Alive?

Yeah, I think so. Need to revive the blog here though.

Resource for today: ConceptArt.org. Crazy good artists, forums, contests, fun stuff. Check it out.

In other news: The Lackadaisy Cats! Been seeing them on DA for forever, finally realized that there was in fact a website for the webcomic. Yeah, I'm just sharp like that. Anyway, Lackadaisy's got more crazy art, and a unique concept, prohibition era with cats, très interessant.

Edit: Stumbled across an interesting blog post because I liked the picture. [link] It's about the temptation to create instantly gratifying "fast food" art that's pretty to look at but not challenging in any way, rather than more thoughtful art that might be more uncomfortable. Also about not getting stuck in one style or method, even if it's successful, but moving past it to new things. I think I needed to read that.

Resource: DeviantART

I'm sure this won't be news to a lot of you, but DeviantART is a great online art community, there are some really fantastic artists and photographers on there. There tends to be a focus on manga/anime and digital art, but there really is a wide variety once you start poking around. You can set up your own gallery, comment on everything, save your favorites to different collections and all that fun stuff. It's a little bit like a myspace for art. Great for finding those new artists too! :)

Resource: GoMediaZine

GoMedia!

I love this site! It's mainly geared toward graphic design, but there are a lot of tips and tricks on illustration and the creative process in general, and tutorials for photoshop and illustrator.

They post updates almost daily, and theirs pretty much the one email newsletter in my inbox that I actually read, I highly recommend it. Here's one of their recent blog posts I really liked, tips on how to illustrate quickly: [clickie]

Also, they happen to have some amazing vector art packs, and there's actually a good selection available [for free].

Inspiration: MYST

Well, I'm not sure if this will count as a "spiritual father" or whatever, but the myst games have always been a pretty big source of inspiration for me. It might be just a video game, but you can't look at even the visuals alone, and say there's not something artistic about it.






Aside from being visually stunning, the series has an interesting plot line to it, very much integrated into the game, but subtle enough to miss it if you don't look. The stories are all surrounding an ancient, fallen civilization that could write different worlds into existence, but you would only ever find little hints of the story as you went along, if you looked in the right places. (Or read pages and pages of journals, which I still found fun, oddly enough. Not everyone's cup of tea though.) But it was fun piecing those together, even if you didn't get some kind of points or game reward for figuring it out. It actually made the characters come to life, even though you saw very little of them.



All the games are incredibly immersive as well, and half of the fun is just exploring and poking around, just to see what's there. Add in some brainbending puzzles and oodles of excess story and background material to geek out on, and you've got some serious fun, at least in my opinion.

New Discoveries: Alephunky

[ click for more awesomeness. ]

New Discoveries: Phil McDarby

Phil McDarby

I just stumbled across his site about a week ago, and I was completely blown away. Total cheesy-sauce, but his work reminds me of why I wanted to do art in the first place. It has a subtlety to it, with loads of hidden little details you would only find if you really studied the piece, yet it isn't loud at all. It also has a sense of wonder, imagination and appreciation of the natural world that I really admire. It's almost like you could see these things for yourself if you went deep enough into the wilds, and were patient enough to actually look.

The amount of time and effort that goes into these images is incredible - he uses a combination of his own photography, digital painting and 3D modeling to construct different pieces. Keeping lighting and texture and everything consistent, making everything blend together that seamlessly with a wide range of media in the same picture must take an incredible amount of work, and also a certain OCD perfectionism and attention to detail that I can definitely relate to. And I have to say, the results are stunning.

Never Been

So, somewhere new this week that I've never been before. That's not too difficult of a task, considering I've only been in Ashland for a week total now, so pretty much everywhere is somewhere I've never been before. I did almost drive to Yreka because I got on the wrong half of the freeway trying to go to Target in Medford. So I went to Mt. Ashland, even if it wasn't on purpose. Didn't see much of it though, just mountain backroads (which are REALLY creepy in the dark, by the way) lots of pine trees, and yellow roadsigns that popped out of nowhere, like "Long steep downgrade ahead". That was fun. At least I didn't see any creepy people with chainsaws, that would have made it worse. Or taxidermy shops in the middle of nowhere, like last time when we decided to take the scenic route back to California through the mountains. Anyway, I'm sure there's a lot to explore around here, I'm looking forward to it. Hopefully it'll be on purpose next time.