Pirate Crew of Cthulhu

My week 3 assignment for Nate Wragg's course, 'Character Design for Animation' over at the CG Master Academy.

Tried not to include too many pirate clichés with these guys, hence the lack of parrots, hooks and skull and crossbones.

Loving the course so far - five more assignments to go!

Shane
www.ShaneMadeArt.com

Blue Nose Friends Blossom Pond

Image Courtesy of Carte Blanche Greetings

A promotional illustration created for the launch of the included characters in plush form.  I always enjoy painting water and it was fun experimenting with different colours and levels of transparency in this piece.

Shane
www.ShaneMadeArt.com

Percivile the Impatient

My week 2 assignment for Nate Wragg's course, 'Character Design for Animation' over at the CG Master Academy.


Shane
www.ShaneMadeArt.com

Dexter's Dinosaurs

When my Son, Dexter, was six months old I started this piece.  It marked the start of my first proper oil painting (shameful I know!) so I was full of enthusiasm for a new project, new medium and it was dinosaurs - what could go wrong?  Well, as it turns out, oil painting is actually pretty bloody difficult which is why my son has just turned two and I've only just finished it!

I could make excuses about house moves, job changes, and wrestling with different techniques, but the truth is that I didn't have a dedicated painting space at the time, and the fact that I'm so accustomed to working digitally meant the mere thought of setting up all my materials, mixing colours, being frustrated for several hours and then clearing up again, every time I wanted to paint, was enough to put me off.


I had messed about with oil colours before but never got much further than a few sketches, the required use of solvents really put me off and is why I didn't touch them again for nearly ten years.

The discovery of Winsor & Newton Artisan water soluble oil paints is what brought me back, the ability to use water for clean up making everything infinitely more convenient and enabling me to paint without worrying about the health of myself or my family.  I would highly recommend them.


But I finally found a technique that I was happy with and fought through to the bitter end, the painting now hanging proudly on my little boy's bedroom wall.



Below are some closeups of the individual letters;

Shane

www.ShaneMadeArt.com

Blue Twit

I'm currently working my way through Nate Wragg's course, 'Character Design for Animation' over at the CG Master Academy and am really enjoying it so far, the creature above was my week 1 assignment.

I've been designing characters for years, but have never really put any thought behind my process, so the course is really helping me to rationalise my design choices, leading to better characters in less time.

I'll be posting my work from each assignment so stay tuned!


Shane
www.ShaneMadeArt.com

The Lost Lumberjack

I'm back!  Life has been pretty frantic lately, but I think it's about time I got back on top of this blogging thing, so expect a good few months of consistent weekly posts.

Since joining the creative team at Gemma last October I've been working on some pretty exciting stuff, but unfortunately I can't actually show any of it until the Autumn at the earliest.  But the good news is that I have a bunch of new personal work to fill the coming weeks, along with the last few pieces of Blue Nose Friends artwork I illustrated before leaving Carte Blanche Greetings.

First up is the guy above, a portfolio piece painted prior to visiting Eurogamer Expo on a job hunting mission at the end of last year.

If he seems familiar, it's because he's basically a rendered version of this earlier sketch.



Shane
www.ShaneMadeArt.com

Hello 2013...

Year of the snake and all that...

Hope you have a good one!


Shane

Blue Nose Friends Sunset Snow House and end of year recap

Image courtesy of Carte Blanche Greetings Ltd

So 2012 is nearly over, and it's been an interesting year to say the least.  The first half started out pretty much as normal; Working away on Blue Nose Friends illustrations and squeezing in the odd personal piece when by amazing, but very distracting, 1 year old son allowed.

Then the greetings industry started to change, some well established high street names nearly went under, and I realised that I needed a safety net.  So with the intention of building a freelance client base I spent the latter half of the year putting together a portfolio, website (stop by www.ShaneMadeArt.com!), business cards and a cool little pack to send out.  Beyond freelance opportunities I also hoped to use this work to break into the videogame industry, so I headed off to the Eurogamer Expo to show my stuff.  Although I received some excellent and positive feedback from some well respected industry professionals, it also made me realise that maybe the industry I choose isn't as important as I think it is, as long I enjoy what I'm doing.

This was further confirmed after attending the Schoolism.com live workshop in London and listening to the advice of Bobby Chiu.  Inspirational is an understatement;  After the four hour lecture I finally felt I had direction, and that direction was to do what I loved doing and do it well.

So although I had put a LOT of work into my videogames focussed portfolio, it turns out it hadn't gone unnoticed.  Soon after I was offered pretty much the best job I could possibly get within the greetings industry, a role with so much potential it's almost daunting!  So I packed up my pencils and left the home of Tatty Teddy.  For better or worse this obviously means that I will no longer be illustrating My Blue Nose Friends, therefore the above image will be the last MBNF christmas image I ever post - it was used on this years Blue Nose Friends advent calendar by the way.  It's been a good run but I'm glad to move on to something different and stretch my artistic legs a bit.

2013 is going to be a super exciting year for me and I hope to show of some of the work I've done for my new employer as soon as I can.  In the meantime I still have a few unseen pieces to keep things ticking over.

This blog will live on!



Have a great Christmas and a fulfilling new year,

All the best,

Shane

Dust Bunny

A finished painting of this earlier sketch done for my new portfolio site over at www.ShaneMadeArt.com.

Fur is always fun, but challenging, to paint.

Shane

Phew...glad that's over

After a month long absence I'm finally back to get this blog back up and running.

Rather than enjoying the sun I've been frantically working on my website, portfolio and a few other promotional bits (that I'll post about on here in the coming weeks) in an attempt to break into the daunting world of freelance illustration.

So if you have a few minutes please stop by www.ShaneMadeArt.com and let me know what you think...good or bad.  In time this blog will be altered to match my website and eventually they'll be integrated.

Until next time here's my newly created logo;

It represents the fact that I like to illustrate both cute and creepy subjects, and sometimes a combination of both.  It's based on the idea of the kind of creature that would hatch from this "Hybrid Egg" that I previously used as a placeholder image while the site was being built.  Pretty apt I guess!

Shane