Michael McDonald - Blog

Steampunk - Cheeky Chick

2012-02-27T18:07:00.000+11:00

At long last I've gotten around to finishing my latest image. I tried to just paint from my imagination and memory without looking at much reference material. Had a few tips given to me with the face, and wished I used reference material from the start, haha. Anyway hope you enjoy it.

Art-Potato-ised

2011-11-24T02:20:00.001+11:00

Sooo.... no art for a while now, but in the meantime i've re-designed the look and feel of both my website and blog, bringing more of a presence to the name "art potato".

art potato:
noun (informal), a person
who spends a great deal of time creating artwork.

Post Apocalyptic - Deforestation

2011-09-11T18:32:00.002+10:00

This months Art Jam theme is "Post Apocalyptic"

I really didn't want to do a stereotypical city ruin image with a Gears of War character standing amongst the smoke trying to look all cool.

So I decided to show a different side of what post apocalyptic would mean for other parts of the globe, and how it would not only effect people working in office buildings in new york.

Again, I tried some different techniques here to what I usually do by using vector silhouettes to quickly pull out a composition, then roughly worked in detail and focal points. I kept the image loose overall, as I didn't want to spend a lot of time on details that would not add to what I wanted the image to show.

Hope you like it! here's a breakdown image for anyone interested, tho it's pretty straight forward...

James & The Fat Controller

2011-09-04T14:42:00.000+10:00

This image was a bit of fun :-)

Part of my company's monthly art-jam. (just a bunch of artists getting together and having fun creating some personal work)

This month's theme was 80's TV, so I wanted to go out of my way to create something not so popular in the artist realm (eg, not transformers and voltron)

I started this image as a quick 3D render to quickly get the perspective right, then I jumped straight into photoshop and slowly build up colours and value, and working the details in.

Also finished it off with some filtering techniques and some CC light rays in After effects ;-)

Here's also some breakdowns of my workflow:

Fun In The Flurry

2011-09-04T14:36:00.000+10:00

Here's another image I've been meaning to upload here:

This image was inspired by background paintings done by Eyvind Earle for
the Walt Disney classic, Sleeping Beauty. The story behind this image
is about a boy playing in the snow, watching how his leaf-parachute
dances in the wind, and making the most of a situation that most people
would not find joyful. I attempted to produce the simple yet detailed
brush strokes seen in the Sleeping Beauty film. I also focused on
keeping strong silhouettes, while creating movement for the eye to dance
around the picture in theme of the dancing leaf-parachute.

Major Website Updates!

2011-09-04T14:13:00.000+10:00

Hi Folks,

I've finally got around to updating my website after nearly 2 years!
Nearly every section includes some new additions and I've also fixed up a lot of problems with how it used to load up.

Unfortunately I haven't updated my Demo Reel as most of the work I do these days is top secret! (non disclosure agreements)

anyway, enjoy! I'll be posting up a few more things here soon too!

Let There Be Art! Jack Of Hearts

2011-08-31T21:24:00.000+10:00

Ok, so for my 1st art post I want to show the 1st Art Jam image I created for July 2011.
The theme here was Alice in Wonderland, so I decided to do a take on the Knave/Jack of Hearts:

I wanted to try something out of my comfort zone and attempted to create a traditional watercolor image similar to the style of Yoshitaka Amano, which proved very difficult using digital tools.

I would have liked to add further details to this image, and I still might do just that if I get around to it :-)

Here is my workflow on creating this image, I didnt use much reference for this at the start so please disreguard the terrible perspective in the 1st stage :-P haha...

2011-08-31T20:55:00.000+10:00

I probably should tell you a bit about myself before I start drawing pretty pictures everywhere...

I'm employed with EA (Electronic Arts) as a Mid-Level Production Artist working at Iron Monkey Studios in Melbourne. Our studio has created many successful iPhone/iPad game titles and I'm enjoying my time here.

Some of us artists have also started up an "Art Jam" thing in our spare time at home; we all create our own personal artwork each month relating to a particular theme.

The majority of my art posts will consist of Art Jam content, but there will most probably be the odd additional art piece here and there.

2011-08-31T20:41:00.000+10:00

Hello World!

Being a professional artist, I thought I would start my own Blogfolio.
I will be using this space to archive my personal artwork and to share with you my journey towards becoming a better artist, which all artists know never ends :-P

Anyway, stay tuned for some image uploads in the very near future, and also a bit about myself.

In the meantime you can visit my personal portfolio:
www.michael-mcdonald.com
(it's a bit outdated)