Geek Night 2011 - TONIGHT!

Tonight is the night! GEEK NIGHT 2011! If you are in north Florida stop on by the campus of Florida State University for fun and FREE sketch cards. Speaking of sketch cards here are some of the sketch cards that I have ready for folks coming out tonight...

Geek Night sketch cards
© 2011 Christopher Burdett

Geek Night 2010 • Union Ballrooms
Friday, September 16 • 8:00 p.m. • Free for all ages

Aim for the giant red arrow and circle that appears on the HUD display.

I will be appearing again with the always talented Lee Bretschneider and Justin Peterson. We will all be doing free sketches and talking to folks. Hope to see you out there tonight. Just like the last two years you will also have a chance to win a free print! Plus video games, board games, and lots more geeky fun!

That is all for this week. I have a full day ahead of me before Geek Night. See you back here on Monday! Until then...

For more samples of my work or to contact me regarding my availability head over to my website: www.christopherburdett.com

Directed Studies Week 2

As I mentioned last week, I am conducting a Directed Studies class with a local art student. For my demonstration for the second week I took a piece of photo reference supplied to the student for an assignment last semester. That assignment was to create a character from the reference. I wanted to take that same reference and show how I go about using photo reference to help influence and improve my drawing. This is the end result of the drawing demo, a monkey man with a lot on his mind...

Simian Orator
© 2011 Christopher Burdett

Giving my student the option, he asked that I create a character along the lines of the one that he did, a orator type figure, rather then one using a weapon. I opened one of my animal books and came upon a howler monkey and I let that be the reference for the monster side of the drawing. While letting the reference influence my choices I pushed and pulled the anatomy and altered the attire. Always looking to the reference to tell me how I should go about defining my forms. LOOK FIRST and then DRAW SECOND.... repeat. Here is the final drawing next to the supplied reference...

Figure reference and drawing.
LOOK FIRST and then DRAW SECOND

You should be able to quickly pick out where I stuck closely to the reference and where I did not once placed next to the reference... hopefully you could not when just looking at the drawing. Once completed I got out the drawing from week 1 in which the drawing was mostly influenced by the silhouette that I drew. While I was looking at animal reference the waste majority of the drawing was influenced by my experience and the symbols in my head. I put the two drawings side by side to show the difference in feel even in my own drawings when more reference is used...

Week 1 and 2 drawing comparison.
Image on the left is mostly out of my head while the image on the right is much more informed from reference.

If I was creating the image on the left for a project I would have gotten a photo of myself in the pose suggested by the silhouette before beginning the final drawing to help fill in the gaps and add a level of realism.

As a reminder, if you are in the Tallahassee area Friday night, I will be appearing at GEEK NIGHT 2011 on the Florida State University campus! Hope to see you there!

That is all for today, see you back here on Friday! Until then...

For more samples of my work or to contact me regarding my availability head over to my website: www.christopherburdett.com

Blood Bowl: Team Manager

Starting the week off with something new! Many moons ago, I was approached to work on a little game called Blood Bowl for the good folks at Fantasy Flight Games. I thought of orcs and goblins or even rat men... turns out I was assigned an elf. Not even a dead elf, but a hero to elf kind... Prince Moranion. Not really a monster, but I was tasked to make him look awesome, and I tried my best. Enough talk, on with the monster... er, I mean elf...

Prince Moranion
© 2011 Fantasy Flight Games

There is a little story on how this elf came to be mine, but I am not sure if that would be appropriate to mention here. All things considered, it was a fun piece to work. The silliness on the forums speculating if the game would ever come out due to production delays is another matter. Not much to say other than that, this project went REALLY smoothly for me, and it was over quickly. This was another project I got to see at Gen Con and was given permission to now show. I still have not seen the final production card, but I was told it definitely made it into the game.

That is all for today, see you back here on Wednesday! Until then...

For more samples of my work or to contact me regarding my availability head over to my website: www.christopherburdett.com

The Project That Never Was (Part 2)

Back in June I brought you the first post about a big project that I worked on back in 2008. The project died before it ever saw completion and the work I produced for it has remained sealed away every since. ...until NOW. Please keep in mind while I can now share my work I can not divulge any other details regarding the project. If you missed any of this series of posts, you can see them here: PART 1, PART 2, PART 3, PART 4, PART 5, PART 6, and PART 7.

In this second installment of turnarounds I have the first of several variations on a theme. The 'Devil Dude' was one of the pieces I was able to have complete control over in the concept phase. It came together really quickly and seemed to be well received. Once designed I had to create a lot of specialized variations based off the 'Devil Dude' template. Before I say to much, bring on the monsters...

'Devil Dude' Turnaround
© 2008 Wizards of the Coast

'Devil Dude - now with AXE POWER' Turnaround
© 2008 Wizards of the Coast

I will bring you more 'Devil Dudes' soon. Looking back I was a little surprised with just how many of these I created. They could have been awesome... oh well... Not every project can see the light of day and not everything that is begun can be completed.

That is all for another exciting week on the blog, see you back here on Monday! Until then...

For more samples of my work or to contact me regarding my availability head over to my website: www.christopherburdett.com

Ninja Mountain 105 & Geek Night 2011

I was a little slow on the uptake on this one... I recorded a Gen Con wrap up with Paul "Prof" Herbert and Ninja Mountain members Ralph Horsley, Drew Baker and Jeremy McHugh recently. Apparently it has already gone live and you can not listen to everyone's thought and experiences from Gen Con 2011 as well as the lovely sounds of my load computer. There is some great reflection on the everyone's experiences as well as tips and ideas on how to make your con appearances better. You can find all this in the second half of episode 105 of the Ninja Mountain Podcast. Go have a listen... NOW.

It is that time again, Geek Night 2011 is just almost here! Geek Night, you ask? Geek Night is a yearly fall semester tradition at Florida State University to help welcome students in a fun and geeky atmosphere. I will be returning for my third appearance at Geek Night along with the very talented Lee Bretschneider and Justin Peterson. We will be creating sketch cards on the spot and giving them out to everyone that shows up on a first come first serve basis. The last two years have been a blast and I see this year being even better! I better get started making some sketch cards to have ready ahead of time. If you are in the Tallahassee area the night of Friday September 16th between 8pm - midnight, be sure to stop by FSU campus and say 'hi'!

That is all the updates for today, see you back here on Friday! Until then...

For more samples of my work or to contact me regarding my availability head over to my website: www.christopherburdett.com

Even More Meeting Notes

A late blog post on a holiday for most in the United States. Laying low and getting some rest and HOPEFULLY a lot of work done. I still wanted to make sure I got by the blog all the same. Since it is a low key day I have some more meeting notes that I have been compiling over the last several months.

As always, before you pass judgment, this is how I take notes in meetings and you should not think I am not paying attention. Active hands means active brain... or something... anyway, on with the monsters...

Tentacles?!?! Again? Who would have thunk it?
© 2011 Christopher Burdett

*snort*
© 2011 Christopher Burdett

Are you seeking a career in monster dentistry?
© 2011 Christopher Burdett

The floating head of Self Doubt wants to whisper into your ear.
© 2011 Christopher Burdett

Gorthock like long walk in moonlight, holding hands.
© 2011 Christopher Burdett

That is all for another exciting Monday on the blog, see you back here on Wednesday! Until then...

For more samples of my work or to contact me regarding my availability head over to my website: www.christopherburdett.com

Directed Studies Week 1

I am conducting a Directed Studies course in Illustration with a local art student and yesterday marked the first day of the fall semester. I got things rolling with a drawing demonstration and took him through an entire drawing, start to finish. I gave him the option to choose from a couple of different options and the idea of a bipedal reptilian monster was picked. I got started on some silhouettes first...

Monster silhouettes!

I quickly got as many of these on the paper trying out different shapes, forms and arrangements looking for something interesting. I let the student pick and we went with (1). I pointed out that some of the smallest and less defined, (2) & (3), to me at least offered a very interesting starting point. I also took this opportunity to talk about planning ahead and fully working up your ideas before moving onto a finished piece. Using (4) I pointed out the sudden difference it made when I added big feet to this silhouette. It suddenly became less threatening and to me looks like it is wearing clown shoes. While working on your silhouettes is the right time to figure these types of issue out... not while you are finishing up an illustration.

As I mentioned (1) was picked as the silhouette to move forward with so that is what I did. Since I could not spare the time to electronically enlarge the silhouette so I did it by hand. I made sure to have my animal books out in front of me and before I started on my sketching I made sure to flip through the pages to find interesting lizards and crocodiles. Understanding the differences between 'silly' and 'scary' animals is very important skill to have. While a frog is amazingly cool and offers tons of important reference cues it is not scary. An alligator on the other hand offers lots and lots of scary reference cues. Time passes and the drawing comes together...

Bipedal reptile monster!
© 2011 Christopher Burdett

From start to finish it was just over three hours of work while talking and explaining the entire process. After the fact I of course thought it would have been neat to capture images of the drawing as it developed... of well. Next time maybe. Here is a side by side comparison of the silhouette and final drawing, you can see the changes that began the moment I sketched out the silhouette by hand. The overall gesture and form is still there though.

Silhouette and drawing comparison.

That is all for another exciting week on the blog, see you back here on Monday! Until then...

For more samples of my work or to contact me regarding my availability head over to my website: www.christopherburdett.com