INFLUENCES: BEYONCÉ FALLING DOWN STAIRS

You think I'm joking? I'm not. I find this video incredibly inspiring. Why? Well, I've always been a bit of a perfectionist. I know that's often the generic, go-to response when you're being interviewed for a new job and they ask you about your faults. But honestly, for me it's absolutely true. A big struggle for me has been to figure out how to not obsess over details, because for artists that can lead to overworking a piece, wasting lots of time on a small part of a painting while a deadline approaches, or even being so scared to make a mistake that you don't start at all and end up procrastinating. So a major struggle - probably THE major struggle - for me as an artist has been learning how to let go; to accept that my best is all I can do; to force myself to stop fretting and just get cracking on a project, and have enough faith in myself to know it will probably work out; and also to pick myself up after a tough break or disappointment. In other words, accepting my own human imperfection.

Watch this video and the way Beyoncé tumbles down the stairs, but then immediately gets right back up and keeps on head banging:

Did you laugh? That's okay, it's a natural reaction. But I hope you also felt a shot of deep respect for her as an artist. It takes a lot to put yourself out there and perform in front of a crowd (something that, as a 2D visual artist, I rarely have to face). And to tumble in front of everyone... on top of the embarrassment, there might have been injuries she sustained, which she had to cover up in order to tough out the rest of the performance. I think this video is evidence of a real class act and a professional. The top comment under the video is spot on: "got to hand it to her though for real, she got right back up." Yep.

If you're feeling defeated, think of this. Then get back up and start head banging. :)

MILLENNIAL MAN

An original character I created, based on myself and inspired by my memories of coming of age during the late 1990's/early 2000's.

GOOMBA TIME LAPSE

Just a fast sketch to experiment with time lapse software.

PM: PUBLIC TRANSIT ADS

I'm very excited that PerBlue has rolled out large format public transit ads for our game Parallel Mafia! It's great to know my Bruiser is currently riding along on buses and trains in Pittsburgh intimidating commuters. Grrr!!

INFLUENCE: CO-WORKERS!

I thought I would start treating this a bit more like a blog and not just my own sketchbook, so I've decided to start a new series of posts on issues that surround my art practice but don't necessarily focus on my drawings. I decided to begin a series on some of my personal artistic influences, the most immediate example being my very talented PerBlue co-workers. We all have different styles and interests but it's fascinating how much synergy exists among us as a team, and how we are able to blend our styles together to make visually coherent products. Here's just a little taste of what they do, and as always I have links to their respective websites in the sidebar on the right side of this blog. Enjoy!

Alayna and Beau both have facebook fan pages for their art as well, so you should check them out, share, 'like', all that jazz.

PK: GRADUATION

Ah, commencement: the end of one thing, the start of something new... Congratulations to all our Parallel Kingdom players who will be graduating this year!! We've given our players a mortarboard and gown, and a spitball shooter for the class clowns. :)

PK: MOTHER'S DAY

Celebrating Mother's Day in Parallel Kingdom with a hat and old timey mom glasses, and a bouquet "sling" that fires flower ammunition. This is a good example of how too much detail would have been overkill since it has to be brought down to pixel size to fit in the game anyway. The carnations are very, shall we say, impressionistic. Another side note: My own mother's favorite colors are green and purple, so I colored the hat to honor her. Love you mom! :)

PK: CINCO DE MAYO

¡Feliz Cinco de Mayo! Un poncho, un sombrero y un shuriken de cactus.

PK: GOLDEN WEEK

Made a Japanese garden for Parallel Kingdom to celebrate Golden Week. We already have a rectangular zen garden with a cherry tree for one of our character classes, so I tried to do something a bit different; I decided to ground the design in a threefold tomoe symbol. Here in the high resolution painting you can see how I leave a lot unpolished, since many of the details won't translate to the in-game pixel size anyway. Yet it is detailed enough so that it wouldn't require too much touch up work in case my employer wanted to use the hi-res image elsewhere.

PM: HI RES ENEMIES

Polished a couple of my enemy NPC designs from Parallel Mafia.

PK: EARTH DAY

Celebrating Earth Day with new Parallel Kingdom swag.

PK: MONSTER SWAG

A few more armors for Parallel Kingdom.

PARALLEL MAFIA: LAUNCH!!

Parallel Mafia officially launched today for Android and iOS. Here is some of the first artwork I made for the game, including most of the times, class and skills icons, and some ads. I designed the enemies as well but I'm working on something special to show them off. Will update later.

PK: EASTER

Only one swag design for me this week.

PK: SPRING

Spring swag for Parallel Kingdom!

PK: ST. PATRICK'S DAY

Parallel Kingdom swag released across two updates.

Got some nice compliments on these from our players in the forums. :)

WOOT SHIRT: UNLOVABLE

My first shirt.wood derby entry in quite a while, and I'm hoping to get back to making it a regular side hobby. I took a darker approach here in order to explore some interesting textures.

If you're a woot member you can vote for it!

PARALLEL MAFIA IS ANNOUNCED!!

Very excited that my employer has officially announced our company's new game, Parallel Mafia, a robust location-based MMORPG set in a dystopian future ruled by crooked corporations and cybernetically enhanced mobsters. This being my art blog I'll be emphasizing my own work as usual, but several people on our art team have been working really hard on the graphics side. And of course many of our talented PerBlue employees in every department collaborated to give life to this new project, but I have to focus on the art aspects here or I'll just go crazy singing praises for all of my creative cohorts.

The website features a taste of the items and NPC's I've been working on:

Another exciting development is that the Parallel Kingdom website has been completely overhauled, and now features a lot of the art team's concept art.

PK: VALENTINE'S DAY

Our swag for Valentine's Day was split into three separate releases.

PK: THE BIG GAME JERSEYS

Lots of jerseys for our players to celebrate an important upcoming athletic competition.

PK: CHINESE NEW YEAR DRAGONS

Dragon float decoration and water dragon enemy, added to our game to celebrate Chinese New Year. Hi-res and pixel art versions.

PK: HIGH-RES ART! (part 2)

More high resolution artwork from Parallel Kingdom. I tried to mostly show off images that I painted or redesigned myself, but again, the game art we create for PerBlue is often a team effort. Many of the original character designs were conceived by our lead artist Alayna, and all our artists readily share input and criticisms.

PK: HIGH-RES ART! (part 1)

Up until now I have only been posting the finalized pixel art I've been creating for my job, but a lot of our drawings don't begin at the small size. We create much of the art at a larger size and then reduce it for export into the game. After the size reduction, most of the pixelated images require more touch-ups and highlights to make them readable on a cell phone screen. Some types of images are easier to create at the small size initially, or don't need to be all that detailed before the resizing process, which is why I don't have polished high resolution versions of everything I've ever made; but to celebrate the end of my first calendar year with PerBlue Mobile and Social Gaming, I've decided to post the high res versions that are finished enough to stand alone as art pieces. I will be posting a follow up to this, with all the monsters I have made.