Maybe I Do Miss Snow......

Naaw I still hate snow.

Guns Collection 01

All the nice and candy glossed firearms I've illustrated - up till now.

PMC Dude - With K9!!

Started work on the K9 German Shepherd today. Took a while to get the proportions right but I think this is pretty good for now.


There's a full dog underneath that K9 vest. It takes longer, but I usually prefer to work with a full body below whenever I want to overlap something. Also because this image is dual purpose, for the web-portfolio and for my collection of dog drawings.

Putting the 2 together:


I'm fairly happy with this update. These set of characters will be worked into the main web-portfolio interface at some point. There's an additional IRobot 510 Packbot to be added. Still in basic stages of line construction. At one point today I thought I lost the working file. Turns out its not in my usual working folders.

AKS-74U PMC Dude - Full Body

I've posted a half body version before and I'm using it now as part of my printed marketing material. But I needed a full body version for my web portfolio revamp. Its a year overdue and it seriously needs some updating. Almost done, just a bit more to go.


Some parts of the webbing was reworked so I'll need to paint those over. Changed the pants around a little bit but the artwork is generally the same.

Updating Some Old, In-Progress Artwork

There's a lull due to the holiday season here with the Chinese New Year celebrations. So I thought, I better dig up my older stuff and get them completed before moving back into the current stuff I'm working on.

This piece was last updated maybe 6 months back or more. To put it into context of how fast the world moves (or how slow I work depending on how you see it); When I started out doing this piece, I was looking at using the UCP camouflage for this guy's uniform. As of a few months back, the US Army in Afghanistan has swapped to the OCP - Operation Enduring Freedom Camouflage Pattern. Better known as MULTICAM.

(I checked, it was almost 9 months ago)

To get the details into the gun, I use Adobe Illustrator to path out the features in vector and try to separate out the overlapping areas. After the pathing is done, I can bring the vectors over onto Photoshop to paint digitally. With the pathing and overlapping areas planned, I can then use Photoshop layers to its fullest. This way I can make minor adjustments even after I've done the coloring for the weapon.


This is how it looks like pieced together.


I'm not looking at any real deadline for this. I'm currently concentrating on getting a Natural Science portfolio up to buff my capabilities and also on the lookout for incoming jobs so I'll see how it goes. Shouldn't be a problem.

On to something a bit fun. I got carried away while working on that Year of the Rabbit greeting card and just went nuts with the variety of guns. I just wanted to create one but ended up doing over a dozen and I'm adding new ones everyday. I intend to release them for free use soon - but not all at once. So here are a few to look at - I'll post the vector packs once I'm ready.

AKS-74U SOPMOD Progress and other ramblings..

May is almost at its end and its nearly half of 2010 gone. There's this voice at the back of my head telling me "Dude, maybe you're not working hard enough."

Anyhow, the last couple days I put in several hours into the AKS-74U SOPMOD piece. This is part of a package of firearms art similar in presentation style to the title bar (and my business ID). Its not complete yet, there are a few more things to add like a rifle sling and a background, but generally its done.



I've actually got a couple more pieces done in this presentation style for a client. I'll have to talk to him about letting me put them up here. Typically I don't publish artwork(s) before a client uses them for their business.

Also working on a new piece.....as well as several others. Hope to finish the bunch of stuff by 2010 if time permits. Sure as hell don't want to drag it on till 2011.




Changing to another topic.

Quite recently an old friend and paintball buddy of mine messaged me to inquire about my Deviant Art post. Well I don't have a DA account then, so how the heck did my artwork get posted up? After some digging, we both found out that this dude posted my artwork claiming it as his own - its not even copyright infringement, its outright plagiarism. In fact 3 of the work-in-progress pieces of this AKS-74U SOPMOD piece was stolen and posted on his Deviant Art gallery along with 4 more of my sketches, all from this blog. Those pieces either had no watermark or had the watermark tampered with.

I had my friend message him regarding my artwork and he took down the 3 AK pieces, but kept the rest of the sketches up. After a few more failed attempts to communicate with him, I gave up and went to Deviant Art moderators to lodge a complaint. They suspended his account in less than a week of my complaint. Some friends joked that I've finally 'arrived' because someone feels my work is good enough to steal. Honestly I don't find it funny, but I accept that as the silver lining in this cloud.

So the lesson learned here kids - don't steal works from others. The kudos you gained parading the false trophy cannot outweigh the embarrassment of being found out. And its getting easier to be found out these days. Hard work and commitment always pays off.

Last but not least, super duper thanks to Marc for giving me the heads up on this situation. (When you come back I'll buy you coffee...the expensive ones).

IT'S MID APRIL!!

AND I'VE DONE NOTHING SIGNIFICANT YET!!!

Almost all my personal projects are on hold due to picking up 2 jobs at the same time. The burned weekends aren't great but at least the paid work was enjoyable content-wise.

For the first time in over almost 2 months found time to work on my personal stuff.

Weapon Detail:


Figure Detail:


Its just a few extra hours of work put in today right after I shipped off the last article in the draft to one of the clients. Looks OK I hope.

AKS-74U SOPMOD update

Tonal and detail work with bits of tweaks here and there.

AKS-74U SOPMOD update

Linework update for the AKS-74U. The linework for the dude is pretty much done. There's that little bit more to go for the Glock and the Blackhawk Serpa Holster he's carrying, might need to tweak the scale a bit, the Glock 17 is sleek - not small. The linework for the AKS is still at a very basic stage. That would need a bit more work. To be honest I'm not even sure why I bother with the lower body. Chances are I'm cropping it off at the waist in the final product.



Busy with other work. I'll decide if I want to put them up. Its mostly because they're neither military or technical themed.

Small Update

Long story short - Most of this month I'm on a new contract so I couldn't find time to update stuff. Most of LAST MONTH however - was taken up by Dragon Age Origins. Blame Bioware for making such an awesome RPG.

I've gone back to pencil sketching recently and found myself in need of practice. The problem with using software is the ability to experiment and make mistakes while in traditional work you can only change so often. I do miss pencil sketching though - even though you can't undo.

Here's something I've been working on - a contractor with an AKS74U with quality mods. Still researching the AK so please pardon any inaccuracies. This piece had already been touched up digitally - that explains the sharp linework but the underlying sketch was done in pencil. I haven't had the confidence to ink sketches for a long time now.