Richard Jones

Hot wheels style racing

2010-12-09T14:51:00.000-08:00

Here's a step by step process of an action shot.

I started with my thumbnail, a basic sketch using a blue pencil, here I make decisions about perspective and the general composition / layout before scanning it.

Once I am happy with the sketch I start to 'ink' the illustration and tidy up the line-work.

Then I add colour. I use 'flats' which means selecting an area of the illustration and filling with 'flat' colours (eg green and orange for the cars) I then start to airbrush and shade them to add definition.

Finishing the illustration involves building up the layers of colour, concentrating on each area in stages and building up the overall detail consistently. Finally I add a few effects to add some drama to the lighting.

Work in progress.

2010-09-20T05:14:00.000-07:00

I'm experimenting, as usual, with a few styles again. Here are a couple of images I have done recently for two projects I'm working on.

I saw some fantastic concept art recently and this inspired me to have a go at a different style; below, I'm using a variety of brushes, the painting is still in the rough stage as I play around with different textures and marks. Once I've got a technique I'm happy with I'll have a go at working on a more adventurous composition.

The next few images are just typical 'pin up' style girls. Using no reference is helping me develop more accurate poses... also I'll admit I enjoy drawing girls.

I decided to push the cartoony style a bit more than I usually do to get a smoother look.

Will Solvit - some early work.

2010-09-20T04:26:00.000-07:00

Here's a collection of Will Solvit artwork, some of it from back when the project was in its infancy. I was given a brief description of Will and from this I sketched the character you see below.

I was very pleased to be offered this job as unbeknown to me at the time some talented artists had also been pitching for the work.

The picture below was the original style of painting I used for the character, it was tonally much simpler. The grid reference is on the floor so that I can position the pose (when I'm sketching) and use it and an aid to help get the perspective correct.

A variety of quick spot arts and another cover pose.

Below is a transition from sketch to the colour-ups. Here I tried a couple of colour / lighting schemes. Whilst painting the last illustration I tried an alternative painting technique, this just helped me get a feel for the best way to work.

Real Heroes Firefighter

2010-07-15T16:50:00.000-07:00

A month of so back I produced the cover for Real Heroes Firefighter on the Wii released by a great bunch of guys at Creative Distribution

This is the first bit of box art I've worked on and it was a pleasure. All games / products released for use with Nintendo hardware, such as the Wii, have to pass their quality standards, it wont get released as an official product unless they are happy with it, so I was really pleased (and relieved!) when my cover was signed off by Nintendo to appear on the pack and the promotional stuff!

Here's the final cover (back/spine/front):

Originally the concept for the packaging was to have a cartoony style to the artwork, below is the colour rough I produced to get across ideas while working with Creative:

That style didn't really settle well with this product so it was time for an overhall, for me to check out some more reference and crack on in another direction. We agreed a stylized realistic look would work better. So I quickly knocked up the following sketch:

By this point I was on the right sort of track however more realism was needed so I just painted more detail in. I chose the dramatic pose initially for a cartoon style but it dawned on me later I would need to paint in a 'sort of realistic' style but without a photo of a model in this position with all the firefighter kit on, yikes! Photorealism isn't my forte, although I'll give anything a bash so I cracked on and in the end I was happy with the result:

I added two guys in the background and made all the elements separate, so that they could be used for promotional material. I produced the artwork on an A3 sized canvas, that way if they wanted to use my artwork for posters etc it would be better if they didn't have to upscale from the smaller Wii box size. It turns out they were printed quite large for the E3 display as freestanding cutout statues.

Here's some of the key elements broken down:

During the project I had a play with some of my art layers to create a street art stencil style:

I hope you enjoy the game and thanks for reading!

District 9

2010-02-05T13:54:00.000-08:00

I watched this film the other day and was blown away by the story and the visual effects. The mech suit worn by Wikus which features during the last moments of the film is designed by Greg Broadmore a superb, talented concept artist. I found the film so influential I've produce a graphic novel style piece - I've added a cooker, which at one point in the film makes a comically devastating weapon (as does a rather large pig!).

More poses.

2010-01-26T04:26:00.000-08:00

More poses! this brings the total of Will Solvit covers I've done to sixteen. We decided to go with lots of energetic poses (my guideline was that they couldn't look too 'manga' but still had to be dynamic). After doing a fair number of these I proposed that props are added which tie the cover art to the story.

More Covers

2009-11-27T06:37:00.000-08:00

Last week was busy but I did manage to get the cover art for the project pretty much all sorted. The deadline wasn't 'till today but I was buzzing after drinking several cups of coffee so got all of them finished before this.

These all have removable elements on separate layers, like the sword belt etc, mainly so the art can be used multiple times.

Comic strips.

2009-11-27T05:40:00.000-08:00

Just as I thought the run up to Christmas was getting quiet I get a last minute brief through for some comic work.. keeps me out of mischief!

I had just under a week to create 3 spreads and a single page but had no script, just four highlighted blocks of text taken from a book so the first job was splitting the text into frames.

Here's the first job, roughing out:

I broke it all down into specific key frames, in this case there wasn't a huge amount of action in the scenes I was given.

And final art:

After feedback I had about 1 day per spread. I would like to have added more detail, if time permitted but sometimes the best thing to do on a tight schedule is get the job finished to a consistent standard rather than miss a deadline.

Painting practice

2009-10-02T15:51:00.000-07:00

I've had an opportunity to try out a few different brushes to see if I can get similar effects to how I used to paint traditionally in acrylics with alkyds (makes acrylic workable for longer) and gouache. I remember years ago painting large boards and using sticks to get scratchy lines! In some respects I miss doing a physical piece of art and would love either the money to rent a studio or the space to do large scale painting at home.

So, anyway, here are a couple of paintings and sketches, I'm sure I have others on zip disks knocking about somewhere but I imagine they are more dubious in quality, quite often they are done on one layer and 'scribbled' out in an hour or two with the wacom, generally if I like them I save them.

More kids books

2009-10-02T15:19:00.000-07:00

Hello,

Here's a small selection of artwork from a few books I've been working on recently. (I cant write about the books or the character until they are published at the start of next year) but they revolve around a young boy and time travel. These books had a turn around of 1 book per week, I also had a few commissions from my agent to do while these were going on. Despite the rush getting them out I'm quite pleased with the work, the need to work quickly helped improve my figurative work over the course of this project.

Kid's "Character Workshop"

2009-07-15T03:44:00.000-07:00

Recently I was invited to offer some tips to a class of Children in their 3rd year at Primary school. When I arrived the kids were already designing their characters and 'pets' which had to be from one of the main animal groups (reptile, mammal, insect etc). I set my kit up then talked about being an artist and what is involved when we have lots of fun creating illustrations.

When the lesson ended I was really impressed by some of the Children's characters and asked the teacher if it was possible to have a copy of some of their designs so I could go away and work them into illustrations in my spare time, this way I could then show the class how an idea is developed and also explain how having an idea is probably more important to the creative process than having experience at drawing.

A couple of days later I received a selection of their drawings, I apologies that they are scans of the B+W photocopies, I wish I had their sketch books as they were really colourful! Below are the images that I worked up into designs from their sketches on the right.

This character was really good fun to replicate, I liked how they have drawn the character in an 'action pose' the pet the croc was going off the paper so he's draw it's head tilted up. I think this shows real creativity, in fact I kept the basic pose I liked it that much! Notice also the hearts for the character and the pet, I incorporated these into my version, this was something the pupil added of their own accord.

This Character was produced by one of the girls in the group, I was suprised how involved all the girls got in this project, I assumed the boys would be more interested in designing characters.

I thought this character looked like she was wearing a judo suit so I thought a fighting pose would work nicely, like a character from Tekken for example, I also used the heart shapesfrom the earrings around the design. Her pet is a stripy squirrel which I figured would look great if I made it 100 larger than real life.

This character needed no further explanation even though it's a bizarre combination of blocky robot man and electric eel for a pet! Seeing as I already had the name and looking at the character's shape I thought, why not make him into one big bomb, so there is a counter on his chest!

All in all a really great class with some budding artists among them!

2009-04-22T06:18:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since my last post as I've been busy with commissions.. Like most of my work I've had to sign confidentiality agreements so I am unfortunately unable to upload a lot of it until it has been published, but I can upload a few samples of other jobs I've been up to these last few weeks.

Clicking on all pictures loads up a larger version!

Finally some concept art! A couple of colour roughs I produced for a publisher needing some illustrations for a project in it's early stages of development. I've included the line sketches, also of the two characters from the selection I created.

This is an accompanying illustration I produced for the same project, I also created a book layout for the client.

This job contains about 30 of these types of illustrations, mostly orientated around teenage heath. The above illustration is for an educational book in a graphic novel / comic format to promote teenage issues. This strip features a teenage boy who has to decide what to do when he is propositioned by a woman - odd scenario really, as a teenager I found my issue was that scenario never happened often enough!!! The speech bubbles will be added later.

Coloured version:

The above collection is from a set of about 16-20 images I created for a client.

These are a couple of artworks from another commission, just b+w, I was asked to give the girl a short 'stylish bob' type hair cut (fig 1) I also wanted to submit something more interesting (fig 2), the client didn't wish to deviate on this occasion but I always say it's worth chucking in a few of your own ideas on the off chance. The boy appears in another publication and they wanted a high level of consistency in their product, hence his pose is mirrored. These are roughs.

Here's another rough for the same project, it's the same girl as the cover pose above, thinking about what to write in a thank you letter. I re-submitted the pose after it was established the biting lip expression was too subtle so I gave her pursed lips and more of a frown, she was also required to slim down a touch and I made a few other slight modifications.

Well, that's it for now. I'll have another update sometime, I've been watching Don Bluth's channel on YouTube and he's such an inspiration that I could listen to him all day. Let's hope May brings some spare time, and fingers crossed a few commissions too!

Preliminary Sketching

2009-01-28T03:26:00.000-08:00

Hello!

Sketching is my favorite part of the creative process and often I prefer looking at sketch work by other artists rather than the final article. Sketches rarely get seen, at least in a commercial sense, this is one reason why I like looking at other artists concept art and sketchbooks so much but also it's an insight into how they work.
My enthusiasm for sketching also stems from working commercially with clients and bringing their ideas to life.

This post will focus on as small selection of my sketch work, some of it worked into an illustration.

Sketching for illustration

A selection of sketches from a recent project. The turn around was fairly quick so I usually just work without reference and look up specific items as I need them. A positive aspect of working to tight deadlines is that it forces me to work at improving my accuracy under pressure.

Here's a selection of 'vehicle' sketches from numerous commissions. These sketches were from a comic strip and are actually quite small in real life, less than A6 in size, I once worked with a guy who did all his story-boarding on post-it-notes (the very small ones!) he was sickeningly talented!

This is an example of pushed perspective, to give an element of warping it helps make the cars look like they are speeding. I have the final piece on this site so have a flick through the older posts.

This is a sketch I produced for Egmont publishing, a technique I employed to add more action into the composition was to draw the cars racing around a corner, oh and I've used a tunnel in the shot again (this is a great way to avoid drawing more road / scenery!)... and yes I do make car and explosion noises when I'm drawing at home!

Some transitions to final art

This is a recent job for a client showing a sketch > worked up into colour rough > then to the final illustration. It took roughly 2hrs, including the sketching stages, to produce as this was quite a cheap commission and I tend not to hang around on these jobs. I suppose like everything you have to strike a balance between quality of work and speed produced.

Here is another commission worked into a final illustration showing the development stages. The brief said "Character imagining a Space station lab with scientists growing plants" so I went for a retro/future environment.

Here is another job, it's from a range of 12 illustrations for an educational book, again showing the transition from my origional sketch.

Below are some examples of sketches for production and basic interface design

Here are a few product concepts I created for a client. The exercise was just to give them some direction but I still needed to work within some confines, such as the dimensions of the internal components, so the item can function properly, and limitations of the vacuum molding process where certain shapes would double or triple the cost of manufacturing the unit.

These are a few quick layout sketches / colour roughs they are environments used in a children's book. I usually try my best to visualize in three dimensions, which helps with environment designs.

While consulting for a publishing house I created this interface for a CD-ROM project so the user can navigate features in a more interesting way. The concept I created was to customize your surf / skate / snow board using a screen made to look like a desk in workshop, that way the board would be created as if it sat on the desk rather than over a generic options screen. The final artwork appeared virtually unchanged from the design I sketched during the meeting.

This example shows a quick b/w sketch and another finished interface illustration.
Often I sketch using a Wacom tablet in the same way that I'd use felt markers and a biro for sketching. This is a quick way for me to bypass scanning artwork if an idea is needed in a hurry.

Here's another visual I created using the Wacom rather than sketching on paper first. Using a Wacom tablet gives a slightly different line to pencil or pen, partly because you cannot move the orientation of the 'paper' on the computer screen to allow for directional pencil marks (although in later versions of Corel Painter you can)

I produced these sketches during a meeting while I acted as consultant for a production company, the example shows how I worked up an idea and how it translated to final art. We needed the island to have 4 sections for each board sport; naturally it is not geographically correct (snow right next to a hot beach!!?) but it serves it's purpose as a navigation tool. At the bottom is another idea for a separate interface, which was not used.... I imagine I've probably got through a fair amount of paper over the years going through the 'unused ideas' stage, but that's part of the fun!

Changing art Styles

The above layout shows five styles I submitted during the course of one project.
Although these examples are not sketching in the literal sense of the word, being able to offer variations in style during the early stages of a project is another part of production I enjoy. Sketching helps develop ideas but even the final style of the artwork is open to the same degree of fine tuning.
I work in many styles, whatever will please the customer mainly, although most of what you see on this site is commercial work so I don't really have any hang-ups about sticking to one style, I'm happy to produce whatever my customer wants and that is perhaps one of the most important things you can do as a practicing illustrator.

Design

2008-10-28T08:58:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd post up a couple of design jobs I've done recently.

This job was for a department of BT, apart from the services most people would normally associate with BT they also run courses to consult businesses on practices to help them reach the specific iso standard for information security.

The Job below shows a basic kids activity book lay-out I produced using InDesign / Photoshop. Most of the assets were supplied to me on a DVD, from the style guide (artwork created externally) I created pages for the book internals and front / back cover.

This is a quick excercise I produced, mostly just to experiment using various graphical elements. Because a-lot of my work involves illustration I like to break away every now and then and try some graphic work. I actually like the idea of incorporating graphic elements into my artwork too. I intend to push my illustration style in this direction in the future.

This layout is using artwork I created. The elements individually are quite complicated on their own, so to display it quickly for a client I made this. Because of the subject and that the product is aimed at children I wanted a rough and ready approach so scanned in bits of masking tape to use in the design and downloaded some interesting brushes in Photoshop to add texture.

Figurative Art

2008-10-24T08:53:00.000-07:00

Hello, here is a selection of my character art. The pieces are from various projects I've worked on from Kids books to computer games. I'll start with my sketches first, all my initial sketching is done by hand without the computer, although often I use the Mac to block in colour or tone.

You can click on all the images to zoom them. There are even more of my work to see if you click on the 'previous posts' link at the bottom of the page. Thanks.

The level of detail I paint into an image is often dictated by the urgency that my client needs the image so I try to work images to the same consistency throughout. Below is a collection of concept work I produced for a military based computer game.

You may have noticed that I work in a number of styles. Occasionally I like to try something new so I can loosen up my styles especially if I see something and I'm inspired. Below is an example of some quick cartoon sketches I produced using a Wacom Tablet in Photoshop.

When producing work for Kids books I've usually chosen to use a graphic key line and a bright but simple colour pallet.

The painting directly below features some vector shape elements merged with the painting style. I often use vectors in illustrations as they are a superb way to get really smooth lines or interesting shapes.

Computer Game Concept art

2008-06-16T06:28:00.000-07:00

Here is a collection of Concept art I produced while working for EA Games on Cat woman. This work dates back to 2004 when Cat woman was in production.

Production Design
There were a large number of objects and props I painted in Photoshop that I needed to design for certain levels, many of which did not appear in the movie so it was important to keep my work faithful to the film while remaining mindful of the technical limitations, such as the detail of the objects, so they were practical for use in the game.

Environment Design
The environments I created in the game differ slightly to the ones which appear in the movie, to allow the game to work, I looked closely at film reference and developed environments which were faithful to the film sets by imitating the style of architecture. Here are some examples of the environments I painted, (using Photoshop.)

Environment and Lighting Design
There were a large number of environments that I painted at the concept stage. Lighting is an important part of the process, it can make or break the atmosphere, here are some examples of my work which are all painted in Photoshop:

Cute Work (greetings card illustration)

2008-03-12T06:11:00.000-07:00

Due to the nature of the projects I have worked on more recently, my portfolio is quite male orientated, much of the 'cute' character work I have produced has been for the Greeting card industry. Over the last few years I have produced greetings card illustrations for Remind4U (Male orientated), Fountainhead UK (Female orientated) and Vital Cards (Humor).

Duckies!
This is an example sheet with a variety of traditional media used to achieve different results..

Kitties!
This is a style sheet with character turn-around and details of elements.

Cute collection
Here are a few more cute images including a few sketch book scans and coloured images created in Photoshop for friends and commercial projects.

Cute graphic
I'm fond of creating characters in a more graphic style, here are a variety of examples.

Funnies!
Finally a few humorous style illustrations.

Hotwheels official Comic Strip

2008-02-22T09:11:00.001-08:00

Below are a few extracts from the Hot Wheels comic strip I produced called 'Chuck Speed' written by Matt Crossick for EGMONT publishing, I created the artwork for a new episode every month in the official magazine which usually involved Chuck, the Hot Wheels test driver, being given a new vehicle to test and featured his arch enemy Diesel Darkclaw's failed attempts to run him off the road for good. I've included samples with and without the text and effects.

Robot's in disguise (as transformers!)

2008-02-22T05:37:00.001-08:00

A collection of robots I have created in a classic 1980's transformers style for remind4u.com a fantastic company which allows you to personalize your greetings card with the recipients name, check them out! It's a great service that takes the hassle out of finding a card in the shops.
find my cards here

I've used popular euro cars, see if you can recognize what models they are. On the right are some original sketch scans, most of my work is drawn by hand before being scanned for colouring on the mac.

Below are a few examples from another card range I've produced for remind4u, featuring cars, these have not yet been added to their site but I'll keep the blog updated when they are.

Board Sports (children's book)

2008-02-21T12:58:00.001-08:00

Here's some recent artwork I've produced, it's another kids book and CD combination for Parragon Books Ltd.
I create the artwork for both the book and the CD-ROM interface. It is a good example of how I have combined producing work for print and screen in one project.
You can choose your skater, dress him how you like and then hit the surf, ramps or the alpine for some board action, you can even custom create your own board. I developed all the costumes, gear and developed the concept of the map / board interfaces, there were also the 9 painted backdrops, lot of work and a 4-5 month deadline!

Dream Cars (children's book)

2008-02-21T12:08:00.000-08:00

This is a collection of images from a book and CD-ROM I created last year for the publisher Parragon Books ltd.

The brief was to produce an interactive car modifying CD-ROM and book illustrations, aimed primarily at young lads who have a keen interest in cars. With the interactive CD, budding car designers can add engines, body-kits, stickers, up-rate the sound system and even open doors to show the interior of the vehicle.

I had roughly 4 months to develop all the artwork, a designer at Parragon produced the layout of the book and the text was provided by the author Matt Crossick.
I worked with the team at Red Central, who were responsible for the production of the CD interface, I was also credited with a consultant role for the extra help I was able to offer during production. This is my first book, it was a massive challenge but a fantastic project to work on!
The book can be found here

General Illustration Work

2008-02-21T10:16:00.000-08:00

Here are a few examples of my illustration work, I tend to use quite
a loose painting style and enjoy working on all sorts of subjects.

A few urban style illustrations I've produced in the past.

Here are a few 'chibi' stylized cars of mine.