www.gilestimms.com

Angie and I are getting married on July 22nd, 2010 :)

The above is the comic book styled wedding invitation that I made and had printed through lulu. Hand drawn and colored in Photoshop. The illustrations for the mini comic book invitation were inspired by the work of one of my favorite illustrators, Nate Williams.

If you’d like an actual printed book of the invitation you can buy a copy on lulu: Wedding Invitation – Giles and Angie.

I updated my blog to the latest release of wordpress today (version 2.6.3) and was able to add a really cool plugin for NextGen Gallery. NextGen Gallery allows you to implement and organize galleries and albums on a wordpress site like flickr. I really like NextGen’s implementation and it’s easy to install.

Anyway, with the gallery plugin installed I uploaded the second set of photos from our Gnomon Stop Motion class visit to the Chiodo Bros Studio in Burbank. This set of photos focuses on one of their talented artists, Rick O’Brien, and his amazing painterly work. Rick spent a lot of time with us explaining his texturing and painting methods and concepts – it was great :)

To look at more of Rick’s work, visit his Monument Project and Blog.

[Show as slideshow]

This weekend, as part of the Gnomon stopmotion class we went to visit the Chiodo Bros. Studio in Burbank. It was amazing :) Here are the first series of photos from the trip. To see our class project, visit our stop motion wordpress blog.

[Show as slideshow]

‘Ysbryd, Prince of Animal Ghosts,’ pen and ink, brush pen and Sakuras on Bristol Board, 6″ x 9″

Like a lot of people I like films, literature and art that tell the stories of dark heroes. I wanted to figure such a hero in one of my pen drawings, so the above drawing is about Prince Ysbryd who roams the animal underworld. I think pen and ink is a great medium for creating darker images.

I may have been inspired to go darker after reading the great article on Camille Rose Garcia in the March issue of Juxtapoz. The interview with her is good and she talks a little about her process; her explanation of her characterization process is briefly explained, but very interesting.

Angie and I also saw two rather dark movies both of which I would recommend: ‘Memory of a killer’ and ‘North Country.’ ‘Memory of a Killer’ is a Belgian crime-thriller that tells the story of Angelo Ledda, a vigilante style dark hero (see Wikipedia reference). Angelo is an elderly hit-man suffering the onset of Alzheimer’s who takes on a hit job that prompts him to turn on his employer. The characters are somewhat typical for this genre, but they have enough twists to become compelling. To find out more about “Memories of Killer,’ visit www.imdb.com and to find out more about ‘North Country,’ visit www.imdb.com.

Angie and I went to see Joe Batt’s exhibition yesterday. I was really excited to see his work as I had seen a flyer for the exhibition that had depicted a whimsical ceramic hare in a bright yellow life-jacket. The show was small, but there were more of the wonderful hare figures. My favorite piece was ‘Traveling Hare’ which I drew above. These pieces were also very colourful as Joe had added coloured highlights with coloured pencil; the ‘Traveling Hare’ had a very fetching bright green backpack and pale blue belt.

To learn more about Joe Batt and his work, you can visit his web site at www.joebatt.com.

I received a set of Prismacolour brush markers for Christmas and created a set of drawings that were inspired by Smook’s marker drawings (http://reddotblog.blogspot.com/).

I really like the painterly quality of the markers and the blending that happens when you lay colours on top of one another.

These images are all drawn from photos. I’m still trying to learn how to use the markers.

This one turned a bit dark.

These were my attempt at caricatures.

Above is the Tim Biskup book, ’100 Paintings’ (ISBN : 1-59307-051-9) I received as a Christmas present from my brother Allister. The book is a collection of 100 small format paintings, 3 1/2 inches by 3 1/2 inches, reproduced at actual size. It’s an excellent book and I highly recommend it if you’re a Biskup fan. To find out more about Tim Biskup, visit his website at www.timbiskup.com.

Also here’s a photo of my brother’s daughter Vienna in her Christmas best surrounded by some of her gifts.

I hope everyone had an excellent Christmas. Will post something new soon :)

Here’s the opening adventure of Marmaduck.

This is my first finished comic style illustration of a character from my sketchbook. I tried to keep things simple , hence no text bubbles and only four panels. I have always loved Double Fine’s comics (go to www.doublefine.com to view) and thought that their four strip panel sets were a good minimum number. Despite keeping things simple it was harder than I thought, but I really had fun creating the Marmuduck panels and it was an excellent new challenge for me. If anyone has any advice on how I can improve my comic skills for the next set, please let me know.

I was also inspired by Pete Fowler’s great little comic strips from his ‘Ken’s Mysterious World’ series. I’ve included a scan below.

I actually created this comic panel for my redesigned web site (which you can view at www.gilestimms.com, though it’s still being updated). I thought that it might make the home page more interesting to have something different every so often, hence the comic. Hopefully I can create a new set every fortnight, especially if I keep things simple with the vector format.

Anyway, this was entirely created in Illustrator.