Book Cover

Here is the color version of the book cover. It may be a bit dark overall, but I kinda like it. Can't wait to see it in print!

Book Cover Thumbs

Here are a few thumbs for my friends self published book. This is pretty much my first attempt at free lance work. Lets hope I nail the job!!!

New Painting

So once again I started this thing over. I moved on to something more within my range. Hopefully this will be the last time! I may play with some gradients in photoshop before I call it done, we will see.

W.I.P. Wedding Gift

Here something I've been working on for a long time now. Problem is that after about a days work, I would delete everything out of frustration. But now that the "deadline" is almost here, I can no longer afford to be so self critical!

Bee

It's been TOO LONG since my last post. Life just seemed to get in the way. Now that I'm home and back on track, I hope to keep the posts more regular. I am currently in full swing on my animated short film, but I hope to do a drawing or sketch every few days or so.

Card Sketches

Haven't posted in a long while, been very busy updating my website and working on my short. Here are a few sketches for some business themed greeting cards that I'm helping a friend do. I plan to finish them off tonight or tomorrow in Illustrator.

Old Squid

Took a brake today from my short to do this quick painting. I hope to start posting some progress on the 3D models soon.

Faces

I did some quick sketches for my characters in my short. I went with a larger, thicker look for the frontiersman and a more scrappy, thin look for the native. I plan to do one, if not both, of the final model sheets tomorrow so I can get modeling as soon as I can.

Native Hunter

Here is the second character from my upcoming short. I was looking at a bunch of concept art from Starcraft 2 today, and noticed how they seemed to put broad colors under their outlines, then paint more details above. It helped me get my formes and volumes down quicker than my previous technique, so I want to work more with it. As for the character design it's self, I definitely want a minimal amount of clothing for this guy. I may go back and create some tattoo patterns for his body, but for now, I like the lanky but toned look to him. I hope to get started on some more defined character sheets tomorrow.

Frog Mutant

I just finished watching the film Wizards by Ralph Bakshi and wanted to do a quick character in that style. I wasn't so hot on some of the animation and timing in that movie, but I loved the story and character design. I also wanted to play around with the background to give a more painted feel to these sketches

Frontier Hunter

Long time since I last posted, got pretty lazy this week. But I have finally settled on an idea for a new short animation I want to do, so now I have tons of stuff to start posting. I may even throw up some storyboards when I get to that point. So this is one of three characters from the short, a American Frontiersmen who is on the hunt. I like him as a start, but I want to stay away from too much loose clothing for the short (cloth simulations are a huge pain in the butt), and since I'm not the best 3D modeler, I'm planning on going with a more stylized look to the characters. But I like where this guy is going so far.

New Suit

I've been watching The Animaniacs all night while I worked and wanted to do a quick cartoony character before I headed to bed.

Blues Man wip

The last few years I have started getting into the blues more and more. It was a heavy influence on some of my favorite bands like Zeppelin, the Stones, and Clapton. I hope to finish this guy some time over the weekend.

Dog Day Afternoon

Watched Dog Day Afternoon over the weekend. Pretty weird movie, not sure what message it was trying to convey, but I liked it anyway. I liked this guys hairdo and lanky build. He also played Fredo in the Godfather movies, says IMDB.

Alex Mercer

Spent the majority of this weekend playing Prototype. I've been pretty impressed with this game so far, it seemed like it was destined to fail with all the hype surrounding it. But it's a ton of fun, it was all I could to to rip myself away for a few hours!

Bat Anim Test

Having some trobles with this post, but it should be all sorted now. Here is a quick animation test for my Bat character. A little rough, but a good start. Click on the image to watch!

(if anyone knows how to load a .swf file into blog posts, let me know, it would be a big help)

Bats

I spent the last two days working on this model sheet for an upcoming personal project. I'm pretty excited about it 'cus it will give a good chance to start animating on my Cintiqu, which I've been wanting to do since I bought it.

Batty

Some quick bat concepts for an upcoming project. The end product will be more cartoony, but I've always found it good to start off with some life drawing first.

Web Site

After a lot of struggle, I finally have got my new web site up. I'm still working out the kinks, it seems to take a while for changes to show up on the web, so the link from the site to this blog is not working. For now, though, the main page is up and the demo reel plays. Looking at it now, I really need some new work. I'm planning a short film at the moment, so my next few drawings will most likely be geared towards that.

The Mask

This one started out as a pretty abstract sketch, wasn't sure where I was going with it. But I kinda like the way it turned out. The armor reminds me a bit of Mass Effect, which I've been playing a bunch of. The weekend is coming up, so I hope to post something up tomorrow before heading out to party!

Sharpshooter

Another quick sketch and paint job. Not really happy with the pose on this one. I also realize I should try to do more complex lighting, most of what I've been doing so far has been single, harsh light sources. I should try a mid day setting with more subtle shadows.

Wing Ding

All you can eat wings at BW3's sounded like a great idea until about a hour ago. Now I feel like the biggest glutton on the planet. I imagine that someday my metabolism will say "screw you" and walk out the door, and this is what I will turn into.

Hairy SharkMan

Not sure what I wanted to do with this one when I started, and I'm still not sure what it is, but its kinda cool. It was fun not really having a plan going in, although it made it tough to finalize the details in the end.

Male Figure

Just some quick figures today. Went disc golfing all day and now feeling pretty beat. Probably will try to start finishing my painting from last week tonight and hopefully post it tomorrow.

ARRRRRrrrrrrr

Finished the illustration from yesterday, pretty happy with the way it turned out. Also pretty proud that I manage to finish it off when I worked from 8:30 am to 9 pm today. On the up side, I've got most the day off tomorrow now, so I may try to post something up before we hit the town.

ARRRRRRRrrrrrrrr

There was talk of a new pirate game at work today that sadly, I wont be working on. I started sketching some ideas and I worked on this little pose while waiting for renders to finish. I hope to throw some more color in tomorrow after work and some Resident Evil 5 with Matt.

Figure 01

Loooooooooooooong day at work today, and I estimate it will be longer tomorrow. I've been wanting to do more life drawing and figures, but it's hard to find refrance images online that arn't.....questionable. Looks like I may have to head over to the bookstore sometime this week.

I'm not thrilled with this one, my coloring is getting better, but the figure is pretty poor. Guess it was just an off day.

Phantasm

My cousin visited for the long weekend, and so, no work was done. I quickly finished up this little sketch from Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, which I had never seen before Thursday night. While not the best animated movie ever, it was still pretty good, and it brought back some fond memories of the Animated series from when I was a kid. Good to know that not every cartoon I enjoyed back in the day wasn't cheap, outsourced garbage!

Late

I've woken up late 4 out of the last 5 days for work, which is not like me. So I'm calling it an early night tonight. Did this little sketch in Flash this morning before work and quickly finished it off after dinner. I like the idea, I may try to do something more finished with it later.

Ceremony

I found this image over the weekend on the National Geographic web site. I really liked the tightness of the shot and the bold colors on his face paint. The sketch turned out pretty well, but the lighting is giving me some problems. The other painting I did had a harsh directional light, but this is much more subtle and I'm having a hard time with it. I'm going to put it away for now and get back to it, maybe over the weekend.

Confused

One quick sketch before bed. I tried using a quick, bold stroke and fast colors. Not sure about the result, I may have to try it some more and feel it out, but a decent start.

Tribal Fire

This is my first painting I did over the weekend. I don't have much of a traditional art background, so I'm kinda learning as I go. I picked this image because the lighting was very harsh and direct, so it was easy to quickly block out. It's still very rough, but I'm pretty happy with the result, and pretty proud that I am weening myself away from outlines.

First Post

Well, its official. I have a blog. I am now the proud (but poor) owner of a Wacom Cintiq, and I have started a quest to do at least one drawing, painting, or random doodle a day before or after work. I plan to post these images up and drop a quick little blurb along with them. This blog will run in conjunction with my portfolio website (www.justinlashley.com), which is down at the moment. It's really more for me, to force myself to broaden my skills as a digital artist, try new things, get some feedback, and just unwind after a long day of making keno and lottery games. Hope you all enjoy it!

Justin