Winter scene done, onto the next

The winter scene we were working on is now complete. As soon as I have seen that it has been published I will upload the full image. In the meantime I can let you see just a part of it. But this will give you an idea of the paint style. No rest for the wicked though. The moment this job is in the client’s hands we turn our attention toward the production of the next one. This next one will be the second in a series of four. The first was done a couple of years ago and this second one is an image of the same event as that picutred in the first. I am really looking to get back this scene. It should be cool to produce another image of the same event, but from different angle. I’ll be using a different set of models this time as it is suposed to be in a slightly different location.

The funny thing is that I do these scenes in photo studios and 3D programs and elsewhere on the computer and then, sometime toward the end of the illustration my mind starts believing that the event or scene actually occurred. Strange what the mind will do.

If a torpedo hits the water, does it make a sound?

Here’s a little graphic we did for the Canadian Acoustics Magazine cover. I have been doing the covers for that magazine since I was quite a young lad. They are never really spectacular... how nifty can you make sound wave look? It is an ever present problem with that magazine. The covers are always a challenge. Well, on this one the challenge was to illustrate two concepts and make them look like they belonged together: an audio file retrieving system and an article on methods of tracking the progress of a torpedo moving toward the device that is tracking it. This was our solution. I did the 3D bits and Assistant Lugs did the rest.

The march of progress

We picked up a new printer for Studio Lugs the other day. Well, I picked it up, Assistant Lugs held open the doors, cheerily enquiring of the store owner how much delivery would have been.

The printer is great, it does all sorts of things; scans, copies and prints, reads from SD cards, all that stuff. All for $200. Maybe I am dating myself here but my first laser printer (the Apple LaserWriter) cost me over $10,000.00. That was only 300 dpi, black and white and certainly didn’t make photocopies.

While some things (the price of housing, for example) continue their slow rise into the stratosphere, other things defy logic. For half the price you can get something that weighs half the weight and does twice as much than a similar machine did two years ago. Now that kind of progress I can get used to.

Making an early winter scene

We are taking pictures of people today. Reference for a winter scene illustration. Part of the image reference will be created in a 3D program and the people will be shot as photographs with similar lighting and then dropped in. The image will then be used as reference for the final painting which will have a higher contrast and more saturation probably but will generally look the same. The benefit of doing it this way is that the art director can give the go ahead on the painting and know that it won't look too different in the final from the thing he approved. That's important on crazy deadline jobs like this one. Crazy deadlines also generate other problems too. There is no time to do anything twice so we have lined up twice the number of models we need for the shoot. That'll cover for any that don't show up and also give the art director some extra leeway in his selection of the ones that he wants to use. I'll post some of the shots after the shoot.

What happened to the calm before the storm?

Here in Studio Lugs we are getting ready for a huge onslaught of work. We were already pretty busy but now we are likely to be doing another four big illustrations before Christmas. In the normal run of things each one of these would take two to three weeks. It is going to make for a very busy, but productive time. I am excited by it but with a fair amount of trepidation. Still maybe that dash of panic makes the final work all the more vital. Anyway, we’ll know in the next couple of days whether we really are going to be that busy or not, but it seems pretty likely. Once again we won’t be able to show you the results until published but we might be able to show you little parts of the jobs as we go.

Riding can be heaven or hell

It gives me great pleasure to have a little digital camera in my backpack. You never know what you are gong to see cycling to and from work. Take this scene I shot on my way home from work recently... I liked how there was this glorious sunset going on able the distillery district and yet it seemed as fit the area had its own business to attend to. Lights were just coming on and businesses were setting up for the evening with no thought to what was going on overhead.

I have often wondered about having a video camera on board. Not just to record the trip but to also have some record of what actually happened during some of the random yet inevitable altercations that seem to occur when bikes meet cars. Like this evening for example. There I was riding along the bike lane, minding my own business, when an owner of a car parked next to the bike lane opened his driver side door to get in right in front of me while I rang me bell. "Watch your car door please" I yelled. He looked up at me as if I wasn’t there "What? Didn’t you see me?" I said pointing to my twin headlights as I passed. "No" I heard him call after me. Yet, moments later, his car practically touched me as he swerved into the bike lane to show me how clever he could be behind the wheel of his big ugly lump of steel and rubber. Maybe he did that to teach me a lesson... and the lesson is that he’s an idiot! I hate people who use their cars as weapons. I could have done with a record shot of his license plate.

Therr’s a prolbem here smeowhere

Can your fingers grow longer after you pass, 20, 30, 40, 50? I am wondering this because as I get older I become more keyboardishly dyslexic. The word “from” now always goes in as “form”, to becomes ot, some becomes smoe. I think of my fingers have grown and this accounts for the errors. Or perhaps my mind has started to speed up ad now works at a rate far in excess of what my fingers can achieve. Hence the error. Maybe, the Mac now has a system to detect these keyboarding errors but there is an error in the software and, because I am not making the mistakes any more, the computer is messing things up. Notice how all my suggestions (exuses) for the problems appear to be based on improvements at my end?

Hmm. See you aonther tmie.

P.S. Yikes, Grandmomma Lugs who loves to draw my attention to every typo I have ever made is going to freak if she sees this post.

Making it real

Woah!... the days are getting crisp. Just spent the weekend at the cottage. trying to finish off a third bedroom. It is nice to turn from tablets and screens to plaster and sand paper for a change. The room is pretty well done now, just needs painting and something covering the floor. This weekend I built a box to hide the electircial panel. There is something immensely satisfying about using tools to create something real. some edifice (even if it is only a box). The other work I do is so ephemeral I don’t think it is real. It is only real when it gets printed and you walk past a poster of it as you enter a store or drive past a billboard with the image on it. So, there is a definite pleasure in creating something real, something you can grab on to.

Casting envious eyes

Assistant Lugs is doing some small paintings for an art show and I am extremely envious. For once it would be neat to wallow in traditional media and all the spontaneous unplanned things that happen as paint hits canvas. When you are working on the computer pretty well everything you do happens because you plan it to happen. There aren't too many things that happen all by themselves on computers and yet IRL* that’s what you are working with all the time: the texture of the media, the viscosity of the paint, the temperature of the environment. And the smell, remember the smell of the inks? The computer only smells twice; when it is brand new and when it's about time to toss it out.

* IRL = in real life, I mean