Been doing 2D art for a small game company. Here’s some item icons, dialogue illustrations and early concept art I did for a game called Northbound (which will hopefully be released some time this year)
I’ve been working at a small indie game studio for a year now, and did 2D graphics for a game called Northbound.
Here’s a bunch of icons for a mechanic called Spellbind where you can enchant your weapon with different kinds of combinations.
I bought a 1 year subscription to Schoolism and the first class I’m taking it Designing with Color and Light by Nathan Fowkes. The first assignment was to do color studies from photos or paintings. Here’s the first four I did.
The assignment said no color picking on originals allowed, but I might have cheated a bit on two of these because I was impatient. Shame on me :’D. 8 of these left to do, I’ll try not to cheat in the following ones.
The one year subscription is 144$ and it gives you access to the video material of a lot of really good classes you can study from in your own pace. Worth the money I’d say, as long as you can find the time. I’m currently working only 30 hours a week, so I usually take Fridays off to study.
It’s been like a year since I last touched my sketchbook. I’ve only been doing work stuff all year, but I’ve missed my sketchbook. So here goes. A digital game artist’s attempt at surviving without Ctrl+Z and infinite layers. Inktober!!
(Also an end to a long blog silence. Hello!)
Anonymous asked:
So cool to hear from you!! I'm curious, how are your plans and thoughts about the Animation Workshop? I applied once too, but didn't get in. I'm thinking if reapplying would be a sensible thing to do for me, so I'm curious in other people's experiences! What led you to apply there? Are you going to reapply, and why? Thank you!
I really liked the AW’s curriculum and thought the school would be perfect for me and my career goals. I applied and got in last spring, but at the same time I got the job at Rovio, so in the hopes of continuing work at the studio I didn’t take the AW place. My work at Rovio ended at the end of November (they were laying off a bunch of people and my contract was fixed term, so no hopes of renewal). My plan was to apply to AW again in spring 2015, but then I joined FakeFish in January and got into the Game Development Trainee programme, so I didn’t apply. I’d love to stay in Turku for as long as possible, but start-up life is fickle and we have no idea how long the company stays afloat. And the job market is what it is. Right now I really don’t know what future holds :D
I don’t know if I’ll apply again. I’d still kinda love to. I think the school would offer me a great and interesting education, but at the same time I feel that I’m ready to work professionally and learn on the go. Also I’m doing weirdly adult-like things, like moving in together with my partner and putting aside some money for an apartment savings account and kinda settling down for a nice balanced adult life even though neither me nor my partner have any clue where either of us will live or work (or in my case study) in 2 years. Options are still open, and it’s liberating and kinda terrifying at the same time :’D
Life update
Hi everyone! My blog has been super quiet for the last year. I’ve been creating a lot of art, none of which I can really share, because
1) I worked at Rovio Animation department for 6 months, first as a graphic artist trainee, then as a layout artist freelancer. I did some background painting, worked on several episodes’ layouts and completed some title cards for the episodes from sketch to finish :).
2) In January I attended my first ever Game Jam and we made a little game called Firephant!
We made the graphics with the amazing Joiku. You can play it here. Sorry about not having time to add a tutorial screen, we kinda ran out of time :D. You can only move the elephant. Nothing else. You can’t move through burned windows. The kitten tile needs to be moved towards the exit. Sounds recommended. Try not to cry when the kitten faints :D.
3) I joined a start up!
I started doing 2D graphics for a small game start up called Fake Fish, and was recently sorta “promoted” to Art Director of our main title, an iOS adventure game called Northbound. It’s based on the Finnish national epic and draws a lot of inspiration from nordic folklore. Not the scandinavian stuff you usually get from the northern Europe, but the Finnish stuff! It’ll be super cool! We might set up a development blog at some point so I can share all the art I’m doing for the game.
I also attended a short Game Development Trainee programme and finally learned some 3D! Low poly modeling is so much fun gaah why haven’t I learned it earlier :D.
Anyhoo, TL;DR: Sdalla not dead, Sdalla just busy with work and will start posting (probably mostly work or other game related )stuff as soon as she can!
The last art classes I took at my school! These are the color tests I made for my color metal graphics' class. I nailed the etching part, but completely failed the aquatints, making the colors way too light, so these tests are the ones I'll submit. Dinosaurs! Dinosaurs are cool!
Oh man I'm so excited to have all my art classes done. Now all I have left to do is a loooooot of writing. Ggah. Writing.
I assembled a texture pack from my thesis experiments, free for your personal non-commercial use. Most of these are watercolor monotypes, either original scans or with inverted colors because they’re way cooler with inverted colors :D. Pack no 2 will follow as I have a lot of materials left!
I threw in a couple of (bad but still usable) photos of one of the offset plates I painted (the plate itself was super cool, but the print, unfortunately, failed).
All images are approx. 2500-4000px wide or long, with 72 dpi resolution. (small preview of full texture images here)
It’s available for free on Gumroad, but there’s also a pay-what-you-want option if you want to support an artist who’s moving and facing a bit of a financially difficult June, with two rents, moving costs and deposit on my new apartment.
All donations are greatly appreciated ✿^ ‿ ^✿
My third thesis piece for our graduating exhibition at Jyväskylä art museum.
It's available as a 49x37cm print (19x14,5 inch) at the museum store, and I'll probably do a giveaway on one of the test prints later this spring :)
Another thesis piece for our graduation exhibition at Jyväskylä art museum. I combined hand printed watercolor monotypes with digital drawing&painting.
This piece is called Disco Mare Balticum! (the looters), and it is based on a story I heard about a shipwreck in the Baltic Sea. There had been some looters who had made no effort to cover their tracks. They had tried to steal artefacts most inconvenient (things they could lift on the bottom of the sea, but not on the surface), and left footprints EVERYWHERE. My first mental image of the event was something like this (note the very obvious Saturday Night Fever reference that I'm now making even more obvious by pointing it out :D).
A 49x39 cm (19x15 inches) print is available at the museum store.
One of three thesis pieces (that's quite fun to say) for our graduating artists' exhibition at Jyväskylä art museum. I combined hand printed watercolor monotype with textures found around the school (mostly my studio's stained floor :D) and hand drawn elements into a digital painting. Lots of fun, let me tell you!
The piece is called "Gimme gimme gimme!", and it's available as a 38x39cm (about 15x15 inches) pigment ink print at the museum store.
Background drawings for my application portfolio! Guess which ones were done in a horrible rush! Hahaha.....haha.... ha..
Character designs for my AW application portfolio part 2.
Happy little demon doge, Succubus squid, A post-apocalyptic survivalist who didn’t prepare for the apocalypse very well but is still miraculously alive and someone who's probably gonna blind you with all that sparkle.
I had fun with my portfolio! There's still a couple of things to complete (*khrmPERSPECTIVEkhrm* and a couple of other things I've been so cleverly putting off), and the deadline's tomorrow, so I have a looong night ahead :D
Character designs for my application portfolio for the Animation Workshop.
Fashionista, Goblin Shark who's tired of the corporate world, A friend lost/a friwend found and a tomboy character.
I feel bad for getting another cluster of new followers (hello people <3 ) and not really uploading any art. I haven't even scanned my comic answers yet because I've been keeping my computer at my studio at school, and the scanner's been OH SO FAR AWAY at the other side of the building xD
So here's what's up:
I'm graduating! In a couple of months. First I need to complete my thesis. We're having a group exhibition for the graduating artists at the museum of Jyväskylä in Finland. If you're from around there, you're most welcome to visit the exhibiton/ come to the opening on Friday April 11th at 6pm.
I've been swamped with work lately, making the promotional materials for our exhibition, sorta art directing a couple of small photoshoots, and working on my application to the Animation Workshop and holy moly is this a lot of work at once xD. I've developed a rock solid work routine, I don't do all nighters anymore but get to the school around 9-10 and get the day's work done by 4-5pm. I even went to the gym yesterday at 7 friggin am because I thought it'd be fun to get that done in the morning too so that I wouldn't have to go in the afternoon in my precious precious pastime. Haha.
It's gonna be SO WEIRD when I don't have any projects like this in a month. I think I'm gonna do a one month super session with my webcomic and get it running. It feels so good to get stuff done!
I'm keeping my blog on a sort of a hiatus for another week or two, but I'll have all my portfolio pieces for the AW to submit by 15th, and all my exhibition pieces by the end of the month too. I also have a couple of new tutorials about brush settings and effective use of layer masks (since I taught two short Photoshop-classes in late 2013 and I kinda modified the material I gave my students to fit tumblr :D)
But yay! Here's our exhibition's promo pic, a couple of pics from around my little studio and a beautiful profile photo of me taken by sassaphoto.tumblr.com for our exhibition catalogue.
Days 1, 3, 2, 5, 6 and 7 of this Art block butt kick challenge from last year.
I'm gonna try to continue this after I clear my to do list a bit. I welcome everyone to try the challenge, it's got a lot of cool stuff that I've been subconsciously avoiding because *cough*PERSPECTIVE*cough* :D
If you do the challenge, I welcome you to tag your art with #art block butt kick so I can stalk on everyone's art!
sdalla reblogged
Me and my friend Victor wanted to start the year with a 30-day challenge, but we couldn’t decide which one, so we whipped up one of our own :D. We’ll try to motivate ourselves and eachother to complete it within 5-7 weeks. We warmly encourage other people to take the challenge as well! It should be fun. You can tag your stuff with #art block butt kick so I can spy on everything you guys are doing :D. Yay!
The Challenge
1. Draw yourself as a superhero, along with your animal sidekick 2. Make some squiggles and create 3 monster based on them. 3. Go to random character generator like [this] or [this] and draw the character you get 4. Now develop the character further by drawing a room from their home! Try to include lots of random stuff that tells us even more about the owner’s personality. 5. Paint a picture using colours generated by a random color palette generator like [this] or [this] (or any colour meme you find). You are allowed to use black&white too. 6. Find an interesting photo (either from the internet or your personal library) and do this cutout-exercise 7. Draw an animal that doesn’t really exist. 8. Find interesting textures from your surroundings and incorporate them into an illustration. 9. Go to Serendipity’s city generator and illustrate the environment! Have as much fun as you want with whatever you get, but try to make it a lesson in perspective - you know you need to practice it! :D 10. Draw a garden, jungle, forest or any place with lots of different kinds of flowers and plants. 11. Draw something inspired by a dream. 12. Go to wikipaintings, and select Artwork - Random artwork. Do a self portrait based on the piece you get. 13. Do some life drawing today. People, places, random objects, anything. 14. There are some story generators around the internet, like this one here. Design a book cover or a movie poster for the story you get. If you find it difficult to come up with a title for the book/movie (I know I always struggle with naming my stuff), don’t let it stop you, just use Lorem Ipsum or something :D 15. Inspired by drawgabbydraw- make a watercolor blob and draw something on it, or participate in gabcollab. 16. Fashion day! See magazines, lookbook or some of the gazillion fashion blogs for inspiration, and draw some outfits. If convenient, keep using traditional mediums. 17. Draw something to reflect dictionary.com’s word of the day 18. Draw some character interaction, like a couple, a fight or a group of friends on a road trip. 19. Draw a vehicle of some kind - car, train, bicycle, plane, anything. If you like, you can draw one or more characters as drivers/passengers. 20. Let’s get back to the city and character generators. Get a new city, and a new character, and draw the character interacting with the environment. 21. I know I personally draw way too few animals, so this day is dedicated to drawing all kinds of animals. If you decide to do multiple drawings, try to include at least one bird, one land mammal and one marine creature. Insects are pretty cool to draw too. 22. Re-do one of your old artworks. 23. Another life drawing day - but this time with your non-drawing hand. 24. Do some album cover art for a musician of your choice (existing or imaginary). Include both front and back covers as well as the label in the disc itself. 25. Draw a short comic. 26. Draw a genderswap self portrait 27. Do some light source studies 28. Draw a room from your dream house. 29. Go to random mascot generator, and based on what you get design a package for a new kind of cereal. 30. As for the last one, go to wikipedia and click “Random article”. Now imagine someone writing a story about the person/place/topic/whatever in your random article, and you’re commissioned to illustrate that story. (Don’t cheat! No clicking “Random article” until you get something that seems fun. Do your research on your topic, and if the article is a stub about someone relatively insignificant just use your imagination I suppose :D)
If you’re making a New Year’s resolution to draw more, here’s something that you could do to get started! (It’s from about a year ago, so obviously I didn’t complete it in 5-7 weeks like I originally intended. How surprising xD.)