Moleskine Brush

As Greg mentioned a couple weeks back, we’ve been playing with ink and brush pens. It’s been a good deal of fun and lessens the guilt when I’m plopped in front of the television – blast you Netflix PS3 Disc!

We get emails from time to time about how to get started in concept art. The response tends to be the same and almost always starts with “observe and draw from life!” To that end I’m really trying to follow my own words and have taken to carrying my sketchbook around. I lucked out and found the perfect bag at the perfect size – though some would say it could double as a purse. At least now I have something to smack a mugger with.

*Update*
I’ve been getting some requests for more details on the bag so here’s the scoop. If you head over to Amazon, you can find it as “Travel Portfolio Bag“. There are several independent resellers offering the thing which can get a bit confusing. I went with the Olive Drab to hold on to the remaining shreds of my masculinity. The bag doesn’t have the best construction, but it’s been great for me so far.

CreatureBox Interview

Another interview?! Yup, you got it, but this time from our cronies over at Insomniac Games. Insomniac is a really supportive place to work and we’ve always appreciated the support from the team, and now they’re giving us a chance to yap a little bit about what we’re doing on CreatureBox over on the Insomniac Blog. If you’re not too tired of hearing us go on about character design, games and our own inner demons, stop on by!

Oh, and if you are sick of listening to us, we posted a couple of the vids from the Thoughts, Scribbles + Madness: Volume 1 DVD! Enjoy!

-the creatures

StoryTeller 02 & PSCafe Interview

I wanted to continue on with the StoryTeller that I posted earlier. It’s impossible to not imagine some ludicrous back-story when you’re knuckle deep in the drawing. My daughter made me tell her a story off the cuff tonight. It was pretty terrible; she even looked a bit disappointed. But it conjured up all these memories of my parent’s friends telling me wild tales as a kid. If there were moments I could revisit at my will, I think it would be those moments.

I also wanted to throw a little ode to my new kitten who sits on the back of my chair howling incessantly at the escaping sounds of my decrepit headphones. She is very judgmental of my musical taste. I’m big into Pink Floyd right now, she is not.

Photoshop Cafe Interview

On another note: Dave and I were lucky enough to be interviewed over at Photoshop Cafe! For all you hounds looking for a little process, it’s there! But don’t get yourself too worked up; we hold no secrets to the kingdom of great art! But, if anyone finds them, we want!!!

Tricks and Treats

It’s been a wild and crazy few weeks – sinus infection, computer upgrades, Halloween – but at least life is an adventure. This was our first Hallow’s Eve in the house. The turnout was pretty decent but we still have enough candy left over to bury in our bomb shelter. At least if the world ends I’ll have a great excuse to down those mini Nestle Crunch bars.

On the computer front, I’ve made the transition to Windows 7 x64. All went kinda smooth though I’m hitting a few bumps with Sketchbook. I’m finding that disabling the windows tablet services get the strokes nice but then the “Open” and “Save as” dialog boxes stop working. I’ve been able to use ACDSee as a work around but is anyone having any luck with this?

Alright, time to soak in the new time change darkness!

Ratchet, Clank & Qwark Vinyls!

We had an awesome opportunity to create this year’s Insomniac Games employee gift for the Ratchet & Clank Future Games. We’re huge fans of vinyl toys and wanted to do our own take on the characters we have come to know all too well. Dave handled the concepts, I sculpted them digitally and we both did crate inspired boxes for the set. We worked with Gentle Giant for the production. They arrived in the North Carolina Studio today and they are so cool! Qwark is 15 inches wide!! Not sure if these will ever be released to the public, for now they are just for employees. But it was such a cool project! Hope you like.