A Last Name You Can Be Proud Of

Tomorrow is my wife's birthday, which also very conveniently marks the halfway point of this year and a good time to finally come out of hiding.  As a quick aside my own birthday is at the end of the year.  I'd never realized the neat symmetry of our birthdays before, but that's pretty cool, no?

Last year was about trying to transition myself from games into what I thought I really wanted to be:  A concept artist.  I learned a lot about being an artist and it was both torturous and rewarding.  But the ultimate lesson seemed to be that I don't really want to be a concept artist. Or rather, that I wouldn't be satisfied even if I reached that goal.  It turns out what I really want it to make an impact.

To understand this need to make an impact we have to go back in time to a conversation I had with my father when I was in elementary school in Bangkok.  We were talking about our last name, because kids had been making fun of it (Sumo, if the blog's title didn't alert you to this fact).

Dad: You don't like our last name, no?
Me: ...Yeah.
Dad: Because people make fun of you?
Me: ...Yeah.
Dad: You know what you have to do then?  You have to make it a become a last name that you can be proud of.

I always get emotional when I remember this conversation.  My father and I have a mostly awkward relationship, but I am immensely proud of his accomplishments.  He came from a small seaside town and walked to school with his bare feet but managed to build a career that crisscrossed the region and gave me the multicultural childhood that I so cherish.  It is one of my greatest desires to make our name a last name that he would be proud of.  Ideally before he kicks the bucket and has time to appreciate it, so I'm on a tight schedule here.

I'm walking a very fine line, announcing this kind of a thing.  It's borderline self-aggrandizing and there is nothing I hate more than people who puff themselves up and announce to the world that they're out there "to make a difference" and to be "changemakers" and (good Lord this portmanteau just slays me) "Filipinnovators".  While I respect a lot of these people and wish them the best, words like that just make me squirm in my chair uncomfortably and avert my gaze (there's a word for this, I can't remember it but it sounds like "wah-jah".  Update: supposedly it's Fremdschamen).  But I want to be honest as well.  I want to make an impact.  I know I can make an impact.  The question is simply how big of an impact can I make in this lifetime, and to what ends?  That's what I'm still trying to sort out.

In line with this came the decision to focus back on games.  I have a love\hate relationship with my career as a games artist.  I love that I can do this for a living but hate that it makes me feel so limited sometimes.  But as of now it is my biggest chance to make an impact on the world, so I'm pursuing it full throttle.  I've worked my way to a point where I now have the opportunity to make a most excellent game (a sneak peek above, with some of the art made by the most excellent husband and wife studio Robotwithasmile) with Erick Garayblas and am currently working on the awesome and always improving Prison Architect (Alpha 11 just out!).  For now, this is how I make my impact.  When that's run its course then let's see what happens next.

Here are some Cars Instead of an Explanation

I have in my drafts folder a rather lengthy blog post detailing why exactly I've been away for so long, what I've been up to, and what the future holds for me.  This is obviously not that post.  It's still gestating in the drafts folder, while I chip away at the work that has been occupying almost all of my time.

Instead, please accept a few car sketches.  While I'm no longer drawing or painting as much, I try to keep myself as practiced as I can possibly can, and take at least 15-30 minutes in a day to sketch or draw something.  I don't sketch cars or vehicles a lot, so I thought I'd expand my visual vocabulary in that area.

I promise to do my best to write more soon.

Sake Drinking Ronin

Been a while since I've drawn anything so I felt the need to bust out something just for fun.  A ronin that took a little less than an hour?  I painted the face in a little bit but then got tired of it.  Shades of Toshiro Mifune, though I didn't start out with him in mind.

The signature on the lower right is something I wanted to try out.  It's my last name spelled in Korean, though I've sure my handwriting must look atrocious.  I wrestled with the idea of signing my name in Korean, but the truth is I'm not clever enough to really come up with anything original, so I'll happily appropriate another culture's writing for now.

Urban Sketching : Makati University + Japanese Restaurant

Aissa was judging Project Citizen last Saturday in the University of Makati.  I listened to some of teh student pitches then decided to take a look around the campus to see if there was anything worth sketching.  The campus itself is pretty impressive for a city university. except for the fact that mayor Binay had his paws all over it, in the form of stylized Bs on all of the staircase and window grills.  Candidate for worst epal?  Anyway this giant tree in the middle of the campus caught my attention, because it was obviously spared during the midst of constructing the University.  It's stands out beautifully, if a little lonely, in the middle of the campus.

Sundays we alternate between my folks and Aissa's.  Last weekend was at Aissa's, and I've recently taken to walking around the Aguirre street area, looking for interesting things to sketch.  The South has a surprisingly large foreign community, with many Koreans and Japanese but also Europeans as well.  This leads to very unique restauratns like this Japanese barbecue place, which wouldn't look out of place on the outskirts of Osaka or Kyoto.

Trade Station Final

I'm writing this post with a rather bittersweet feeling, because I'm now officially off the Trade Frontiers Project.  With me back on Prison Architect there our schedules just didn't work out but I wish Chris Brind and co. the best for their game and I'll make sure to post about their Kickstarter project once it's announced.  I had a lot of fun with this piece, as surprisingly it's one of the few science fiction artworks that I've ever made.  I was thinking about turning this into a tutorial piece but frankly I'm just too lazy to write a decent tutorial  so I'll just go step by step and talk about my thought process along the way.

This was the first rough sketch I made based on the large thumbnail from the previous post.

I colored the original sketch blue to make it easier to trace over it with cleaner lines.

I make two important changes here.  I noticed that the sizes of my images (namely the signal officer and the docking ship, did not help convey a sense of perspective and size very well.  I moved the officer to the center and enlarged him and made the ship a little smaller as well to highlight the distance between them.

Laid down flat colors.

Painted some texturing.

More texturing, and some shadows.  Getting near the end here.

Final image.  The last big change I made here was the decision to turn the yellowish planet into a blue one.  Firstly because yellow heavenly body is too commonly thought of as being a sun, but also because the warm yellow color was very eye catching and there was a lot of tension between it and the signal officer.  by turning the planet blue the eye naturally gravitates towards the officer, then diagonally upward towards the ship and the planet behind it.  I also pushed the second ship farther back into the background to furhter highlight the distance between the objects in the image.  And that's it!  You can see a larger sized image at the start of this post,  hope someone finds this useful!