Danny Ryba

Website?

2013-01-02T08:15:00.001-08:00

So...I've got a website thingy now. I was going to delete this blogspot, but I feel like it may be a good resource to post my in progress stuff or tyhings that may not warrant being on a professional site. But isn't that what the DeviantArt is for? Too many things to keep up with.

Anyway, happy new years everyone!

A Couple Things

2012-11-16T12:16:00.001-08:00

Okay one...here's the troll - he's been on the backburner a bit but he's still a project I'm working on. The main problem I ran into was the castle, which took me a bit to get right. It's looking better now, but there's a fine balance between making it TOO detailed, and not detailed enough. I've gotta work on that still.

Other than that, here's another piece I recently finished. Experimenting with using photos as direct reference and then painting over them to imitate their textures. The mountains are hand painted in that way, which was excruciating, but really helped me understand how to imitate their rocky terrain.

I wish I had incorporated more light contrast with it, because the whole thing seems really dark. That's what I was going for, but it turned out moreso than I wanted it. Still like how it turned out and it was a great learning experience.

See, I do post stuff here!

A REAL post

2012-09-05T10:36:00.004-07:00

Yeah, this blog is a pretty sad excuse for one. So it's time for a real entry. Just went to Dragon Con on Sunday and had a GREAT time! It was my first year there, and I already bought my tickets for all four days next year! Got a chance to grab some awesome merch, meet some cool cosplayers, and even got to chat a bit with the famous Todd Lockwood! That was the highlight of the day.

Anyway, so I started a few new projects, and quickly scrapped most of them. I just can't ever seem to get past the rough B/W stage with a painting - I don't know what it is. However, I'm determined to finish this one up:

Cute guy, huh? I love this idea - a giant troll thing with a city on his back. I'll probably cut the image a bit at the bottom and extend it a bit at the top as well, just to give more space to the city area. Anyway, I'm pretty determined to get this piece off the ground, just because it's been really fun to work on so far. I can also do a lot of experimenting with textures and stuff like that.

Well, there ya go. Not much, but better than what I've been posting, right? I'll post some more updates of this piece as it gets further along!

San Francisco! (Again)

2012-08-07T16:08:00.001-07:00

Well I'm off to the Massive Black art convention thing in San Francisco! Should be an awesome time. I'm so ready for a whole week for drawing, drawing, drawing, and more drawing!

Under Construction!

2012-03-15T12:46:00.000-07:00

So after attending GDC, I realized I need to switch up a lot of stuff in my portfolio and need to step my game up!

Therefore, my website over at Dannyryba.com is gonna have some maintenance work on it for a bit. It'll still be up and running, but in the meantime I'll be taking images out, rearranging stuff, etc.

Also, I'm definitely going to be putting more posts up about my process and how I make my work. It seemed to be of great importance to some game studios I saw that they see your process, rather than just seeing all finished work all the time. So I'll have some specific projects I post up here, with decisions I made, why I made them, etc. So keep an eye out!

GDC is over!

2012-03-10T09:35:00.002-08:00

I had a great time! I'll do a more extensive post about it later, but for now I'm busy unpacking, getting settled back in at home, and following up on the awesome connections I made!

GDC!

2012-03-07T08:54:00.000-08:00

Well I'm off to GDC 2012 today, not quite sure what to expect. I'm not part of the game industry, so hopeful I can meet with some professionals and network! If all else fails, at least I get to see some cool panels!

Totally unrelated but...

2012-01-10T12:36:00.000-08:00

Another One

2012-01-09T13:53:00.000-08:00

Another digital piece I finished today, took about 2 hours and is in color! No process this time, just the final:

Looks a bit grainy since I worked in CMYK instead of RGB (it's gonna be printed). I like how it turned out - maybe a little more dynamic composition would have been nice, but I wanted almost an air of eerie calmness over the piece.
Also wanted to play with doing some smoke without the use of a specialized brush like my last piece. It was a bit tougher but I think it got across well enough.

Oddly enough, just saw the movie Contagion after doing this piece. Very creepy movie and well done. However, it really is more of less just a documentary for how we respond to epidemics disguised as a thriller. Not that that's a bad thing - it's all very fascinating - but I felt emotionally detached from everyone in the film, save for the last couple scenes. Still, a very smart movie that I highly recommend.

Uh, right. On to the next piece!

New Year!

2012-01-01T11:32:00.000-08:00

Okay, so it's a new year, and looking back at 2011, gotta say that although it was a pretty kick-ass year, I didn't get as far with my art as I wanted to. So my new year's resolution is to keep practicing and get better! But then again, I make that resolution every year.

Anyway, did a quick little digital painting in grayscale and liked the way it turned out. I just wanted to experiment a bit with different brush types, since I always use soft edged airbrush settings, which is awesome but then gets me stuck doing blending and details for 50 hours. Instead, I decided to just try and do a quick piece using JUST hard edged brushes and some textured brushes I've had on PS forever but never used. Turned out pretty good.

This was the piece about 20 mins in, just blocking in some basics and getting the composition right. As you can see, that smoke brush I have is pretty awesome and really helped out a lot.

And here's the completed piece. Robot dude is standing a little less lopsided, and looks more intimidating. Also made the vehicles and people smaller, to give a much grander scope. It was a lot of fun to do and only took about 2 hours max.

Gonna really start ramping up my digital works, so I'll try and post some more work in progress stuff.

Happy new year!

The Last Semester

2011-11-27T18:12:00.000-08:00

So it's been a while since I updated, but I have been super busy with classes. Hoping to get some really cool stuff done, though. Next semester will be my last, and the classes I have lined up are gonna be awesome. Advanced Study in the Figure and a directed study in Concept Art are both going to push me and it'll be totally worth it. I can't wait! Check out my website for some updates, as I'll be changing it around a bit.

The Fem-Kraken!

2011-07-12T19:29:00.000-07:00

So...just finished this piece for a couple of friends at the gaming blog MMOMFG - which I write for as well, if you wanna check it out. I have no idea what it will be used for, and as much as I kind of wanted to put it in my portfolio...I decided against it. Maybe.
The only prompt I got was to make the eyes Red Rings of Death, and to make 'a kraken with tittehs.' Yep. Check and check.
Anyway, check it out below!

It's Been Awhile,

2011-05-13T19:06:00.000-07:00

Hasn't it? I'm updating my portfolio site with a couple pieces, but for now I've just been drawing, drawing, drawing, now that it's summer!
Oh, and watching Hulu Plus. Having 1000 Ways To Die and The Office at my fingertips is a dangerous thing.
Check out my portfolio (dannyryba.com) for my new works. I'll post my latest one at the bottom of this post, which is a dragonfly man thing, which turned out really nice, actually. It's weird how different art styles can come together. I chose to do more of a comic-book look to the piece, with black outlines and layered colors. It's very different from most of my other PhotoShop stuff, which tends to involve just using brushes and erasing the outlines.
Anyway, I got the idea for the weirdo from this book: Fantasy Genesis, by Chuck Lukacs. Honestly I've had the book for about 3 years now, but just cracked it open. Yeah, I'm bad. But it's a great way to generate weird monstrosities to draw, especially when I have no particular inspiration. He has a blog for it too! I wish I had used it earlier, because now I'm all about playing the game!
Check out the thing below, and if you were wondering, he was supposed to be a Humanoid Dragonfly (main body) with Bull (minor forms) features. His surface was Turbine, which I made into a weird chest plate thing. His action was Recoiling head/torso and his emotion was Fear. Obviously he didn't come across as intended, because all he has are bull horns and his pose didn't lend to any 'fear' emotion.
Ah well, it was fun. I have more projects coming up, so stay tuned!

This 3D Stuff is Hard

2011-02-22T08:38:00.000-08:00

So I've been trying to self-teach myself ZBrush...man, it's tough. The interface actually isn't too bad, and I'm really thankful they have presets, but jeez. 3D modellers, I have newfound respect for you guys. I'm probably going to search for some guides online and give it another shot in a little bit.

As much as I would rather not learn the program and stick to what I know (Adobe Suite), concept artists have to be versatile nowadays. Not that all concept artists need to know those programs, but it definitely helps. So I figured I may as well give it a shot, just so I can at least learn the basics.

I never was good at my 3D classes, though. Ugh.

Pumpkin Dudes, Orcs, and more!

2011-02-13T21:00:00.000-08:00

So next project for Electronic Illustration has officially commenced, and I am totally pumped. Not only is it going to be a super fun assignment, I get to digitally paint a lot of cool stuff for it. Like this guy!

No name for him yet, but he was the first guy I finished up. Also did an Orc, which was fun. I can't wait to see what else pops out of my head.

Another awesome thing is that I finally got my own domain! So now you can either access my site from the old URL of wix.com/dannyryba/dannyryba or you can just head to dannyryba.com!

Tomorrow is another day, and more art is to be done. But now, I retire to my bed to hopefully shake off the rest of this sickness. Ugh.

Projects, projects everywhere

2011-02-10T13:16:00.000-08:00

Well I am officially done with 2 of my art projects, that's a relief. The third one if a pretty big painting I'll have to work on over the weekend, but my photography is done and so is my work for Electronic Illustration. Of course, they cost a pretty penny in printing costs, but that's what you get into with art.
Got another show on campus I'm gonna have at least one piece in, it's more of a casual event than anything else, which is actually kind of nice.
Other than that, it's all about the next round of projects now. Maybe I'll squeeze in another recreational painting in the meantime.

Yeah, right.

Awesome!

2011-01-27T16:50:00.000-08:00

For my Electronic Illustration class (which is turning out to be a very interesting class - in a good way) we have to choose an artist/illustrator that inspires us and I chose the amazing Dave Wilkins (check out his artwork here: http://400lbninja.blogspot.com/). I also shot him an email and he is going to let me send him some questions for him to answer! It's really cool of him to let me do that, especially since he is such an accomplished artist!

As for my own work, my sketchbook has been submitted, so that should go on tour soon. I've got a lot going on in my art classes - paintings, photos, graphic art...I'm gonna be busy! Hopefully I'll have some time to do some work of my own, since the ideas for digital and oil paintings have been bubbling in my brain.

The Hobgoblin!

2011-01-05T14:32:00.000-08:00

I may be an artist, but I'm also a total comic nerd. Not too big of a surprise. Then again, I'm just a nerd in general, but I digress.
The other day I had an awesome idea for a digital painting involving The Hobgoblin, one of Spider-Man's villains. He's always been one of my favorite Spidey villains and I don't really know why. Maybe because he's clever, but not insane. He's a level-headed Goblin, which is pretty rare to find. I didn't act on the digital painting right when I thought of it though, cuz I had some other things to do. Then I went to my local Borders to get something and found the latest issue of The Amazing Spider-Man, featuring the return of the Hobgoblin! Well, a new one at least.
Immediately becoming more inspired, I started on the digital painting yesterday and just finished it. It's on my website, but I'll post it here at well.

Pretty menacing, eh? I like how it turned out. It's the classic Hobgoblin. Anyway, have a great day everyone! I gotta go back to working on my Sketchbook, took too much of a break to finish this!

Happy New Year!

2011-01-01T08:41:00.000-08:00

Goodbye 2010, welcome 2011!
Hope everyone was safe and had fun celebrating. I make resolutions every year, but don't usually end up fulfilling them. This year I'm totally going to actually do it, I swear.
Here's my list:

1. Ramp up practicing art, especially when it comes to my digital paintings
2. Get some work into at least 1 other exhibition
3. Start contacting places about internships
And finally, 4. STICK TO MY GODDAMN RESOLUTIONS

Which of course, means more art on my website (I haven't posted any because most of my art time is being put into The Sketchbook Project I mentioned in my previous post - deadline is coming up!), which will be cool.

Enjoy your 2011!

Holiday Time!

2010-12-24T07:22:00.000-08:00

Happy Holidays everyone! I know I haven't posted anything here in a while, I've been super busy between work and The Sketchbook Project. After I finish with that I will hopefully have some free time to start on some recreational art.
Enjoy the holidays!

BUM BUM BUM!

2010-12-07T06:49:00.000-08:00

Finals week is here, but I'm not too worried. Being an art major does have the benefit of a lack of tests! Instead we get final projects, which can be just as hard...but still more enjoyable.

Just did a little bit of digital art the other day. Who likes Pokemon?

Who's That Pokemon? It's Cubone!

Turkey Time Tomorrow!

2010-11-24T12:40:00.000-08:00

Had a nice day today, no classes or anything, so I put the finishing touches on my website (see previous post) and watched a movie, something I haven't done in a while. Called The Slammin' Salmon, it was pretty funny, kinda in the same vein as Waiting... . Glad I have Netflix though, since I wouldn't recommend spending a whole lot to see it. Not too too hilarious (I gave it a 3/5 on Netflix).

Also spent the rest of the day working on my sketchbook for The Sketchbook Project 2011. Check it out if you've got some spare time, it's a really cool exhibition, featuring artists and their sketchbooks from around the country. I've gotta get cracking though, only about a month and a half before they're due! My theme is 'Capture The Flag', which I chose because I thought it would be a nice challenge. And it really is.

Anyway, everyone have a happy Thanksgiving, stuff your faces!

High Museum!

2010-11-24T07:38:00.000-08:00

Well my first show went off smoothly, and was a lot of fun! Had one of my pieces, Nude Pose 3, featured at the High Museum of Art (which is the biggest art museum in Georgia) for a couple days as part of a Kennesaw State University Student Show!
It was awesome, and was really cool to see all the great art our program has produced. We have a lot of talented artists at KSU and having all sorts of different works set up was really great.
The only downside? The food at the reception was all downed within the first hour! Guess that's what you get when you have free food around college kids, right?
If you want to see the piece I had entered, it's on my website at http://www.wix.com/dannyryba/dannyryba.

Welcome to my art blog!

2010-11-24T07:27:00.000-08:00

Howdy, and thanks for stopping by! I set up this blog to talk about my art, upcoming projects, and also some little bits of life. It will be more interesting than it seems, trust me. I should be posting some stuff up soon, so keep checking back!

-Danny