The Blog at Happy Rock

LOTR, D&D, and KOA:R - Two Months of Fantasy Acronyms

2012-02-13T09:21:00.000-08:00

My girlfriend was bitten by a dog, on her hand. I passed out twice.
It's a long story... -_-

Hi Guys! Still not dead!
It has been an incredibly busy few months-
I'm not even sure where to start. So much has happened, and none of it has been blogging :/

I suppose I should apologize for my long absence and lack of content- I'm truly sorry I've been so missing from the web.

Things are kicking into high-gear at 38 Studios with the project I'm working on and I've been obliged to spend any free art time at the office keeping up with the pace of crunch-time at a video game studio!
The big news around here is that we launched our first game! Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is out! and it's been reviewed! Which is thrilling news for us at 38.

It's not the game I've been working on per-se, but it is set in the same world, and I do have a design or two that made it into reckoning in a kind of round-about way :)
So...if you see one of these...

An Aurochs

Then slay it for me! ^_^ or maybe take a better screenshot? haha. It's a really minor ambient bull-type creature. But it's SUPER neat to see my first real creature design in my first real video game! I drew it, and my roommate Brandon sculpted it and it somehow snuck on in there!

Anyways, just about as notably. Felicia Day played our game. O_O I watched it happen live, spellbound. PICS BECAUSE IT HAPPENED!

LOOK THERE SHE IS!

And there's more! Amalur.com is up, and there are all kinds of hidden goodies and information about the world of Amalur to find. Among them are the racial pages for the:

and the...

I didn't do those paintings! (done my incredibly talented coworker, Devon) but they are based on my designs for both races (costume, face, hair design etc) which is super exciting! (if a little confusing, sorry :p)
But that is probably my absolute favorite part of my job- getting to conceptually develop the different cultural aspects and queues for fictional fantasy races. Trying to work towards something iconic and original, but still playing on classic fantasy-types. It's a blast. The light elves in particular were one of my baby-races. Maybe sometime in the future I'll be cleared to show you guys some of the concept work that went into these!

So we've been pretty giddy around here about all of that. But my job is still only beginning, and there's even more exciting stuff coming up from us in the near future! stay tuned. :) I'm going to geek about these things. It's going to happen. Hope you're interested ^_^

So that's what's been happening on the professional front. I've been trying to keep doodling in my spare time (which is all I have time for, at this point!) I really want to get back to Jellybots at some point, but it doesn't seem like now is going to be the time. In lieu of that I've been kind of sketch-journalling and persistently in love with Prussian Blue watercolor :p

Which brings me to another significant event of the last few weeks. I played my first ever game of Dungeons and Dragons. It was...amazing.

I work for a video-game company on an MMORPG, love the Renaissance Faire, and started an event at RISD called Thunderdome which is basically diet LARPing, but I have never played Dungeons and Dragons.

My girlfriend was actually the one who got me to consent to play. Reason #163 why she is the best. She was our veteran player, and her brother was our DM. It was a small party of 4 of us, and three were total noobs...he was very patient.

We set out to do it right- holed up in my dining room with a cache of pringles, cheetos, mountain dew, cookies, spaghetti and token carrots with hummus, for what wound up being a 10-hours-straight, 5am blitz.

I played a Halfling Rogue named Wren. Because hobbits matter very deeply to me and rogues are the best.

Over the course of the night we decided Steven's Dragonborn warrior was really a half-artichoke man, almost died ALL of the time and barely made it through some excruciatingly slow stop-and-explain newbie combat. We were so giddy and giggly by the end of the evening, it didn't matter. Except to Andeniede, who couldn't land a hit to save her (or our) lives.
A few hilarious (to us) scenarios and jokes came out of the evening, which inspired me (when I woke super late the next day, feeling like the cheetos and the mountain dew had forged an alliance in the night and were fighting their way up my esophagus in hopes of hurling themselves out of my face.) to do a few little doodles.

Because of popular demand (and because our DM refuses to oversee another adventure unless I post them) here are my D&D doodles :p

Next time, we're starting at noon and eating celery sticks.

Herschel the Half-Artichokian was a favorite character of mine.
I am particularly proud of his artichoke-frondy pectorals.

Yay! And because that's not nearly enough artwork, I'm just going to empty my sketchbook of watercolor doodles!

I've been rewatching and re-reading the Lord of The Rings (probably because I have Hobbit fever), and I'm just all-over-again in love with them. It's so easy to dismiss the series as stereotypical of the genre that it created, but it really is still just the greatest. Why? Because hobbits. But that's a whole different rant for another blog post, maybe. Still- it remains my greatest, deepest fandom :)
Most of these were drawn in a single sitting while watching The Two Towers on New Years' Eve (gosh, it HAS been a long time since I've posted!)

And some assorted other doodles for your viewing pleasure, and because you're all just so patient with me :)

Oh, and as of today this blog has exceeded 500 followers! which is a big deal to only me!

:D I'm really really thrilled to know that at least some small percentage of that number are out there reading my blathering and looking at my doodles. Hopefully if you stick around I'll make it worth your while by doing something neat! Thanks so SO much for all your comments and support over the last few years. It's been a great encouragement to be able to share and receive feedback on my work and my thoughts.

I hope I didn't keep you all waiting too long, and that you're all still out there reading! Thanks, and may God bless you and bring you peace!

Much love!

-n

The Hollow Men: Black and White

2011-11-16T15:58:00.000-08:00

This is something I've been wanting to do for a while, and now that a good amount of time has passed, I figure: why not now?

Above are the first seven pages of The Hollow Men (my story for Flight volume 8) in their black-and-white state. This was a new process for me, and it was extremely educational. Normally, I work in ink and lineart first, pure black and white with no greytones, and then go in afterwards and color it all at once.
I knew in general I really wanted to hone in on my storytelling, which is all about composition, which is all about value and emphasis. Anyways- I don't want to be redundant so if you're interested in how it came together, I went over some parts of my process for the Hollow Men in a few previous posts here, here and here.

When the comic was all finished in black and white, I had a really hard time moving forward. Looking back now, I'm glad I finished it in color and I'm happy with the result...but at the time I really felt that, once it had been drawn in greyscale it was finished. Every time I went to color it, I felt I was weakening and ruining the work I had done by inches.

The vision I had in my head for how it would turn out was definitely in color, but I felt that my ability wasn't equal to my vision in this case- and black-and-white allowed me to imagine the color and how it would work without having to actually deal with actually coloring it.

It was like there was unlimited possibility, and it was so exhilarating because it left color up to the imagination...but once you start making decisions, you start hacking into that possibility and it can run the risk of feeling overworked...squeezing out space for the reader's imagination to participate in creating the world and envisioning the story.

It's still something I'm thinking about...and it's hard because I love color SO MUCH. But I figure, since this is my blog and nobody can tell me not to, I'd post some more of the black-and-white work for everyone to see and I'll continue to think about the correct application of color in my work :) Sometimes less is more?

I think when you do less, when you start to stylize and pull back in different ways, you leave more and more up to the reader. I don't think I'm ever likely to let go of color outright, but limiting it and putting a value on simplicity has it's attraction (hence, Jellybots). Everyone's gaga over hyper-real art, even in comics, and it just leaves me high and dry.
I may be making a controversial statement here, but I personally am much more exhilarated and inspired to read this than this. I'm not saying the latter is bad, but I do think it pushes me out of the world much more than inviting me in. Perhaps it would be better to compare the former with this. :)

Anyways, I'm not comparing my chicken scratch to these much better artists' work- and maybe I'm just off on a tangent here and nobody's following, but I think a lot about the magic in simplicity.
It can be very impressive to render the hell out of every panel, but I am trying to learn how to hold back on trying to impress people with polished art, and start trying to actually tell a story. And in some ways I regret getting as rendered as I did with this piece in the very end.

Anyways, I hope you enjoy these pages! Maybe sometime I'll even post the rest of them :)

Much love,

-n

On God, Art, and Dragons.

2011-11-02T09:54:00.000-07:00

ME ON A ROCK!

I praise God that it is in the moments when we are the weakest, most broken and helpless that God is most glorified. I hope that, as I write about my life and my work, this comes across loud and clear- I am a small man sustained by the grace of God alone. I hope that, when I talk about spiritual things- about God, and about my faith (which is so important to me) that you don't hear me preaching downwards from some height.

I could just talk shop in whatever way feels safest: keep to the art-speak and pithy anecdotes from my life. But I find that if I am going to be truly honest, I cannot avoid talking about God.

To my mind, when I talk about faith, I am talking about art. There is no clear separation. If my work and what I believe fit neatly into their own separate categories, then neither would be much of anything. If my belief in God was all well and good but had nothing to do with why I make art, I would be in a sad state indeed- given that so much of my time and energy is devoted to making art. As I've been feeling the desire to wax a little introspective and I hope, as you all have in the past, that you'll indulge me again :)

I feel that God uses my work and my experiences with art to teach me lessons that suddenly become all the more vivid and true to me because they relate to things in my life that matter deeply to me. Or to put it another way: I speak "art", so God speaks "art" to me so that I'll understand. And because art matters deeply to me, it matters deeply to me when I find God stooping to my level just to really get to me.

So love: right? God is loving, we've all heard it.
It's so possible to just hear something again and again and again to the point where it means nothing anymore. You becomes desensitized, and you tune out because in the end it's just words. What are they talking about, anyways?
It's pretty impossible for me to get/relate to the love of an all-powerful deity. But I understand the love of my family. And God goes to great lengths in the Bible to communicate his love is like that of a 'father'. He's saying "I know you don't understand, so here's a picture...do you get it now?"
It's all well and good to say that God is beautiful and he is a loving creator, but it is so much more vivid when you can understand that his love is like the love of your family. Your actual ridiculous, boisterous, frustrating, wonderful, stupid family. You follow me? How does this relate to art? Stick with me.

I mentioned that God's use of the word "Father" is like a picture. I mean that literally. It's like an image: an abstraction, a representation meant to pluck at your heart and your associations and communicate something deeper than just the word itself. I'll come back to this.

So: beauty. It was never quite enough to me to say that God was beautiful, because that was just a word. And that word, in the context of church, in the mouth of a well-meaning pastor on Sunday morning meant to me that he was beautiful like worship-service stock photos of sunsets and pastel-colored naked babies with wings. Not terribly interested.

As an artistic soul caught up in the mainstream church-culture of America, I've sometimes felt ostracized. If you're like me, you don't really like the things it seems that everyone else likes- and you feel that your definition of 'beauty' clashes wildly with the church's. Which means yours is clearly a wrong one that you need to repent of. -_-

Really, the opposite is true. If you have a love of art and all things visual, you are closer to understanding what God means when he says beautiful. And if you follow that through to its conclusion, you may find yourself nearer to the beating heart of God than you'd have imagined possible.

It was a new and really profound thought to me: God's understanding of beauty encompasses my entire understanding of beauty. Hold on that for a second.

This means everything you've ever loved, admired, found striking, stood in awe of. Everything that moves you to tears. And if that's not pastel-colored paintings of angels: THAT'S OK.

For me that includes things like Miyazaki Films and good acapella. It includes comic books and mid-afternoon light. It includes good, heartfelt folk rock and ridiculous, candy-coated dance music. Chocolate chip cookies, musicals, rainy days, and well-chosen fonts.

I have spent much of my life feeling like I need to be making the 'right' kind of art...that It was all well and good for me to love fantasy novels and Disney movies, but the real ministry and work of God was done in tracts and comic-books-about-angels. Not that it can't include those things, it's just SO MUCH BIGGER, and if we miss that then we miss the point. And that's the very simple thing I'm trying to get at.

If we believe what we say we believe, then we believe that God made EVERYTHING. And before we get ahead of ourselves and decide we can judge what parts of creation are 'good' and 'evil' we have to remember that he declared everything to be 'good' first and foremost. All creation is still his. In the story of Genesis, the first act of God was to make art. "Let there be light" laid the foundations for every form of visual expression ever conceived.
When we paint, we paint with colors God conceived of. Every act of art is at least an accidental act of praise.
When I make art, I am playing Legos. God made the Legos, and I'm just...rearranging. That in- and-of-itself shows that, like a child made in the likeness of his father, I love to create because he loves to create. And that's enough to justify the action of creating. Praise God for Legos!

As a character designer, this has become clearer and clearer to me as I work. I design dragons for a living. And people love dragons.

(Aside: Not all people love dragons. In fact, generally the church-ladies of the world would have me feel guilty and heavy-laden for digging on dragons. They're 'evil', 'demonic' beasts, right? DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY DRAGONS YOU WOULD HAVE TO DESIGN IF YOU WERE GONNA ILLUSTRATE THE BIBLE? A butt-ton, is the answer to that question. Not to mention the Leviathan, a monster which God describes as one of his favorite and mightiest creations. BUT ANYWAY.)
Something about dragons occurred to me when I went to the zoo.

There's a thing about the zoo- it's pretty amazing when you're a very little kid...animals are cool! Everything is new and astounding, bizarre and exciting. Then most kids (at least, I did) go through this phase where it's all just 'boring'. I mean- horses? seen em. A fish is a fish, you know what I mean? But dragons? Hell yeah. SUPAH COOL.
But I took a few character design courses, trying to come up with super-cool new designs and things that nobody's ever seen...I started to sense something was holding my work back. Everything felt derivative of things I had seen drawn before- I was regurgitating work other people had already done. I needed to strip my process back down to basics.
So I hit up the zoo. And HOLY CRAP. Suddenly all that jaded little-kid-stuff fell off in a heap. I was suddenly back at the visual source- the origins of all creature design. Maybe this doesn't happen for everyone, but it happened this way for me. I was suddenly enraptured like the littlest kid by watching manta-rays float and snakes coil. It rocked my world and I realized that dragons aren't cool for their own sake at all- Lizards are cool. Bats are cool. Dragons are cool because of that little spark of creativity that it took for someone to put bat wings on a lizard. See what I mean by Legos? The spirit of creativity?

G.K. Chesterton (who is a GENIUS like WHOAH) puts it better than I ever could:
"Fairy tales say that apples were golden only to refresh the forgotten moment when we found that they were green. They make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water."

I realized that I do nothing that God hasn't already done. And in that moment I realized that God loves character design more than anyone who'd ever designed a character. He was a better, more wondrous designer than I would ever be, and he wasn't looking down impatiently for me to put down my pencil and start praising him. He was waiting for me to realize that by picking up my pencil, I was praising him all along.

And it's so beautiful, because there's this other side to it, too. Why would God make art? That doesn't make sense; to just do something for no reason at all. But then I think about why I make art...

I'm an illustrator, so this aspect of it is very specific to my discipline: I make art to communicate. I make art to say things to people that don't make sense to say in words. I write, and I use words when it seems right to do so, but sometimes what is in me to express is emotional and wordless.
And then suddenly lizards and bats and sunsets all make a kind of sense to me. When we see something beautiful, we see the beating heart of God. And God gets this idea, because God communicates his love in the person of Jesus, most completely and for this reason Jesus is called the "word made flesh".

Is it so hard to believe, therefore, that every coiling snake and every color on the color wheel; every Lego in the whole set is stamped to it's very core with the message "I love you"? "I love you in this wordless, beautiful way and there's just no way to express it other than >beluga whale<" :)
Such that there is no combination you can make, no work of art you can conceive of that isn't covered all over in God's love, whether you intend it or not.

In that light, it is a delight...a wonder to study and to learn to love some small part of what God must have loved when he made a lizard. To delight with him in its scales, color, spines and forms. And to me, God is saying "you like that? me too!"
And moreover: "you know that green? I love you" "I love you enough to make you this green I knew you'd love."
They are little gifts, love notes all throughout creation and all we see, stuck everywhere. Here and there: whispering in every small way "I love you. You specifically. Here's how."

And we can get it wrong- I get it so wrong so often, and I put the gift before the giver. I open the present and become obsessed with its qualities and functions and forget to notice the loving parent who is watching me play and just waiting, aching for a "thank you".

That's as honest and open a window into my thoughts as any. And just as messy and stream-of-consciousness, too :p Call it a first draft.
Thanks for reading (if you have). If not, I understand :) I'm...wordy.
Short version: Thank God of Dragons, Color and Miyazaki Movies.

I am so grateful for your support and comments. I hope this finds you well :)

God bless and love you,

-n

Daily Prompts: Part 2 (Seattle Trip!)

2011-10-27T12:39:00.000-07:00

"they move when nobody's looking."

Multimedia entry!
I just started taking photos for fun. It's like, the first time ever (on my very, very crappy camera)
and some of them even turned out alright (especially after reintroducing some contrast in Photoshop...you know it's funny, it's one of the ONLY times I've ever used Photoshop on photos?)
So if you'll indulge me (and if I keep the habit up) I'm gonna pepper a few photos up on this blog as I go...It's become more and more related to my artwork, since I've been taking my watercolor on the road and my sketchbook has become more of a hybrid sketch/travel/prayer journal.

Last week I decided to take a trip to Seattle. One of my very best friends moved out there a year ago, and I promised him I'd come visit him sometime- so (realizing I have become a grown-up with a job and stuff) I hopped a plane, scheduled some time off and headed out there with my sketchbook & camera in hand. Even better- I went with 5 new prompts in 5 unopened envelopes tucked away in my bag.

I've been to Seattle once before, for an interview with Microsoft whereupon I was pampered with beautiful weather and expenses paid. I assumed, based on my previous luck, that I could expect Seattle's trademark rainy gloom to be in full effect this time around. Somehow I was blessedly wrong and ended up with the most beautiful 5 days ever! The result of which is that now Seattle ranks up there with my favorite places to be in the world. I'll have to see it when it's pissy sometime, maybe I'll like it less :/ For the time being, though, my good opinion remains untarnished. I love Seattle.

So- before I wax too lyrical, I should get on to the prompts and sundry (my favorite of which, I slapped some quick color on. It's sitting atop this post):

Day 1:

"something left, something taken"

I mean- sure...it's a cute idea. But I was on a plane (dead alseep for most of the ride) and had to rush this out in between the hustle and bustle of arriving, getting settled, seeing my friends again and eating good food. And guys: let me tell you: I ate some GOOD food in Seattle :)
I think the prompt is really beautiful and evocative, and I feel a little silly for having only come up with the above. Ah well, it was my first instinctive response and I couldn't shake it :)

Day 2:
"deeply rooted"

Quite happy with this one- just a sweet little illustration, and the context of it is hard to explain. I just like the idea of giving-tree esque friendship between a child and an unmoving tree. Something transient and something intransient.

Day 3:
"the kid's table"

For whatever reason, this was the hardest prompt for me. I just didn't connect with it- sometimes you have an idea and sometimes you just don't. The top illustration is what I came up with, and I'm pleased enough with it, but "meh" overall :p It does amuse me as an illustration of the concept "God is very, very patient" The second illo is a pass at the next prompt...

Day 4:
"the unmendable hole"

Hopefully pretty self-explanatory. I had a few other solves for this one, but they got a little more personal than I'd like to publish. Still- enjoyed this one...less of a scene and more of a graphic solution.

Day 5:
"they move when nobody's looking"

This is my favorite. Favorite prompt and favorite solve. Hopefully it's self-explanatory. It was a real challenge to try and work out a composition on the fly in this medium...most of my watercolor stuff has been single characters, landscapes, or spot illustrations- but when you introduce the idea of a narrative scene, suddenly the composition becomes the thing. I'm not happy with this as more than just a study, but it was a step in the scary direction of composing in media without a ctrl-z. Sketching, erasing, and ctrl-z are a huge part of my composing process, so I definitely balked. It drives me nuts now, but at least I got something out on paper. More better in the future!

That wraps up the prompts, but I should mention, for honesty's sake: I had a 6th prompt, but I didn't finish it...not because I didn't want to, but I ran out of time and got frustrated. I guess I felt I should mention it because sometimes this happens: you fail. It's not the end of the world- especially with self-inflicted homework for fun, but it does suck to feel like I couldn't even keep up with voluntary sketch work :/ At any rate: a good lesson ^_^

But I didn't just do prompts while I was away- I kept doodling as the mood took me, and I figured it would be fun to toss those up here too, interspersed with some of my favorite snapshots :)

We climbed the space-needle and had lunch at the top- it was SO incredible up there. I know it's the most touristy thing you can possibly do in Seattle, but the fact that it was a cliche didn't cause it to lose any of it's lustre. I had spent a couple of days bopping around the city before we went up, and it was awesome to pick out places we had visited as the restaurant spun. (oh yeah- it spins. Did I mention that? Who has two thumbs, a blog, and was mildly nauseous the whole time? THIS GUY)

Since we were turning around and around, I was struck with a sudden inspiration to pass a note along the rim of the restaurant. Peter could freehand a passable map of the USA, so we decided to send this around and see what happened! In an hour, we were delighted to find that once we reached our note, several other people had responded! I was a little miffed that they had stolen my pen in the process, though -_-

We got fancy pizza downtown somewhere (don't remember exactly where we were) and right outside the pizza place was this ivy-lined alleyway with this little hole-in-the-wall coffee shop hidden in it. I was so struck by how beautiful it was, I remembered it and drew it from memory later.

While at pizza, I did do some sketching. My friend Peter challenged me to draw him (which i did! and I was super pleased to find I caught some part of his personality in it). Then I passed the sketchbook around and made everyone else draw. It was like pulling teeth, but the humored me, and then I watercolored over their drawings :)

ALSO: near this pizza place we went to this place called WOW which was, get this, an overtly 'christian' bubble-tea joint O___O Like: seriously. I was slurping my slushee to worship music.
I was so amused, I texted my sister about it, which unleashed a cavalcade of puns including:
Tapioca Testimonies
Biblical Bubbles
Scriptural Slushies
Mighty to Mango
Lord over Litchi

Gummy Gospel

Apologelatics
The Taro Torah
Parting of the Red Tea
King of the Juice
Frozannah in the Yoghest
Boba and the Whale
(and my favorite)
Slurpshack, Teashack, and Abendystraw

^_^ derpa derp. derp. derp. I have a good sister.

On our tour of the most-cliche-tourist-destinations-in-Seattle, we stopped over at Pike Place Market. Again, I was delighted...I just really really love big colorful overcrowded markets and street performers (of which there were several :D)

Taken in the Seattle Public Library. I had a day of exploring the city on my own, and I headed over there where I ogled at the architecture, found the reading room, sat down to sketch and promptly fell dead asleep. Like- totally gone, mouth agape, probably snoring loudly. I woke up to the sun setting through the angled windows of the building with my mouth tasting like library.

And then THIS happened. Gasworks park...on the most incredible afternoon-into-sunset of the week. It was the most beautiful location on the water in the middle of the city surrounded by harbor activity and the skyline , and it was so SO cold. I sat up on the crest of the hill and sketched as my friends wandered off in search of warmer climes:

This. Place. I am in love. F'real.

Before you ask- yes. Those are what you think they are...and my sister made them from scratch. Like I said- I have a good sister :)
Oh, and yeah- I got a haircut.

Alright, that wraps up my indulgent slideshow of snapshots and, I think, this entry!

I'll keep sketching if you keep reading :) And keep those comments coming- they are immensely encouraging (just knowing people are reading this crap is neat!) and I love hearing back from you guys...you're all pretty neat ^_^

Until next time- Much love, and may God bless you with life in abundance!

Cheers,

-n

Daily Prompts: Part 1

2011-10-25T09:44:00.002-07:00

"and then there were four..."

Ugh. YET AGAIN I have been absent for OVER A MONTH. No excuses, but:
I am officially making it a goal to update this blog a little more frequently than once-a-month-ish. It will tie nicely into my resolution to make more art more frequently! :)

I am still very much on a watercolor kick, and very much in my 'blue period'. Out of consideration for you folks (for being so patient and obliging!), I decided to break it up a bit and spent a few minutes tossing some quick color on the above sketch. I realize: not everyone is as in-love with Prussian Blue as I am (But. Guys. I am so. SO in love with Prussian Blue watercolor), and it might be nice to break up the monochrome.

Because I'd bet money that most of you don't watch this blog because of my monochromatic doodling- that you'd like to see some more finished looking work. Many of you may be getting a little impatient with all this scrawly sketchwork. I feel a (perhaps bizarre, perhaps unnecessary) need to make excuses for myself- this is something I need to do for me.

If you love this style of work, then please forgive me for not giving you the benefit of the doubt- you have much more broad and evolved tastes than I give you credit for! :)

I've said it often to myself and it's come up more than once in conversation: I don't much care if my color is pretty, my rendering is slick and my styling is confident- if my ideas aren't compelling/sincere/arresting, then it's all for naught. I spend all day at work doing very precise, 'rendered' drawings and sculptures- and I've found that I have been really craving to do...not-that!
I'm slowly realizing that, while technical skill has its place, in the end my joy in making art doesn't come from those things. I don't want to spend my life trying to render more precisely or paint like a renaissance master. Comparing myself to my peers in that regard is pretty dispiriting- I am by far not the best painter...and I think I don't want to spend time trying to be. And that is SO freeing :)

What gets me most excited is the dreaming- the conceiving, sketching, thinking and storytelling. I am more and more in love with work that shows the heart of the artist, and less and less in love with work that is technically excellent but empty. It's not a new thought, by any means, but it's taken on new meaning for me.

Perhaps it's more simply said this way: I am more inspired, my life is more enriched, by seeing a beautiful idea than by seeing a beautifully rendered bicep.

< / rant >

SO: to that end a friend of mine consented to give me a little homework. Each day for a few days at a time I would open a sealed envelope with a new prompt in it. Just a sentence or a word, and that day I would respond visually in some way or another.
What you'll see is pretty raw and unpolished. And I would say a lot of it is pretty boring and some of it fails completely. But I think it's probably more useful and interesting if I post them indiscriminately- I'm going to make a lot of mediocre work if I'm going to make good work. And I think there's something to be said for posting bad work as well as good.

Day 1:
"and then there were four..."

The first day is still one of my favorites, but it was a struggle from start to finish. I've found the more narrative/sentence-long prompts tend to inspire me more, but it's not a hard-and-fast rule. Day 1 I had a little idea, and I decided: "I'll make this a short little one-page comic! if it's sketchy and quick it won't take long and it'll be fun". So, I leapt right into trying to come up with characters and panels and assumed it would go quicker because of the style it was in. SO WRONG. I ended up having a mini panic attack and falling asleep early. True story.

The second image was to be the final panel in the comic, and it's the original idea, essentially. I still like it, and I thought about finishing the comic later but decided against it- I think it's more honest this way. Fact: sometimes I bite off more than I can chew, stress myself out, and become paralyzed. Comics are hard and style has nothing to do with why.

Day 2:
"warm"

Day 2: chill out and breathe. Keep it simple. Something easy and, in the end, kind of 'meh'. They can't all be interesting :/

Day 3:
"the moment he knew"

lol. Hard to explain this first response- so I did a for-real one.

The final response I liked a lot, but it has little to do with the actual prompt. I had been thinking about this idea for Jellybots- herds of buildings migrating across the plains...

Day 4:
"...and that's when I stopped believing in gravity."

My first reaction to the prompt was a bit...obvious, I thought. And not particularly good. My first instinct is not often my best one (which is actually a really great lesson across all of these...often I had to do a little soul-searching and thinking to get to a result I was excited about- apparently it's not enough for me to just lash out on intuition alone), so I gave this one another quick shot...

ahhh...that's better. "...and a number of other things, for that matter."

Just because I had to think a little harder didn't mean the result would necessarily be more...intellectual. Perhaps 'thinking' is the wrong word- maybe it's that I had to stop 'thinking' about the prompt and start 'feeling' about it. That rings truer.

That pretty much wraps it up for my first session of prompts. I had a lot of fun when I wasn't panicking, so I asked her to do it again! I made a weekend trip to Seattle last week and took a few prompts with me! I'll post the results of those next (but I figure it might be less overwhelming if I break up the posts) :)

Bonus sketch! I am fond of the cut of this fellow's jib! Not to mention his Banjolele :)
If intrigued, please click.

Anyways, maybe this was an interesting look into how I think? Maybe it was a self-indulgent post full of introspection and meaningless doodling? Either way, I'm going to do it again until somebody stops me!

May the staggering beauty of what God has made give you pause and fill your heart up!

-n

Loosening Up

2011-09-18T12:05:00.000-07:00

In which I draw collars and shawls, just like always.

Hi guys! I've been meaning to get back on and post for a few weeks now...I just haven't had the necessary combination of free-time/internet access in which to do it.

But it's a beautiful Sunday afternoon and I find myself in the (rare-ish) position of having a little time to myself. SO HI. Long-time-no-monologue!

The past few weeks have been a rollercoaster. And on a day like today, when my plans and to-do lists suddenly run out and leave me sitting here trying to occupy myself, it's important to remind myself that this is what I've been telling myself I've wanted all month :p
Actually, it's funny- reading the start of my last post...it starts off with a similar sentiment. I guess I only blog when I'm feeling the need for a pajamas-and-tv day.

I don't have much in the way of 'profound' thought to offer today. But I DO have an enormous backlog of sketches I thought I'd share. Some of these I'm more pleased with than others, but part of the exercise of loosening up is letting go...so rather than edit it down, I'm just going to post everything in a big bundle and move on :)

The encouraging lesson from watercolor is just that: move on.

Like ink, it can be an intimidating and unforgiving medium to approach. It's permanent and it doesn't like to be reworked. But it's as much a blessing as it is a curse: overlaboured watercolor looks awful! so you can't noodle on it. You actually HAVE to relax and get loose.

So I've been a lot more stream-of-consciousness about my sketchbooking recently...and it's so liberating! I find I am more excited about taking on art projects and doing little favors for people, because it's not the intimidating prospect it was before. I don't have to commit to pencils, inks, scanning and hours of color when I consider whether to do something or not; I can lay something down quick and be satisfied if only with the beautiful textures that the paint makes that have nothing to do with me. (Like that knee in the above drawing. It makes me SO happy. And I had, like, nothing to do with it...it's just pretty paint.)

Enough about that! I think it's time I shut up a bit and showed some of the work I've been blabbing about.
A couple weeks back I went on a road-trip to see my family in Michigan. From here that means a 12 hour car ride. It's one I've made many times in my life...but it's always a new challenge to keep myself engaged for the entire trip. Luckily, this time I didn't have to do much of the driving...and I thought "why not, if I want to get all loosey-goosey, paint in the car? I mean, besides nausea." SO I DID! And I totally didn't throw up! It's not so bad if you keep your water in a water-bottle and use paint right out of the top of the tube :p
The next few pages are doodles from the car on the way up:

When I arrived in Michigan, I got to spend some much-belated time with my Grandparents. Particularly with my Grandpa, who suffers from MS and has been bound to a wheel chair as long as I can remember. Initially it was hard to see my grandparents and observe as they've grown older within the small rooms of their home. But as I was there, I was struck by how loved and cared for they are. It amazed me how full a life can be if even a few people love you. Despite his health and complications relating to his MS, my grandfather remains a canny and delightful man...it was amazing to hear him talk. And as we were talking, I got to paint him.

Along the way in the car, there and back, I took come quick visual notes from observation of the landscape we were passing by. It's really interesting how I can more clearly remember the trip because I sketched it- even if I sketched it poorly. For whatever reason (I have a variety of theories that would comprise a whole new paragraph), watercolor makes me want to draw from life a lot more.

When back in Providence, I joined a few co-workers and went out to life-drawing (something I haven't done in a few years!) and It was good fun...It was a good excuse to take the paints on the road again.

I spent some time with a friend and professor, and after a while we both decided to bust out our sketch materials and just jam quietly between topics. It was great! It's something that is extremely difficult to do with a cintiq :p

Some of these I want to take into photoshop and color (like the self portrait from last post) when I get a little more time, I think that's the next step...see if I can't find a way to bridge the gap between both worlds.

I think that's it for now! Hopefully I won't go so long between posts next time. But it's nice to have art to share (I hope you guys like this sketchy stuff! I mean, I'mma probably do it anyways, but...) Thanks again for reading! Your feedback is valuable and encouraging! :D

Until next time!
Much love,

-n

"What Now?"

2011-08-14T17:36:00.000-07:00

Self Portait of The Artist as a Hairy Man

Phew! I'm not sure where to begin. As usual, I kind of disappeared into my cave for a while. I've been meaning to get back on here and post. I just don't like to if I don't have anything to show you guys. And, frankly, I've been in a rut.

To be honest, since the comic for Flight I haven't been doing all that much personal work. Actually- alright, there was a rash of Jellybots designs that kept me occupied for a bit. Fair enough. But specifically these last few weeks after returning from San Diego Comic Con, I've been feeling pretty bone-dry, creatively.

I suppose I should start there: SDCC was pretty incredible. I think the most fitting word is "Intense". In every sense of the word. It's such a manic time full of rapid-fire events and meetings both wonderful and exhausting. I returned to Rhode Island very much in need of a nap and a homecooked meal...and some non-threatening cartoons...and my teddy-bear blanket. Bon Iver has been helping me recuperate ^___^

A special thanks must go out for those of you who read this blog that came up and said "hi". It was SO encouraging to meet you guys in real life! Nice to know this isn't all going out into the aether completely unattended.
It was such an amazing experience to sit at the booth with the other Flight artists, meet them face-to-face (pairing each face with the work I knew and loved was really fun and enlightening!), and sign books. Very humbling to stand next to some of my heroes.
Anyways, I came back with new friends, some great new books, and a lot to think about!
One thought in particular: Everyone kept asking me what the "next step" is...where is this all going?

"What Now?"

Heck if I know! If anyone has any experience with that question, you probably know it can be one of the most paralyzing. I seized up a bit.

Part of the paralysis has to do with process, and some of it is just listlessness and emotional baggage. I've felt pressure from myself to decide: should you start work on a book? What is Jellybots going to be? Why isn't that done yet? How are you going to follow this up? Do you really feel like working, with no deadline? Do you really feel like sitting down at the Cintiq and forcing your way through all the limitless possibilities of a blank, digital page? Why? Just to prove to everyone that you can? Ew.

I wanted to follow up my last few "On Process" posts with a third one: A treatise on "Faith and Art". An exploration of how my faith intersects and drives my art. Honestly? I don't think I'm up to it tonight. That seems a bit grandiose...too ambitious for one blog entry? (that, itself, was paralyzing :p I'm a mess!)
But here's what I do have to offer on the topic, just today:
My sketchbook and my prayer-journal used to be two books, now they are one. Which means, lately, there have been pages and pages of frantic text and barely a sketch between paragraphs. I just haven't felt up to it. But yesterday morning my prayer time became my art time. Often I find my prayers bleeding into writing...playing with story ideas and themes, but this time it was sketching. You ever wonder why people sing in church? The sunday-school answer is: "to praise God". But isn't that sort of arbitrary? Why music? Why not dance? For that matter: why not drawing? writing? story? color? Really: why not?
Anyways, my time praying segued right into a sudden inspiration that came out of nowhere: I picked up my watercolors for the first time in 2 1/2 years. It was...a thrill. As a result: all the sketches above and below have been generated since yesterday. I feel like a real artist again. Artist block: broken. Praise God. Really.

I've been trying to let go of the things that I always do. Sometimes when I think of making art I get too intimidated by the process; before I even start I know how much rendering It's going to take to get the digital piece to look good. Honestly: I am sick of rendering. I have been so jealous for years of people who are just...loose. Gestural. Notably an early obsession with Dave McKean, and a growing appreciation for Hayao Miyazaki's storyboard work.
I have always loved the sort of things watercolor does in seconds without you even trying. The sort of textures and effortless gesture you can't get in digital if you spend hours. That sense of ease.
Jellybots was a step in that direction: a move towards simplicity. But this was another step.

And it seems like the right time; after a talk with Kostas Kiriakaikis at SDCC, a few years of telling myself "I miss watercolor", watching my friend Elise sketch in fountain pen without reaching for ctrl-z, jealously eyeing Cory Godbey's work, and finally purchasing Enrico Casarosa's "The Venice Chronicles", I was poised to move.

I'm finally realizing it's, like, a THING I am allowed to DO...to just sketch loosely and let go. To stop assuming that my lines have to be immaculate and clean for them to be worth looking at.

But it took a nudge in prayer...without which I would have remained exactly as afraid of change and flexibility as I have always been. And, to paraphrase Chariots of Fire, "when I draw, I feel his pleasure" ^___^

SO: what next? who the heck knows. I sure don't. But that's ok. I'll keep drawing if you'll keep reading, deal? I hope you like watercolor! :p

Well, THAT was wordy and introspective. Blog therapy. UGH: this is my blog-where-I-ruin-the-magic-of-things-by-talking-them-to-death. You guys just ready for me to shut up and post some art? I'm ready to shut up and post some art.

Sam Hounder. The latest iteration of the character who may-or-may-not be a Dog in a story that will-likely-not-still-be-called Wanderhome. I am...fond of him.

(above) Waterfire in Providence: it's for snuggling.

Today, inspired by Enrico Casarosa, I went on a sketch-trip to Bristol, RI with some friends. I brought my watercolors along and felt properly artsy. We ate fresh sweet-corn from a roadside vegetable stand (illustrated below. God, I love roadside vegetable stands), wandered through a graveyard, and sat by the water as my friend played the bagpipes. U JELLY?

We snuck into this mansion, and were eventually caught when the old-ladies who give the tours realized we didn't have stickers. :D

I got DEVOURED by mosquitoes while painting this lake. And the paper got rained on. Worth it.

A moment in the graveyard, and the roadside veggie stand complete with colorful attendants. This painting, and our youthful charms, won us some free tomatoes. It was a good day.

Oh, right...and also, I drew this kid. (below) He's kind of a big deal. I also made my own watermark. I know, I know...you're impressed. :P

And that's the show for today, folks. I am honored that you have read this entry at all. I hope it has been in some way edifying. (Speaking of edifying, if you haven't seen BBC's Sherlock THEN YOU SHOULD MAYBE SERIOUSLY CONSIDER IT. I haven't geeked out about anything as much as I have about Sherlock in a while. It's- augh. It's good.)

Alright, it's late. I'm outta here. Thanks for reading.

Be blessed!

-n

San Diego COMIC CON!!!

2011-07-19T10:48:00.000-07:00

Who has two thumbs and is going to San Diego Comic Con tomorrow?
I'M A HUFFLEPUFF.

It's kind of a joke, see...based on that video...see? it's funny, right? ugh. That's all besides the point because-
I AM GOING TO SDCC!

My home-base will be at the Flight Booth (#2235), so PLEASE stop by if you're there. I'd love to meet any/all of you if you're at the con.

I'll be selling prints of some my work as well as helping to promote Flight, Volume 8! Please come buy things I neeed moneyyy for comicccssss...
But seriously, if you don't have monies I'd just generally like to meet you if you're around ^____^

Sorry I've gone a bit silent suddenly...I have more art and will have PLENTY more to say once I come back from the Con, but for the time being prepping for SDCC has eaten up my life.
I am so excited. I don't think I have ever been packed this far in advance for anything...watch me STILL forget my phone-charger. AUGH.

Hope to see you there!

Much love,

-n

The Hollow Men: On Character Design

2011-06-30T09:42:00.000-07:00

So by now some of you may have actually read Flight Volume 8, which is neat! I was right, wasn't I? You enjoyed yourself. Toldja so.

I finally got my own hands on a copy, and had a wonderful time re-reading everyone else's stories. There are so many phenomenal storytellers with such distinct styles represented in this final volume...I think as a whole it really lives up to and exceeds Flight's high standards.

For my own part in it, it was really surreal to hold a copy in my hands. Like any artist, I feel a certain amount of anxiety seeing my own work all published and done. I vacillate quickly between that sensation that "it could be better!" and a general giddiness that it's actually done.

I think, with whatever perspective I can have right now on the whole experience, I feel content.

I am also itching to start working on something new! I've got a few projects that linger perpetually on the backburner...maybe it's time for one of those to take shape and start developing? Jellybots? Something else? Time will tell.

I mentioned last post that I wanted to talk about some of the character design process that went into Hollow Men...so I figured I'd give that a shot. If you haven't read the story yet...you probably should do so before you read the rest of this post, lest I spoil it for you :p

________

On Process II, Character Design:

When I start something...or at least when I started this...I think non-linearly. Not just visually, but in moments, emotions, color, symbols, etc. A random stream of things that jumble together, and ultimately become the final story...or they don't, and they sit around my attic of ideas and gather dust :p

I work full-time as a character designer for a video-game company, so naturally much of the miasma of my thoughts includes character design.
Just like with Story, it can be tempting to get caught up in the bits and baubles of character design. For me, I like to add hooks...little adjectives you can add to a design that give the viewer something to think about...some visual and conceptual handle that stops the eye and the mind and keeps you looking. I think that's vital to all really captivating character design...but the very best designs (it seems to me) don't just resort to gimmicky hooks to grab your attention...there's a deeper element of design that's beyond all that...and I think it has to do with sincerity.

It's that thing that, however 'uncool' or just weird the idea is, you just can't shake. Anyone can put more and more spikes, horns, wings, or whatever on a character...but that deep sincerity is what can make one drawing mysteriously captivating. It's literally one of the hardest things in the world to articulate (so if you don't know what on earth I'm going on about, I don't blame you) because it's a design thing, not a words thing.

So I'll stop talking theory and talk practically:

A boy paddles a canoe down a silent river in the forest, there are serpents in the water.

That means there is a boy and there are serpents. Obvious, I know. But to me...even in that simple sentence, those are specific people (er...and serpents that are also...kind of...people?). So the process of designing them is the process of trying to figure out how to visually develop the image you see in your minds' eye without losing their unique identity along the way. That means making decisions all along the way to ignore 'cooler' ideas that may occur in favor of 'honest' ones. Make sense?

It's like naming someone. Some names will fit and others won't, because there is already a someone to name. You can't go deciding that 'Peter's' new name is 'Optimus' when it clearly could never be. It just doesn't feel right. It won't stick. Optimus is a cool name, but not for a Peter.

The main characters in The Hollow Men are Jehan (the prince, though you wouldn't know it because his name is never mentioned) and the Hollow Men themselves. The first thing I knew about Jehan was that he had tattoos of hands on his shoulders.

There's something profound to me about the idea of a tattoo...and moreso the idea that that permanent mark could represent the impact of another person...it could stand for kinship...that fealty could be expressed as a kind of permanent embrace. It just worked for me, emotionally, as a symbol. Of love, legacy, whatever...again it's a felt thing, not a words thing for me. So hands became a very important theme in The Hollow Men...which drove the story and some of the decisions I made in terms of how to compose certain frames and play certain moments.

It followed in the soup of my ideas that the hands had to do with his father. That there would be a scene late in the story where we would understand what they meant. And the image of black hands with long, slick talons came to my mind...violating that space. That's literally how it went. That was the second 'moment' that I knew had to occur for me to be satisfied. So the character design became integrated with the story itself and they helped drive eachother.

Then there were the Hollow Men themselves. MUCH more tempting to push further and further away. I knew the serpents in the water would be white. I knew the kind of personality I wanted and I knew there would be two of them with only one consciousness between them.

There was an idea I'd had, which I still like, that they would sort of...unzipper down the middle. They would twist and wind in and out of eachother (doodled above). That's the conceptual origin of the black line that bisects them. But because it pulled too much focus away from the narrative, I decided against it.

They were kind of a meditation on loneliness, I suppose? The thought of being completely alone in a crowd...the pair of them are only one thing, and that one thing is barely a thing at all...just an idea of hunger. A void always wants to be filled. To me, that is the essence of how it is to be alone.

There's more I could say, but I think I'll ruin it if I talk too explicitly about it all...I want to let you into the process, but not completely draw back the curtain and show you how the trick works (if it does) :)

I've talked a lot about preserving that initial idea, and I think it bears saying: pinning down and keeping inspiration can be an impossible thing. Like, literally. Impossible.

It's been the biggest struggle and the source of some of the biggest lessons for me. As an artist, you're constantly aware that once you lose that passion, it all falls apart...you can only do your best to tread water. Maybe your dogged commitment will see you all the way to the end if you just grit your teeth and bear it. It's never really worked that way for me...you only get so far white-knuckling it before your strength gives out.

Like many things in life, I am so dependent on something that is so beyond my control: "Inspiration".

Who said I'd even have an idea to begin with, or that it would be a good one? After I start, what happens when the passion abandons me? I never finish. So often I feel like I don't have an idea worth preserving. When that happens, why start at all?

This could be a whole new post, but I make passing references to my faith and my praying a lot in this blog. I don't want to alienate anyone, but by the same token I don't want to shy from being candid:

A huge part of the art process is surrender. Giving up. And that is a huge part of prayer for me as well. I always wondered: how on earth does my faith have anything to do with my artwork? I found some new things out about that during the process of making this comic.
In art, as soon as you start to seize down on something, you overwork it. You kill the sketch...the pose turns out wooden and stiff. So I panic pretty consistently throughout the process. I second-guess myself and freak out. That's why I pray. And that's just one of the ways my faith has collided with my work. Not in some high-minded spiritualized sense, but in an even more 'practical' way than chasing emotions and trying to pin down dreams. Giving control over to something as 'abstract' as God makes a lot more sense when I realize I give control over something as abstract and fleeting as 'inspiration'. All. The. Time.

Phillipians 4 springs to mind.

Maybe more on that later? Just a thought for now.

Thanks SO much for reading. I hope you still do. A full several-page preview should be up of all the comics in volume 8 on the flight website soon. In the meantime, you can tide yourselves over with some similar posts from the other phenomenal contributors:

Corey Godbey
Katie Shanahan
Scott C
Jake Parker
Der-Shing Helmer
Tony Cliff

Sonny Liew
Kostas Kiriakis

Kyla Vanderklugt

JP Ahonen

Much love,

-n

Flight 8 is out TODAY.

2011-06-28T07:48:00.001-07:00

Click Here To Order Flight Volume 8 On Amazon.

Today.
Today is the day. This is going to be a good, long post. Don't worry, there'll be plenty of pictures!
To start: above is the final, full color version of Page 1 of my story "The Hollow Men" in Flight Volume 8.

I don't know what else to say, except that I'm SO excited that the book has finally hit shelves. I hope you'll buy a copy and support the last hurrah of this series. I can't emphasize enough how many great stories by other great artists there are in this volume. For all of us, this is bittersweet. For the veterans, this is the curtain falling on years of work and companionship. For me it is the strange feeling of having to say 'hello' and 'goodbye' at once.

Over the last few posts you've seen how this page has come from sketch to thumbnail, to black and white, and now to final. As the work progresses to final I have less and less to say about it. I hope the final story speaks for itself. And I really, really hope you enjoy it. The hope that something that I've done might mean something to someone is most of the reason I do this in the first place.

A friend of mine (who got her copy before I've gotten mine!) sent me this photo yesterday, and (I'll own up to it) I teared up. It's real. I can't believe it:

I could play this off like I'm too-cool-for-school, but really...why bother? You only get one first, you know? Today I just feel so thankful. You all know who you are, and you get a shout-out in the book...so I won't belabour the point. But, thank you...really and truly.

________

On Process:

Based on the response from the last few posts, it seemed there might be some interest in looking more deeply into the process of how I work...or how I worked on Hollow Men. So I'm going to indulge and show you guys how this really, truly starts.

Below are some scanned pages from a little moleskine notebook I put to use when it came time to plan out this project. Blurred text is because I use my sketchbooks as prayer-journals and I was expressing the full-extent of my panic to an embarrassing degree :p

The rest is the frantic note-taking and shorthand I use when I don't expect to be showing anyone what I've been working on. I didn't proof read this, so you get to see all the mess I make before I settle on a direction.

At the beginning I was asked "what story do you want to tell?"
So, naturally, I panicked. I pulled out all the half-baked, partially complete stories and character designs I'd been sitting on and summarily dismissed them all. It didn't feel like time for any of them. So on an idle thursday in November, I took my anxiety for a drive and prayed for an idea.
A little daydream crept back in. It had originally occurred to me a year before when I was riding my bike through the forest around my aunt and uncle's home;

A boy paddles a canoe down a silent river in the woods, there are serpents in the water.

That was it. A story started to grow up around it. I think in moments, bits of color, visuals and emotions. The feeling of it washed over me and I pulled over the car to take notes.
That's how this mess always starts.

I should also mention that working on something this large (I've only ever done, at most, a 7-page comic before) and this important to me was a new experience. Much of the process was just any panicked attempt to wrangle this together.

I immediately started to sketch characters and play with themes. Before I got to the layout phase, I was burning through pages of sketchbook jotting notes...little designs, themes, ideas. Occuring, iterating, and discarding. I'll show you some of that later.

I sketched and jotted and eventually wrote a script. When I was finished with that I decided the script was too confining, and the problem was it wasn't true to my process: I was thinking in simultaneous visuals and bits of dialogue, not pages of text. I had to start thumbnailing or I was going to lose this thing.

So I accidentally came across a method that really worked for me. When I thumbnail I HAVE to keep it small and messy. If I get too big, I get intimidated by the size and start to feel like I have to render out characters. Nothing is more poisonous to getting thumbnails done well than a preoccupation with rendering characters or scenes. At this point, beyond the basic concept, they aren't the point. This is about story, speed, flow...pace. Bringing the reader through your narrative in a way that makes sense, doesn't confuse, and (in layout alone) makes them feel the story. That's about light, dark, composition, panel placement and size...not so much pose and facial expression. This is bullet point time. No sentences allowed.
The crux of this (for me) is trying to think through these things symbolically. Moving the reader through intense moments at a quick pace, slowing them for a beat with a large panel. If the character is feeling overwhelmed: overwhelm him with composition. If you want to feel the physicality and tension of each limb...get close in and claustrophobic. There's no rule here...I had to feel my way through it. But it is, without a doubt, my FAVORITE part of making comics. No other medium works quite the same way.
I had to iterate quickly and keep it sketchy. If I went digital I would noodle. And I needed some way to experience the flow from page to page. So I found a small moleskine I had around and didn't have a use for (it was so tiny...who uses that?) :p and the idea of sticky-notes occurred. With the moleskine I could dedicate each small page to a corresponding page of the comic. And with sticky notes I could stack, remove, move around panels and pages.

So that's what I did! And it totally worked for me. So below are a few scans of what I think are the first eleven pages of planning. It's still the truest form of the comic. After that I had to tidy up come thumbnails for approval. After that point the process is almost automatic...nothing to it but to do it...the challenge at that point is not screwing it up! :p

Anyways, hopefully this is interesting to someone.

It's a beautiful day in Providence...thank God for sunshine. Much love to you guys...thanks for your support and comments...they help keep me going! I may post more on the process of character and concept design later. For now: It's summer! GO PLAY IN THE SUN!

Love,

-n

How It Grows.

2011-06-27T10:54:00.001-07:00

Tomorrow.

Tomorrow Flight Volume 8 hits shelves.

Today I'm posting this: the black-and-white of page 1. I'm not sure whether to call it 'inks' or 'pencils' since it's neither. I worked with a totally different method than I usually do and the upshot is: The Hollow Men will be the first ever totally-digital comic work I've done.

I also tried to teach myself about value and composition by working out the hierarchy in black and white before I colored (which usually isn't the case...generally I do clean lineart and then try to figure out value and color together). I had a great time working in this method...I've always loved stark compositions, and it's so much easier to figure out layout when you're thinking about light and dark at the same time as lineart.

Hopefully it's interesting to see how something develops conceptually from start to finish. If there's interest, I can explain more of my thought process...but I think it's fun to see how different the layout of the final page turned out than the previous thumbnail stage, even though all the ideas are essentially still there. I'm trying to hone down what I want to say and how I want to say it.

Anyways, I have been getting really wordy recently...so I'll stop myself this time and just hope you guys enjoy the preview!

Cheers,

-n

The Un-Glamorous Way Things Begin

2011-06-24T13:06:00.001-07:00

I have been aching to just get this properly started.
I have precious little I want to show just yet, but I figured we'd start out slow and I could tease some of the preliminary work. So here are the thumbnails of some of the first pages I used to pitch my story 'The Hollow Men' to the guys at Flight.

In 4 days' time it will be published alongside the much-better stories of more seasoned comickers in Flight Volume 8. I couldn't be more honored and terrified. :)

I am hard-pressed to find a time in my life when I have felt more impatient. But soon enough it will be out there to read and I can relax and get on with the business of loathing it like any proper artist loathes all his old art.

So, admittedly, these are rough. And even the basic building blocks that you see here shifted around a bit before settling on the final design. But as sketchy and crude as these are, this is where the real work happens.

My greatest teacher taught me this about comics (admittedly plagiarized, if I remember correctly, from someone who'd told him): "The final work is the shit of your thumbnails."

And it's true. These aren't even really my crudest thumbnails, if I'm honest. I'll go and dig up the story pages I did for myself before I decided on this direction...they get smaller and cruder. If you can believe it, these were actually made to show people :p

In reality, what you're looking at is at least step 4 of the process.

After all the scribbling down written notes, gathering plot ideas and casting them off...I even wrote an actual script and then barely looked at it. Then I sketched characters, moved into a little moleskine which I covered with sticky notes, rearranging panels and deciding on dialogue. Panicking, making a mess. In fact, these are the result of a LOT more work than it looks like. As far as I'm concerned, these are the comic...the rest is just polish.

You know what? As I think about it, I think those first, sketchiest, illegible scribbles (before these) were the high point...the most honest version of the comic. Even these represent the beginning of a rollercoastering downhill trend.

Everything after the initial ecstasy of the first idea seems like a paler and paler attempt to recapture that seminal spark; to pin it down and show it to people.

It's a struggle, and a fascinating one, to try as hard as you can to preserve the life of the story through all the phases of creation. Over the duration of this project I felt like I found it, lost it, and found it again.

I'll need some distance from this to know whether I succeeded at all in the end. But this is the sloppy start.

And you get to read it without the dialogue, lucky you!

I really hope you guys stick around and check out the final product when it hits shelves. Not just my story, but the whole book. SOOOooOooon. 4 days. Just 4. I can wait 4 days. I mean, how many 4 day chunks have I lived through so far? A lot. It was easier then. I can do it again!

Yeah.

...

yeah.

...

-n

Jellybots: Duncan

2011-06-10T06:59:00.000-07:00

Everyone knows that the best possible way to procrastinate and run from your feelings is to bury yourself in work! right? right...

I do tend to make more work when I'm feeling introspective. I was up late last night putting the finishing touches on this guy. I think he's my favorite. Not sure, though.

This is one 'bot that's been waiting to happen since I had the idea.

Guys, meet Duncan. (based again on another friend. Of the same name) He's the older-kid and a bit of a mystery. I think he might serve as sort-0f an instructor to the younger kids. He's, like, the Jelly RA. :p

Generally, teens as old as Duncan can no longer interface with the Jelly. But as one of the Candyman's first pupils, he's been able to grow and change with his suit. He's aloof and a little sarcastic. He designed the sphere floating alongside him in the suit himself; is that it's kind of his 'tell'. He's able to punctuate his expressions with an emoticon of his choosing. I'm hoping to get some fun juxtapositions out of the idea.

I just love the idea of him frowning sarcastically and the sphere being all ":p" I'll have to draw it and show you guys.

I had a completely different color scheme in mind, initially. It was going to be amber-colored and purple...or maybe even brown and green. But as I was drawing him and honing in on his character, I realized I wanted to make a darker, twilight-colored bot. What resulted (and if you've ever lived in/been to Providence you'll know what I'm talking about) is kind of the Jellybot personification of Waterfire. Go figure, right?

Hope you like it. I am literally counting down days until Flight is released and then until San Diego Comic Con. SO EXCITED. How to pass the time until thennnnn!? More Jellybots!

Much love,

-n

Jellybots: Biin

2011-06-06T09:58:00.000-07:00

"woogly woogly woogly," it seemed to say.

I got my Jelly back! :D

This is Biin (pronounced like 'bean'). Another based-on-a-friend character from the Jellyverse. Expressions on the right, a few alternate forms on the left.

She's one of the Candyman's first experiments in alternative-intelligence (they get upset when you call them artificial). She's the only AI in The Soup that isn't a proxy (controlled by a grown-up operator).

Biin doesn't exactly follow orders; In order for The Soup to accept an inhuman intelligence, she had to be programmed with a significant amount of childlike anti-reason. Like all of the suits, hers is malleable and adaptive...incorporating new information into her physical form as fresh matter is introduced to the Jelly.

She just learned 'hands'. She's pretty excited about them :)

She took me longer than I'd like to admit. The thing I've been challenged by (and excited about) with Jellybots, is that I spend a lot more time coming up with the concept than I do with rendering it out. The simplicity can be deceiving...she went through a number of weirder, wilder iterations before I settled on the above design as her default-state. The idea is that she'd be able to change pretty wildly according to the situation. I'm not saying I'm 100% on this design...but I think it has the spirit I was trying to capture :)

Hope you like her! Name, details, and design are all up for change...so let me know if you have feedback!

Also, if you're confused about all of the things I mentioned earlier in this post: good. I haven't been very forthcoming with details about the Jellybots story, because it's still totally up in the air! So you haven't missed anything. I'm trying to confuse you with sudden detail on purpose :p

Hooray for summer!

Much love,

-n

PS. The design. process. is. complex. :p

Ninnerview!

2011-06-03T08:07:00.001-07:00

I got interviewed by this neat site called Something We Like.

If you 're interested in hearing me talk about me even more than I already do here, you can read my interview. Otherwise...um...hi? I'll make more art, I promise!

-n

Vince Napolo

2011-05-31T12:14:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you need to let your angst out.

It would have been really hard to express this feeling in Jellybots. It needed a new fiction.

The thing about personal work is not having structure or deadlines. So my mind's been wandering a little bit left of the Jellyverse and I decided to doodle this. It's a really quick character study for a story that's been refusing to go away.

The name "Wanderhome." is a working title. In truth I'm not sure what this project really wants to be yet. Hell: he may not even be a dog in the end.

But for whatever reason, despite trying, I can't get away from this character. Vince Napolo is the chain-smoking proprietor of a ramshackle vegetable stand by the river. He may or may not be a dog. May or may not be a wizard. Time will tell.

Summer is coming. You can smell it.

Yesterday, you couldn't distinguish the sky from the sea. It was incredible.

Jellydoodles

2011-05-19T18:56:00.000-07:00

I've promised myself that I'll post in-process work here as it's coming together, and so I shall!

It might actually help motivate me to keep sketching to figure this piece out and eventually finish it- I've been itching to take some of the Jellybots characters and put them in a full illustration...set the tone for the style of the world and not just the characters' heads-and-shoulders :)

...and after that very chatty post, I figure I owe you all some pictures. So here you go! These are just early sketches...and only a few that I liked, at that. I've still not solved the composition and concept...but it's nice to get something down. More soooon!

love love!

-n

A New Look, Springtime, and Thoughts On Coming Back 'Home'

2011-05-06T16:54:00.001-07:00

Guys! It's Spring! It's almost Summer!

There are leaves on trees, and the smell of flowers on the wind.

And, resultantly, the blog needed a new look: Creamscicle. I've always wanted stripes...I just never got the time to sit down and customize. And I wanted to simplify the header so it would be something that could age a little more gracefully.

I'll probably be tweaking it as I get accustomed...and the palette will likely shift with my mood, but this is what's up for now :)

In other news, I have relocated (along with 38 Studios) to Providence Rhode Island. Back to where I graduated from school just 2 years ago.

I keep telling people it feels "weird" just to avoid explaining it. But I've been feeling the need to talk about it, so I'm going to indulge myself and do that here.

I've spent most of my life moving from place to place; my mother recently shocked me by calculating that this will have been my 19th move. In so many ways, the shifting of scenery has been the constant backdrop of my life. It has sculpted me in ways I can't even begin to understand. And throughout God has been so good to me; truly the boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places. This move is no exception; all of the facts are incredibly positive: For our company this has been an immense improvement on all fronts. For my roommate and I, we have a beautiful apartment in a great area of town with tons more space than our previous place. The greater availability of excellent food, alone is reason to celebrate!

But I can't help feeling, as this new season of life begins, a little melancholy. For all the places I've moved in the past, I've never 'gone back' anywhere. And right off the bat it's stricken me: you really can't ever truly 'go back'.

I think I loved RISD more than I've ever loved any place in my life. And since graduating in 2009, I've missed being here (in Providence) on a fairly consistent basis. Which is nothing unusual; in my experience the grass is always greener in hindsight.

But now being back, being so close to where I belonged for so long, it feels like standing in your old house with all the furniture taken out. And every time you close your eyes you can just see it...the couch was there, and there was the tv...the armchair...

But it's irrevocably different. Undeniably still the same place.

The strangest feeling has been when suddenly it doesn't seem like anything has changed at all. Suddenly I'll be in a dorm hall watching a movie among friends, huddled on that same old modular furniture. Every smell is just the same. And every bit of it is still alive with all those same memories. The only thing that doesn't seem to fit is me.

I've changed along with the circumstances of my life. But the circumstances of my life have brought me back to this same place. And now I have to face that change.

So this is not the Triumphant Return per-se. No trumpeter on the rampart has taken up the cry that the "Lords of Gondor Have Returned!" This is the slow, familiar witnessing as the old ebbs away and is replaced with something new and untested. I am back, to watch as every last friend graduates and departs, and to gather whatever new friends present themselves. Just like the changing of the season: Winter has passed and these will not be the same flowers.

The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. For my part, I am glad for this gift; to be back in Providence. I am very interested to see what he intends by it. I trust that it will be marvelous.

So "Hello" again, Providence. "Hello" again, all those friends still here. I missed the hell out of you.

Much Too Much - James Hersey

If you made it this far, thanks for reading. Be blessed!

-n

BUY THIS BOOK.

2011-03-30T13:43:00.000-07:00

Well, here it is...

Flight: Volume 8 is finally available for Pre-Order at Amazon! And if you look down that list you will see my name, among many of my heroes...which makes me very misty-eyed. I have been so completely blessed to be part of this Volume.

For those not in the know, this 8th volume of the Flight anthology will be it's last. And it's going to be a pretty amazing volume, after seeing all the work come together...I am SO excited. I totally recommend picking up a copy yourself.

I won't wax too poetical this time around...I did that in my last entry about Flight. But I really can't wait for you guys to read it. The cover really captures the bittersweet tone of the whole experience, closing this series out. It also feels kind of like this.

Jellybots: Lizzie

2011-03-22T15:46:00.000-07:00

As long as the ideas keep coming, I'm gonna keep riding this thing out...we'll see where it goes!

This is Lizzie :D

She's based off my friend, Lizzie (who, after I did one based on Jen, asked for her own :p) And I realize this has effectively opened the floodgates for anyone who wants a portrait (which wasn't my intention) but I'm trying not to design characters I don't actually believe in.

I've been jamming on plot development with my friend Peter, and at the same time I was considering..."what kind of character would I turn Lizzie into?" he spontaneously wrote me a draft of a script (yay!) that contained a character named Anne who was pretty much all the buck-toothed, awkward, befreckledness I had been dreaming of.

So here she is...in the current scheme of things she may even be the protagonist...a young girl who doesn't quite know who to be. She's kind of a lot of crazy energy all pent-up in a very self-conscious shell. (hence the little doodles: a) has obnoxious laugh, b) is embarrassed) The kind of girl who would decorate her suit with smiling stars, but get a little shy if you brought it up. Also, she likes llamas (not pictured).

Spring/Summer/Any-Sunshine-At-All couldn't come soon enough. I was thinking about pink lemonade all the while I was working on this...I think Jellybots in general is my way of pulling myself out of Winter and into Spring. Hope you all like it! It is, after all, for you!

Also: Cheers, Lizzie! Welcome to the lineup! Now don't ask me for anything ever again. ;)

God is love!

-n

PS: I'm not sure anyone's noticed, but I've updated the blog with tabs! In particular, I've been updating the "Playlist" section with music that's really inspiring me. Which will also keep me from spamming it here :p But check over there for new songs every now and then! Hooray!

Jellybots: Jen

2011-03-09T07:57:00.000-08:00

Another one? It's true! From 3am in the morning I bring you: Jen!

I'm just continuing to jam on this topic and see what happens as it develops...as Ideas occur I'm trying to get them down on paper. I've also been really throwing down ideas and rearranging them in terms of where the plot is going. I don't want to rush it, but I do think this could have a lot of story potential. It's funny: but I'm experiencing how hard it is to just write a fun story that doesn't get soooo SERIOUS.

Anyways, this is for my friend Jen Hom, who wanted her very own Jellybot :) So it's not a portrait per-se, but I tried to get the gist of her in 'bot form. Of course I picked a color palette she probably wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole (teal was already taken, Jen, sowwy!) HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY! :p Anyways, I'm having a ton of fun on these...I mean...I was up till 3am last night making sure this got done. Hope y'all are enjoying them too! We'll see where this goes. I've got a couple more character ideas in the queue before I have to figure out what next. Hopefully those will materialize soon!

Oh, and at this point of development, I'm open to any and all ideas and suggestions: so let me have em!

Cheers!

-n

Jellybots, Craig?

2011-03-05T23:20:00.000-08:00

I guess I'm on a roll? I had some time and the inspiration...so rather than doing my taxes, I did this tonight!

I enjoyed slapping the Candyman together so much, I figured I'd keep going and work up a portrait of another character I've been sketching. I think his name is Craig? I'm not sure yet, though. I'm open to better ideas.

Just to prove that not EVERYTHING is happy-go-lucky in Jellybots-world (just most things)...Craig is a big bully, and not terribly bright or open minded. A kid with a Jelly suit and something to prove. Small ears, big mouth, and one 'eye'. Not really a sensitive listener.
Kind of the result of my thinking about the range and variety of suits and forms possible. I'm trying to keep them simple, but distinct in terms of silhouette...and as things move forward I hope to get crazier and crazier.

In a lot of ways he's a less adventurous design than the Candyman...I mean, we're all pretty super-saturated with lantern-jawed neckless badasses. But why not one more, for old times' sake?

Jellybots, The Candyman

2011-03-05T13:14:00.000-08:00

Hi guys!

I've been feeling a little aimless since I wrapped up work on my Flight comic. Things have been crazy-busy, but that's not the same as having a project to work on. So I've been thinking about a few different stories and ideas I've had bouncing around my brain, and I thought I'd do a little development on whatever strikes my fancy.
Today, it's Jellybots. This is the first work I've done for myself in a few weeks.

So this is (working alias) The Candyman. He works with the kids, and (in the current version of the story I've been fantasizing about) he's the only grown-up who can interface with the Jelly. He's kind of a eccentric/kooky mentor ala Miss Frizzle :)
This is still a tentative first pass...I just wanted to get my ideas down. I'm not sure about his face and whatnot. He'll probably get adjusted and revised.

The dial on the visible side of his headgear controls what color his 'hair' is, and there's another dial on the other side that controls the style.

Oh, and his cravat is a robot that detaches to assist him.

There's no real outline for the story, but I have a lot of ideas for character designs, so that will suffice for now...I'm having fun :)

And below are a few really quick color studies I threw down last night...just to get myself in the mindset again. I'm not really fond of any of them...maybe the first. But I have little I can actually post these days, so I figured: why not?

FLIGHT, DUDE.

2011-02-22T10:37:00.001-08:00

GUYS. It's done.

For the last several months it has been my worst-kept secret that I have been working on an 18-page submission for Volume 8 of the Flight anthology. (Which happens, tragically, to be the series' last volume)

It's basically both a dream-come-true opportunity, and the longest comic I've ever written. It has also been the most fun I've had working on anything in a long time.

I hope you guys don't mind if I take the opportunity to wax a little sentimental:

The Flight anthology has been such an important thing to me, over the last several years.

If you've talked to me, you know I love comics and (despite pitifully little work to show for it) I love making them. Graduating from RISD was an intense experience, and by the end I had to make a hard decision: what was I going to pursue?

Long story short- I made a list of things I wanted to do...things I really felt like I wanted to do. It was short list, and at the top of it was "Be part of Flight". Even above working for Pixar.

I really don't think there's much else like Flight out there.

As I pondered whether I wanted to enter the American comics' industry, I learned how hard the work is, how small the pay, and how little creative input or control someone like me would have most of the time. Past all of the myriad of superhero books I've slowly stopped reading, one by one, I realized my love was for webcomics and for Flight. I feel that Flight is the tangible representation of that new spirit of webcomickery that's growing (which includes works like The Meek, Rice Boy, and Bird Boy among countless others): why not use the medium of comics to tell honest, true stories that come right from the heart of the artist? Comics that aren't out to just make a buck or fill a monthly billing. So Flight, to me, has been this beautiful haven of freedom. So many great artists have told great stories through it's pages and it's a heartbreaking shame that it can't last forever. But I am so grateful to have been allowed to be a part of it.

It's been a labor of love, completely.

Now, I guess I need a new dream :P

Above is a tiny preview panel of the finished piece, and below is some of the concept art I did for myself before I started out.

As the release approaches, I may post more of the in-process work...just because I think it might be neat to see?

Nonetheless, to see more of the good stuff you'll just have to buy yourself a copy of Flight vol. 8 :P And let me assure you, having seen some of the work that's been done for it: it will be WELL worth your money. It's going to be an incredible send-off for the Flight series. I am SO incredibly excited to have my work printed alongside some of my heroes'.

And if the Lord wills it, plans are for me to be in San Diego come July for Comic Con, where I'll be sitting at the Flight table for signing! I would love to meet any and all of you, so if you're going to be there, stop by!

A Few Things...

2011-02-08T09:39:00.000-08:00

So I know I uploaded a bunch of work in a hurry, and now I've totally gone quiet again. For which I am sorry. I'm totally swamped right now with work both at the studio and at home...all of which is totally fun, and none of which can be shown just yet. :)

The work-work I won't be able to talk about until our game ships, but the personal work may or may not have anything to do with a comicentryforcoughFlightcoughohmygoshi'msoexcited.

So for now you'll have to make do with an old in-progress piece. To tell the truth, I'm not sure if I'm ever going to get around to finishing this, but it was something from a couple of months ago that popped into my head and wanted out. So, in a frenzy I knocked the inks out and just haven't been able to find that muse again, so it's all alone and, I think, kind of boring.

ALAS!

I wish the snow would stop. I feel like the moment I see grass, I'm going to cry.

Also, my friend Fabiola has been featured on this awesome blog in a totally wonderful article about Fabiola-ness. It's be best!

In other news: My Mom has landed a children's book gig, The Illusionist was gorgeous, and fantasizing/spontaneous note-taking about Jellybots is proceeding sporadically.

God is good, even when it's snowing, and especially when the sun is out.

love love,

-n

The Old Man

2010-12-06T13:10:00.000-08:00

Hemmingway's 'The Old Man And The Sea' was the last thing my grandfather gave me before he passed away years ago.

Only just now did I finally read it, and then I did this quick doodle (and since my doodles are in color now, I feel justified in uploading them!) Sort of to commemorate the occasion, and to continue to explore some new stylistic stuff in Photoshop, and to procrastinate, if I'm being perfectly honest (which one should always be on the internet :p). He's a bit...whiter...than he should be. Alas.

I also just read Blankets for the first time. Heavy stuff, all around.

-n

So...I have this fandom...

2010-11-30T13:45:00.000-08:00

Okok. I've been doodling a lot now. And I had some free time at work, and I'm going to see Deathly Hallows for the second time tonight and and...

well...I have a long standing history of Voldemort obsession. I can't put my finger on it, I think it's just the simplicity of his design that I like...and I've never been 100% on the movie version.

I love what Ralph Fiennes has done with it...but I just don't dig on Voldemort with normal eyes and ears. Just an opinion.

It's also fun to do this as a "look how far we've come" exercise:

I don't know how to take this gallery down anymore, but I'm kind of glad it's still around.

Oh, 2003...

Anyways, I'm off to the movies!

Cheers, guys!

-n

More Jellybots and a Doodleface

2010-11-27T08:22:00.000-08:00

More Jellybots! It's smiling at you :)
I thought I'd spend a little more time to give this idea it's due. Again, not a huge amount of work here, but I want to keep it simple. I'm starting to figure out the tone I want to strike, visually at least. I should be working on other things...but I figure this is helping to keep me fresh.

Again, just toying around with some new techniques and brushes. Really just doodling into the wee hours. But since it resulted in an actually colored piece (love love Cintiq!), I thought I'd post it it :D

Really nothing more than a doodled collection of things I like to draw...hair, noses, little eyes and floppy collars :p

Otherwise, not much to report. Thanksgiving-break spent holed up in my room at my parents' house. Coming down occasionally to let my family know I love them and that my workaholism is not their fault, and then disappearing back into the upstairs to draw.

And then there's the food. Egads! I've written this weekend off as a loss diet-wise. I think I have a stuffing-problem. I am addicted.

Anyways: Happy Thanksgiving, all!

I hope you are well and have plenty to be thankful for!

I am thankful for my wonderful family, their patience, my Cintiq mistress, and the project that will keep me from sleeping for the next few months. Also, my car. Which drives me to and from my Cintiq. :)

Bis später,

LEFTOVER SANDWICHES!

-n

Jellybots

2010-11-23T07:05:00.000-08:00

Hi!

I got a Cintiq! :D To break it in, I sat up a did a really quick doodle. It's not much to look at, but I needed to get some portion of the concept down, because it's been sitting in my head for months.

It's a concept I hope to develop really fully at some point when I have some time to myself. Try to flesh out the world and cast of characters...

For now, I'm just psyched to have the opportunity to loosen up and sketch (with color!) quickly and easily.

And in the meantime, I'm completely swamped with a particular side project I am completely psyched about. I don't think I'll say anything here yet, but please be patient. I know I promised to do more personal work and not to disappear...you'll just have to trust me that I am doing just that...but you can't see any of it. yet. :D

-n

Seasons: Requiem

2010-09-10T06:50:00.000-07:00

Yeah...about that "wait"...

I got itchy and decided I'd upload the whole comic :D I had a hard time getting the files (and I wanted to wait until I had permission to post them), but here they are!

Again: this was done over a year ago for a yet-unpublished Anthology called Seasons (to be published sometime soon by Sofawolf press...updates will follow!)

This was done at around the same time as Piper's Pet, and it was a source of some frustration to me at the time that Piper is a better comic, even though it was comparatively less work. This was done first, so at least I'm...learning? But for my own sanity: this is OLD. I make better now! I promise!

All I can see now are the flaws. I do realize that it is narratively broken beyond all sense. I ambitiously wanted to do this silently (no words), but see if you can guess what's going on! I posit you cannot!

Points for anyone who gets this without the 'spoiler's at the end of this post :p

I will gladly receive any critiques on the storytelling, since I want to make sure moving forward I work out all the kinks! This probably won't change, but it's useful feedback for the future. Lay it on me.

I'm considering adding text, but I'm afraid it would be too much an afterthought.

Still, I'm glad I did it. It was a good learning experience.

And in unfancified prose, the plot is thus:

A repentant mouse warrior returns from the war with his most regrettable casualty: a small child. He feels he must return the child to her father, but the horror of what he has done doesn't hit home until he see's her father's face. He casts down his sword in a solemn vow to never fight again, and instead of retribution he is met with forgiveness; a chance to start again. Simple enough.

Even typing that out I'm realizing how obscure some of the paneling is. Better next time!

Hope you like it anyways,

Cheers!

-n

A Dark and Stormy Night...

2010-09-09T12:36:00.000-07:00

I'm clearing out my backlog!

I promised I'd work on more personal work and as a result would be posting more frequently. Which I have been...but I've just gotten saddled with a large personal project that I am really excited about...and that will be taking up most of my spare time from here up till around February!

In the meantime, I remembered that this old thing had never seen the light of day!

SooOOooOo...this is a preview, the first page of 7, of a comic I did almost a year ago. I'll refrain from going into too much explanation till I post the rest of it.

It was done for an upcoming Anthology called Seasons, being published by Sofawolf Press. I took the opportunity to revisit my love for all things even obliquely related to Redwall :)

Like I said, it's been over a year since I made this and now all I can see are it's flaws. Go easy on me :p

Hope you guys like it; more soon!

-n

Hiccup and Toothless

2010-08-20T20:58:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone! It's been such a long time since I've posted any new work. I've been really starving to do some personal work, but up until recently I just haven't been able to motivate myself to get it done. Well, I finally did, and this week I got to the half-inked sketch I had done MONTHS ago of Hiccup and Toothless from Dreamworks' How To Train Your Dragon.

I love that movie. It was such a breath of fresh air, and a real win for Dreamworks. I have to tell you the truth: not even the last few Pixar movies have gotten me as excited to get back to the theater. Anyways, I really just wanted to draw toothless and what started as an indulgent doodle became a...more...biggerer...doodle?

It was really just going to be a character portrait on nothing, but then I got a little ambitious and decided (late in the game) that I would treat it as if it were a 2d animated version of the film, which meant painting up a background with *gasp* no lines. So that's new. And of course I defaulted to blobby and "painterly" in an attempt to disguise the fact that I don't know what I'm doing :p

In the end, I'm pleased with the result, even though I usually thumbnail out something like this and plan ahead. So the composition is WAY boring, and it feels a little slapped together. Ah well. At least I made something, right?

Since this is my self-indulgent blog, I figured I'd toss in some different states of the piece for those interested:

The lineart, and the whole piece, was done after-hours at work on a Cintiq, so it's all-digital. I still miss pencils.

The cel-shaded look gave me another excuse not to spend time rendering. I would say it was an excuse to do less work, but I spend a lot of time rendering designs at work, so it's actually just a nice change of pace :)

And then, yeah...the background. It looks WAY better as a tiny thumbnail like this. I advise against clicking on it :)

So that's it for now. I'm just really glad to have gotten something done and out there. I hope you guys like it, and I promise I will get off my butt during my off-hours and try to eek out some more personal-work in the not-too-distant future! In the meantime, life continues to be good. The job is great and I can't wait to be able to unveil what we're working on here :D In due time, of course.

Till next time, God bless!

-n

Where have I been!?

2010-03-13T14:54:00.000-08:00

(I didn't paint this, it's just one of the only pieces of art released for the project I'm working on! all credit to: Scott Duquette)

SO: Hi guys!

As usual: sorry for the long delay. :(
I know I've been largely absent, and have barely posted art recently...and that which I have has been...well, 'meh'. Alas and alack!

I've sorta sworn off freelance for the time being, since drawing all day doesn't leave much energy or inspiration for drawing all night. I don't know how some people do it!

Of course, I'm getting the jones for a little personal-work, but I really know that I can only handle it in the tiniest dribs and drabs. Like eggnog!

But I promise you, all of my best effort and energy is going into what I'm employed to do. And you'll get to see it...eventually...

In the meantime, there's been a little flurry of buzz regarding the project I am working on, so I thought I'd be a little indulgent in my excitement and post some stuff here. If you're interested in tracking with the vagueries and rumors, here's a starter kit:

Firstly, this is ME :D
--> http://www.38studios.com/people/team_show/93

and this is the news!
--> http://kotaku.com/5488700/curt-schillings-all+star-role+playing-game-has-a-publisher-and-a-mystery-title

and this is slightly older, but kind of neat!
--> http://www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cfm/loadFeature/4001/Five-MMOs-That-May-Surprise-You.html

oh, and this...some littlest tidbits about what we're working on are embedded herein!

-->http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/27645/GDC_RA_Salvatore_On_Building_Worlds_Copernicus.php

So that's what's going up. To clarify, there are two projects...I'm on the one codenamed Copernicus. So if you wanna track with that you'll EVENTUALLY see some of the stuff I've been working on :D Still no real proper news and certainly no revealed images. Keep watching them internets!

More than that, I cannot say. But we're pretty pumped on my end. Go team!

Anyways, I miss you guys! I am still around, and I am always grateful for all your comments and watches!

Cheers!

-Nick

I MAEK PEEKSHUR

2010-01-25T19:12:00.000-08:00

YAY!

Hello all!

S'been a little while and I am just about ready to see that Christmas post move down a slot.

I haven't had a thing to post in a long time (since all my recent work won't be seeing the light of day for...well...a while). But I did pick up a little freelance project along the way. And I gotta say: I'm swearing it off for the forseeable future. I don't think I am handling freelance very well alongside full-time employ. :( Still, I did have fun with this...between the tears. Oh, the tears.

The writing is all Rich Fogel (two-time-emmy-award-winner, and father of my good friend Andrew) and the pictures are mine. (I still need to update this with the credits in place).
It was my first time ever working with a script from someone else...it's nice because it takes the edge off my perfectionism; I don't have to worry about writing it, and I'm in good hands.
And it's also one of my very rare excursions into the realm of speculative scientific fiction, which I hear is all the rage these days with the youngsters.

It stars my friend's favorite band, The Phenomenauts, in their comic-book debut. They've been trying to break out into fiction for a while and, seeing as they're a sci-fi-rockabilly band, the match seems to be a logical one. If you haven't heard of them, you should definitely check them out here.
A couple of other friends are contributing comics (all written by Rich Fogel) to the project, and it'll be pirched around a bit by the man himself. It would be neat if something actually worked out!

In other news, I've been really enjoying my job like crazy, and now I have a bunch more RISD kids employed all around me. We're all having a good time. It's a little like camp :)

Other than that, not much news...especially news I can talk about. Life is good, God is great.

Much love to you all and, hey, "Science and Honor!"

-Nick

BE HAPPY ITS CHRISTMAS OR ELSE

2009-12-24T12:24:00.001-08:00

Hi!

I thought it would be a good idea, in light of the season, to wish the mostly-anonymous internet a very Merry Christmas!
I'm holed up at my parents' new place in MA, trying to fend off the barrage of cookies my Mother and Sister insist upon leaving lying around the house :p

It's the first time I've spent the actual Holiday in the USA for...well, over 8 years at least. And it's the first time I've lacked a proper "Christmas Break" beforehand (got off WORK yesterday). I definitely feel a little twinge at the thought of missing an Austrian Christmas, but I'll get to experience for the first time in memory what it's like when spent with the extended family here!

I do regret being pretty absent from the Internet recently. I've been trying to keep myself busy outside of work with side-projects, but that has proven to be a *little* overwhelming, so I'm trying to keep things sailing smoothly. I wish I had more art content for you guys , but in my defense: it's been a MAD few weeks here...I just got a car(my first ever), my friends brought it up (from Virginia...they got lost twice and were woken up by the police) with an uncooked turkey thawing in the trunk (which fit snugly in the oven-I've-never-turned-on and set off every fire alarm in the apartment and beyond), we got a (bed)couch (because we helped my parents move into their new house), drove it an hour (strapped to the roof of my friend's truck because it didn't fit inside it), it didn't fit into any door of my apartment (it waited in the rain in my backyard under a tarp for 24 hours to get returned), my mother hit a deer, I've experienced Holiday traffic in large American suburban malls firsthand for the first time (>40 mins for a parking spot), been snowed in for an unexpected long weekend in a blizzard, and my aforementioned new car failed to pass the state inspection. Also I am driving to Michigan in two days. Hooray!

Honestly: most of that's all been kind of a blast. But only because it's been such an absurd comedy of errors that my friends and I keep looking at each other and saying: "I can't believe this is happening!" "I know!"

There will be new art soon! (I did a really neat, more-elaborate-than-anything I've-done-before collaborative Christmas piece for work...BUT YOU CAN'T SEE IT! :( :( :( ) I look forward to when this game launches! :D

In the meantime, you can now order the Trade Paperback from Dark Horse that contains Piper's Pet! BUY IT FOR THE KIDS.

Tell me if you do! :D
In the meantime: DRINK YOUR EGGNOG. DRINK IT.

May God bless you through the Winter's cold!

Much love,

-Nick

Published! (In The Future!)

2009-12-01T08:14:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone! I'm alive!
As promised, due to having a job I have recently been kind of absent on the Internets. I doubt that's such a big deal to most people, but if you actually missed me, then: thank you :D
I missed you too.
I have, of course, been resisting the temptation to blog without art content to accompany my silly ramblings. But no longer! Today there is content!

To those interested: the job has been amazing, and I'm really enjoying myself. I basically get to draw monsters all day and design armor and swords and stuff, so there's precious little to complain about.
The verdict: life in the "real" world = not so bad.
The pace of non-school life has been very agreeable, though I am generally either busy or asleep at the moment (still getting used to the waking up "in the morning" thing). But despite a new and confusing schedule, I decided to take on some freelance work on the side.

SO: I got contacted by some people at Disney Publishing to do a cover for them! YEAH!
(I got a letter in the mail this week with The Mouse on it. I peed a little.)
It was a very quick job due to deadlines, but this is what I did: It's a cover for an upcoming children's book (They're bringing back the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure format!) based on the soon-to-be-released Prince of Persia movie (the one with Jake Gyllenhaal). it's called Guardian's Path. They liked my Moby Dick piece and wanted me to do a riff on that with Henna and her hand and the dagger. So this is what came of that! I hope you enjoy. They were very generous in giving me permission to post this in advance of it's publication (like actually this time, instead of before when I posted it and didn't really have full approval).

(Also: it's being published on April 13th. But is Available for pre-order HERE :D)

I'm mostly just excited because this will really be my first officially published work!

Other news? I'm confirmed to be going to San Diego Comic Con this year for the first time ever! Let me know if you're going to be there. More news on that as the date approaches.

I have a few more freelance projects I'm working on, so those should pop up over the next few weeks...slow, though. I'm sorry.

And also, that's the first time I've ever chibi-ized myself for a blog post. Guilty pleasure? Perhaps.

Beyond all that, keep warm and thanks for reading!

Cheers!

-Nick

Fan Art All Over Again

2009-08-29T14:05:00.000-07:00

I haven't done a piece of fanart in...like...forever!
This was a blast. I'd been sketching Luca off and on for a little while, and it was only a matter of time. I've been getting a little itchy to make some art on my own, so I figured I'd ease in and do something light...like a character portrait! :D

For those not in the know. This is Luca, a fan-favorite character and antagonist of Der-Shing Helmer's webcomic The Meek
It's a great read, and an awesome testament to what one artist, with a lot of determination can do on their own nowadays. In my estimation, it's about the best webcomic around for quality of art and writing. Loads of fun, I highly recommend it. She's just started Chapter two, which is going to be SUPER AWESOME, so yeah...just read it, please!

Otherwise, for me this is the calm before the storm. I start work on Monday (at 38Studios as a Junior Character Artist)! I'm SO excited, but could certainly use your prayers and well-wishes! I'm finally going to have a real job!

-Nick

MIT Summer 2009 (SHADOW SHOPPE)

2009-08-26T17:17:00.000-07:00

YAY!
Guess what went live today? Yes, you're right! The MIT GAMBIT Games! Good guess.
Which means that finally I get to post some of the art I've been working on recently. :D
I DID THIS:

That's the main poster (there are two other color variations) for the project I was assigned to: Shadow Shoppe. I was privileged to work with some of my best friends and some very talented and gracious students from Singapore. We were holed up in a beautifully appointed lab at MIT for the sole purpose of developing video games in response to a variety of research questions. The game was developed entirely from the ground up with the basic question:
"How do people associate certain types of traits with basic forms and shapes of character design?" Trickier than it might seem, actually.

Thom Chang and I worked on Shadowshoppe. I'm responsible for half of the concept work, and all of the backgrounds. He accounts for the other half of the concepting and all of the animation in-game. Oh, and I also did all of the voice-acting for the game! I love voice-acting! Head on over to the following link to play the game and let me know what you guys think!

Play Shadow Shoppe
(Click "Go To Website" and please don't be put off by the age/gender/location form...it's for the research aspect of the project)

Here are some screenshots from the game, for added visual interest!

My fabulous friends and colleagues are also responsible for much of the artwork on some of the other projects, all of which can be found here.
For those of you familiar with the rotating cast of characters in my life. My friend Fabiola Garza worked on Camaquen, and roommate Brandon Cebenka worked on Waker. Definitely check out their games and all of the new work up on the website!

I will leave you for now with a poster all of us GAMBIT kids (art team) put together at the end of the program. We each took a crack at drawing eachother's characters, since over the course of the summer we all generated a lot of fan-art :) I did the Dearth characters and had a large hand in collaging this all together. Stay tuned for more concept art and doodles if I get permission! :D

GAMBIT kids, if you're reading this: I miss you. I'll see you in Singapore some day! Here's to a fantastic summer!
Much love,

-Nick

So...Now What?

2009-08-23T12:52:00.000-07:00

Hey All!

Sorry for the long silence. I've been moving in to my NEW PLACE OF RESIDENCE!!!

(just kidding, I live across the street from this place.)

I am now *officially* moved in. Well, I'm still in-process to be honest, but I've been using my new place as the base of all my operations, so it counts. I'm no longer half-in-half-out of Boston!

This new step in life is both exciting and BORING AS CRAP.
I am thrilled to have a new place. I am excited to be moving forward with post-school existence. But I am now in a waiting room full of ramen and gas bills. D:
Basically, I'm just whining because my actual job starts in 8 days and in the meantime I have nothing to do.

Alright fine, I've actually been keeping quite busy, and have found myself in the company of the most wonderful sort of people. But leave me at home alone for any length of time and I start going nuts.
It's good to me made to relax and spend some quiet time alone, though. I just come to it reluctantly. Kind of like broccoli.
My significant art supplies are all stored elsewhere right now, as well. So I don't have anything to show for my boredom except some idle doodles. All of my actual recent "artwork" is top secret until the game I was working on gets released (soon! here!)
I just figured I should post a newsy post about all of the nothing I'm doing. :D

In the meantime, I have found a number of very diverting things to occupy some of my downtime with:
I bought one of these! (excusing my frivolity with the fact that I am now a video-game professional and don't really play so many video games...so I had to buy a console! right? right???)

Of course I got the cheapest and girliest console out on the market. But I couldn't resist Professor Layton and the upcoming Studio Ghibli game. And I am cheap. And girly.
And I am now, once again, a world-class Pokemon Trainer. First time back since the late 90s :D
Once I get my internet set up here, I'll be taking all comers. So if you've got a DS and a party-full of Pokemon, then feel free to taste the wrath of my Torterra! Friend-codes, anyone?

Also: I went to go both District 9 and Ponyo. Can you guess which one I preferred?
PONYO WAS WONDERFUL! (On District 9 I know I'm in the minority but it made me sick to my stomach in a kind-of-don't-want-to-see-this-ever-again kind of way, *winces*) I've been seriously considering my fanart options, and this one *might* win out. Some of the scenes were just really sublime. The night-scene after the power-outage, the fish storm, the father-son signal scene and so on. But for me, the cake was taken as soon as the town flooded. I mean: Kids. In a plastic boat. On adventures. Over a sunken town.
Awesome.

I've also just started (and then finished, in the matter of 3 days) reading Scott Pilgrim.
Whoah.
I am really glad I gave that a chance. The american(I know, I know...Canadian)-manga-for-12-year-old-girls look didn't really grab me off the shelf initially, but I'm really hooked. I didn't even know there was gonna be a movie until yesterday! Hooray!
If you don't know what I'm talking about, I highly recommend that you slip off to the nearest bookstore and give "Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life" a chance. No matter how much it may look like it's gunning for the sailormoon market. I'm in love.

And lastly, my friends and I have been guffawing at this particular series of Youtube videos.
If you have never seen them , definitely check out some Viral Video Film School. Some are funnier than others. This one's my favorite: Youtube's Worst Demo Reels.

Hope you guys don't mind this very chatty post. :/
Overall: boredom or no, the Lord has been good to me, and I have been really blessed to be here. Job soon, art soon too!
Thanks for reading, even when there isn't much art I can show!

Cheers,

-Nick

Weighing In

2009-07-16T19:43:00.000-07:00

I loved it.

I am referring to Half Blood Prince. I enjoyed the crap out of it, and I had to throw my blogging hat in the ring, since I have one of these and I've had to withstand much Potterhating since last night from some disappointed coworkers.

Had a great night celebrating a Jackie's birthday, and went to the theater. I was so excited: and here's the real thing...I wasn't disappointed! It was one of the very few movies this summer that didn't totally bum me out!

More than that: I liked it best of all the Potter films so far. The performances just sky-rocketed in quality, as far as I'm concerned. No more than one spit-riddled "POTTER!" from Malfoy, even! And it didn't suck!

Other people are better critics and reviewers than I, so I will resist the temptation to break it down spoiler-style. I just had to air my opinion. See it? Love it? Please?

Also: YAY! AUTO-TUNE THE NEWS 6 IS THE BEST YET!

Much love,

-Nick

Piper's Pet! For Serious! Finally!

2009-07-07T20:37:00.000-07:00

Well...
So, there was a little problem.

You see, a few weeks back my comic for Myspace Dark Horse Presents, Piper's Pet, went live on their site. There was some sort of hiccup in the server, however, and the colors of the entire issue wound up too-green and lemony on some monitors, and completely inverted/yellow-explosion on others. Most viewers seem to have been treated to the yellow explosion variant.

I did, however, get permission from my lovely employers to post the 2 whole pages of it on my blog and deviantart, so that I can share it with the world! (well, you guys at least :D). So, without further ado, Piper:

I hope it's been worth it :D I was really excited to do it, and I am still very pleased with the outcome. It was a very satisfying way to put a cap on my senior year at RISD. It's not a huge epic, but hopefully it touches someone out there, and hopefully some of you who were so supportive to begin with (and were rewarded for your kindness with the electric boogaloo version) will be glad to see the thing as-intended. Colors will now vary only according to your monitor.

Myspace Dark Horse Presents is a great publication, and you can visit them here for more updates by other (more talented) artists. And if you really like this, it will be printed in a future issue of the MDHP Anthology. I keep you posted!

I hope you are well and that you are thoroughly enjoying your summer.

Enjoy and God bless you!

-Nick

Rosemary Reviewed!

2009-07-03T08:07:00.000-07:00

Hello everybody!

I have some news that is blogworthy again, which is exciting!

Over the last semester, there have been a number of things I've worked on that I wasn't allowed to post (Piper's Pet, a 7-pager called "Spring Requiem" for SofaWolf Press, and my work for GAMBIT at MIT among them).

But today the GAMBIT Game Lab has released our work from last semester online!

Sooooo: you can actually download and play our project "Rosemary" here:

Rosemary - A GAMBIT Game

You know what's even cooler? Just a week after it's release, it's been reviewed on Destructoid, and very positively at that! You can read the review here.

Thirdly, there's another game we collaborated on was The Bridge, also just recently released on the GAMBIT site. Our RISD art team were responsible for the background art and monster animation, while the character design and animation were handled by MIT artist Alison Malouf.

I was one of three RISD artists set to work on Rosemary and The Bridge (both projects which had been rolling long before we got there). All the UI, Characters, Settings, Menus, and Intro were drawn up, painted and implemented by myself, Fabiola Garza, and Brandon Cebenka.

I'm actually still working with both of them at the lab over the summer, though this time we're spread across several projects, and we've been involved from the earliest conceptual process in driving the vision for the games!

Credit for the art goes all around, since we were all in eachother's work so much it's actually hard to remember who did what on Rosemary or The Bridge.

I'm working on a particular project right now at the Lab, and I can't wait to be able to unveil when it's published, but it's not even close-to-finished yet, so that may be a few months!

Highly recommended Youtube-ed themes of recent life in Boston:

The Go! Team - Get it Together

and

Amanda Palmer - Astronaut

(I've actually been REALLY into Amanda Palmer these last weeks...her solo album is amazing, and I highly recommend checking her out: she is a singularly weird and fascinating individual. A really powerful lyricist as well. Songs for the not-easily-offended: Strength Through Music, Delilah(better to find recorded version...AMAZING song), Runs in The Family, Leeds United)

Alright, that's it for now! Let me know what you think of the games, sorry to mac users without emulation - Rosemary is PC only!

Much love, and thanks for reading!

-Nick

Speech! (Again)

2009-06-20T22:49:00.000-07:00

Well...ok...
This is weird, and delayed, but this just went online, and I thought some people out there might still be interested in watching it!
(mostly relatives of mine)

Without further ado:

A video of me delivering the commencement speech, RISD class of 2009

And make sure you check out the other speeches if you have the time and interest...everyone should see the speech by Sir Ken Robinsion. It's just a good one.

Much love you guys, thanks for reading!

-Nick

I Think I'm An Adult Now?

2009-06-10T05:35:00.001-07:00

A little praise report, because God is good: I has a job!

For serious, I just signed this and sent it in confirming my acceptance of the position of 'Junior Character Artist' at 38 Studios here in MA!

I'm WAY excited. You can check out their site here.

I'm under strict NDA, so I'm not allowed to talk about the project I'll be working on, but there's some information and concept art that's been released on the site. I think the most I can say is that I'll be working as a Character Artist on an MMORPG codenamed Copernicus. :D

Other news: I'm in Cambridge, Boston with a summer internship at MIT (continued from the Spring semester). I have a great pad, with great friends, and I get to meet a lot of really awesome new people from Singapore! (and make games!)

Speaking of which, I've got to get to work!

Cheers!

-Nick

First Ever Published Comic Work!

2009-06-04T13:08:00.000-07:00

Piper's Pet is live today over at Myspace, Dark Horse Presents!
I'm VERY excited to have this finally hit the web.
Above is just a preview image, and the story is only two pages, but it was a blast and a great way to end the year! (repeat: this is just a preview posted here, THE WHOLE 2 PAGE COMIC IS PUBLISHED HERE) :D

Dark Horse have been really great to work with. The gig was super-simple: they told me I could to a 2 pager or an 8 pager and that I was free to pitch whatever story I wanted to tell.
I met them up at NYComicCon this year (my first comic-con EVER!) and I went straight to the Dark Horse table to get in line with my portfolio. Apparently they liked what they saw and were very quick to offer me the opportunity!

So, please go and check it out. There's no real commenting space there, so feel free to use this post to tell me what you think! If you like it, write Dark Horse and tell them to hire me more :)

If you really like it, and want to support me and the awesome artists at Dark Horse, then wait for the anthology TPB of all the MDHP work to get released, and snag a copy! I'll make an announcement around these parts when that happens.

I feel really glad about this piece. I think it's one of the only ones recently where I've sort of "meant it"...and I'm happy to have ended my RISD career on a high note and with some published work.

I could blab on (you know I can), but I won't. I hope you guys like it...let me know!
Cheers!

-Nick

Commencement Speech for the Class of 2009

2009-05-30T23:28:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone.

I know most people read this blog waiting for new art and sketches. But I hope you won't mind a few more words.

I'll let this stand here as an Ebenezer to the last four years spent at RISD. Here's the commencement speech I delivered today for my classmates and friends in the class of 2009. It was an amazing day; the kind you don't forget. Anybody reading from RISD: I love you guys. Sincerely.

Commencement Speech for the Class of 2009:

Thank you all so much for the incredible privilege it is to speak today.

There are two RISDs

That's something that I‘m sure some of those gathered here may not be aware of, but I think it's incredibly important to mention that truth today.

On one hand we are a rigorous and prestigious academic institution,

alma mater to many influential alumni, boasting a very impressive museum and a list of programs and credentials longer than your attention span.

On the other hand, our mascot's a penis.

I'm sorry, parents, if you weren't aware of this fact. His name is Scrotie, and he's not on any of the brochures.

Our hockey team's called the Nads, our campus plays host to a yearly invasion of students in monster-suits disturbing the peace, and every spring a growing number of students drench themselves in fake blood and march down Thayer street as a zombie horde.

We are smelly, under-slept art students who dance in the streets, work until morning, and shower only as soon as soon as the next portfolio review rolls onto campus.

Now, my purpose is not for a moment to put down the academic side of this school. We owe so much to the dignity and legitimacy of what RISD represents.

Here's what I mean to say: that the graffiti on the walls is as much a part of RISD as the paint that covers it back up.

If you’ve ever had the fortune of meeting someone you fall in love with, isn't it curious how you never fall in love with their list of credentials? You love them for all their quirks and idiosyncrasies, for when they are noble and when they are silly. Warts and all.

So I am here to tell you that RISD has warts and that I love them.

I love them so much, I would stand up in front of all of you to say so.

And I would be completely remiss if I stood up here and glossed over the beating heart of what this class has made of it.

It would be a disservice to all the long nights each and every student has spent laboring to attain this day.

It is a day full of much reflecting on what has been gained from our four years spent here.

So parents, I hope you won't feel scandalized to know that the most of what you've been paying for was so that we could meet each other.

I may walk out of here with loans to pay till I've got children of my own to send to college, but I will pay my part gladly knowing that the experience of being here and the friends I have made are worth the work and the cost.

And I’ve just attended my loan exit meeting, so I know what I’m talking about.

I can't imagine RISD without my friends and the people who have made this campus what it is. To me, the legacy of this place will be its people. I will walk away today knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is the face of a friend I will remember before I recall the diploma in my hand.

I will remember the professors willing enough to stay behind the extra hours, long after pay and duty demanded, to keep teaching the students that were still hungry to learn.

I will remember the friends who stuck around when the night was wearing on and all that was needed was a friendly hug and a word of encouragement to keep going.

I will remember the alumni of this institution that have cared enough for the future of the undergraduates to pass on a portfolio and put in a good word.

I will remember every way in which the people here have gone above and beyond to help, love, and assist.

What's so shocking is not that we have one of the highest freshman workloads in the United States, it's that some of those freshman still find the time to come along after class has ended during finals and pass out food and coffee to exhausted classmates.

If you have come to this place looking just for a grade and a pretty piece of paper, then I'm not sure you're at the right graduation ceremony. I can't imagine that anyone has endured freshman foundations, countless all-nighters, and work-parties just to boost their GPA. The RISD experience is more than the sum of its parts, and its parts are amazing, so that's saying a lot.

And who could know that more than we do? If a painting weren’t worth more than the canvas it’s painted on, who could stomach the RISD store bills?

RISD is more than the halls of its dormitories, the rigorous academic workload, and the picture-lined walls of its museum, and that means everything.

This diploma signifies more than the money spent on gouache, countless shirts rendered unwearable by charcoal, and sleep that never seemed to happen.

And it's that little bit more that's worth all the other bits combined.

It's the mad energy of this place that comes from the love and passion of those who pour themselves into this school. It's beautiful and I am proud to have been a part of it.

For my part, I can say un-ironically: it's been an absolute privilege to be here.

RISD has been the first place I have ever felt so completely accepted for who I am.

I am not sure there's another place like it out there in the real world.

I certainly aim to either find out, or make one of my own.

I will never forget the people I've met here or the lessons I've learned, and I am truly grateful for the blessing it has been to attend.

I hope, while I have been here I have given back something to the community in some meaningful way.

I congratulate all of you, my friends and our families gathered here and everyone who helped to bring the class of 2009 to this last day. Sleep or no sleep: we've made it. I have been honored to sing, dance, cry, joke, and make art with you. Let's not stop.

May God bless you all as richly as I have been blessed just to know you.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Some Words About Leaving

2009-05-28T14:40:00.000-07:00

It's interesting, I've just been reflecting. In previous years it's been true and it's all true again: when the seniors get ready to leave, they check out early. They loose touch and disappear into their rooms and studios and only come back out when the senior week rolls around. (There are exceptions)

But I pretty much did exactly that. Well, not all the way, but I'm emerging out on the other end and realizing that a lot of very good, very important friends have shuffled off campus one by one without a very proper goodbye. At least not from me.

It's also really tempting to want to say something meaningful at a time like this; when the year is closing it seems about time for someone to get up, clink a glass, and give a toast to bring the house down. The trouble is when you have the desire to say something meaningful, without having anything meaningful to say. Then you just wind up sounding like an idiot.

I'm just feeling like I could use the space here on this blog to set down a little marker and really give the end of RISD all it's due. Even if it is just a dumb blog entry that few RISD students may ever read.

All that said: I don't know quite what to say. Which leaves me in the unenviable position of sounding like an idiot. And I'll be giving the commencement speech on Saturday, so what do I need another soapbox for?

So here it is for now: it's done. It meant the world to me and it's over, and now I can only hope the next phase and place is as good as this one. I can have confidence wherever it is, I won't be moving further from the presence of God and his blessings. This has been one of the greatest I've ever experienced, though.

I'm nervous about the future and where to head from here; it's a whole lot sooner that I thought it could be. I hope the best for everyone reading this whose graduating, or staying behind and watching a crop of friends leave: may God bless you guys. I mean that sincerely.

It may be a little bit before I have new work to post, but I'll be keeping this blog up as I move forward!

Very soon my first ever published work will hit the web right here: http://www.myspace.com/darkhorsepresents

And eventually the other comic I've been working on will be published as part of an anthology...I'll keep y'all posted! I've got a summer full of continuing video-game design at MIT with some of my favorite people in the world, and we'll be trying to keep eachother doing work for fun as well. Hopefully the games we worked on this semester will be up soon, and I'll link over to those!

I'm looking into real-person jobs doing real-person art and some really exciting things have been looking likely! All-o-y'all: make sure, even if I get a "real job", that I don't get complacent and stop doing work for fun and for the love of it! If I start dropping off, yell at me!

I need to stop blogging and get back to packing. Just had to type something in!

I updated my blog background, which probably means more updates to the "look" of this blog are on the way! Don't freak out!

My youtube recommendation for the week: a beautiful senior thesis project from an animator at Ringling:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPyjGkZqwUc

Much love,

-Nick

Whoah.

2009-05-14T12:40:00.000-07:00

I just walked out of my final studio class at RISD.
I'm still in shell shock...I didn't even realize it was my last until the end.
The show is tonight :D :D :D
Life is weird.

UPDATE: Show is done! It was amazing! Thanks to everyone who came and packed the place full of love! I've also recently been informed that I'll be the student speaker for our commencement on the 30th! yikes! I'm really excited and nervous. This next week is going to be an odd one, no doubt. Still looking into job stuff: if you want to hire me, soon would be good! I'm having to make decisions really, like, nowish!

-Nick

SHOW!

2009-05-09T10:16:00.000-07:00

Announcement:

EXPLORATORIUM

The last illustration senior show of 2009, featuring the work of Nicholas Kole, Lia Marcoux, Fabiola Garza, Alex Lee, Lisa Cunha, Brandon Cebenka, and Kirsten England will open on:

Thursday, May 14th!

at 6:00pm

in the Illustration Studies Building

It's going to be awesome! Those whom this announcement will actually effect probably already know, but I'm launching an all-out web-campaign so I had to hit this up too :)

For the rest of y'all: Posters! (we're waiting on two last ones. B & Lisa...if you read this: send me the finished posters and I'll post em!)

I Think I Just Peed a Little.

2009-05-07T00:04:00.001-07:00

For context, read text:

Er...Hooray!?

HOORAY!

I just had to geek out about this. I am especially cowed to see whose presence I am in :D

SO COOL!

The actual page is here: http://www.myspace.com/darkhorsepresents

This will be my debut comic gig. I'll be posting more closer to the release, but watch this spot, and the actual DH page for my little two-pager coming soon!

No other major art updates at this time. Just that my senior show will be on this coming Thursday (may 14th!) and that immediately afterwards I'll be interviewing with 38 studios on the 15th! (Good friend, Fabiola, is interviewing today...good luck, Fabi!)

UPDATE:

Baby's second Zbrush! Well, really this is the first actually serious piece. The first was just whatever doodle came out of playing with the move and snakehook tools. I pulled this old character design and used it to base a model off of! It was fun...I'm really enjoying Zbrush. Dunno if I'm much good at it, but hopefully the 3d experience, however basic, will pay off somehow. Still, it's really neat...like making a little toy. I feel the same way when I'm making pixel-art...it's just these little digital assets that feel like collectables. Anyways, i think it was a good self-imposed exercise. Thanks Lucas for the how-to's!

More work soon!

Happy Day!

-Nick

Baby's First ZBrush

2009-04-29T23:01:00.000-07:00

On a whim tonight, I sat at a computer and had a good friend teach me the very basics of using Zbrush! This is my first ever introduction to digital 3d work. All the video-game companies want to see examples 3d expertise. So I figure cosying up to Zbrush is not a bad idea (at least so I can say I've touched it, rather than just being vaguely terrified of it). So, I made this from a ball. It's nothing mind-blowing by any stretch of the imagination, but it's not as scary as I thought it would be to do! And it looks like a face! Like, of a dude!
I still have no idea what all the tools and menu items do. But at least I feel like I can start somewhere.

To those who actually read this stuff: Hi!
Just a quick update before I go to sleep...a few small things to post and a little news!

SOME NEWS:
I've just committed for the summer to extend my stay at the MIT GAMBIT Games Lab for the 8-week summer program with three of my cohorts already in the program. It was awesome, actually...it wound up that there were 2 slots open and 3 of us yet to make the call...so we talked it out and decided to ask if they could accommodate an extra artist...and they totally are helping us figure out how to squeeze a third spot because it would be a little tragic to break the Fellowship. So: yay! The first real adult decision of my life. Not a full-on real job yet, but it gives me time to spend with some of the people I like the most and some time to get prepped for whatever else the 'real world' has to offer. The upshot is, come June 11th, I'll be working at MIT with Fabiola and Brandon.
Guys: It's kind of, like, 2 weeks until things are like...kind of...done here. It's crazy.

OTHER NEWS:
I've been featured by this really neat little blog called Artlibs. They asked for an interview and to fill out a mad-lib...you can read both by scrolling down a little here.

MORE NEWS:
I'll be an officially published comic-artist on June 3rd, when my little two-pager for Dark Horse Studios goes live HERE. SUPER EXCITING! I'll be blabbing about it more as the time approaches, I'm sure.

This week for John Foster: a cover to "Wolverine: Netsuke". It's a comic about Wolverine's Japanese connection, and it needs a fitting cover by next week...so above are the sketches I'll be hearing back about tomorrow. Any favorites, y'all?

And finally, this week's dumb Youtube reccomendation is this: Auto-Tune the News.
It's awesome. I think I'll watch it again. :D
Much more art in the near near future!
In the meantime: sleep!
Thanks for reading!
-Nick

Puckahontas: Painting With All the Colors of the Wrong Frickin Movie

2009-04-23T14:25:00.000-07:00

THE SUN IS OUT THE SUN IS OUT THE SUN IS OUT.

YAY.

I also have art!

This week for Jon (Foster...he's kind of a big deal) we got to do a cover for "A Midsummer Night's Dream". No sketch phase on this one...so pretty much under the gun and in a week with whatever we could come up with (which is, in some ways, how I prefer it).
I am by turns pleased and displeased with this piece. I don't know how to fit it. For myself, I was happier with the lineart phase, and the colors went in a different (albeit, functional) direction on their own. I just don't necessarily equate this palette with Midsummer Night's Dream...I think (what with the Birch trees, too) I've managed to make MSND look very like Pocahontas.
Hmmm.
Also, I've ripped off Magritte. I know, I know...but it's not like he's doing anything with it anymore.
(I had this idea vaguely sketched out, and then my friend Peter said "hey, like Magritte!" and showed me the piece...so then I went with it and made it SUPER like Magritte) :)
I think I should have done a color study beforehand...generally I should just be doing more color studies.
Oh, and this was a nother night-long piece (pencils, inks and color)...a little more time spent than last week's. Digital color in photoshop...the yooojgeual. Which sucks, because I really wanted to bust out the watercolors for this piece...too little time, too little courage.
Did I mention Spring is here?
Yay!
Also: musics! I've recently received a massive dump of J-pop from some very generous and half-asian freshmen. The stand out track this week is from a crazy celtic/japanese combo artist named Kokia! (IGNORE DUMB VIDEO)
And my current jam (played at every opportunity) is mostly unspellable in english and comes from my bee-eff-eff Beth: XI SHUA SHUA!

Since I like the lineart this week, here's that:

Enjoy!

-Nick

Steam Thursday

2009-04-16T17:25:00.000-07:00

The sun is out today...and I am glad.
I have just pulled a pretty rough all-nighter on this piece. I'm pretty pleased with it for all that (it's a personal best for a single-night's work, I think). Still, I'd love to dig in more and respond to some of the critiques to get more light into the foreground onto the characters.
It's a cover for a Steampunk novel called Boneshaker...there was little information given (ie: none) about the plot, but we were told there was a female lead, her son, and some dirigibles. I took some liberties :)
I think the tone of the book was much more adult...grim-gritty realism and all that. But if I'm being given a little wiggle room...:p
I need to get some sleep and take a little break from working. It's been a mad week and it doesn't look like the semester's going to let up. I'm going to try getting some more sleep in the coming weeks...I always forget how gross the world seems when you haven't slept. Ick.
Anyways, next week there will be another cover: Midsummer Night's Dream! Should be good fun.
Other quick news: job hunting is looking good from this vantage point. Waiting to hear back on a lot of things. Hope you enjoy this little piece and thanks for reading!
-Nick

Steam on the Horizon

2009-04-10T15:54:00.000-07:00

And that's that!
Not much in the way of work to show at the moment, but plenty of news on the horizon!
I've braved the my senior Illustration Portfolio review and it went very well! It's been a crazy week, just prepping for it, but I've made it through the other side with a snazzy print-portfolio to keep showing around.
Marvel were a no-show at the event: ":("
But Microsoft and Blizard are coming soonishly! So there's still something to dress nicely for in the near future.
The big news today is that Piper's Pet is done and sent off to Dark Horse. I'm awaiting their feedback to that end, but I am very excited about it. The bad news for y'all is that you're unlikely to see any of it until summer is in swing. Still, I'm really glad to have done that. It was a great experience and a lot of fun to do. Here's to many more! :p
All throughout Piper's I've been on this weird Jpop kick again. I know this will not be interesting to all or any of y'all, but I always think it's fun to share music that's been stuck in my head with everyone. This happens every time I work on a big piece...I always wind up with one song in particular that I repeat back again and again.
So:
Ayumi Hamasaki - Trauma
and, today: Gackt - Mizerable

(I went through so much troublle just now trying to find that Ayumi Hamasaki song online. I have the file, but it was unlabeled. So I had to guess the lyrics from some of the sounds and search them up and match the phonetic japanese lyrics with what I was hearing. :p I'm obsessed)
This sort of proves what my friend Robyn's been saying...there's a little asian girl trapped inside me somewhere. Weird.

Also, the next piece to look out for should be good fun. It's for Jon Foster again and we're doing the cover for a vague steampunk-ish novel (vague as in, we didn't get much/any plot info) called Boneshaker. All we really knew was that there's a lady, her son, and some zeppelins. Suits me right down to the ground! Here are some sketches for that...finish in a week :D

Muties, Business Cards, and Pets for Pipers.

2009-04-02T18:39:00.014-07:00

Hey all!
Sorry for the silence. I didn't have much to show, so I prefer to wait until I do to jabber to the anonymous intarwebs.
Above is my latest piece for Jon Foster (and the product of a day and night's work including breaks for food, RCB, and a Dentist appointment). It's been a crazy day.
We were assigned to re-do the cover to Marvel's Muties #1, a story in which a picked-on kid (Jared) comes to school to shoot the jocks who have made his life miserable, and ends up finding out that the main jock (Dunk) is a mutant, who he shoots in cold blood. Fun. Then the kid's hailed as a hero for killing a mutant and we're out.
So that fun-filled angst-a-coaster called back all the fun of high school. I went with this option because it was the only one I was a little bit excited about that I could complete under deadline, and it meant I got to make up awkward high school characters :) (all of whom were individually illustrated and inked, even the cropped ones...it was an exercise in baby-killing to crop, shrink, and degrade them to yearbook quality.) It was probably most fun naming them :)
It's pretty specific to the book itself, but I hope you enjoy it. At least you know what I've been doing with my time recently.

I went on a very pleasant Spring Break to see my friend Beth in Virginia, and now I am back to the grind of assignments. This time is going to be intense. I have a LOT of work to do in very little time. It was a little weird coming back to school from what must have amounted to my last Spring Break ever and knowing that this is kind of the last leg. I know I'm likely to depress the crap out of some people out there, so I'll shut up about that for now.
Still, this next bit is going to be HAIRY. I'm looking down the barrel of a massive amount of comic-book work that still needs to be completed (read: polished, pencils are done...it's all inks and colors from here). And to add heat to already tight deadlines, this upcoming week is our Portfolio review (companies coming to chat with juniors and seniors and exchange business cards) and this year, for the first time I've seen, MARVEL STUDIOS is coming to RISD. So, yeah, that's sort of a thing.
In preparation for that, I have some business card designs I've been working on. My favorite of which, that I think I'm gonna send to the printers post-haste, is this:

Let me know what you think!
Other news: I've just been given permission to say so: One of the secret comic projects I've been alluding to is a project for Dark Horse Studios! (yay!) It's just a two-pager, but I'm quite excited about it. It will be published in an upcoming issue of Myspace Dark Horse Presents. Then bound up and published in an anthology of that work that will be available on amazon.com!
Yup: my first legit published gig! I'm excited, and I will be keeping y'all updated as it develops. I can't show much, of course. But I think I can say, it's called "Piper's Pet" and it's about fishing. That's all you get for now :p

Also: Ok. I know everyone's not likely a Counting Crows fan out there...but they are one of my favorite bands. I've recently rediscovered a song they did for none other than the "Mr. Deeds" Soundtrack. They actually exclusively wrote a song for (and about) that film which failed completely to lodge itself in the canon of great American films. However the song rocks, and it's my musical recommendation for today. It's SUPER hard to track down. I don't know this guy, and I'm not recommending watching his slide show, but it's the only place I could find the song:

Counting Crows - Goin' Down to New York Town

God is good. Thanks for reading. More work soonish!
-Nick

"The Back's on The Front." Moby Dickery

2009-03-18T21:10:00.000-07:00

Moby Dick!

This week, for Jon Foster's cover-to-cover class, we got to bring a sketch of Moby Dick to finish. I brought a bunch of thumbnails in last week for him to peruse...many types and kinds, and found myself once again in the predicament of choosing whether or not to go with what the teacher recommended. I kind of always am tempted to go with the action shot...something epic and sweeping. It's what I like, and I assume it's what people like to see as well. However, he liked the ever so slightly more conceptual approach of the back-sketch.
(for those not in the know, one of the main characters in Moby Dick is Queequeg...a cannibal harpooner with tattoos all over his body) So I decided he was right, in the end, and I did the back piece. I was less interested in painting a dude's back than I was in painting the whale-in-the-air-jaws-wide-flailing-Ahab picture, and the beginning of the piece was rough. Overall, though, I'm actually really jazzed with how it came out!
I'm particularly suprised because I started out so unenthused about this idea...and the lineart was really lame, but once the painting went down I was really into it. So here are the fruits of my labor. We'll see how it goes over in crit tomorrow!
And while you can't see it all right now, you'll have to trust me that this is the least of my work at present. The MIT gig is going well...although the work is strictly under-wraps...the art-team brought the pain this week and our bosses actually had to ask us to do less work (which is an odd thing to be asked, really...especially coming from RISD). But I am happy to oblige and really excited about SPRING BREAK. Which is, like, now. (well, it starts Friday)
I am going to see a friend in Virginia and intend to chillax to the absolute max.

Also: I have been unable to drive this song and it's video from my brain recently. If you haven't seen it yet, I encourage you to take a look. It's hilarious...I'm on a Boat.

Oh, and here's my doofy lineart for this piece. I'm posting this partiularly because I think the contrast between the lineart and the finish is kind of hilarious. :p

Propaganda Turkey and The Last Charge of the Carboard Brigade

2009-03-05T13:05:00.000-08:00

He liked it!

So, I bit the bullet and went for it...I did PROPAGANDA TURKEY. :p
Just got out of Jon's class today and the critique went very well. There were some really neat pieces on the wall today, and we had a pleasant day of critiquing among friends.

Among today's pieces was Lia Marcoux's cover here, and Fabiola Garza's here, go check em out!

Also, my friend Jen Hom just finished a piece she's been laboring over for WEEKS and it's finally up online. Throw some love this way.

Other news: I'm CRAZY busy with work. The MIT Internship is going very well (though I'm really swamped with work...we're going to have fun with this one, I'm sure! It'll be a long weekend of game art and comics.

I've gotten my two-pager for Dark Horse approved...so I'll be developing that (expect to eventually see it online with Dark Horse in the coming months). I'm really excited about that one!

Tonight, I am going to see my little sister in a production she's performing in at Wheaton College...I'm excited!
Otherwise I am keeping sane as much as possible despite being frequently assailed by madness at every turn.
I am insistent that this semester will not break me...but it will be a squeeze, for sure!
If I graduate peacefully it will be but for the grace of God. :) (But he's good at that sort of thing)

Other news: This week was my third and final THUNDERDOME here at RISD (an event I helped conceive of a few years ago where students with angst and delusions of grandeur craft cardboard and duct-tape armor and then meet on Nickerson Green to beat the crap out of eachother with foam pool noodles.) It was AWESOME. It has solidified the notion in my mind: I will miss RISD very dearly when I leave this place...
For anyone reading who was there, thanks for making it a blast!

Next week for Cover-to-cover: Moby Dick!

:D :D :D

God bless and thanks for reading!
-Nick

Ben's Thumbs

2009-02-27T08:03:00.000-08:00

Hey,

A brief update today:
Just finished the first round of Jon Foster and it was less scary than anticipated. Our assignment this week was to propose 12 or more thumbnail ideas for a cover to Ben Franklin's biography, and then to choose one you liked and develop it further. This week we'll be taking one of them to finish.
So, above are my thumbnails! I started out caring very little for Ben Franklin and now I kind of like him, having done a little research. The one sketch I chose to elaborate on is from an anecdote my friend Beth told me out of his Autobiography whereupon Ben is appointed to some clerical governmental position. While the other men debate and carry on their business, Ben is so bored that he begins to doodle compulsively just to keep himself awake.

Still, Jon liked a lot of the thumbnails, including Kite-Head and, surprisingly enough, Propaganda-Turkey. He liked that one ALOT.

So, I'm torn between doing something sort of 'subtle' and 'tasteful' or biting the bullet and just going straight Turkey with this. What do you guys think?

Finish next week!

Snowstorms, Tetris, and Smart-People-School

2009-02-18T19:22:00.000-08:00

Hey all!

First and foremost: Watch the above! It's finally here, as promised...my Music Video final! I'm really psyched to have this thing hit the web finally. Hopefully someone out there will enjoy it. MAJOR credit to my cinematographer/cameraman/all around buddy Andrew Fogel and to DJ Vainglory for making this happen!
Mom, Grandma, Etc - Sorry for the brief "language". :(

It's been a little while since my last post, but I'm back and now the Spring (and my final) semester has begun at RISD! (I'M GRADUATING! MAY 30th!)

It's nuts.

Anyways. Spring couldn't be further from the truth tonight. It's actually snowing in Providence again, after a beautiful and smile-inducing few days of unabated sunshine, we're back in the dark wet cold.
Still, it's been a good week and I have been richly blessed...
if the only thing I have to complain about is the snow, then I'm doing alright.

This week marks the official beginning of my Internship with the MIT GAMBIT Games Lab. Which is AWESOME.
I'm really excited...myself and the other Interns are straight to work, but I think we're all glad to have real work to do. I do regret to say that I won't be allowed to post any of the work I do online. Which means I'll probably shut up about it, too.
So...yeah...shutting up. :)

Other news: classes have begun and I WILL be allowed to post some of that work. Which will include comic work as well as the products of a book cover illustration class with Jon Foster!

I just saw Coraline last night. And...I won't wax too poetical about it. I loved it. It was beautiful. I'm going again.
Yeah. Pay-for-it-twice-even-though-you're-in-college kinda beautiful.

Speaking of which: I haven't been this tempted to buy a console since I realized there was Gundam game on the Dreamcast.
Except then I did buy the console, and this time I'm just going to be bothering my friend Izak and using his.
One word: Flower.
Holy wow.
That game is amazing. I'll wax a little poetical on this one: It's what games could be. It's utterly gorgeous. For those unfamiliar: you play as the wind.
You blow on the flowers and they bloom.
They bloom into a musical crescendo.
...
Flowers.
Music.
Blooming.
It's like a dream about flying. I teared up. My friend Kirsten actually cried.
Yeah.

Good week.
God Bless and Enjoy the video!

-Nick

Monk Over Matter and NYCC!

2009-02-05T15:20:00.000-08:00

Hey all!
Back for one last "Monster" class illustration.
This week's theme was "Metamorphosis". Yes, last week's was "Transformation" and I'm just as confused as you are. Still, I decided that Metamorphosis would represent a more inwardly-driven change, while transformation could be the result of outward force or somesuch.
Anyways, I was going nuts, because I've been giving a lot of attention to my Music Video final (which should be OFF THE HOOK, by the way, and up posted up here within the week!) and I had very little time to get a piece together for "Monster". I went through a few pages of ideas I wasn't thrilled about until it was getting too late for ambition and I just had to make something or face the shame of a workless class.
The result is above, and it's the result of some personal reflection on madness and sanity. I think the themes are pretty plain, so I won't bore everyone with more chatter. I hope someone out there finds it the least bit interesting :p

Other news: this weekend is absolute madness! I'm going up to Boston on Saturday for my orientation with the MIT GAMBIT Games Lab, and then from there myself and two of my compatriots are going to get our ticket-money's worth at the New York Comic-Con! Anyone else going to be there on Sunday? Hopefully it should be fun...I've never been to a Comic-Con before!

Otherwise, next semester will begin soon and I'll be making plenty more work as classes start :)
In the meantime, accept this meager offering. I may post some of the sketch-work I've been doing over the last few weeks soon, just to keep this space active. And, of course, the video :p

Lineart here:

Apples Alive!

2009-01-29T14:06:00.000-08:00

Hello again!
Another week, another manic overnight piece for 'Monster' class, as promised! As I mentioned last post, this week's theme was "Transformation".

(Nobody in class seems to have noticed yet, but none of my pieces for 'Monster' actually feature any "monsters" even though I am generally the sort that is inclined to use any excuse to design a nasty critter!)

This week, I was thinking about Harvest Moon:
I. love. that. game.
It's such a silly concept, and I get endless amounts of crap from people about it, but there is something utterly charming about a video-game with so little pretense. Your farm. You fish. You woo. There's no "bad-guy" and no epic, windswept adventure to be whisked away on (as much as I love those, too). It's like "Shire: the Video-Game". Without the scouring part.

Anyways, I'd love to be involved with a project in my life that is as sweet and unassuming as Harvest Moon...I really love the whole genre of simpler, cuter video-games like that...I think the world could use more.
So...thinking about that, among other things (how much I love road-side fruit-stands) I decided that smiling apples that came to life and smoked tiny pipes would be a neat idea. I had more involved plans for the illustration, but it came down to what I could do in a day and a night with other social obligations thrown in. I wound up starting color on this last night at 1:30 :(

Anyways, It's done and now I'm looking to get some "sleep".

But, before that: news!
I just got word, and it's confirmed. I'm one of 5 RISD students who are going to be spending some of the next semester (10 hours a week) in and out of MIT for the GAMBIT Games Lab as paid Interns! (plus credit!) I'm REALLY excited. If you're interested in hearing what the whole thing's about, then click here.

Among the other Interns are my very good friends, Brandon and Fabiola (who you should totally check out!)

It's going to be a really neat semester. I'll be sure to share anything I'm allowed! (no idea if I will be able to, though)

Other than that, not much else to report on this end. I am in a strange place of feeling really thankful and blessed and being ready to fall over and sleep for a week. Which I may go ahead and do...

Cheers!

-Nick

Turn up your Volume for Higher Maths! -or- My Teeth Aren't Really That Yellow

2009-01-26T10:41:00.000-08:00

Do you enjoy music? How about videos? Do you love fun? Balloons? High-fives?
Me too.
That song I posted with the last entry? Yeah...I had a Music Video assignment for my Music Video class and I couldn't think of a song I like more right now.
But the dilemma is thus: I don't know anything about fractals or equations and am under a very short deadline! What to do? I love a song about math, but I don't love math.

So I made a music video about...well, let's just say it's about how much I love the song, and makes minimal reference to actual fractals. Ok: no reference.

I went to the basement of the Film/Animation/Video department and holed up for two nights with some friends and some balloons...the result is above, and I hope someone out there will enjoy it! :D I had a lot of fun, and for such a silly, quick, animation/video assignment, I'm really pleased with how it came out! Props to Lia Marcoux and Liz Mooney for hanging out and being my attractive lady-type assistants :)

It's only part of the song. The assignment was only to do 1min of stop-motion animation...and this is already over 2min.
I'm really excited for my music-video final...I have a DJ friend set to the task of mixing up some power-metal to some pop/video-game music and I've got a few ideas up my sleeve. Anyways, more pictures to come this week...
In the meantime, I hope it is sunny where you are. It is here.

Enjoy!

-Nick

Also: (and this is so this doesn't become a hidden secret of mine) But, if you think you might like to hear/watch some ESL Danish candy-pop brain-crack, I highly recommend:

Alphabeat - 10,000 Nights of Thunder

Alphabeat - Fascination

The word is on your lips.
Say the word.

:D

Sorry for all those with "taste".

Winter After Christmas and the Silent Stones

2009-01-23T11:54:00.000-08:00

"Why, Nick" you might say, "You have a habit of drawing small men against large monolithic structures...kind of a lot...stop it."
Well, I won't. And I've done it again.
I originally wasn't going to post this piece, because it was really quickly put together, but it got a pretty positive reception in class, so I decided I'd put put it up for the Internet to see as well. Just in case it's worth it...and at any rate it's all I can put up right now. (I'm working on some other stuff, but I can't post it).
This was this week's in-class assignment; the prompt was "Invasion".
So, like the senior I am, I went off down whatever tangent I found compelling until I came up with a piece that is more or less completely nothing to do with Invasion. Ah, well.
I was thinking about some of the movies we've been watching in class (it's a class called Monster about...well...monsters) and about how much I really, genuinely, vehemently and in lots of ways dislike the Horror genre. Among them, I really hate this tendency to leave the audience with the bleakest of all possible endings. But at the same time, it's really fascinating to me...the obsession we seem to have with hopelessness. Anyways, I was sure I wasn't going to talk much about this, so I'll stop, but I did want to do something about bleakness since it's something that's so prevalent in the subject matter I'm studying. Horror films, man...not my bag. (And neither is winter after Christmas-time...so the combination is pretty nasty) Even so, God is still good.
Hope y'all enjoy it...It was kind of funny showing the linework around...people seemed to really respond to it, but they were describing a much more colorful and thrilling scene...Not sure if that's just because it's expected of me, or if I'm just not very good at composing a 'bleak' image. :p
Anyways, here's that:

Next week is "Transformation". Fun!

And this piece was done (inked and colored) almost entirely to this song:

(best video, half the song:)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ES-yKOYaXq0

(whole song, lame video:)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIlwFpz9s_I

I LOVE Jonathan Coulton, and I know NOTHING about higher math or fractals. Except what's in this song. Which I recommend you try.

:D

-Nick

Happy Caged-Glo-Frog Day!

2009-01-17T10:55:00.000-08:00

Hey all!
I know I've been rather unproductive lately, but now I'm back at school, and the irresistible impetus of deadlines has me working dutifully again! This is the first real piece of the new year (happy 2009, everybody!). It was an assignment from one of my Wintersession classes (Monster: we talk about...well...monsters and stuff. It's neat!). We were asked to do a piece based on the concept of beauty vs. repulsion. Predictably, I went off on a thoroughly Illustrative, "man, I'd like to something blue and glowy" tangent and the result is what you see above! I was actually thinking about (we had just watched Cocteau's "Beauty and the Beast" in class) the moment that occurs in many fairytales where the just or generous spirit disguises itself as something repulsive in order to test the protagonist and offer them a decision. I think it's neat that it seems to be a concept we understand in a broader storytelling sense; it pops up a lot. I think it's an important idea...that things may not appear as they seem: "entertaining angels unawares" (Hebrews 13:2) and all that.

So I was thinking about the moment in Beauty and the Beast (the Disney version, anyways) when the Old Hag offers the prince a rose. The result is this. "How do you arrive at glowing froggies?" you may ask. I could make up some great, swaggering "ART" statement about my motivations and genius...but really it, like much else, is the result of a frustrated evening of banging one's head against the table until th stupid idea you have suddenly seems like a good one :p My friend, Jen Hom, and I were talking about getting this piece done (how I wasn't) and the ideas I was interested in...how roses and flowers were off limits.
J: "I...er, like lanterns!"
N: "What about...glowing frogs in birdcages?"
J: -censored for those with delicate sensibilities-
Proof positive, that being an artist with deadlines means that even your latest, silliest, most spur of the moment spontanaety can be exchanged for hours of screen-gazing and wrist ache! ;)

(bee-tee-dubs, Jen Hom is now online with the rest of the RISD crew at DeviantArt :p) Check her out here!

Here's the lineart for the piece...I actually collaged it together because I ran out of page in my sketchbook!

Also, for those with time and interest (who haven't seen it already): this guy's lecture is AMAZING!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPAO-lZ4_hU

Here at RISD, I'm working on my last half-a-year before graduating...which means I'll be a busy guy! I'm currently looking into a few job and internship possibilities that could be really exciting! As well as continuing on my little comics mystery project, trying to pull together an anothology of RISD student work, and attempting to survive.
Hope you enjoy this new piece...expect more soon!

Cheers!

-Nick

Yule Tidings.

2008-12-24T15:53:00.000-08:00

:D

Just a quick note, and again no images this time.
I just wanted to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas (to those who celebrate, and to those that don't) I hope and pray that the Lord will show you much of his love during this season and I hope you find time to rest and be merry. Sing songs! Drink Eggnog! etc!

Also:
The Muppet Christmas Carol: Best Christmas Movie of All Time?
discuss.

Cheers and thanks for reading!

-Nick

In which a great deal is said, and little is seen.

2008-12-16T18:15:00.000-08:00

Just for fun, and because I can: A post!
I am home for the Holidays, and I am lagging like online Stratego circa 2001! So, it's something like 3am in the morning here, but of course I haven't bothered to set my clock back yet so I know full well that it is 9:18pm in America. I have found one of the two spots in the house where the wireless signal is functioning, and have settled in the narrow space between the couch and the TV to write a little note to the wide open web for any who care to read. Weirdly enough, I don't have any art to post or anything professionally significant to announce...I just figured, since I have a blog, I may as well post since I seem to be too tightly wedged here next to the TV to do anything else.
Actually, I've written an essay or two this semester that I thought might be worth sharing with y'all (henceforth, any reference to "you" "you guys" or "y'all" will assume I am talking to those who are actually interested in reading so far down this graphically unadorned posting. If you're one of those still reading: shame on you! don't encourage me.) This semester I took a class with an amazing professor named Dan Cavicci. The class, "Audience", was a study of the concept and idea of audiences throughout history. Sounds strange at first, but it's really rich and fascinating stuff when you get down to it. It's brought to mind a conversation I've been having a lot recently and I began to skew my essays and general focus in the way of the Internet. I actually just went out to eat with the parents of a friend at school and we had a very long and animated talk over dinner about parenting and the responsibilities of the media-maker in the post-Internet world. Fascinating stuff, almost knocked over the water.

The latest essay was meant to run in a more autobiographical bent, and so I've decided to take advantage of one of those things that the Internet is so famous for providing: putting my crap out there to see if there are likeminded people out there crossing my digital path. Hopefully someone out there might even be amused:

READ MY CRAP!

I edited it down and added a few things for this version, but it's most of the original essay.
There's TONS more to say, and I know I talk a lot, but given the subject matter I couldn't resist attempting to post it and see what people thought.

That's that, then. I've been spending my newfound free time surfing youtube with friends who are likewise adjusting poorly to having no immediate work to do. While doing so, I was trying to explain Europe, the Eurovision Song Contest, and why "Lordi" was such a revelation...so I subjected several friends to the following two videos:
(beware: LAME!)

part 1:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Xb9LXuROGI

part 2:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xbk4pxXj_P0

Also: I know my website is not properly working on Internet Explorer. I'll be getting to work fixing that in the next few weeks (allow Christmas lag :p)
I'll be working on a number of projects soon enough...I can't stay away from making artwork for very long, after all. I won't make many more of these imageless posts, so don't give up on me just yet!

I hope you are all well and continue to wish you a very Merry Christmas!

Much love,

-Nick

www.nicholaskole.com!

2008-12-10T15:24:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone!

That's it, as of today: finals are over! I am done and officially one semester closer to graduating from RISD in the Spring! Weird.

Also: as of right now, http://www.nicholaskole.com is live!
My last final was Web Design and the result of it is out and about on the world wide web for all to see...that's right, I now have my own official website! I'm really excited...I dunno why it seems like a big deal, but the "dot com" helps to make it feel all neat and official (so does the favicon, which is so silly as to be preposterous, but it doesn't stop me geeking out about it).
Please go and check it out and drop me a comment. Definitely update your links and bookmarks if you have em and spread the word! :D If people are interested in having a banner to link me with, then let me know and I'll make a few.

It's very new and there are doubtless some bugs to work out, so let me know how it works for you. I'm pretty pleased with the design myself, but I'd really like to hear what everyone thinks!
A large portion of the credit is due to Peter Lefferts (programmer and co-designer of Selah, incidentally) for walking me through the trickiest bits and telling me when I was being stupid. By the end now I really actually feel like I kind of understand how to do it, which is neat...especially when I decide I want to redesign it/design a new page (webcomic, anyone?)

In other news: I'm going Home on Sunday. Which is an unspeakably relieving idea at the moment...I'm really looking forward to what my be my last Christmas in Austria. And I love Christmas so much that generally I'm just looking forward to the break. I fully intend to watch The Muppet Christmas Carol until the tape breaks and I have to buy a new copy.

I'll be working a bit over the break as well...I'm actually going to be doing a 6-ish page story for an upcoming comics Anthology called Seasons. More on that, I cannot say, but it ought to be pretty exciting. It's looking to be my first published comics work, so I'm going to be kicking my butt to get it looking nice :D

Otherwise, thanks for reading and if I don't post before the bless-ed day: Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good...site.

awwwwww....pun-cramp.

-Nick

A Good Day.

2008-12-06T01:30:00.000-08:00

-text-

-no text-

Hey Guys!
Here it is: the last assignment for Shanth Enjeti's 'Character Creation' class. The prompt was simple: take two characters that you've designed and rework them. Then, illustrate a scene with both characters. This is the result of all those color studies and a long battle with the idea over the week. I just couldn't bring myself to pull out the purple, being that Kojo was so engrained in my head as this misty green/blue palette. The whole idea is kind of based out of dream-imagery for me and so I've been very attached to the concept from the get-go...and it can be hard to subject those kinds of things to a classroom critique situation.

One of the things to tackle was that this illustration, just by the nature of having this big nasty monster in it, had to have that ominous feeling...had to scream "RUN!", so it couldn't get too "pretty". And overall I was realy just pursuing the vision I had for the project in the beginning.
Anyways...this felt SO GOOD to do, I can't even tell you! It's been such a long semester of single-shot character designs against plain-backgrounds that getting to sink my teeth into something with a composition and story was just so nice. Like coming home :)

I'm quite pleased with the outcome, and it went over really well in class! It's such a bittersweet thing, finishing up this class. I feel like I've learned a LOT about character design and how to approach my work in general and I love the people and the dynamic so much that I really don't want to leave, but on the other hand I can hardly wait to get home for the holidays.

In fact, I am very excited to come home to Vienna for Christmas this year! It's going to be great to go home, and I have some exciting work to be playing with over the break that will show itself around here soon enough, I'm sure! I've got a few ideas that I'm sorting through and hopefully I'll get a chance to do come comic-book work soon. I've got some killer classes coming up next semester...two with Jon Foster (I'm bracing myself for a significant workload). I'm also starting to work through the first stages of a project I'm sure I'll be talking about more here later...myself and a friend will be endeavoring to create an anthology of RISD comic work by the end of Spring semester and independently publish...could be really cool!

I just got back in from Caroling with my friends, which was an entirely pleasant experience. Any opportunity to sing in public, really. And I REALLY love Christmas :)

Also: Very soon my personal artist's website will be due, which means that very soon my site will be online. I can't show anything just yet...I'd like it to be a surprise, but I think it's looking pretty neat...I'll be interested to think what people think of it when they see it!
It is extremely late here in Providence and I think I'll head to bed. Thanks for reading and enjoy!
-Nick

A Portent of Things to Come!

2008-11-22T00:12:00.000-08:00

UPDATE:
My teacher liked my least favorite and most last minute color study (purple) the best :p That happens a lot...once again, the tighter you hold something...
So I've done a few variations on that layout with some modifications from crit and some color schemes I'd be much more pleased to work out for the final piece. It's fun, doing these! Anyways, I'm posting these to show process and also because I need a link to refer my prof to so he can check up on my progress (I'm partial to the middle one, but that's because that's the palette I'm envisioning Kojo in, and it's a little hard for me to stray too far from that here)

Well, finals are upon us all over here! Things are starting to move towards completion and I'm prepping to say a tearful goodbye to Character Creation class :( For our final assignment we were charged with redesigning/tweaking two of our preexisting characters and doing a variety of color studies for a final piece in which the two (protagonist and antagonist) confront each other. SO: I'm doing a Kojo piece, since I seem to have stumbled across a new little world to develop.
It's been hard because the idea for Kojo kind of came in a bit of a dream (not to get too weird or pretentious) but It's hard to let go of that imagery and color palette even for the good of the piece. Anyways, the top study is my favorite to that end, but here were a few studies I put together for today. I also did some redesign sketches for Kojo and his foe (the big white element in all the sketches stands graphically for what will be the montser) but I'm still working on redesigning the two of them, so I won't post those just yet. It's been a rough week, but I think I'm coming out of the woods! It's been a lovely weekend thusfar, and I can hardly wait for Thanksgiving break! I am in need of a change of scenery and some serious stuffing!

Oh, and before I forget, part of this crazy week was having a portfolio review with Genndy Tartakovsky (creator of Dexter's Lab, Samurai Jack, Clone Wars etc.) which was WAY neat. Although I did leave the meeting feeling very vaguely that he disliked my work, aparently that was not the case. Still, he did mention a lack of readability in terms of value-range in my work and so I spent a good while of this week's process hitting the drawing board with a lot of simple value studies. I actually left the interview and immediately went to my room to work on little value studies. So that y'all can see how I think through this sort of stuff, here's those:

Also: I just snuck away with some friends to see Disney's 'Bolt'. Which (having no expectations to begin with) was pleasantly surprising. Really nice color and background painting, and excellent character design. Bolt himself was freakin' CUTE as crap. And the gestalt of the little group running around, chubby hamster in ball, emaciated cat, and huge-headed pup, was rally nice. Some really touching and sincere character animation as well. I do not regret seeing it, and would reccomend you not write it off completely if you're considering seeing it.

Well, I'm going to get some much-needed sleep...but be on the lookout: In the next two weeks I'll be finalizing a redesign on Kojo and the monster, putting together a full-sized finished piece based off of one of these studies, and finally putting together and launching my website! Fun!

Much Love and Enjoy!

-Nick