’ impressions of their favorite video game. My piece is derived from Atlus’ Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne (or Lucifer’s Call as it was known in the UK). The premise of the game is that the world has ended and the sole survivors, a group of teens, are left to deal with the demons that now walk the Earth.  Your main character, one of the teens who himself has inherited some esoteric power, wades through the confusion of the game, battling and collecting monsters as he goes. It’s a bit like Pokemon as interpreted by Lars von Trier…

Did this a couple of months ago for Hyphen magazine. It was a fun piece to work on, about hipster scam artists – basically people who seem really cool and ‘alternative’ who really are just scammers who ‘borrow’ money from their likewise trendy (or wannabe-trendy) friends to pay off their debts or else fund their lifestyle.

This is another brush image I’m working on for myself. I have an on-again, off again motif of girls with swords going through them, and this is the latest incarnation of that. Final colors to come, depending on when I get the time.

inked sketch on tabke

Another view of table

Closeup with pencil. You can see the original brushwork is not complete black.

Finshed inks, scanned and cleaned in Photoshop.

Sketch of crow. Ink pen and watercolor. I think I need a new scanner to scan anything that’s not black and white. This one is making my browns look purple and neon-ish. This was the best I could do to adjust the color in Photoshop to look like the original.

Been very busy with work over the last couple of months (at least I think it’s been a couple of months, I’ve sorta lost track of time). Am STILL really busy, which is a good thing all things considered. Am currently working on something for Oxford University Press, as well as several other things.

Anyways, here’s the new stuff that’s been added to the site:

Eating Well – Nourish

For Eating Well magazine, in the new ink brush style. Very happy with it. It’s about the joy of growing and eating your own food. I love food. Even though I don’t eat all that much.

Kayak – Summer in Canada spread

For Kayak’s summer issue featuring Monty Moose.

Know Magazine – Baked Alaska

For Know science magazine for kids. About the discovery of Baked Alaska. More food, strangely.