"Fly Free" Hawk Plate and Gamer for Life Art Book Tribute to KKG

This is the longest I've gone without blogging for quite awhile, but I'm aiming to get back in the saddle again.

A few months ago, one of my close friends, Kevin K. Griffith, passed away, and for awhile I simply didn't have the bandwidth for a lot of things like blogging. Over the past few months I have been creating new art and writing, though, and in the coming months I'm also aiming to create a sort of standing memorial post to his art here on my blog, but, well, first thing's first: I have quite a lot to catch up on.

"Fly Free" - Plate

 

"Fly Free" - Fired Plate - Completed on November 1, 2014

The final few months of 2014 were rough for many, myself included. Weeks after Kevin passed away, some of my family and friends gathered to celebrate my Birthday by painting ceramics. I wasn't sure exactly what I wanted to paint (and wasn't necessarily in the mood to create art), but I wanted it to be something with meaning to me. So, after some thought, I worked to painted a red tailed hawk flying free.  It seemed appropriate under the circumstances.

Glazing is always guesswork, because you never know how the colors will turn out until they are fired. I've slowly been getting the hang of layering the various glazes, though, and this plate ended up nearly as I'd imagined it. It's around 8 inches in diameter and was painted freehand.

  

 

"Gamer for Life: A Fan Art Tribute for KKG" Art Book

 

Primal Fury - Altered Beast Fan Art - Project KKG - Completed on February 3rd, 2014

Last year I posted a detailed walk through of the above piece of Altered Beast fan art, which I made specifically for Project KKG. During this call to action, 283 artists came together from around the world to create art based on games Kevin loved in order to support he and his wife in their time of trial. Kevin fought an incredibly rare form of cancer, Alveolar Soft Part Sarcoma (ASPS) cancer, and unfortunately in Oct. 2014, he passed away prior to the campaign going live.

While the original intent was for all of the proceeds will go directly to paying for treatment, instead the purpose of the book was re-examined after Kevin's passing, and the organizers opted to transform the love that had been poured into the art for the book into a tribute book entitled "Gamer for Life: A Fan Art Tribute for KKG."

The proceeds from the sales will be going to two different charity organizations related to cancer, and the Indiegogo campaign for it is still open for another week if you're interested in finding out more about the campaign or purchasing an art book of your own.

Myself and many other artists have donated hundreds if not thousands of hours to make this project a reality, and I hope others are able to enjoy the spirit of hope and solidarity that went into making it, even if Kevin isn't around to enjoy it with us.

You only have so much time in this life, so make sure to make it count.

I hope all of you are well, and thank you again for taking the time to read my blog. 

Nature, Art, Writing, and the Possibilities Approaching "Balance"

The smile of someone who is at present, exceptionally busy and craves balance.

The last few weeks have been exceptionally busy for me, and amid the general craziness of life, I've been doing what I can to work towards getting things back in balance.

I went on three separate trips (one for work and two for pleasure), which meant a lot of the productive creative schedule and routine I had going was interrupted by travel and an assortment of adventures. It also meant that the time I've had book-ended around these events has definitely been a lot more jam-packed than usual, and even with other busy periods on the horizon (BlizzCon, I'm looking at you here), I'm understandably eager for things to settle down so I can dig back in to personal projects with renewed gusto.

Travel Tidings

 

Seeing friends from near and far on my adventures to Seattle, San Diego, and San Francisco was a wonderful breath of fresh air! It's always such a blast meeting up with old friends and new friends alike to get together and be raptors just have fun and be myself. I certainly wish we had lush woods or towering redwood forests a bit nearer to me! They were exceptionally calming places to visit.

Art Adventures in all Shapes and Sizes!

It seems that part of my methods of trying to obtain a state of zen and stability during times like these is three-fold: 1.) Increased cleaning, 2.) Increased organization, and 3.) Increased beautification. I've been doing a lot of all three of these things these last few weeks, and one of the more notable examples of this is my tenacity for getting some art up on walls both at work and at home.

The first of these pieces was a 30 x 40 inch all-acrylic painting that you can read about here. It's one of my favorite paintings that I've ever done, and I've had it up on nearby walls for many years since, but it's never been framed. The few times I'd looked into getting it framed, I'd simply balked at the price and told myself I'd get around to it "some other year." For some reason, I thought it was time to finally dig in and "git er done," as it were. I was very pleased with the result, which I've hung above my desk at work with a bit of overhead accent lighting. :)

"Ethereal Tree" Completed on April 6th, 2006

 

I also attended the first class of a "Sculpting the Figure from Life" class held at Blizzard last week! I'm really having fun working with Chavant NSP hard clay, and am eager to see how this personal project evolves in the coming weeks!

The bare bones of my next sculpture.

I also decided it was high-time I get to hanging up some of the loads of framed and matted original art I have at home! Here's a glimpse at some of the many pieces that are now hanging on the walls. You may notice a bit of a theme of familiar characters running through them, and that's no coincidence: over the years I've often commissioned artists to create their own interpretations of my story's characters. In addition to being gorgeous to look at, their presence on my walls also reminds me on a regular basis that I need to keep on writing so I can share my stories with others out there so others can see why this motley crew means so much to me!

Art by Gabby Vee, Malikaa, Emma, Kimberly Swan, MurderousAutomation, Caroline Muchmore, Nambroth, Sixth Leaf Clover, Cara Mitten, myself, and many more.

I also hung up a few more pieces of art in my art/writing/parrot room above the cork-board that acts as a repository for reference images for my various projects. I will also be the first to admit that having a (much) less writing-only laptop and little area all to myself has really helped my overall productivity.

Art by Kharnage, Emma, Tessa Thornberry, and Cynthia Reep.

20,000 Words... 30,000 Words... So About That Writing...

The first three paragraphs of "Secrets of an Accord," still sitting in their first written draft, eagerly awaiting editing.

A few weeks ago I hit a pretty big milestone for me concerning my next novella, "Secrets of an Accord": I broke 20,000 words on the first draft! In the weeks that followed, my rush of productivity continued, and I'm actually sitting at over 30,000 words now. By my estimation, I should be well over 60% of the way through the first draft (hopefully further). Below is an spreadsheet chronicling one of my recent productive weeks in early September!

This, this was a good week.

Unfortunately, since the last few weeks became unexpectedly (and sometimes mind-numbingly) busy, I've decided to push back my next milestone for "Secrets of an Accord" to November 1st, at which time I hope to have the first draft of it completed so I can start editing it. While a part of me is sad that I wasn't able to meet my initial estimates for my given milestones, I'm also increasingly aware that as the scope of this project has grown exponentially in size, so it makes logical sense that the time to complete it will also increase. 

Looking Ahead

The weeks ahead are due to be busy, but I'm aiming to do my best to keep moving forward with my various creative projects, and I'm looking forward to sharing them!  How are you doing on your own projects and hobbies?

Altered Beast Fan Art for a Great Cause - Project KKG

This particular update is quite close to my heart, and relates to a great cause.

Primal Fury - Altered Beast Fan Art - Project KKG

Primal Fury - Altered Beast Fan Art - Project KKG - Completed on February 3rd, 2014

This is a piece of fan art of Altered Beast, but this piece isn't for me, it's for Project KKG, aka: http://www.gamersforgood.com/KKG-Artbook Myself and over 100 artists from across the gaming industry are coming together to create art to be put in a book where all of the proceeds will go directly to paying for treatment for a dear friend and artist at Blizzard who is battling stage four Alveolar Soft Part Sarcoma (ASPS) cancer.

If you're an artist, and are interested in finding out more about the project or lending your pen to the cause, please visit http://www.gamersforgood.com/KKG-Artbook to find out more.

This piece was originally supposed to have one figure and no background and... it's certainly progressed from there! I feel like one of the iconic things about Altered Beast was that stylized graveyard you start out in so.... in it went. Without it, it just felt like a generic werewolf to me. Also it was really a fun challenge trying to remake the 16-bit Altered Beast "world" in Photoshop. Midway through I'd considered having it look more like a side-scroller, but I didn't like the idea of nullifying the potential for perspective. If I could do it again, I would have dug into a few more studies and thumbnails, that's for sure!

Here are some images of the creation process along the way:

 

 

 

 

 

Artistic Lessons on the Value of Re-scoping Projects Mid-Production

Over the years, I've gotten a lot better at planning in my life, and this craving to organize has carried over (thankfully) into how I approach my art.

With each piece, I try to spend a fair amount of time in the planning stages before I start work in earnest because I realize it really does pay off later, but I’m reminded on a somewhat regular basis that I still, STILL am not spending enough time in that stage, especially when the scope of a project increases exponentially.

Case-in-point: The “Primal Fury” piece above that was originally supposed to be one figure with no background, and I feel that I spent sufficient time during pre-production on thumbnails and poses and research and the like. This piece, however, has grown to include a total of 6+ figures, a complex background, perspective and more, and along the way I started going “it’s okay, I’ll figure this out as I go along…”

And I've done alright, I’m pretty okay with where the piece has ended up in black and white, and the moment I started in with color overlays… I realized just how very wrong I was. For while the values of the piece worked as a whole, the moment color was tossed in, all that careful planning went right out the window. I worked at the piece for over three hours trying to force it to work before resigning myself to the realization that making the piece work well in color would mean reworking large portions of the piece, and I simply didn't have the time to do that in terms of scope.

So my lesson here is that if I intend to likely bring a piece to color, I really need to make sure that in addition to doing value thumbnails, that I also do COLOR thumbnails too. Not one or the other: BOTH. Live and learn!

The WIP stopping point I reached on my initial attempt to try colorizing the piece to try to match the game’s original in-game colors. It... wasn't going well, particularly that bright gargoyle… :|

 

(Above) Reference shots of the original Altered Beast game

The lesson here for me was to be aware that if the scope of your piece changes mid-production, you probably would be wise to do some new thumbnails!

On the whole though, I’m still very pleased with how the greyscale piece turned out, and going forward, I vowed to pay more heed to color thumbnails as well.


What lessons have you learned recently pertaining to the value of pre-planning, or what are some trouble-spots you’d like to improve upon?