The Art Department

A Cloaked Traveler

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From the Art Department

Yesterday, I finally took some time to do some Inktober drawings. As I was searching for ideas of what to draw I remembered I started the month with a cloaked character and thought I should return to that character.

This drawing is for Day 30: Gear, so I gave him a bunch of electronic equipment to carry. I have no idea what this guy is doing with all this stuff...but something is starting to brew.

I just shared some sketches and a little secret trick that I'm kind of embarrassed I used to design this guy over on the PATREON.

PATREON: You can see all the behind the scenes stuff and more like the start to finish creation of the SPACESHIPS book and other art, including secret stuff I can't share publicly. Sign up here: LINK​

Drawings Round Up

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From the Art Department

Here's a few drawings from this last week or so. Top one was for Day 10 of Inktober: Crabby.

Bottom three were done at Lightbox Expo for friends.

I posted process images on Patreon this week, as well as gifting all my patrons a digital copy of SPACESHIPS.

SPACESHIPS is finished and at the printers right now, so books will be shipping out sooooon. So excited!

PATREON: You can see all the behind the scenes stuff and more on the creation of SPACESHIPS and other art, including secret stuff I can't share publicly. Sign up here: LINK

-Jake

Inktober 2022 Week 1

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From the Art Department

Week one is down! ....and I only had enough gas in the tank to do three drawings. I'm usually pretty amped up to do Inktober every year, but this year that Inktober preparation slot was filled with doing the Spaceships book. Maybe now that the files are sent off I can get caught up on it!

I'm posting process stuff weekly over on the patreon. And this month, Patrons are going to receive a digital copy of the Spaceships book. Great time to sign up: LINK​

-Jake

The Stone Hand

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From the Art Department

I've been so focused on spaceships since May that I haven't really drawn much else (besides freelance stuff). Yesterday, did a livestream on the Inktober IG account for Kuretake, who's one of this years Inktober sponsors. Yeah, it was also a paying gig, BUT I just got to draw something different that wasn't attached to anything and that was nice.

I used this pen set, which it GREAT for inking controlled lines that have a little life to them.

Work continues on the Spaceships book though! I finished the last of the comic pages and they're off to the colorist. Skull Chaser makes an appearance in the book!

I posted the comic pages over on Patreon this week, including ALL the process sketches and my tricks to make work go faster.

You can see all the behind the scenes stuff and more in the creation of this book, including secret stuff I can't share publicly. Sign up here: LINK​

-Jake

Star Runners

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From the Art Department

This week on the Patreon I shared the entire 20+ page Star Runners chapter from Kepler's Intergalactic Guide to Spaceships (Taking pre-orders now in case you missed the Kickstarter). Here's a couple pages for you to get a sneak peek before the book comes out.

I'm in the hardest part of the process of making this book and I'm still enjoying the heck out of it. Not only am I enjoying the pain right now, but I'm fantasizing about my next book project. I guess if you love doing something so much that even the boring tedious part of the production offers some form of satisfaction you gotta follow that wherever it takes you.

You can see all the behind the scenes stuff and more in the creation of this book, including secret stuff I can't share publicly over on the Patreon.

-Jake

Sublight Engines and Jumpgates

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From the Art Department

Here's two pages from the book I finished this week. I uploaded a 20+ page preview of the Spaceships Book to the Patreon and privately to Kickstarter backers.

I'm grinding on this thing day and night trying to get it to the printers by the end of the month. The more I work on it, the more I've been improving and expanding the original scope of the book. It's WAAAY better than the book I originally pitched to you.

So far this week I've written about 4000 words to fill in descriptions of each ship. Still more to go, but I feel like the end is in sight now. I've got about 6 more comic pages that need to be inked and colored. Then a final editorial pass, and file prep and I'll be sending the files to the printer!

You can see all the behind the scenes stuff and more in the creation of this book, including secret stuff I can't share publicly over on the Patreon.

-Jake

Spaceships Book Progress

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From the Art Department

I know pretty much all the art I've posted for the last 3 months has been for this darn spaceships book, but that's all I've got. I'm in the why-am-I-not-finished-with-this-yet-?-?-? stage of the book making process.

I've enjoyed every minute of working on this book, but am SO anxious to have it finished. For two reasons: 1) I'm really excited about my next project and want to start on it asap and 2) I'm really excited for you to have this book. I feel like I'm making something out of the ordinary here, and I'm dying to delight people with it.

These two images are the latest images finished for the book. I colored the last few spaceships that were just line drawings from my sketchbooks. And there's about 5 comic pages left to knock out.

You can see all the process art from sketch to final over on the Patreon.

-Jake

He-Man and the Masters of the Universe Coda

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From the Art Department

There's no shortage of He-Man shows in the world so this might have gotten lost in all the noise, but the He-Man and the Masters of the Universe show on Netflix has this cool thing they do at the end of each episode: Codas.

These are black and white illustrations mostly done by comic artists that give a sneak peek at the next episode. When executive producer on the show Jeff Matsuda reached out to see if I was interested in doing one, I was not going to say no.

I loved He-Man as a kid and to be able to contribute to the franchise, even in this small way, was something I've always wanted to do.

You can see my drawing at the end of episode SE E4. But while you're there might as well check all the rest out.

Process art from sketch to final over on the Patreon.

-Jake

Spaceship Splash Page

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From the Art Department

I'm trying so hard to get this spaceships book out to the printer by next week, and there's a pile of coloring still to do on it. One page I've been dreading was this splash art from the foreword. I thought maybe I could just leave the sketchy version and call it good.

Then I thought that a rough sketch like what I had would be one of the first images you see in the book would just drag the overall quality down a few notches. No, the first image needed to be colored and polished a bit. So I rolled up my sleeves and 3 hours later, had this thing colored

Process art from sketch to final is over on the Patreon.

-Jake

Recent Spaceships

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From the Art Department

Just a few spaceships I've colored up for the Spaceships book. Been sharing the process art from sketch to final over on the Patreon. I'm so excited to get this book finished and sent off to the printer in the next couple of weeks. Still a lot fo work to do on it, but there's a light at the end of this tunnel.

-Jake

A journey through Midjourney

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From the Art Department

First off, for anyone who needs a primer on AI Generated Art here's a concise video on the subject to get you up to speed: LINK

I used Midjourney I started out with these prompts to see what I would get: Astronaut with a skull head +skull + skeleton + red spacesuit + character design + full body + red + sci-fi + star wars + Ralph McQuarrie + Jake Parker, cartoon, cartoon network, adventure time style:

Thought I'd mix it up and see what prompts like octane render + 3d would give me:

I didn't like what I was getting so I went back to my original prompts but added rubberhose animation + pixar + disney + 3d:

The results were better, so I asked for more variations. When I got these I decided I was getting diminishing returns and called it a day. Lots of interesting ideas to put into my design, but no one design really felt like it nailed the vibe I got from my original design.

After this experiment here's what I think:

1) AI Art Generators will only become more powerful/capable. So wishing it away is a waste of time. The only path forward is figuring it out how to implement it and how to regulate it.

2) With revolutionary technology comes a reorganization of status and power. The status quo HATES this and will do almost anything to stop it from happening.

AI Generated Art shifts the power (and wealth) of creating images from people who have training, to people who don't.

This reorganization happened in the 2000s when programs like Maya, 3D Studio Max, and Photoshop made art creation a lot more accessible to people who couldn't paint traditionally, or sculpt clay.

It allowed places like animation studios to be havens for creative people to make art who might not have been able to draw really well. Which really upset people who had trained to animate in 2D on paper, and who studied classical painting techniques. Which leads me to 3:

3) Not everyone who is creative can make art, and not everyone who can make art is creative. The creative people who could also adapt and learn new tools absolutely thrived in the new digital art world.

A lot of the art I've seen generated from AI is a lot like hearing someone impersonate English but who doesn't know the language. It sounds right, but they aren't actually saying anything.

4) I see these AI Art generators as tools. Another resource for creative people to add to their toolbox to make them even more creative. Or at the very least, make their job easier.

5) AI isn't an end to end problem solver for productions. There's still a needs to be an artist to translate it into something usable. Someone needs to interpret AI art into something a modeler can model, or set designer can build.

Example: After a producer plugs a bunch of prompts from a script into Midjourney they take it to the art dept. The crew gets a brief from an art director and instead of a lot of back and forth, the art director points at a page of AI art and says "Make it look like this"

6) Questions I’m still thinking about:

- Do these AI Art Generators actually undermine illustrators, photographers, concept artists? Or does it actually elevate these industries?

- Is it bad to democratize something like art creation?

- Who truly benefits from this shift in power? Where is the money flowing to?

- Should artists have the option of their artwork being removed from the AI generator's databases? Or is any art you post online free game? Does the AI generator do anything different than what an artist does who has strong stylistic influences from other artists?

7) I'm still learning about this, and still reading up on all the pros and cons.

I would love to know your thoughts. We've been discussing it over on the Discord for a couple weeks now: LINK​

I also posted this on IG and it blew up. I could not keep up with the comments. Over 750 of them! If you want to get a vibe check on what the broader art community thinks of this check it out here: LINK​

-Jake

Blender to the Rescue

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From the Art Department

I had a few comic pages to do with the ship on the cover of the Spaceships book and instead of trying to figure out its complex shape over and over again, to save time I made a rudimentary model in blender.

Not only did it save me the headache of constructing shots of the ship from different angles, but it actually made the drawings a lot cooler in my opinion. There's some nice perspective shots I have no idea how I would've achieved with out the model.

If you want to see my step by step process work for stuff like this, especially comic pages as I finish them, I'm posting all the time over on my patreon.

-Jake

Destiny 2 Ships!

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From the Art Department

Last year I had the opportunity to work with Bungie on some designs for Destiny 2 and they FINALLY released them! Posted above are the finished assets for the game done by the artists at Bungie based on my concept art.

This was such a fun project! Here's some sketches I did:

If you want to see the rest of the work I did for Bungie, there's a TON more designs and process stuff for this project over on my patreon.

-Jake

The Art of the Smear

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From the Art Department's Craft Mastery Special Unit

Smear frames in animation is a creative solution to making animated characters move with more fluidity in a short amount of frames. This webpage does an EXCELLENT job at explaining it with interactive examples.

THE ART OF THE SMEAR: BREAKING DOWN A SECRET ANIMATION TRICK LINK

I share this because someone recently posted screen grabs of all the smears from the recent 3D animated Spongebob film. Each of these frames is like a Dali painting. Brilliant work by the artists at Mikros, who animated the film.

Tons more here: LINK

(via @PunzieSfw)

-Jake

The Star Catcher

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From the Art Department in cooperation with the Online Sales Unit

NEW PRINT!

I haven't updated my shop with a new print in well over a year. This is the Star Catcher, a reminder that you can't wait for your dreams to come shooting down to you on the ground. No, you need a lot of rope and the grit to go catch a them yourself.

Each print makes use of archival inks and quality paper stock to stand the test of time.
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Two sizes:
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- 16 x 20
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- 11 x 14
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Signed. Ships in an indestructible fat tube, packaged with love.

ORDER HERE: LINK​

-Jake

C.A.T. Bot

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From the Art Department

Using Cybernetic Action Tech or CAT for short. These security droids could be modified for a variety of purposes.⁣

C.A.T. Bot is another collaboration with my son Calvin who has all the good ideas around here.⁣ This the design evolution of the character from Calvin's initial drawing to the one I just finished this week.

C.A.T.Bot is one of the pins I designed for my first pin set! I'm making a list of people who want to be notified when this set drops at the end of February. If you want to get on that list all you have to do is click here, and my email bots will put you on the list: LINK

-Jake