Website?

So...I've got a website thingy now. I was going to delete this blogspot, but I feel like it may be a good resource to post my in progress stuff or tyhings that may not warrant being on a professional site. But isn't that what the DeviantArt is for? Too many things to keep up with.

Anyway, happy new years everyone!

A Couple Things

Okay one...here's the troll - he's been on the backburner a bit but he's still a project I'm working on. The main problem I ran into was the castle, which took me a bit to get right. It's looking better now, but there's a fine balance between making it TOO detailed, and not detailed enough. I've gotta work on that still.

Other than that, here's another piece I recently finished. Experimenting with using photos as direct reference and then painting over them to imitate their textures. The mountains are hand painted in that way, which was excruciating, but really helped me understand how to imitate their rocky terrain.

I wish I had incorporated more light contrast with it, because the whole thing seems really dark. That's what I was going for, but it turned out moreso than I wanted it. Still like how it turned out and it was a great learning experience.

See, I do post stuff here!

A REAL post

Yeah, this blog is a pretty sad excuse for one. So it's time for a real entry. Just went to Dragon Con on Sunday and had a GREAT time! It was my first year there, and I already bought my tickets for all four days next year! Got a chance to grab some awesome merch, meet some cool cosplayers, and even got to chat a bit with the famous Todd Lockwood! That was the highlight of the day.

Anyway, so I started a few new projects, and quickly scrapped most of them. I just can't ever seem to get past the rough B/W stage with a painting - I don't know what it is. However, I'm determined to finish this one up:

Cute guy, huh? I love this idea - a giant troll thing with a city on his back. I'll probably cut the image a bit at the bottom and extend it a bit at the top as well, just to give more space to the city area. Anyway, I'm pretty determined to get this piece off the ground, just because it's been really fun to work on so far. I can also do a lot of experimenting with textures and stuff like that.

Well, there ya go. Not much, but better than what I've been posting, right? I'll post some more updates of this piece as it gets further along!

San Francisco! (Again)

Well I'm off to the Massive Black art convention thing in San Francisco! Should be an awesome time. I'm so ready for a whole week for drawing, drawing, drawing, and more drawing!

Under Construction!

So after attending GDC, I realized I need to switch up a lot of stuff in my portfolio and need to step my game up!

Therefore, my website over at Dannyryba.com is gonna have some maintenance work on it for a bit. It'll still be up and running, but in the meantime I'll be taking images out, rearranging stuff, etc.

Also, I'm definitely going to be putting more posts up about my process and how I make my work. It seemed to be of great importance to some game studios I saw that they see your process, rather than just seeing all finished work all the time. So I'll have some specific projects I post up here, with decisions I made, why I made them, etc. So keep an eye out!

GDC is over!

I had a great time! I'll do a more extensive post about it later, but for now I'm busy unpacking, getting settled back in at home, and following up on the awesome connections I made!

GDC!

Well I'm off to GDC 2012 today, not quite sure what to expect. I'm not part of the game industry, so hopeful I can meet with some professionals and network! If all else fails, at least I get to see some cool panels!