My recent contract work has me developing a lot of urban themed environments, which is a nice change. But I can’t seem to think cityscape without thinking Zombies lately, Not sure if this is due to too much L4D or not enough.
Here’s a quick concept painting to exorcise it from my brain. Rendered in the same style I’ve been exploring recently, it’s yet another napkin doodle while having dinner at the Vintage. …stay away from my steak zombie, it’s mine!
I was chatting last night with one of the ladies from the Vintage about a philosophy course she’s in and a class debate about obligation toward future generations. That brought to mind a bit I read in Bill Bryson’s “A short history of nearly everything”.
I’ve taken a little creative license, but it’s a more or less faithful retelling, so here’s a scary little story of mad scientist and how their own creations always seem to be their undoing.
Once upon a time (in 1921) there was an engineer named Thomas Midgley. One day he decided to go all mad scientist and turned to industrial applications of chemistry. Sure it doesn’t sound very mad scientist like, but like most things, you get out of it what you put into it.
His first big success as an Evil Genius was in using Lead Tetraethyl to reduced engine knock in the increasingly popular automobile contraptions that everyone was so interested in.
Even though Lead was a well known neurotoxin a.k.a. a really bad thing for the villagers to be in contact with, it was used in all sorts of stuff. Get too much lead in your system and you’re on your own personal roller coaster ride of horribly entertaining side effects, like brain damage, blindness, cancer, convulsions, and terrifying hallucinations…until you die that is.
Lead …a known neurotoxin was used to line water tanks. It protected fruit from nasty bugs as pesticide spray. It even kept your tooth paste safe. What could go wrong? ..and it was crazy profitable, so that balances out right?
In 1923 Mad Doc Midgley’s Lead Tetraethyl gas additive gave three big corporations a big idea, they formed a little company called Ethyl Gasoline Corporation, later shortened to Ethyl Corp because it was easier for the villagers to pronounce and sounded friendlier I expect.
They began to mass produce the newly dubbed Ethyol as an additive for gas. This was good all around, Ethyl Corp was making lots of money, and engines made less noise, which seemed like a good deal.
Unfortunately people working to produce the additive were getting sick and dropping like flies. But Ethyl Corp pulled a Jedi mind trick and denied any connection. “..this additive is not the one you are looking for …these guys probably went nuts and died from working too hard …nothing to see here, move along”.
Even the best Jedi can’t keep that up for long, and as the villagers began to get restless Midgley went total dark side. In and effort either show how bad ass he was or that Ethyl was safe, Darth Midgley held a demonstration where he washed his hands in it and inhaled it, insisting that “you could do that every day ..no problemo”.
Mad Darth Midgley knew all too well the true dangers, having gotten seriously ill from exposure once before, and had avoided going near the stuff ever since.
Intermission… and obligatory pic. It’s a day late, but here’s a Halloween sketch. More doodling on cocktail napkins. I spent a little longer on this one than I probably should have, but still got it done in about three hours.
Back to the story… Like all good evil scientist, Midgley moved on to top his previous work by inventing Chlorofluorocarbons, that’s CFC’s for the typing challenged (me) or the environmentally minded. CFC’s, the dreaded scourge of the ozone layer were used even more widely than Ethyl. It wasn’t until much later that the destructive genius of CFC’s became as obvious as a pink elephant standing in your living room.
Midgley wasn’t around by the time the uber nastiness of his CFC’s were realized, having been strangled to death by a mechanical contraption he designed to control his bed after being crippled by polo. …Ta Da!
What’s the moral of the story? ..you don’t know what you don’t know? The dark side works in mysterious ways? Take your pick. My personal favorite is, Don’t bite into a fresh made donut 30 seconds out of the fryer, it’s too damn hot!
Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite It’s all Hallows Eve, but the only things going bump in the night around here are the roving gaggles of drunken college students haunting the street below my window. And they’ve apparently acquired to ability to converse with friends half way across town without the use of a cell phone. Where’s a zombie Apocalypse when you need one.
When I was a little boy, my older brothers would tell me a scary tale about an evil thing called Mister Rattly Bones. Mr Rattly Bones ate children the story goes, and collected their bones which he carried in an old sack. You see, it was the rattling of the children’s bones in that sack from which he got his name, and was the sound you were warned to listen for when you were alone in the dark.
I never saw Mr Rattly Bones, but I’m sure I heard him on occasion. I always imagined him to be very tall, gaunt, and bone thin with long fingers and a lipless grin.
I’m gonna go hide under the blankets now …and load my shotgun. Y’all have a Happy Halloween.
Oooooo …scary flowers. Another quick (obligatory) pic in the style I have been working in recently, and yet another in the growing line of illustrations that started as a doodle on a cocktail napkin at the Vintage restaurant downstairs.
I was having lots of fun with my old WordPress theme, making custom navigation bars and such to match the header image, but while out of town for a few days I visited my site and it felt a little overworked and not very clean.
So I grabbed a new theme and tweaked it a bit. There’s more work to do, I don’t like the sidebar spacing and cloud test colors among other things, but I do like the cleaner layout and navigation.
What do you think?
Not much time to post today, but there’s lots happening.
Notable is that the Unity Team announced today that a FREE version of the Unity Game Engine was now available. It is essentially equivalent to the Indie license version, which is now discontinued as a product being sold. Read more HERE.
Obligatory Pic . This is a concept I did some time back for the crew at Mad Otter. It’s one a several similar concepts I had to develop in very short order. You can see more of them HERE.
To my loyal army of subscribers, all 3 of you, I wanted to give a heads up that my spam filter is apparently eating some legitimate post.
Novak (Quite possibly my first subscriber) recently posted and I never received any notification, it just got flagged as spam. Fortunately I caught it an am now trying to keep an eye on things until I puzzle out exactly why a repeat poster would get spam filtered. I suspect it’s due to recent plugin updates or some such.
So, if any of you comment and don’t see it show up, email me directly and I’ll take care of it.
Obligatory pic. this is a rework of a concept sketch I started some time back, but didn’t finish. This style I’ve been playing with is probably not the best suited to this subject matter, but it was a fun exercise.
Cheers.
Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite I’ve been listening to Craig Ferguson’s “American On Purpose” on audio book, so if you want to hear this the way is sounds in my head, read the following with a thick Scottish accent.
Something like this …A coople O week agoo Ah posted bark ‘at Madge Otter hud acquired th’ rights tae th’ Red Baron Gam IP, puttin’ it back in th’ hans ay some O th’ original creators efter mony years in th’ wild. …Get the idea? Awe rite reid oan!
This week the crew over at Push Button Labs got their very capable hands on The Incredible Machine IP, which is fitting because Jeff Tunnell was the one of the original designers and producer on the game. PBL has released a bundled pack of the various incarnations of the game on GOG.com
Here is another quick sketch in the same style as some of my recent color concepts. This one was about two hours, but I spent way too much of that screwing around with the ground around the base of the rock.
Autumn has arrived in Eugene and the trees are beginning to drop their leaves. Time sure does slip by fast when you’re having fun. I’m gonna a have to switch to more appropriate subject matter or at least a Fall color palette, as the season is beginning to grow on me.
Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite It has been a busy month. I’m finally catching up on a few things that have sat idle for too long.
Fall has landed on Eugene and even though the sun is warm and shining, the air is crisp and the wind is already beginning to blow the leaves from the trees. I’m no fan of the cold but I am looking forward to some long runs in the cool air, and hikes in the woods among the fallen leaves.
On the art front, I’ve finished up a lot of contract material recently and will post some of that soon, stay tuned.
Also still waiting on the launch of the Enchanted Forest Environment Pack. I’m not going to draw any lines in the sand, but think it will go live this week, now that GDC Austin isn’t filling the publishers attention.
Here’s a landscape painting I just wrapped up. I’ve received a lot of positive feedback on this rendering style and have been putting in some effort to refine the process. This one was about 4.5 hours, not counting the Corona and 15 minutes or so I spent working out the sketch. The creative process aside, I’m aiming to get hands on rendering down to about 2-3 hours for this level of complexity.
This painterly look isn’t appropriate for every subject matter or project, but it is a nice contrast and change of pace from more gritty “core” styles. Being able to work in either of the two pretty much cover the spectrum, and server the purpose of communicating an idea.
While waiting for a few lose ends to be tied up, I took the opportunity to finize the logo for the soon to be released Enchanted Forest Environment Pack. Stay tuned, I hope to be announcing the launch very soon.
The Koi picture below was a recent speed painting exercise I did while eating breakfast a few days ago. This is version 2.
A friend pointed out to me that the rocks and the fish weren’t working together, and they were right. It was bothering me since my first iteration on the painting, but I had intended to leave it alone and let it be. It was after all just an exercise. …but I couldn’t help taking another pass at it. I like this one a lot better …except for the fish, I think they turned out better in the first painting.
Yesterday was the first day of Spring! …well, not technically, but in so much as Eugene seems to have transitioned from winter rain, hail, and 40 degrees, to blue skies, sunshine and 70+ in less than a week.
It was definitely my first day of Spring. I worked long hours all weekend on a very important project and decided a siesta was in order. A couple of drinks at the Vintage with great company and a walk around town enjoying the sunshine made for a perfect end to the day, and an awesome start to Spring.
