Post 201: Everything Changes

Whelp, this is embarrassing. Shortly after my last post, my partner on Lunar Ascension decided he wasn't willing to put in the time necessary to complete the project, and has instead opted to walk away entirely. So the project that I was most focused on finishing this year is now packed up in a box, tucked away in a closet in my studio. I'd like to revive it some day, but it's not something I'm comfortable trying to finish solo, and I'm not willing to devote the time to finding a new partner/team right now. Too many other projects pulling at my sleeve. So goal #1 is dead.

Long Live Goal #1!

But of course there's always more to do, and over the last few months I've been helping to build a new collaborative project with an amazing group of people. Boneshaker Press, and their first art book which we plan to release in the fall. It's been a fantastic experience so far, and I feel deeply honored to be involved with so many talented individuals. They are truly inspired, and inspiring, and working with them gets me very excited about what's to come. For now we're focused on getting this book finished, kickstarted, and printed. But along the way we've launched the Boneshaker Press website & blog which we plan to turn into a home for all of the lessons we, as a group and as individuals, have learned over the years. Check it out and let us know what you think!

#200!

Haven't really been paying attention, and I guess in the grand scheme of things it's not all that impressive, but this is (so blogger tells me) my 200th post!

I've been out of touch for a while (sorry!) due to being craaaazy busy. I've got some major ongoing projects (Board game, Mobile game, Tabletop RPG) that each suck up as many hours as I'm willing to let them. On top of that there's client work (can't share now, but hopefully soon), studies/training, con prep and on and on. Too much to do, and never enough time. With that in mind, I saw a fellow artist/blogger do a check in of her 2015 goals and a list of 2016 goals and thought I'd steal the idea and join in on the fun. Since this is the first time I've done this there's no 2015 list to call back to, but I'll run through the highlights to give context to the 2016 list.

2015 Wrap Up

1. Lunar Ascension. This has probably been the biggest time sink of 2015, but we've made some real progress and I'm super excited about what 2016 has in store.
2. Freelance. Was lucky enough to be involved in some really fun projects during 2015 (shout out to Feudal Legacy and Valhalla Comics!).
3. TO DO Book. This might sound like a small thing, but I bought a notebook a while back (on my second one now) and have used it to track/plan every day of my life since. I'd say it's at least doubled my productivity.
4. Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo. Surprised by the amount of art I prepped for Calgary's show. I aim for 6 new pieces at every con (which tends to include an image made for the artbook) but this year produced 8 new pieces and updated 2 others. Had some big sellers in this batch too, which is always reassuring. I also spent some time building up my original art collection, which continues to be time will spent.
5. Breal Studios. I was asked to join a pair of awesome programmers to form a game development studio back in June. We've spent the rest of the year working out the rough plan for a mobile game that we plan to execute in 2016.
6. Sketchboxes. They need a new name, but I've been developing a sketchbook replacement system over the last year and it's been coming along pretty well. Getting parts in has been painfully slow, but I think I've got that figured out now, so things should progress much quicker throughout next year.
7. Schoolism Subscription. I jumped on the Schoolism subscription Kickstarter and made it through Character Design Fundamentals with Stephen Silver this year. Picked up a lot of great habits and information that I look forward to implementing. I've just started into Advanced Character Design, and am looking forward to more of the same (Silver is an awesome instructor).
8. Edmonton Comic and Entertainment Expo. I put together 4 black back pieces for this con. Less than I like to do, but I'm quite happy with the quality of each image and I also dipped my toe into the sketch card market. Sketch cards are a lot of fun to make. Sadly they didn't sell, and they took time away from developing larger originals, so I'll have to cut them from future con prep.
9. Oatley Academy's Painting Drama 1. I was accepted into OA's Painting Drama 1 (a 12 week course on composition that ran an exhausting 14 weeks) and have had a pretty good time there. The community is fantastic, and the information on composition is stellar. 
10. Mall Sketching. A close friend and I have been taking some time to do a little sketching in the wild, and I'm loving it. I don't do much drawing from life, so I'm hoping this will lead to some big improvements.

2016 Goals

1. Finish Lunar Ascension! Honestly, I'm not sure we can pull this off amidst everything else, but I'm certainly going to do my best to make it happen. I was also hoping to develop a 1 page comic for each playable character, but I'm a little worried about the amount of time that will require. Once all that is done, we have to figure out how to manufacture it and then put together a Kickstarter. We should probably head to a few gaming conventions too. Don't be surprised if this lands on the 2017 list too.
2. "Art" the Breal Studios game. This is the other big project for the year. I've got to figure out how to animate a mobile game while doing all the character design, prop design, environment design, and a big chunk of the game design. No small task.
3. Skull-a-Day. I just ordered a model skull, so I'll be tackling a month of Skull-a-Day asap. 
4. Complete Proko Portrait Drawing Fundamentals. I think I'll be poking away at this while I do the Skull-a-Day challenge. I'm hoping the course will be so good that I can justify signing up for Proko's Figure Drawing and Anatomy courses as well.
5. 6+ new pieces for Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo. Some Jessica Jones (and Luke Cage) and Star Wars inspired art for sure.
6. 6+ new pieces for Edmonton Comic and Entertainment Expo.
7. ?? new pieces for Central Canada Comic Con. I'd love to stick to my 6 per con, but C4 is only a month away from Ed Expo, and I don't think it's likely that I'll be able to put together that much work in so short a time. We'll see how things go, but I'm currently thinking that it would be best to use that month to refill the sketchbook. 
8. Finish Feudal Legacy Artwork. I'd love to see this project wrapped up and out on shelves.
9. Build a Feudal Legacy Artbook. With any luck I'll be able to bring this along to a few cons. I haven't ever built a book, so this'll be a great to have figured out for the future.
10. Schoolism Subscription. Advanced Character Design w/ Stephen Silver. Gesture Drawing with Alex Woo and Louis Gonzales. Intro to Digital Painting with Andrew Hou. Digital Painting with Bobby Chiu. The Art of Caricature with Jason Seiler. I'd love to say that I'll go through all of the Schoolism courses in 2016, but I don't think that's a realistic goal, so I'll aim for 5 and see how that works out.

Overarching Goal for 2016 - Freelance

My wife, the bread winner of the family, was packaged off a few months ago. She's pregnant, and likely won't return to work until 2017 at the earliest. I figure that gives me a year to get things rolling well enough to handle the financial load if that turns out to be necessary. Fingers crossed!

And now, back to work :)

Or Not

Well that weekend playtest session came and went. We had a great time, and made a lot of progress in the development of the game. Sadly, the vast majority of that progress came in the form of "this isn't working, let's figure something else out". So we went back to the design doc, and have been building and scrapping ideas for a couple months now. We've got some new plans that I think have a lot of potential (again), but we're still ironing out the kinks, so I'll come back with info about that later on.

In the mean time, I've been hard at work on a variety of different projects.

I put together another portrait for a Lunar Ascension character,

wrapped up a few commissions,

And started to really dig into the world of Feudal Legacy and testing out what I was capable of achieving with the style I was developing. Of course, I can't show you all the work that I've developed, but I am able to release the odd image here and there. This is the only one that I've taken through to color, as I was just experimenting with how it would look. I wanted to make sure I could use this style to do the cover of the book down the line, because I do so loathe it when the cover of a book isn't representative of the work inside. Given that these were just test runs, I'm really happy with the results.

Oh, and I started preparing for the next expo and joined a video game development team. I'll update on these last two later, I think this post is long enough as it is. Suffice to say, super excited!

LA Update

Spent some time over the last week jamming out new content for our game. We've got a weekend long playtest session coming up soon, so I'll have a bunch more to share in a couple weeks.

Sketch Cards!

Starting into a new thing and thought I'd share. Right now I'm making four of these every day, but for sanity's sake I think I'll be dropping that down to two a day. I grew up absolutely enthralled with Marvel Cards, and have wanted to do something card related for years now. These are a good start, but I think I'll be testing out some more ideas over the next year or so, time permitting.

Anyways, here's a look at a what I've been up to. The next step is to cut them down and sleeve them, and then keep them safe until the Edmonton Expo.