Why Having a Blog On Tumblr Isn’t Bad At All

I heard the Internet needed another art blog, so I set one up on Tumblr.
I kept reading on other artists’ blog how pretty and easy it is, so I gave it a try.

I had some doubt as to why one should have more than one blog, then I spent a couple of minutes browsing random tumblr posts and I understood why.
First of all, it’s simple. Even simpler than Wordfast. So simple, in fact, that setting the whole thing up, selecting a kick-ass theme and uploading a bunch of images took me no more than half an hour.

People use Tumblr it’s a lot more casual than the average WordPress blog. Sometimes readers don’t have the time to read big walls of text (damn you, Internet low attention-span), and just want to look at some pretty pictures and move on with their life. Which is why many artists just keep Tumblr as a support blog, posting there just their artwork, most times even without comments.

Tumblr gives readers the chance to “like” a post or to share it, making it a bit more similar to Twitter or Pinterest. If the occasional passer-by would like to know more about you, they can still click on your images, be led to your primary blog and enjoy your rants.

So far I’m loving it, it’s really fast, easy and with a nice and friendly feeling. Just little things, like when you input your age it reads “39 years Young” (aww) and when someone follows you you’re notified “Someone is following you! Win!”.
I’m easy to please, I know, but I do appreciate this kind of details.

Anyway, I’m particularly happy about the theme I’ve been recommended (which by the way, is called Narnia and can be found on ThemeCloud).
It places all the images in the same page, and it rearranges them in a pleasant way without any need to bother about layout and stuff.
So, well, feel free to stop by and say hello:)

by Paolo Puggioni

Sketches, Again

It’s been a hectic week, both at home and at work.
Actually, since I’m still working on a fairly big freelance assignment, I can’t really tell the difference between home and work.
Apart from the ugly, extremely comfortable fluffy grey trousers I can shamelessly wear at my own desk.

Despite the lack of time, I can still manage to sneak in a few warm up sketches here and there, usually first thing in the morning.
It’s good practice, and in the long run it pays off in making your proper work faster. And hopefully slightly better.

by Paolo Puggioni

Drawing Session at The Royal Armoury in London

If you draw Fantasy Art for a living, (or even for leisure actually), there are few places more inspiring than the Royal Armouries in the Tower of London.
One of the reasons why Jagex is a cool place to work in, is that it’s always happy to invest in training and improvement, which is why last week my fellow Concept Artists and I were sent to London for a Life Drawing session.

The plan was to spend a day at the armouries copying weapons and armours from life.
What we didn’t take into account was the throng of tourists competing with us for a spot in front of the coolest pieces, so we ended up just taking reference pictures and talking about how every specific detail could have fit into Runescape.

What never fails to amaze me is that no matter how crazy the designs you come up with for a game are, you always find that something crazier has already been done. Like, five centuries before.
For example, I’d never draw a blade as twisted as the one below because, well, how the hell is it supposed to work? Or be sheathed?
Yet, this was actually used.

The decoration on this elm is so tacky it would be perfect for the ego of a final Boss.

The size of the following armour is not a camera trick. This is the tallest armour ever built. The guy who used to wear it was 2.10 metres tall. His sword was WAY taller than me.

One other piece I loved is this dagger. Simple and elegant. Its design would also be perfect for a space ship now that I think of it.

And then the Middle Ages equivalent of today’s average Hummer drivers. This is what knights with small egos used to equip their armours with in order to counterbalance their – umm – deficiencies.

The other unmissable exhibit at the Tower of London is of course that of the Crown Jewels.
Unfortunately, for obvious reasons, pictures weren’t allowed inside. So you just have to believe my description of a diamond twice as big as an egg, or the solid gold wine tankard as big as a small bath tub.

All in all it was a nice and fruitful expedition, too bad we couldn’t manage to draw a single line.
The next training day it will be out in the Cambridge countryside, drawing landscapes from life.

And possibly cows.

by Paolo Puggioni

Some Star Wars Concepts by Ralph McQuarrie

Ralph McQuarrie was a legend in the movie industry, revered by fellow concept artists and Star Wars fans alike.
For those who don’t know who he was, he’s the person  mainly responsible for the look of the Star Wars movies (the real Star Wars, not the last three shitty ones. Jar-Jar is not his fault).
He’s the one who designed Darth Vader, X-Wings and the other space ships, Jabba, the rebels’ outfits, Tatooine, the Rancor, I mean, everything.
He also came up with the idea of Darth Vader breathing through his famous device.

He’s responsible for the gritty “used future” look of the Star Wars universe, and his influence on the following generations is so huge that Science Fiction can’t prescind from his work.
His concepts were always so spot-on that Spielberg said “when words could not convey my ideas, I could always point to one of Ralph’s fabulous illustrations and say, ‘do it like this’.
As a matter of fact, it’s not difficult to tell how closely his drawings below were portrayed in some of the most iconic SW scenes.

Ralph passed away early this year. He had been retired for a while, so obviously his work is now being brought to new light by saddened fans and admirers, out of homage and respect.
I stumbled upon this thread on reddit that gathers most of his famous paintings.
I had some others on my Hard Drive, or in my favs folder.
Some others can be found on this website.

I’m pasting some of them here, whereas here and here you could find books with his complete collection.
Which, since I’m penniless as usual, are now saved in my wish list for happier times.

by Paolo Puggioni

The Lich – This Time With Colours

The Lich is the King of the undead world, no one argues about it. Where people’s opinion is split about the scariness of Slow Zombies vs. Fast Zombies (the latter being obviously the scariest), the Lich holds the position of the undisputed badass.
A Lich could bully around even a Vampire, and I’m not talking about frickin Edward, I’m talking about a real, old, pissed off Vampire.
A Lich could take on a Vampire any time, they’re that scary.

So, I meant to make some experiments colouring the pencil sketch I did a few days ago,then I thought than any colour other than blues would have made it too “merry”. So well, I went with a pretty classic palette. I hope I made it badass enough.

Also, since after all those years I dared to open the Animation Window in Photoshop, I put together all the WIPs in a practical Gif.
It moves!

Thanks to fellow redditor Pit107 for the idea.

by Paolo Puggioni

Sketches

Sketching random stuff first thing in the morning is the best way to get hands and mind to work.
That, and a mugful of coffee of course. Oh, and Death Metal. And a long bath.
Definitely among the first five best things to do before starting to work, anyway.

Contrarily to what I thought I’ve been pretty consistent with it in the last few days, so much so that I’m almost running out of ideas.
However, I found out that using textured brushes – which creates lots of noise and unexpected results – helps finding shapes where apparently there aren’t. Shapes form directly on the canvas without going through the brain first, which is pretty amazing if you think about it.

Anyway, this is one of the pages of lunch-break thumbs I took home from work.
I have plenty more on my hard drive at Jagex, but this is all I managed to get hold of today.

Plenty of colours I’m not used to. Yellows and loud reds.
I like yellow, I wonder why I never use it.

by Paolo Puggioni

The Lich

“A fusion of our typical idea of Death, the Grim Reaper and Anubis” is the next item in my to-do list.
I don’t know when I’ll have the chance to work on it since there is an awesome freelance assignment I’m about to start. But a bit of research and some sketches are as good a way as any to spend a cold Sunday on this wind-swept island (\complaining about the weather).
The description fits that of the classic Lich, so that’s where I started my research from.

I discovered that pretty much every folklore has its own version of this powerful undead.
Where zombies, ghouls and wraiths tend to be mindless, savage creatures with little left of what made them alive, a Lich is always an individual who was already powerful during his life, who eventually managed to retain his powers and wits through some kind of dark magic.

Back when I used to play Dungeons & Dragons the Lich was the encounter that scared me the most. Not only because of his dreadfully high stats, but rather for the idea of this timeless creature animated by its own dark magic, forever basking in its own power surrounded by horrors it created itself.
You’re always an intruder in a Lich’s lair, like a scared mouse in an old, grumpy cat’s house.

One thing I always found a bit off-putting of the fantasy tradition concerning Liches is the fact that they always seem to like adorning themselves with tacky death metal paraphernalia.
Ok, they’re dead, (undead actually), and used to messing around with necromancy during life. But really, do they have to wear rings with skulls and stuff like that?

They already have an ugly face, and bones and sinews clearly visible under their mummified skin, aren’t other skulls hanging from their belt a bit redundant?
I’ll try and stay away at least from this kind of iconography.
I figure a Lich wouldn’t care about his appearance, so I’m ok for his clothes to be the run down version of the precious garments they must have worn in their former life.
No other frills though, why would he care?
However, in some lores a Lich wears a phylactery, an item of his choosing which he imbued with his power to achieve immortality.

In the following sketches I just focused on the armature of the drawing. That is, the bunch of main lines upon which the drawing will be built. I went for the stick figure bottom left because I liked how the lines forming his garments end up framing his head, and the lines of his arms lead to it.
The other drawings seemed a bit too hunched to me, and conveyed less the idea of a powerful guy. At least less than a bottom-up POV.
Ok, I know these scribbles aren’t pretty and might make sense only to me, but what the hell.

by Paolo Puggioni

Digital Painting Tutorials

For some odd coincidence today I’ve been asked by three different people if I knew any nice digital painting video tutorials.
The answer is yes, I have a bookmark folder full of them, gathered over the years.

I’ll just post just my favourites for now, if you want something more there’s a thread on the Hub with LOADS of other inks to non-only-video tutorials. Most of them are for beginners, some others are for traditional painting, there’s something for pretty much every taste.

Anyway, if you start from the following and explore the Youtube suggestions you’ll have about a month worth of viewing.

If anyone knows of something important I missed feel free to comment!

FZD School of Design. This is probably the best known. Awesome stuff in there, plus Feng seems a pretty nice guy.

Mike Corriero.

Bugmeier.

Sinix.

The Art of Daarken.

Drawing Tutorials Online.com

Marco Bucci. I remembered there were more tutorials around by him. If you make a search you might find some more results.

Genn Vilppu. Not digital but very informative.

Noah Bradley. Just discovered, I’ve watched only a couple of them, really nice!

CTRL+Paint

CGM Workshops

Thumbnails

Learn the rules, then break them all.
If my memory were better than that of a goldfish I’d remember the genius who said that. Well said, unnamed genius. But I’d just add a couple of words to your awesome quote:
Learn the rules, break them all, but write them down on some post-it and stick them next to your monitor. One day you’ll become overly confident and you’ll break them in the same way as someone who never knew them in the first place.

Drawing thumbnails is one of the first things an artist should focus on, and still a good rule to follow when you’re studying a particular arrangement of shapes, be they shapes composing a character or an environment.
With an image as big as a packet of peanuts there’s no risk of getting distracted by fancy details. There’s only composition, value masses and the few very important things that make an image work.

When you are really really busy (like in a game studio), really really lazy or really really over confident, it might happen that the thumb-nailing step gets skipped in favour of something closer to what a modeller might need in his immediate future.
Some times it doesn’t matter.
Other times, you look at your artwork after a few months to find out you’re not happy with it, and you realize you wouldn’t have made all those bad choices if you’d have spent half an hour on a bunch of bloody thumbnails.

So, I’m forcing myself to think more before jumping to the final steps, to focus more on the basics and, in practice, to make tinier drawings.
I’m doing this first thing in the morning just to warm up: thinking of rules when coffee is still too hot to sip it makes it easier to break them later on during the day.

Here are a few random early-morning sketches.
Most of them are probably clear only to myself, they’re just ideas and practice, no more than two minutes per thumb. Some of them may even be good enough to be developed into something bigger, I think.
Hey, that’s what thumbnails are for!

Black Djinn part II

I’ve finished colouring the Djinn I started last week.
Contrarily to what I do most of the times (that is, open Photoshop and start drawing), this time round I did some planning first: I thought of the composition, which areas to focus on, how to make the various elements of the drawing support the area of main interest and so on.
I’m quite happy with the result, if I won’t hate it in a week it means it’s a keeper!