PossumEye

New homepage

noreply@blogger.com (Alberto) — Tue, 02 Jul 2013 11:27:00 +0000

Hi! I've moved all the stuff from this blog -plus more of my comics and drawings- to my new homepage. Come and take a look! You're being redirected now.

noreply@blogger.com (Alberto) — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 10:41:00 +0000

A little handmade gift-card I put together for a friend's birthday. Done entirely in Photoshop with a Wacom tablet, which worked surprisingly well!

We were supposed to go to the birthday party, but at the last minute we realized we weren't going to make it (baby crisis!). I thought I'd use the tablet to put this together in no time and mail it to my friend right away, so that he could see it on his mobile the same evening. Took two hours and he got it one week later...

monday morning sketch 4

noreply@blogger.com (Alberto) — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 13:12:00 +0000

I petted a dog this morning.

It didn't look anything like this one.

benjo is in the wild!

noreply@blogger.com (Alberto) — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 11:54:00 +0000

So, my little "grassroot comic" is out for the public to laugh at! I hung up about 20 of these around Malmö city centre, but most of them have been torn down already. I highly doubt anyone has seen them, which is probably just as good. But more are coming, Malmö, get ready!
(By the way, you can check it out here. It's in swedish, which I guess makes my public slightly smaller than it could be...)

self-portrait

noreply@blogger.com (Alberto) — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 12:02:00 +0000

My first self-portrait! I made this quickly with a black marker, just standing in front of the mirror in my dimly lit toilet. I quite like it, and it took only about 10 min!

monday morning sketch 3

noreply@blogger.com (Alberto) — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 15:29:00 +0000

GEGEGEGEJGEJGEGEGEJGE!!!

Well, this is better. Pencil rough and 0.3 mm technical pen.

monday morning sketch 2

noreply@blogger.com (Alberto) — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 12:07:00 +0000

Note to self: either make a pencil rough first or make a simpler sketch. And use a better pen for God's sake.

Inspired by actual events.

monday morning sketch 1

noreply@blogger.com (Alberto) — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 10:04:00 +0000

Man, I hate pencils. They smudge.

And by the way: yes, I know it's Tuesday. This is how I roll.

tablet sketches

noreply@blogger.com (Alberto) — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 14:40:00 +0000

Here are two sketches I made on "electronic tablets" some time ago (wow, that makes me sound like an 80's article on future tech...). First one was made on my Nokia 5800, second one on my Wacom tablet.

The most obvious remark would be that the first one sucks. Indeed, that's good proof that drawing with a tiny stylus on a crappy 3,2in low-res screen with no pressure sensitivity doesn't bring good results. The second one is alright, but I found it very hard to draw on the tablet, DOWN there, while the screen is UP here. It's a weird disconnect that I hadn't really thought of beforehand. I also found it very uncomfortable since I couldn't turn the paper around like I usually do while I'm drawing.
I mostly made these to test what I could do right off the bat with these devices. It would take quite a bit of training to get good results, even from the Wacom (maybe if I had a Cintiq...). But most of all, I'd miss the feeling of ink on paper. You just can't beat that.

the escapist webcomic contest

noreply@blogger.com (Alberto) — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 14:52:00 +0000

I recently took part in a contest launched by gaming website The Escapist. They were looking for a new webcomic to publish, offering a contract for two strips a week. So I did what I could and came up with this (warning: most of this won't make sense, much less seem funny, unless you are a bit of a videogame nerd):

Not the most inspired comedy, unfortunately, probably also because I had never even considered making a comic on this topic before. I encourage you to check out the honourable mentions, though, since these guys knew what they were doing (this one and this one are especially beautiful I think, and enjoyable by non-gamers too). I'm pleased with having managed to submit anyway, and I'm quite happy with the simple but (I think) nice and easily recognizable style. Now on to things that come from the heart instead.

the very gross princess

noreply@blogger.com (Alberto) — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 09:53:00 +0000

Next illustration course assignment: children's book. We chose between three short children's stories from a competition, and were tasked with making a storyboard, character studies and a sample picture for the book. Obviously I chose the gross one. A rather crappy one actually (pun!).

It's about a princess who's so fine she won't go to the loo when she's awake. So she goes in the night, in her sleep, until a paparazzi snaps a shot of her sleep...ehm...walking. The king locks the toilet, the princess gets all fat(?!) and constipated. Until a maiden offers her a juicy plum, and bada-boom!

Click for a bigger version.

One thing's for sure, this book isn't helping children understand the difference between stomach and intestines.
Pencil, watercolour, silver and gold pens (yes!). Took about 6 hours.

like cats and dogs

noreply@blogger.com (Alberto) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 16:09:00 +0000

Well, so much for the weekly updates!
During the past month and a half I attended the last few lessons of the illustration course, and only recently got around to completing (most of) the assignments that we started working on there. I have a full time job, and time is scarce...
This is the first of the last three assignments. We got tasked with making a storyboard and then a comic based on a few words that we unwittingly picked at random. They were: dog, cat, sun chair, Christmas tree, heat and ache (from training). This is what I came up with (click for a bigger version).

Yeah, not much dialogue. I wanted to go for a sort of black and white slapstick comedy feel. I even thought I'd draw it like an old '30s Mickey Mouse cartoon, but my hands got the best of me.
Pencil and china ink, took about 7 hours.

the geek toolbelt

noreply@blogger.com (Alberto) — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 07:53:00 +0000

I just submitted a design for the "Threadless loves Geeks" competition, sponsored by Microsoft.

~~It seems like the design is also open for regular scoring, which means that if I get a good enough average it will become part of their catalogue! So please, click the banner on left and vote!~~
EDIT: Well, my submission was declined :(
I guess it shows it was made in a hurry... I'll try to be a good sport and take this constructively, so expect a revamped version in the coming weeks, because I still like the idea!

the old olympus

noreply@blogger.com (Alberto) — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 20:07:00 +0000

The second task we were given at the illustration course was to draw an object of our choice. We were told to bring something metallic and with some detail, so I thought: what better than my stepfather's old Olympus OM-1?! I kind of underestimated just how much detail it had...

I'll admit I cut some corners, it was too much! But most of it is there.
Pencil, ink, watercolor, gouache. Took about 3 hours.

greeting card

noreply@blogger.com (Alberto) — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 15:40:00 +0000

This is the first product of the illustration course I just started attending.

We were tasked with creating two greeting cards, a serious one and a silly one, and I came up with 4 sketches. This was meant to be the serious one at first, but quickly turned into this... it was the one that the others found most entertaining (mostly due to the mimicry of the characters) and was also the one that looked nicest. So I finished inking it, and when I got home I cleaned it up in Photoshop and added shadows and some shades of gray. In total it took about 1 hour.

late post and some changes

noreply@blogger.com (Alberto) — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 08:58:00 +0000

No post this week yet, unfortunately.
It's been a bit messy since both me and my brother-in-law had our birthday this week. Mine was yesterday and it was the feared nr 30... It did bring with it some good though, since my lovely partner gave me a great present: a course in illustration held by Johanna Rehn, a young swedish artist (check out her homepage). You'll see its fruits in the coming weeks.
In other news, my design for the GWJ T-shirt didn't win, which is a bit sad. It doesn't really matter though, it was fun and I learnt a few things. I got the T-shirt bug now, so there will be more of that in the future!
Whatever time I had left over was wasted trying to learn a bit of CSS to fix the Blogger template, without much success so far... but expect some changes soon! Hopefully I'll have the next piece up before the end of the week, and then I'll try to stick to a weekly schedule.
Stay tuned!

gwj t-shirt contest entry

noreply@blogger.com (Alberto) — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 15:27:00 +0000

So this is it! First post!
Here's my submission for a contest issued by Gamers With Jobs, a great community site for videogames. They wanted a proposal for a new T-Shirt design, so I put this together. They'll publish the results soonish, fingers crossed! Not that I stand to win any money, mind you, but it would be awesome to see my design printed!
Go take a look if you like videogames, it's a very friendly and mature community, and they have a fantastic weekly podcast. I lurk in their forums under the screen name il dottore.

Please comment! Otherwise I'll never learn :)