APE '09

Wheee! APE is approaching this weekend Oct. 17th - 18th at the Concourse Exhibition Center in San Francisco! Islands in the Sky (Keno's Lair Comics) will be at Booth 410A. Please feel free to stop by and say hi if you're attending! Compared to the hustle and bustle of Comic Con and even Wondercon, APE's gonna be a pretty relaxing show, methinks! ^__^

~Genevieve

Cat's Meow, Wix.com & CGHub

Hey Guys!

Some friends have been asking if they could see some of my animations. I wish I had time to finish all my animated projects I started while I was back at the Academy, and even more that I've dreamed up after that. (Someday I will get back to them, I swear!)

The only actual finished piece (and by that I mean gotten to color, since I have many pencil tests and animatics lying around that are rather embarrassing) is a very old short called Cat's Meow. I initially did this intending for it to fulfill my homework assignment of "Push and Pull." But I ended up polishing it further.

I apologize to most of the Academy peeps out there who have seen this waaaay too many times at the shows and are sick of it. m(-_-)m

I joined a site called CGHub.com. It's similar to CGTalk and ConceptArt.org but feels easier to navigate and has more networking features. So far, the members there seem cool and eager to give feedback. I've posted some of my art there, mostly things you've seen already on this blog, and old stuff from my website.

Speaking of my (seemingly ancient and forsaken) website Charicreatures, it's strangely dysfunctional at the moment due to pictobrowser. =( This led me to look around for quick and easy Flash Portfolio Website Builders, since I no longer have the time to make one from scratch. I found one that I want to share, called Wix.com. It's easy to build a free and fancy (but not too fancy so that it takes forever to load or find your way around) Flash site. The coolest thing is that it's highly customizable: you can add your own images anywhere; you can change the parameters, such as speed of animations, type of page transition, etc. in any Flash element on the template, and there are many types of templates to fit your needs.

~Genevieve

Messin' Around

Meh. Crappy sketch, being random and just messing around with some new brushes I found today, trying to get a more painterly feel and mostly just playing around with colors.

Does anyone have painting tips on how to find the best colors to sculpt light and shadow? I want to learn how to make it second nature to "see" light as different colors instead of my usual 2D approach of simply taking the lighter and darker versions of a base color. I'm trying to study this more... *furrows brow in thought*

Update: It's 4am and I am still wide awake, taking a crash course on color theory. I've dug up notes my mentor has given me and numerous helpful websites while actively painting as I learn. It's quite fun playing with color and finding how they harmonize; it's clear I've never been too strong with colors as I've always focused on linework and 2D cell shading. Over the years I've begun to regret my weaknesses and fear of color so I feel the need to force myself into it if I'm ever going to improve.

~Genevieve

The Mighty Nomad Gallery

A super-talented artist named Craig Harris came to my booth (I was away at the moment) at Comic Con this year, and dropped off a card about his new gallery he organized, called The Mighty Nomad Gallery, in LA. I contacted him later and he asked if I would like to submit some pieces. After I heard this, I was beaming widely all week, dazed with joy, excitement and disbelief! I was so honored and humbled that Craig would allow me to be a part of such a great line up of talent!

He said that he was good friends with Sean "Cheeks" Galloway, well known as an incredible and prolific artist who's worked all across the industry from comics, to animated series, to games. He's an awesome, sweet and humble guy, and one of my inspirations! So Craig and Cheeks, if you happen to be reading this, thank you both SO much for giving me this special opportunity! ^__^

I've been working on the gallery pieces ever since. I've never submitted to a gallery before so this is a bit daunting! Needless to say, everyone else there in the gallery are veterans to the animation and/or comics industry. And here I am, just a lowly n00b compared to them!! TT__TT

Still, I've been at it every day. I need to speed up and get my first piece rendered so that I can start painting!

So I can't show you guys what I've been working on yet. But for now, here are some penguins!

Tomorrow is our Ship Party for MySims Agents. I'm excited, but I'm more excited to go home early to keep working on my painting!

Enjoy and wish me luck, guys! ^__^ I'll need it...

~Genevieve

MySims Agents Art

I love being on the MySims team and I'm really happy to have been able to design so many characters for the game. Now that MySims Agents is coming out on Sept. 29th, I would like to share some of my concept art. It's funny to see the difference between when I first started on the team and how I currently draw the characters because at first, I didn't get the proportions quite right. Now that I'm more comfortable and familiar with the style, I can see the difference...

A poster of all the NPC icons you will encounter in the game as you talk to characters.

Various Yeti concepts

Color test

The version of the Yeti they used in game.

One of my favorite designs - Luke

Gabby's wall eyed dog, Grit

Madame Zoe

Poppy's Dog, Dogwood

Chaz & Tim

These are designs for some CAS outfits you can unlock in the game...

Steampunk gear

Preston in a Yeti suit.

Skip Rogers

Gothboy Version 1

Gothboy Version 2

Professor Nova Concepts

Morcubus, the main villain

Magellan the lemur

Zombie Carl

Violet - early concept

They ended up using a simpler design of Violet so I used her detailed version to make a Geisha outfit you can unlock.

Buddy Outfits - Before & After

Here are some of the characters in-game so you can see how the 3D modelers brought the characters to life from 2D to 3D. My friends, Serv, Robert, Paul and Kampol modeled the NPCs while Ethan and the outsourcing group worked on CAS. I think they all did an awesome job modeling, rigging, texturing and lighting the models. To see more characters, go to the MySims Agents Official Site.

~Genevieve

Commissions

Some recent commissions I did for some Comic Con peeps, all 11x17" or bigger....

Rangiku from Bleach

Ihrie of Ruin Explorers

Black Canary

~Genevieve

Business Cards and Posters!

Hey Guys!

Yeah, I'm on a roll for updating today, hahah! That means after this I will go back into my hermit hole for another year or so, right? XD Mayyyybe... I just might have one more update coming up later next week...

I wanted to share some art for our new two-sided Kayli business card that I designed. These will be at our table as well as the artwork sold as a set of 11x17" glossy posters!

Be sure to follow the full story on our IITS Blog! Hope to see y'all there this year at San Diego Comic Con '09! ^___^

~Genevieve

Kayli Shirt!

Here is a design I did for our Islands in the Sky t-shirts that we'll be selling at the booth next week! Please check out the full article on our IITS Blog!

~Genevieve

Manty Hat

Hey Guys!

Be sure to come visit the Keno's Lair booth at this year's San Diego Comic Con in Small Press, table O13!

Jill Johnson is a wonderfully creative and talented co-worker of mine at EA; she is highly experienced at making custom adorable plushies and she's made some for many of my co-workers there.

And she made me my very own Manty hat--YEEEE!! I was so excited to see how awesome it turned out. I'm impressed at how close it came to my concepts (see below)! THANK YOU JILL!! YOU ROCK!

Manty is a character in the comic that you will be seeing more of in the next issue. Because Kayli is obsessed with riding a flying manta, Manty reluctantly becomes Kayli's pet of sorts... We've had many plans for him to act as comic relief in the webstrip but decided to give him a more significant role in the main comic.

Check out more on Manty here at our Official Islands in the Sky Blog! And now on to some photos!

His 3 tails are fully poseable and bendy!

D'awwww, how can you be mad at this face?

It's tough to take pics in the mirror when you've got a manta on your head. XD

~Genevieve

Kayli & Wrench

I haven't posted much, so I sketched this during work today... unlike Gordo, Kayli doesn't smoke, but I just wanted to see what it'd look like if she did.

D'oh! I just noticed her expression looks similar to my profile pic. XD