Quick little things while listening to "The Story" on NPR

I dunno, just keepin it up i guess, each one took like 10 minutes.

One more from the subway sketch =)

Slipped thru the cracks =)

This was on the way back, this guy just happened to be sleepin there, so it was perfect =)

More Sketches from the sketch group and randomness

Ive been really getting into it now. The sketch group on sat was awesome. We went from the Noho subway station to Union station, sketching along the way. Happened to create a bit of commotion, many people were watching us try to draw other people. Had no idea it would be so entertaining. Then we walked around Olivera street for a while, drawing people here and there, had some awesome mexican food, and more drawing. Also, I know my main focus is going to be environment conception, but I've been drawn to (pardon the pun) the human figure much more lately. I think knowing how to draw people will help me draw better environments... if that makes sense. I guess, dimensions, and relationships, and shading technique... So I've been doing a lot of that lately. Its hard to see the subtle differences of shading in and around the cheek bones, and around the eyes. I'm still sorta generalizing it, but I've decided it'd help to convert the images to black and white, then crank the curves, so really clearly see whats darker and whats brighter. Anyway, here's some of the recent stuff from my sketchbook. =)

Creepy Kid - 10 minute quickness

Just woke up and wanted to spill out something. So I remembered this Creepy Kid competition from Bobby Chiu, so here is a quick version of it =).

Chiustream - Cheshire Cat

Hey! We had an hour to draw up a cheshire cat concept, but due to other tasks in the office, I only really had about 20 minutes. But whatever, here is my result. My first time ever trying to draw a cat, and without ref photos, lol. Yeah I know, whatever. =)

Heads will... sit there

I tried drawing up this interior room of a black crystal tower yesterday night, and failed on two different attempts. Needless to say, I was frustrated, and I didn't want to go to work today hanging onto that, and I didn't want to leave the last thing I drew as something I really was disappointed about. So I drew some weird heads, at least I don't hate these lol. I can feel good about looking forward to drawing when I get home again tonight =)

Some more random drawings

Some of these are just for fun, some are for a Tower Defense game I wanted to make. Or at least concept art for a short animated feature on tower defense. I'm still working on this one.

Some drawings while in meetings at work

Very quick doodles, super random ideas. Trying to concentrate on rocks mostly.

Been doin some Drawin

Hey, I've been doing a lot of traditional drawing lately, I know a far cry from my 3d work, but it's something I truely enjoy and I'm trying to get better at it. I've never had any formal art training, and I'm a far cry from one of those naturally talented people who can just do it. So I need my practice, and LOTS of it. Here are some of my more recent additions. I've also started a blog about a book I'm reading, and drawing the images that I see while I'm reading. Coldfire Trilogy Blog.

Something Useful - Vital Photoshop hotkeys

Heyo hey. I really really really am a huge fan of hotkeys. They literally save lives. Seriously, this one time I was walking down the street and this guy sprung out from behind a bush and hurled himself at this poor old helpless woman's purse. I just flicked the old ctrl-z, and BAM, he was undone. No, he just stared at me for a moment while I threw digits his way in a sorta harry potter-esque fashion.... No, none of that ever happened at all, I dont actually think a hotkey will save a life, but they will definitely save you some time. So lets get started I guess.

Photoshop Hotkeys that rock

Ctrl+J - Create new layer from selection...
If nothing is selected, just duplicate selected layer

[ and ] - Decrease and Increase the size of the brush
Increments in units of 10, unless under 10, then its just units of 1

Shift [ and ] - Decrease and Increase brush Hardness or Softness

The number keys up top do a number of cool things depending on what tool you have selected. You can just hit 1 for 10%, 4 for 40% or 76 for 76%. Pretty straight forward.
- Move tool selected -
"1-10" will adjust the opacity of the layer selected
- Brush selected -
"1-10" will adjust the opacity of the brush
"Shift 1-10" will adjust the flow of the brush
... etc. with all the tools after that. It'll always adjust the opacity for 1-10, and the secondary slider for Shift 1-10

Say you have the Dodge tool selected, you can hold "alt" and it'll toggle to the Burn tool. Great when you're rocking the Dodge Burn Combolicious.

When you're selecting a tool from the toolbar, if you hold alt, you'll toggle between the different tools available. Also if you wanna grab a tool without resorting to the mouse, you can hold Shit+whatever, and it'll toggle thru the tools within that hotkey. For example: Shift+M will go thru the different marquee selection tools, circle and square. Shift+W will toggle thru the magic wand tool, and the wand selection tool. BAM!

D - Default Colors, Foreground Black, Background White

X - Swap foreground and background colors.

Ctrl+E - Merge Selected Layers

Alt+Click in between two layers to use the bottom layer as a mask for the top layer. This works great for adjustment layers too. You can layer a bunch of adjustment layers on top of a layer you want to adjust without having to make a mask for each adjustment layer.

Ctrl+Click on a layer to make a selection out of it. Then Ctrl+Shift+C to copy all layers in the selection. Click the channels tab, then hit the "Create new channel" button down at the bottom of the window. Hit Ctrl+V, and you've turned your selection into an alpha channel. You Ctrl+Click that layer again and you'll get a gradiated version of your selection. This is great when you have some kind of gradient that you want to turn into an alpha channel so you can paint in a gradiated fashion.

Hold shift while you're drawing to draw a straight line.

With the a brush-like tool selected, click once somewhere, then shift click somewhere else to make a straight line between those two points.

Q - Quick Mask mode. This lets you paint in your selection. Very useful to refine a selection.

Double Click anywhere on the photoshop background and it'll bring up the "Open..." dialog.

Keep in mind, you're right click context menu changes depending on you're tool, so experiment around with them, there is a lot of cool stuff to uncover within those tools context menus.