I did it, I graduated! I have officially a Bachelor in Design now! 😀
And here it is at last: the final lineup of harpy characters from my graduation project. Unfortunately I didn’t have enough time to iterate on colours too, perhaps I will still do that later on. 🙂
Happy new year everyone! 😀
In keeping up with the tradition, a list of memorable things happening last year!
What kind of great things happened to you in 2018? 🙂
Long time since I wrote an actual blogpost here! I thought it would be nice to tell about the things I’m working on and so.
At school I’m working on my graduation project, which consists of a research paper and a ‘practical’ art project. For my research paper I’m researching the harpy and what this mythological creature can mean to us nowadays, perhaps as a symbol. Yes, more harpies! I wasn’t sure if this subject would be a good fit at first, but seeing how this creature has nestled in my mind for the last year, I know it won’t be something I get bored of quickly.
About the practical part, I haven’t got a clue what kind of product this will lead to. I’d love to make a bunch of harpy characters and tell a story, either through a comic or illustrations, but it has of course to build upon the research paper. And you can’t really say anything about a harpy without saying something about the fact that all harpies are female, right? Do I want to make a feminist statement? I’m not sure..
What else? Like I said earlier, I’m preparing to participate in CenturyARkStorm-OCT at DeviantART! I almost got my character application finished, that means, the art is finished, but writing about my character’s personality and backstory is such a hard thing to do XD Especially when it’s set in a world I know very little of; I’m absolutely not familiar with the ZOIDS universe even though I tried to read up as much as I can, so I hope my ideas make sense! ^^
The deadline for auditions is November 1st by the way, and we could use any extra competitor to make this happen!
And France did indeed inspire me! Though the things I’ve drawn there have to wait, as I don’t have access to a scanner yet. But don’t worry, there’s digital art to come too!
After some thinking I decided to give CenturyARkStorm-OCT a shot, but as a spectator rather than a competitor. I don’t think it would be wise to combine something as time-consuming as a original character tournament with graduating from art school! XD Nevertheless I’m very exited where the story will take us! I didn’t know anything about Zoids before Ra-ooo started this OCT, but as soon I found out it included robot dinosaurs I was sold!
Then there is Comic Con Amsterdam, where I’ll have a stand with two friends. I plan to draw a few new things for that, but not too much. I still have plenty of prints left from my previous con left anyway!
Ever since my summer break has begin three weeks ago, I found it surprisingly hard to start drawing for myself again. I’m not sure why, perhaps it was the fact I’ve worked so hard during my internship? Or that I now have time to do so much other things I never had the time to do before, such as playing games and reading? Or it might be the bloody heat that lingers in my room, even with open windows..
Is this the mysterious affection known under the name art block?!
In other news, I’ll be leaving for a three-week vacation to Normandy and Brittany, France tomorrow. Perhaps the sea breeze and the beautiful vistas will inspire me to draw again!
See you in August!
My internship at Abbey Games is over, what a blast it has been! I worked on so many different things: character animations, buildings, trees and shrubs, marketing illustrations, icons and even UI! Still, it’ll take a while before I can show my glorious contribution, the soonest things will be revealed is in the first half of 2019. A little patience, my friends!
I’m sad it’s over, but I guess it’s time to move on. I’ll be enjoying my summer holidays now and in September I’ll start working on my graduation project. Whatever my graduation project will be: I have no ideas yet. I’ll just see what happens.
And hopefully, now I have a lot of free time again, I get back on track with drawing and painting again!
This is already my second week of my internship at Abbey Games, and it’s really fun so far! I am now working on animations for a new game, but of course I’m not allowed to tell you anything about it. Non Disclosure Agreements and stuff.
Shame is, though, that there is less time for personal art. I’m travelling two hours by bus, metro and train to get to the studio and again two hours back home, monday till friday, and on saturdays I work from ten till six, so Sunday is my only free day in the week. I don’t really mind right now, I can finally read all those books I got but never came to read! 😀
But then I looked on the calendar and noticed that the convention that my friends and I want to attend is only three weeks away… And I haven’t finished a single piece yet. Oops.
So I suppose I’ll be sacrificing some sleep this week. And next week probably too. I have some Zelda things in the works already and some other fan art planned as well, but I’m not sure if I get everything done…
We’ll see!
First of all, I’d like to thank everyone who has downloaded and played our game, Wake! We passed the project with a very good mark and we even made it to 280 downloads! 😀
We immediately started to work on the bigger project with different people. Today we got our first feedback on a prototype we build in minecraft and of course still lots of things need to be done. The exact setting is still to be discussed, but the core of our concept is that you play together with a group of 4-5 people, while one of you is basically a mole who has to prevent the others from reaching their goal (which is still to be decided). I’ll keep you informed on the progress!
And then there is Inktober. I’m still days behind, in spite my efforts trying to catching up a last week during holidays. XD I hope I can manage to keep up at least this weekend, I really wanted to finish Inktober before November begins!
On a sidenote, a group of classmates and I are joining a big exposition called the ‘Kunstroute’ in Alphen a/d Rijn (Netherlands)! So if anyone is near or in Alphen on 4, 5 or 6 November, go check it out! I will be presenting a bunch of Inktober drawings.
Thanks everyone who has wished me a happy Birthday! I’ve had a great day. :3
Yesterday was the day: professionals would be visiting us and looking at our work. The idea behind it was a chance for us to start networking and make contacts for our internship.
As I am planning to go on exchange to Prague instead of doing and internship one would say it wouldn’t be that bad if it wouldn’t go so well. But I was so stressed for it that I actually needed some time for my own after building up.
… But it went actually pretty well! Two game studios talked to me and gave me their cards! The whole atmosphere was really relaxed and informal, we even talked about the new Zelda game, yay!
I am really happy now and that it is behind me as well. I am actually the only one in my class so interested in games and wanting to design for games. In the Animation class there is more interest in the game industry, but at Illustration there is not for some reason. It made me stand out, which is good, I guess! 😀
