Facial Expressions

One of the books I bought at the Fan Expo was “Facial Expressions: A Visual Reference for Artists“.   I want to work on drawing different types of faces and expressions instead of my default go to face.  This book is full of men’s and woman’s faces of all ages, shapes, sizes, and ethnicities in different expressions and angles.  Here’s a study from some of them; there are some pretty awesome expressions, lol!:

Fan Expo Vancouver 2012

I headed to Vancouver for its first ever Fan Expo over the weekend and had a great time! So many great costumes, Artists, and things to look at.  I hope it’ll be the first of many.

My camera isn’t the best so a lot of the pictures turned out blurry but here’s a few that I salvaged.

Crazy lineup!  Luckily we came early and missed a lot of it.

Friend and former co-worker “Dapper” Dan Schoening with some of his great art on display.

I got a copy of Camilla’s book “Femina & Fauna” and she did a cute sketch inside.

This is what I call Heaven! Art books galore! I ended up leaving with 3 new books, lol.

Studies and Sketches

Here are a few landscape studies and random sketches.  I’m starting work on a new illustration.  It’s sci-fi themed with some tough dudes and weapons; should be fun!  It’ll be something different.

I’ve been doing some level background concepts at work on a new title which is a lot of fun!  It’s a new IP so I have more freedom to create an art style and look for the game.  I won’t be able to show it for a while but it’s keeping me busy!

First Paint Video

I’ve been wanting to start recording some of my paintings for a while.  This is a landscape study which I recorded and edited with Camtasia;  A really easy to use program.

This vid could be sped up and shorter but overall I’m happy with how it turned out! It would be nice to record more and maybe do some tutorials in the future? We’ll see!

Spring Cleaning

My site has been updated a little over the weekend.  You might notice my name is now different.  For a while, I thought it would be a good idea to use my first and middle name as my identity online (Michelle Loren), because my last name was in the process of being changed and my married name is pretty long as you can see).  But it seemed to just be confusing more than anything, especially for the people that know me personally, so I’ll be using my married name from now on, which is long but fun to say!  From now on, no more changes.   It’s a lot of work changing all the online accounts!

Anywho, lately  I’ve been busy learning some new things for work.  We are creating a few game prototypes so I’ve been learning how the Unity game engine works as well as brushing up on my 3D skills.  It hasn’t left me a lot of time to draw and paint as much as I’d like .  I have been working on some concept art for a couple games at work but I can’t show those unfortunately.  I’ve got to start finding more time because IMC is coming up pretty soon!!!  So excited!  I want to be in top form for that!

Here’s a work in progress of some level background art I’m messing around with.  I got inspired by Rayman Origins, such cool art in that game.  And the others are just a quick speed paint and a sketch from a Dr.Sketchy session.