Gorgonzola's Noodlin's, UPDATE: August 17th, 2009

[Gorgonzola]

Hey All,

I've lurked on here for a long time, and I decided it's high time I drag out what's been sitting on the computer and throw it up here for everyone to look at and all that. If anyone here frequents Drawingboard, you might have seen this stuff before, so apologies as I slowly bring this thread up to speed then with semi-old stuff. Apologies also for the first huge couple of posts this thread will have..

Crits are always welcome, no sense being an artist if you'll be prissy about it.

[chriis.zed]

pretty damn awesome stuff man
keep it up!

[polipol]

wow man these are really great sketchs :)...they communicate visually pretty well...... keep us posted :) would love to see more :D

[revenebo]

Wow, I stopped by because your nickname made me laugh and then I found some great sketches. More of them!

[Gorgonzola]

Thanks for the comments, fellas!

Here's some more dredged up from the depths of my hard drive...mostly sketchbook stuff, and a few color tests and fool-arounds.

[chriis.zed]

great post. i would say im loving the creatures and the armored dude, but its all really nice. :)

[Gorgonzola]

Cheers Chris, glad you like it.

Here's some more stuff. Slowly working through what I have left, soon it'll have to be new stuff!

[Gorgonzola]

Well, here's some more from the old piles. Some more sketches, as well as a few old comic pages to boot!

-Andrew

[Gorgonzola]

I do believe this might be the end of the stash! I'll have to start being responsible and putting up new stuff...

As always, comments and all that are most welcome.

[Arenyth]

I like the colors youre playing around with for the space suits! The joker one is hilarious. Your dinobirds colors look great, but I wish he was more refined (specular, shadow). You do so well with your color choices, but they all look a little flat. A little more love and they'd be awesome!

[destinyapocalypse]

dude you rock cool stuff in here



keep it up! take care

[AustenFM]

My word, there's so much here to look at! I really love your environments and creature designs, i can definitely learn a thing or two by keeping an eye on you.

Cant wait to see more!

[Gorgonzola]

Hey guys, glad you like all the stuff.

Here's some recent comic pages I did for an upcoming webcomic. Site isn't totally up yet, so I won't bother with giving the url yet. I also have some gesture work here, courtesy of posemaniacs.com. Love the site, except for the occasional awkward model the site gives...

[Gorgonzola]

Here's some more random junk. I think I got a handle on attachment sizes, so hopefully these aren't oppressively huge:[

I went to the Georgia Aquarium this past weekend, hence the little drawings of fish in the travel book. The submarines..well, I can't give reasoning for those, you know how doodling goes.

Also threw up a little critter drawing, which I took into photoshop to try and do some value painting. It's a step in the right direction, I think, but obviously nowhere near some of the talent you folk have here! Methinks I should study some more Mark Behm...I've got a love for the chunky application of paint.

[AustenFM]

Rockin' updates! Those comic pages are really nice, and those sea critter studies are really fun. I wanted to do that the other day at the zoo, but i was too distracted.

Keep on updating!

[Gorgonzola]

Thanks Austen! I wish I didn't post the pages so small, they're almost impossible to read. Maybe once I color them I'll post them back up larger and easier to read.

Here's some stuff I did while I was out of town, then yesterday at the park in ATL.

[TheGnoll]

hey man, great batch of work to start with!
very cool sketches and comic pages (altho they're a bit too small to read, you should post em a bit bigger!)
i coudn't help but thinking some of your stuff reminded me of mine for sime reason... don't really know why, curious :D

my fav of all the sketches you posted are the "frabel" ones, really interesting design, kudos!

keep sharing!
ciao

[Gorgonzola]

Thanks TheGnoll! I promise I'll post the pages bigger once they're colored. I'm glad you like the Frabel designs too, they're a favorite of mine. They're planned to appear in a comic I'm working on down the line...

So after another week of being out of town and on plane trips and all that, I'm finally back, and I have some sketches! The speedball on the plane exploded because of the cabin pressure:( Ah well, at least it wasn't alone, I had a wicked sinus headache from the exact same thing...

[AustenFM]

Great updates dude! Love the glass-headed Frable designs, everything on that last post is awesome as hell, and the homless robot is too fun!

Thanks for the inspiration!

[Gorgonzola]

Thanks Austen!

So I feel a little silly for admitting this, but I didn't know you could map keystrokes to a wacom pen. Found out this past weekend, and promptly mapped brush increase/decrease to the buttons, then didn't get a chance to test it out until this morning. So today I made a new flat marker-like brush based off of the standard round, and gave it a whirl with my rubbish painting skills!

Worked as well as I expected, which means I don't have to reach way across the keyboard to hit the hotkeys anymore for it, and my hand can sit comfortably in the little spot where all the rest of my frequent hotkeys are.

[destinyapocalypse]

ilike your style

[Gorgonzola]

Thanks!

Not too exciting of an update this time, just some gesture drawings done before I get to work.

[Gorgonzola]

Here's some little demon drawings I did. I'm painting up one of them mostly for practice, so here's an in-progress shot and the original sketch of it. Still a long ways to go, but so far it's shaping up better than previous ones...

If you can't tell by the other drawing, I'm a bit of a fan of Guy Davis...

[sevarenge]

eyy nice fantasy stuff dude!but wher is the studys =)kipp going and

seck my sbhttp://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=149972&page=3

[Carbono]

Lot of diversity on this sketchbook, makes it quite pleasuring to see it and be "surprised" at every new image, great and inspirational.

I've noticed from your artworks that you seem to struggle a little with straight lines, your curved ones are perfect, smooth and flowing. But I didn't saw a lot of straight lines and when I saw I could notice a little difficult on it, maybe you should practice it a little, get out of your comfort zone and push yourself a little.

Good works so far man. Hope to always see more from you!
Keep hitting it!

[Gorgonzola]

Thanks Carbono and Sevarange! I'm not really sure what ya mean by the straight line thing, I do know if I start drawing a little too big my stuff starts to fall apart (something that I've been slowly trying to rectify...). Is there a particular image you're noticing it on? I'd at least like to be aware of my faults, hehe.

Well, I know it's been awhile (and in conceptart.org terms, that's a lifetime,) but I've been busy wrapping up a promo I'm putting together for my booth at heroes con...these two doodles were done yesterday during my day break between inking and coloring...I might use them as a base for my ongoing pursuit of trying to learn painting techniques...

[Gorgonzola]

Here's the previous sketches, only now with some color block-ins! It's been a tortuously slow process as I descend into the wildnerness of painting again, trying to learn its intricacies. They're both done in Painter, just different approaches: The alien dino is taking a cue from Ryan Church and being built up in transparent glazes with the Scratchboard tool (I ought to figure out how to tighten it up from there...it seems tedious-in-the-bad-way to keep doing glazes...) and the troll is being done up in Artist's Oils (gotta figure out how to blend a bit with those...)

Of course, this being a weak point of mine, any and all advice is welcome, be it help, passing comments, nags, or death threats. Not so much on the last one.

[humanNature6115]

Love it,

Nice and loose.

=================================
:mittenbop: :mittenbop: :mittenbop: Sketchbook:mittenbop: :mittenbop: :mittenbop:
http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=120761 (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=120761)

[HugeHarHar]

Bad ass! You have such variety. The first few posts of the demon/helmet stuff and your looser cartoony stuff. I'm sold dude.

Have you talked to any of the CATL members? It's the Sketchgroup up there, and there's some really great people. I just moved out of Atlanta and down to Macon.

Here's the thread for the sketchgroup (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=53365&page=121). Check it out if you're interested, I know they'd love a new face.

[Gorgonzola]

HugeHarHar Whoa! Thanks for the thread to the ATL sketchgroup, I'll definitely be checking them out. I've been looking for a group or something to mingle with, ever since I moved up here I have been lacking in the co-artists/friends area.

HumanNature: Thanks man!

So here's what I had been working on the past week and a half, a promo comic being done for my table at Heroes Con in June. It's for a webcomic that me and my writer are doing, and with the launch scheduled for a little bit before Heroes, we thought we'd make an issue 0, so to speak, for the con for people pick up. No lettering on this (wouldn't want to spoil the story, would I?) but hopefully you guys still dig it. The colors are a little spoiled from the mode switch from CMYK to RGB, but it's still fairly close.

[Gorgonzola]

S'more creature doodles...for some reason the lizard's feet got screwed up somewhere in photoshop...

[mike butkus]

Good imagination and great drawing skills.

[destinyapocalypse]

dude i like your chararcters

[Dragonspit]

good stuff. great linework. i really like your ability to tell a story line. when I look on this site, I cant always follow stuff, but yours I can.

[Gorgonzola]

Mike Buktus: Thank you sir! It's always humbling to get complimented from fine talent like yourself.
DestinyApocalypse: Thanks!
Dragonspit: Haha, thanks! I focused mostly on comics in school, so I hope I picked up a trick or two...

So I took the demon drawing from above into Painter, and actually got it done! Considering how frustrated I get at painting, this was a pretty calm experience, and I'm happy with how it turned out. I'm thinking of putting some markings on it though...thoughts?

[Gorgonzola]

Decided to take what I learned from the last painting and revisit some previous sketches to apply the skills...so I restarted the Alien dinosaur. Didn't like the color I was going with before, so here's some color comps of it to get started.

[Gorgonzola]

Here's a wip of the Alien Dino, and a quick doodle done during lunch.

[Gorgonzola]

Here's a paint study, based off of Rien Poortuliet and Wil Huygen's book Gnomes. Love the illustrations in it, and I learned quite a bit while using one of Rien's painting's as reference.

Would love feedback from the folk around here, slowly learning the ins and outs of Painter...definitely seem to care for it more than Photoshop for bringing stuff to completion...

[Dethklaus]

I'm loving all the animal designs. Most of them are quite odd and almost alien in their appearance, yet have a believable qualitiy to them. I could easily imagine how they'd behave if they were real.

Have you ever considered incorporating speech into your comics?

[Gorgonzola]

DethKlaus: Actually, all the comics I've posted so far do have dialogue to go with them - but because it's not my IP's (collaborating with a writer,) it doesn't feel right showing that off witht he art. Thanks for the comments 'bout the creatures! Someday I think I'd want to make a fictional bestiary book, like "The Wildlife of Star Wars" or "Arthur Spiderwick's Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around You." Those sorts of books always interested me tons.

[destinyapocalypse]

yeeahhh now i lookin your website ilove storyboardss

[kidult]

Nice stuff here!

[Gorgonzola]

Destiny Apocalypse: Thanks! I'm hoping to land some sort of storyboard job soon...the woes of being unemployed.

Kidult: Thank you!

I participated in the CoW challenge this week, where the topic was "Shadow and Flame." So here's my entry, which I called "Donovan's Basilisk". You can see the full description, as well as all the other great entries over at CoW forum here.

[Gorgonzola]

Been waaaaaaay too long since I last posted, mostly because most of the stuff I was working on was for hired projects and all that...

Here's two personal pieces though, so yeah! One was a fun little test in painter (trying out some different methodology), and the other is linework for an illustration I'm working on.

[Gorgonzola]

Still working on the illustration from last post, usually during the little bits of freetime I have not doing one random freelance or another...

I was testing out a new ink brush in photoshop (to save some time/money printing out bluelines and all that) and I decided to put it through it's paces and make an illustration with it. Later on, I wound up coloring the thing...

[jackpot_anjr90]

Nice work! You've got some really interesting creature designs :) Keep it up!

[Catatafish]

the creatures, scetching, proportions and stuff are really good
though you need some more work on your use of colors and rendering, but im sure youre aware of that nonetheless and with those awesome skills you have this should be no problem at all!
cant wait to see more!!!

[Gorgonzola]

Jackpot: Thanks! I love the idea of creature design, and basically making new worlds from the ground up...I think SimLife is to blame for a lot of that...

Catatafish: Thank you! You are correct, colors/rendering is one of my weaker points (never really gave it much push until the past month, month and a half.) Hopefully that will change soon enough.

[Gorgonzola]

Wheeee, a new update!

Lately I've been packing up stuff around the apartment in preparation of a move that's coming up, which has unfortunately creeped into my time to do any real work. But I've been keeping busy by at least working steadily on comic pages! All of these pages were done for a webcomic I run with a writer named Chris Sager. If you're curious at all about checking it out, feel free to pop on over to www.thelastisland.com.

These were pencilled traditionally, and then the first was inked with rapidos, while the rest are a mix of brush and photoshop. Enjoy!