Day 2

Friday was a lot busier than Thursday, the costumes were out in full force. Pictures will follow as I snapped away at many of these weird and wonderful creations. There was one gigantic Darth Vader and a small boy with a lightsaber approached him.

Oi pick on someone your own size



2 vaders vs the boy



Spotted various people today – Star Trek actors William Shatner & Brent Spiner, Ron Glass from Firefly. Stan Lee was ushered past while I was sat in a portfolio review. They had people around them that tried to stop you taking any photos that were “candid” and not posed for.

Rick Edwards

Rick Edwards


There are loads of camera crews recording constantly but I recognised a British presenter Rick Edwards from T4.

He was interviewing a rather large guy dressed as the joker so I watched from the background. When they’d finished I approached Rick and cheekily asked if he fancied promoting a fellow Brit. He explained that he was here on a mission to try and get his own comic book published. He seemed interested in my suggestion to do the artwork and he said he would speak to his producer. So I left my card and contact details with him. Nothing may come of it but at least I gave it a go 🙂

Rick Edwards at San Diego Comic-Con

Portfolio reviews were the afternoon agenda. This year on the day in question you add your name to a ticket for the company you want to speak to. Your name is drawn out randomly and added to a list in the order selected, then it’s a case of waiting to see if they have time to see you. It’s brutal but these are the lengths you have to go to just to see an editor or art director. I was No 41 & 69 on the 2 companies I saw on Friday. Eventually I was called for each review, one prematurely as I’d read Paul Burrows as me which is a common spelling mistake but it was my evil American clone so I got in sooner than expected. One was positive the other not so.

I was shattered by the end of the day so back to the hotel and bed – legs are aching after the miles of walking. Shoulder not so bad today. Come on T4 give me a call!!

 

Travel & 1st day

Comic-con – summary so far.

Travel there – At 4am driving my car down quiet country roads I got swarmed by a herd of rabbits, (Not sure what the correct word for a group of rabbits is – maybe Dave West can answer that?) 🙂 I couldn’t stop in time and felt at least one of the cute fluffy bunnies crunch and pop under my front wheel – yuk – makes me cringe thinking about it.

My engine warning light came on shortly after that so I was worried about actually making it to the airport but all was well in the end. Flights were cramped and long. Had to change planes at Denver due to a technical problem which delayed the flight for a couple of hours, better late than dead I suppose.

At San Diego I shared a minibus/cab with a few others and the crazy driver didn’t seem to know what he was doing – word of advice if you’re ever in the queue for a taxi at SD airport and somebody offers you a “shuttle” instead don’t take it unless you want to be led on a wild goose chase and arrive at your destination slower than you could have walked it. I needed my bed – hotel is cheap and adequate but that’s all I need – oh and free wireless internet of course that allows me to do this at 4am.

Okay whinge over:D – First day of the Con was good.  Collecting my pass went smoothly and I was allowed to pick up My Friday & Saturday passes at the same time – saves me queueing again apart from Sunday. I didn’t find it as overwhelming as last year (My first visit). I wandered around first to take it all in – there is a lot to see and do. Most stands looked the same as last year though I haven’t seen everything yet – still 3 days to go. 

I met up with Chris Reilly who was signing for SLG and we hung out for a while. We’re collaborating on a book entitled Grand Theft Robot so it’s good to discuss this in person rather than emails for a change. I bought some books and my bag got a bit heavy, my shoulder is a bit red raw from carrying the Man Bag all day – Neil any recommendations so solve the bag problem? 🙂

I spotted Jane Goldman in front of me in the food queue, she’s quite easy to spot with her pink hair, then I realised she was with hubby Jonathan Ross. Jonathan is not recognised in the US as much as in England so I think he was a bit surprised to hear a call of “Alright Rossy” in an English accent behind him. He politely acknowledged me though before leaving with his order of pizzas.

In the evening I met up with a few of Chris’s friends for a Mexican. Big burrito I had, followed by the strangest party I have ever been to. First of all it was the first free party with free drinks I’ve ever been to that cost $10 dollars to enter & $6 dollars a bottle – bad advertising there guys. The party was outdoors on a large balcony of the Westgate hotel (Quite posh). There was loud music and video being projected onto an adjacent building showing a lot of monkeys amongst other things. We were surrounded by tall buildings and planes were flying in the near distance as they landed at the airport. On a small podium girls with zombie make up and skimpy outfits took it in turns to pose while several people stood around and sketched them. I have pictures. I’ll upload them when I get a chance.

That’s all for now!

Nasa Junkyard

Got quite a few pieces of art to post here but no time to do it as producing the work for my portfolio is more important right now. I’ll try and post at least one a day though before heading off to San Diego next week.

This concept piece is from Grand Theft Robot – a project I’m working on with writer Chris Reilly. I won’t go into much detail yet but it’s something I’m really excited about working on! The piece itself shows a small part of a vast junkyard of old Nasa cast offs. In the distance a city which in contrast is spotless and clean which I’ll get to draw at a later date. There’s a cat and some birds to add a bit of life to this stark bleak looking scene. A solitary robot stands motionless, pondering.

Grand Theft Robot - Junkyard concept

Click on the image to view a larger version

Home Page updated

I’ve updated the home page with some widgets.

  • Like Button – I have added a like button in the main image. Clicking this adds a message with a link to say you like scifiartist.com. on the profile of your facebook account.
  • Blog feed – Recent posts from this blog will now appear on the home page.
  • Twitter feed – Latest Twitter updates also will appear on the home page.
  • Facebook Widget – Allows you to like my scifiartist.com Facebook page and shows some of the members.

My eyes are burning after a few late nights messing around with this. I really should have been drawing. Well now it’s over I can get round to some artwork now. I should really update the home page images though…

Avatar – Wayne Rooney

Here is another Avatar character. This one is England & Manchester United football striker Wayne Rooney. This was created for the Facebook group If Wayne Rooney was in Avatar, he would look like this… 

Wayne Rooney Avatar character

Rumour is that Wayne Rooney is a Leeds United fan and will sign for Leeds when they win promotion to the Premiership next season! 🙂

This clip is the first hint as Rooney accepts a Leeds shirt from the Stereophonics!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1YKmBKbyL8&feature=related

Avatar – Travis Barker

I was asked to do several Avatar pictures. The concept was simple, take a photo of an existing person and transform them into an Avatar character.

The first one I did was of Travis Barker, drummer for Blink 182.  I was provided with a great photo to start with from http://www.blink182.co.uk/



I kept most of the photo from the jawline down the same and just coloured it. The top half of the face was reworked a lot more.

I widened the head and the gap between the eyes and created an avataresque nose. I used transparent layers to paint the facial patterns on and just kept going until I was happy with it.

2 Digital sketches

Here are 2 more aircraft designs. I call them sketches as they’re not finished pieces but they are cleaned up with the rough lines removed. The obvious advantage of drawing digitally is the time saved as there’s no need to scan from my sketchpad plus you can improvise and alter the canvas size to fit the drawing.

The first is a fighter jet type craft.

Fighter jet digital drawing

Fighter jet digital drawing

The second is a cruiser the tiny dot under the shadow represents the scale to 1 person. This is a basic drawing which is quick to do but still shows the form of the craft without having to draw too much detail. I find this ideal when playing with different shapes to create things. I find it easier sometimes starting with a dark block and deleting areas out instead of drawing dark lines on a white background.

Space cruiser digital sketch

Space cruiser digital sketch

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