Artwork
When not making or playing videogames, I draw stuff.
I've been making pictures for as long as I can remember. And before affordable computers came along I drew cartoon characters, robots, spaceships and monsters, wanting to perhaps some day make movies where I could see the ideas in my head come to life.
Getting my first computer back in 1982 allowed me to make my art move, and over the subsequent years I taught myself programming, made games and finally got a job where I got paid every day for drawing and animating all the things I'd dreamed about. (Now, if you hadn't already gathered from my other pages this is incredibly, incredibly cool.)
This did have a downside though - it meant that for the greater part of the late '80s and most of the '90s I stopped drawing for myself. I began associating making pictures with work, or, when the pressure was on, the temptation was always there to spend an hour drawing something for work rather than for myself.
My Current Weapons of Choice: Letraset Promarkers + Wacom Tablet
So, when I finally became a full-time Game Designer in 1995 and my job involved long periods working away from my family, I rediscovered drawing and painting away from the computer screen and made a very conscious effort to make artwork for myself that was the polar opposite of anything I'd ever drawn before.
Having done a fair amount of paintings in oils and acrylics (which seem to take me ages, since there's no 'UNDO' key with that stuff), in more recent years I've been reaching for the marker pens - setting myself various challenges and doing all that I can to generate as many completed pictures as possible.
This seems to work best for me. I no longer have stacks of half-finished drawings in sketchbooks but a mass of finished images that show a steady improvement. I've also been scanning some of them in and colouring them on the computer to teach myself those particular skills. (I've used Photoshop for years but creating game art, game design diagrams and photo-retouching are different from colouring your own artwork.)
To keep myself moving forwards I've set myself up with a number of art projects, each one exploring different themes, subjects and art styles, but all of them forcing me to draw regularly and keep improving.
In 2009-2010 I undertook the mammoth 365 Mickeys Project - in which some Sunday afternoon doodlings and an idle comment to my wife somehow turned into many, many, many images of the world's favourite mouse.
Since then I've returned to improving my digital painting skills on more serious work that can be seen in the Alternative Art section. Prints of my original work are available for sale on redbubble.com and DeviantArt.com.
