Space Ace's Kimberly pinup and lil Borf

I've just finished a pinup featuring Borf and Kimberly from an old school arcade game by Don Bluth called Space Ace.  When I was super young, it was the most beautiful game in existence.  And let's face it, it still looks impossibly cool.  If you don't know about it - you should look it up.

LASER DISC GAMES! Waaaaaaah! 

Anyways, prints will be up at the LTD gallery and I'll post the finished pieces after the show opens tonight. 

Opens August 29th - 7pm-11pm

It's right next to PAX - on Pike street. 307 E. Pike street.

Be there or be square.

Here's a sketch for you.

I know, not nearly enough rainbows or vomit, right?  But at least there are some panties. WOOT.

cheers,
&rew.

Bubble Bobble / Puzzle Bobble Neon Sign art

Pacman, Hamburgers and Shakes, Bubble Bobble, arcades - I tried a bit of everything.

The best thing ever happened.  I made a neon sign.  Well, I didn't do that, because making a neon sign requires glass bending skills, a workshop, and a black belt of ninja art mastery, while I only have a green belt in looking at art.

I designed a neon sign.  Here's how I started.

I built a bunch of sketches around the concept.  I used a bunch of classic arcade/Diner bits and tried to incorporate what he wanted in simple thick elegant line work so the bender wouldn't have a helluva time.


So the guy I was designing for, he liked on in particular, so I turned it into a slightly cleaner sketch, which you can see here.  He loves Bubble Bobble / Puzzle Bobble.

Bob and Bub pictured, because they're awesome and they provided a great color palette

 After everything was built to his liking, I took the work into illustrator to model it perfectly.  It also gave me one more opportunity to play with the size or the glass in comparison to the mass of the sign.

I wanted the thing to look nice and thick/dense with 15mm glass at the size it was to be manufactured.

The sign didn't have that in stock though and we had to go with 13mm.

We picked the sign up the other day and I snapped a few photos of it.  It came out really nice.  In person you can see the colors and they're a bit nicer, but in the iPhone photos, the bloom is a bit impossible to photograph.

Here are my favorite pictures.

A closeup of the neon so you can see all the connective bits.

Obligatory depth of field shot and the colors are pretty close in this one although it's still quite blown out.

The finished sign.  You can compare this to the concept sketch and see that it's pretty close, although if you ask me - I can point out several bits that are off.  I designed the thing of course I'd notice them!

Mission accomplished.  I have a few more neon signs concepts designed / planned and I'm hoping to work few some of them and have them at some upcoming art shows in 2014.

cheers,
&Rew.

Color Work

Working out color for the last sketch posted.

Moar Sketch

Here's another take on the cosplay concept.  It's a sort of mashup of a bunch of refs into one little package.  And for the nerd impared out there (which can't be many because, well, you're reading an digital art blog) I've listed all of the things I'd like to paint into it.

Luigi, Chun Li, Samus, Pokemon, Cammie, Lara Croft, Zelda - I'm pretty much ripping it all.  

I guess you could kind of say like a DJ would do with music, I'd like to do with these characters.

Commence the music.

Those are all game references, but I had to fight to keep a star wars bit out of this.  Oooh - maybe she could be holding a black and red umbrella over her shoulder to mix in a tad of resident evil.

Hopefully I'll find time, of which there is little presently, to fill out the rest of the piece.

As always, your comments are welcome and very much appreciated.

be seeing you,
&Rew.

Cosplay "Pin-up" - Rainbow Dash? Bravest Warriors Beth? Samus? Wat!

So I have this dream of mine...

I want to make a giant pinup banner to hang when I do the next Seattle Comic Con next year.

When I say giant, I mean, really quite large... like, taller than my house large.  Like... 30 feet tall giant.


Chances of this happening are slim but just like I always say "You make don't of the shots that you don't take."

So I'm planning for this.

The sketch has to be really tall because it can't be wide - booths aren't that wide, so I probably have ~5-10' to work with and the thinner and taller the better.  It can't be too lude, so I'll be somewhat tame.

What I'm thinking is that it'll look like a giant version of one of my cartoon girls standing right in the con.  Should be really cool to take pictures of.

Here are some sketches.

Rainbow Dash, Samus, Samus Cosplaying as Chun Li, Samus as Sailor Moon.   Then I did some other randoms - Velma, Beth from Bravest Warriors both regular style and as Slave Leia from the Butter Lettuce episode.

I'm not in love with any of these, although I like Samus as Sailor Moon and also Rainbow Dash is kinda too cool for School.

Do let me know if any of these tickle your fancy, or any other part of your mind or body.

cheers,
&Rew.

April O'neil and her incredible round boobies sketches

Sketches for the April piece.

Look closely and you may notice that on the final I *ulp* painted a nose.  Also it's been pointed out that I'm evolving away from round heads.  (^__^) Don't worry though, I'm not yet moving away from round butts or boobies.  !

Yes.

!

Prints are up on the LTD site.  Limited to only 10.  If  you're interested, follow the rabbit hole:
http://www.ltdartgallery.com/product/ninja-turtles-by-andrew-wilson-paper-10-x-12

GLHF
&Rew.

Double Dragon Neon cheats and WTF is Linda wearing?

Ok, so if you haven't tried double dragon neon - it's f_cking awesome.

I played through the whole thing with my GF last night.  It only took a couple of hours. (In my opinion, that's good).  10 bucks for a few hours of XBLA or PS3 game play is great. Short, sweet, to the point. But you can replay that game to unlock stuff if you want.

I discovered several cheats while we played last night.  I wanted to share them with the world as well as my sketch of one of the common enemies: Linda.  She's a dominatrix.  She's hillariously tasteless.  It's pretty rad. 

This is my version of the Double Dragon Neon Linda.

Linda wants to take your lunch money and they suffocate you to death with her butt.

Ok, "cheats" or secrets for the game.

When you're in the map you can hold down L1 L2 L3 R1 R2 R2 select and start.  If you hit them all, then you'll hear a robotic crash sound and then you can play the game as a f_cking ROBOT.  You may have to beat the game first on normal. I'm not sure, but I think you can just do that.  Basically hit all your L, R buttons + select and start.

Secondly, when you in the lab level with the punching bag - hit the punching bag 87 times.  This is an homage to 1987. If you don't get it, then you never will.  If you do that - exactly 87 times.  You'll hear a SFX and then you can play through an extra part of the game with weird art.  It's cool.

Thirdly - In the countryside (or maybe the level after that) you will see two gravestones close to each other.  Before you bust them up - duck 7 times inbetween them and you'll unlock a weird thing.  I can't explain it.  It's weird.  But the thing helped out.  I'm not saying any more about that.

I think that's all I found.  But I also recommend when you play leveling up your training wheels and keeping those on through the first playthrough - it will make things seriously easier.  Farm the level 2 boss and spend your upgrade points/cash on that or balance and you'll be straight for the first few play-throughs.

That's all I got for now.

bad ass.
&Rew.

Moo mini cards: Kirby your enthusiam.

Wakka wakka... That's right folk. Kirby.  It's on.

Is there any other marshmallow shaped hero this cool?  I surmise that there is not.

Kirby, the old-school NES hero is back on the warpath.

He's really gonna f_ck that tree up.  That's what you get for being nature! DIE.

Why don't you make like a tree and LEAFVE!

More to come if/when I ever have time.

cheers,
&Rew.

Moo mini cards: Contra motherf_cker. Yes. Contra.

Nes Contra is the sh_t.  If you say otherwise, why don't you come over to hang out with me SO I CAN BREAK YOUR ARM OUT OF IT WIMPY SOCKET AND BEAT OFF YOUR FACE WITH IT.

Contra.

CONTRA!

All that oldschool nintendo cart awesomeness is so fondly remembered for a reason.  I've read all the naysayers talking about how it's nostalgia holding it together, but they can go suck a CD, because those carts are the stuff of legends.  Yah, I'm looking at you hate blogger, with my spread pointed simultaneously at your terrible articles and your ugly mug simultaneously, cause that's how we do with spread.

I'm getting the hand of the moo card drawings maybe, but maybe these first few will suck by time I get a little further down the road.

stay in school and don't do drugs,
&Rew.

Moo mini PacMans

The third moo mini card, out of 20-40 depending on how my moo'd goes.  Get it? MOO'D. HAH. I kill me!

 

 

 

Pacman, the way he was supposed to be!

Don't believe me? Check the side of the original arcade cabinet. The art says it all.

Want me to do a game you like? Lemme know about it.  QUIT LURKING AND POST A COMMENT ABOUT IT DAMMIT.  Srsly.

Also, do feel free to post links to your own versions or email them to me.  So far I've gotten a few in the mail box and it's totally awesome that people are getting involved.  Maybe I'll do a page of your art to share with the world.
 
be seeing you,
&rew.

Moo mini sized Sonic the Hedgehog art

Sonic the Hedgehog. Genesis. Green Hill Zone.

Before all of the new shitty Sonic games, there were a few good ones. This is one such blast to the past. 

Look how cute it will be as a Moo card.

Check out the cards at
http://us.moo.com/

And if you do anything cool, pleas do share it with me.

&Rew.

Moo-tivational Concept.

I'm going to make some Moo Mini cards

A guy from Moo contacted me to say that he would trade me some free product for some representation on my blog.

Now, if you're like me, you hate being solicited for anything at all... EXCEPT REALLY COOL STUFF.  So I'm going to be straight up with you that moo cards are actually really awesome and don't need endorsement TBH.  I've never gotten them made and I need cards though, but instead of making business cards, I want to miniature art pieces.

Whether or not you make some, I have an awesome idea in mind, so let's get to it.

I want to do miniature drawings on side-scroller video game levels.  Classic stuff, you know, that's been done to death, but at least this time, I will be doing them to death tiny and in a new way.

The cards are double sided, so I might switch up the design on the backside, so that it's one scene on one side and something a little different on the back.

Then when it's done I want to send a set to people who have participated or reblog or tweet/retweet about it.  I don't really know how to do that, but it's going to be an awesome art giveaway of EPIC tiny proportions.  ¿Amirite?

Oh yah - I also want you to participate and share your stuff.  I've gotten a few emails from people following this site lately and it's really cool to see what they do and how they interpret some of my art.  So do feel free to share with me.

Here's a template to get you started:

Here's a blank template for you to use.  I'm painting these much bigger than the cards will come out, so they have detail, but not so detailed that it looks like a blur when I'm all done.  It's a balance.  Also since there are so many to do, I'm sure I'll get better by the end.

There will be around 40 images to make, so I'd better get started.

Here's Super Mario Brothers from the NES.  If you don't know, you must be like....5 years old. :-|

Here's an up-close shot.  The art will not be represented this way, but it's fun to noodle some detail at this scale.
I paint up close but constantly zoom out to see if everything reads well.

This is how the moo card should look in the end, give or take a cm.
It's important to always look at your art at the size which it will be viewed.
If you paint to closely to your piece you may lose perspective.

¿Super Moorio Bros. anybody?

The link to moo cards is here: http://us.moo.com/ 

cheers,
&Rew.

Lara and Felicia flats.

Lara Croft and Felicia from DarkStalkers / Vampire Savior / All that other good sh_t.

I've been painting the f_ck out of these sketches for a show coming up in San Diego.  I'll post the finished pieces once it's all gone down.

"This is Felicia's Air Plane, you hear me? What's that spell? Fap!" shouted Felicia a the top of her lungs.

"Would you, sir, kindly let me raid your tomb? That is, if you wouldn't mind." Coyly asked Lara.

At first I wasn't going to go anywhere with Felicia, but I got inspired to WASTE MY WHOLE NIGHT PAINTING A CARTOON PINUP GIRL.  Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu.

I do hope you enjoy these and for goodness sake, don't take any of it too seriously.  I know that I don't.

cheers,
&Rew.

cute fourth of July pin ups

Two pinup sketches.  The first one is based on some ref I found in the google, the inspiration for the second sketch should be obvious. :-|

And not to spoil the surprise, but I picked Lara Croft.  I've already painted her up, but I'm holding off on the post for a bit.

Enjoy your fourth of July, regardless of where int he world you are.

&.

Pacman and Blinky.

You must forgive me.  I keep forgetting that people come to an art blog not to read words but look at pictures.

&.

How to Art: painting more Gum.

Ok. So I'm going to take that last bit a little further.

The very next thing I did was push the character around a little. and tweaked some of the proportions.  I also changed the base.  It wasn't interesting enough, so it had to become something from the environment of the character.  You know... it was just lame.  I liked it mind you, but it was lame.  Here's the tweaked Gum with a change of base.

Gum in a slightly more interesting base with some minor proportion tweaks.

Ok.  After that I get straight down to business.  I start painting over the picture above.  I'm not going to worry about the base.  It will go through the exact same steps, but it's not interesting now.

Brushes - this is an important part of the process.  Use the brushes YOU're comfortable with.  If you use my brushes, it may drive you f_cking nuts!  Having said that, feel free to use my brushes.  I mean, they aren't anything special AT ALL.  It's all about a workflow that you are comfortable with.

I mostly use the hard round pressure to opacity brush.  That's my favorite thing.  I blend with it - go from one patch of dark to a mid-tone to a light.  It's super easy and messy.  Don't worry about the mess just build up from sloppy to clean over time.

Here are the brushes I use in order of important/order of workflow.  I don't go straight from 1 down to 7 in order, it's back and forth, but mostly it happens like this:  Start with the hard round and finish with the little tight one.

Always paint with a brush that's one size too big for what you're doing. (^___^) Too small and you're F_CKED.  Trust me.  Save tiny stuff for details at the tail end.

This is my current set of brushes.  It's usually smaller, because why waste all that time looking at a list of bad brushes?

Oh yah - CANVAS SIZE!  I like to paint zoomed in a little bigger than how the final will look, but constantly look at the thing at the final size and a little smaller.  Painting closer than it will be seen will allow you more detail.  I won't tell you how close to get, but I will warn you that getting too close will lose your focus and waste strokes.  Get comfortable with your own process/zoom level but keep in mind the final size.  I care about silhouette and some little detail here and there.  I over render stuff, but I like it.  Get a feel for your style and nail it.

The next step if blending color over everything.I'm super sloppy about it.  This is going to look like a mess but it's all on a layer above, so I will eventually carve the silhouette back out, but I just want to get a better feeling for some of the shapes and colors I'm going to be using.

WHAT A MESS! Gum, you're one sloppy bitch.

A couple hard lines are in there.  You can get those by using your hard edge and coming in super tight with your tiny hard edge brushes. You can also mask stuff off, but that takes allot of time.  There are a hundred ways to do it.  Finding those hard edges important to make the piece not look like it's falling over or a puddle of color.  And that's one of the next steps, finding more and more of those to exploit for shape as well as noodling detail. 

It's insanely easy to add in details like little fabric bits and or that letter print on her clothes, screw holes, frill, etc.  The important part is hitting the general shapes and having your paletter.

Immediately after this I'm going to cut the silhouette of the character our as clean as I can, then I'll start finding edges and adding tiny details.

Some of the highlights I added are greedy.  Save those for last.  I didn't need to waste time on those yet, buuut you know, it's a process.  Have fun.  If you're not having fun it will show.  Also if you're not having fun, how the f_ck are you going to be motivated to make hundred of these?  You're not.

I hope this is helping somebody out there!

be seeing you,
&.

Gum work in progress and how to paint her

I decided to put some time into gum today and also do another one of those shitty How To Paint lessons. (^_^)

Ok. Let's see.

So you've got your line art drawn? GREAT. Now color it. How? Alright, so if you're using photoshop, let's pretend you are, you need to use a multiply on top of the lineart.

Flat colors.  It's just the palette, no real shading or lighting. This part should be easy.

I'm painting an established character, but that doesn't mean I can't inject my own style.  Colors are subtle.  They work together in lots of ways.  I like warm colors.  I actually beat them to death, but.. so what.  I like them.  So this character is all about the warm green  and a little bit of orangey yellow.  <3 that.  She looks like a can of 7-up! Werd?

Alright, so lay down your flats as a multiply.  Be messy, this part if fun.  If you're all conservo, then it's not fun.  Fuck around and try some things.

Then you'll want to give yourself some lighting indication.  Pick the direction that works for the piece and on a new layer, start painting over top of it, MESSY! Get your hands dirty.  Pick the colors and paint lighter and darker versions around those patches to indicate where you want lighting to be.

I added a layer on top of the last one (the multiply flat colors one) and started painting lights and darks.

I usually save a level of lights and darks for the end - the tail very end. That's so the shapes can pop.  This is looking a bit dark, but It's ok, it'll work for those light colors I add at the end to pop it all out.

That's all I've got right now, but I'll go alt-tab right now and work a bit more.  Doubt I will finish this on the weekend as I'm super busy, but I wanted to get started and see what happened.

cheers,
&.

Video Game pinup art. Lara Croft, Morrigan, or Cortana?

I'm going to do another set of video game pinup girls, but I' haven't decided who to paint yet.  I did a rough sketch based on a classic pinup pose and then sketched a few options up.  I'll pull one of these to finish as well as another pose, but I'm really torn about who to represent.

This was the blank pinup pose

cortana from halo

lara croft from tomb raider

morrigan aensland from dark stalkers/vampire savior

Whatever the choice, I'll litter the final with references to the game and probably tweak out the costumes a little bit so that it isn't so plain vanilla and boring.  Although now that I think about it, it's almost impossible to make Cortana not boring.  What a terrible design.

Maybe I should pick that one and try to make her as interesting as possible as a challenge.  Looking at Halo... the only thing they got right were the helmets and warthogs.  I'll bet I could make her look good, but is it really worth all that love?

Bahhh who knows.

cheers,
&.

Jet Set (grind) Radio Gum

I made another thing.

Gum won't think twice to grind your face. 

¿What kind of a name is Gum anyways? 

For that matter, Jet Set Radio?

Weird.

Gum of Jet Set Radio fame.

be seeing you,
&.

Destro and the Baroness (of Gi Joe fame) sitting in a tree...

....about to drop a suitcase nuke down your m_ther f_cking throat.

Just kidding but seriously.

I've been super busy working on the next Crazy 4 Cult piece, which is going to be insanely awesome if I do say so myself, but this has caused a major lapse of other art.

No big problem right, just MAKE MORE ART you say? Well, uhhh, yah, just give me a few more hours in the day. IT'S SO EASY FOR YOU TO SAY. Heh.

So I got up early this morning and drew GI Joe stuff.  Baroness and Destro sketches.  Yes, I'll be coloring them up. NOT SOON, but soon enough.

Destro. What's that short for? Destropolus, I imagine.  With a name like that, you know the bullies beat the crap out of him.

What's the Baroness hiding under that tight pleather cat suit? NOTHING, there's absolutely no room for it.
I sketched an alternate hair style so you can bitch when I don't paint the one you like. ;p  Which one do you like though?

I'll bet Destro would just lurve the Baroness to wrap her legs around that shiny widdle metal face of his.  You know who commands the cobra in that house.

I have about a million pieces of artwork that are "due" this summer, so I'd better get started on them now that I'm done with the Gallery 1988 crazy for cult stuff.

Thank you for your patience. <3

Don't do drugs and stay in school kids,
G.I. Andrew