Contextual Portfolio Part One

Well, I guess I've put this off for long enough. So...I guess I have to talk about stuff I like and how it ties into the projects and all that good stuff. So as I have really no ideas what to talk about there, I'll talk about my art and how I got to where I am so far. And of course, the artists that inspired me.
To start off: showing off time!!!

The doodle wars was where it started I guess. I mean, not one this good (I did this recently) but stickman fights and that sort of thing. Back then, I was not a good artist. I mean, I was like nine years old, but that is besides the point. I made quite a few at that age. Most were fairly uninteresting. I don't believe I still own any of the originals.
Next up came The Big One. Y'see at that point my brother was producing a set of comics called Captain Wedgie. Naturally inspired by Captain Underpants, they were short stories rather than full-on comics, and surprisingly popular affairs. So being the competitive so-and-so I am I decided to set up a rival comic. Admittedly it was something I'd considered before but it would have never happened had I not had such a rivalry. And so: Captain Cool was born.
A far more...well I can't exactly call it mature, but...traditional take on a superhero comic, Captain Cool told the story of an average business man who gains superpowers every time he gets electrocuted. As a premise it was simple enough, and as were the stories told. Three issues were written during my tenure at primary school. The first dealt with the uprising of a wicked witch. The second dealt with a group of burglars led by Tony Blair. The third involved vikings. And Batman. All three were fairly short story arcs with #2 being the highlight of the initial triplet. Then came secondary school and the series took a strong step upwards. Issue four was one hell of a milestone. Taking the series into far more interesting and (unintentionally) morally dubious territory. It dealt with an all-out alien invasion and set up several characters for the stories to come. For the first time I felt the series had come to a point I was happy with. Up to today it still stands as the finest of the series. Issue five saw the series return to its roots so to speak. As the villain it featured the winner of the Design a Monster contest from the first issue. Relocating the action to Egypt, it featured The Beast of the Pharaoh wreaking various levels of havoc. As much as I'd love to critique the issue along with the rest , it was lost a few years back. Whilst it still resides in my bedroom somewhere I haven't found it in quite a while. I believe it was the weakest of the second triplet of stories, but it's tough to remember. The story was another self-contained one and featured the rise and fall of another hero, Doctor Flame. It also contained a dramatic shift in art styles towards one similar to that which I use today. The sixth and final story in the second triplet was quite possibly the most ambitious. Bringing together a new host of villains in the form of Zarok, a surviving antagonist from the fourth issue, a robot designed by another friend as Mister Schnozz, and a pair of twins consisting of Freddy McEvil, runner up in the character poll, and Mister Squishy, a gangster character created for on a whim. They led an invasion of mass-produced stickmen. That issue, whilst far more epic in scope, was something of a disaster in story terms, lacking the strong arc of the fourth issue or the neatness of the fifth. Issue seven was started but barely made it a few pages in before I gave up on it, After that I contemplated recommencing the series at various points, but to no avail. Captain Cool was left at that milestone.

Towards the end of Captain Cool's run, my heart was beginning to be elsewhere. At that point I'd been captivated by the art and universe of Warhammer 40,000, in particular, that of the Space Marines.
Before I go onto that though I thought I'd add some perspective foir the time periods. Throughout my years at secondary school I'd gradually been improving at art. Year eight was a slight dip but generally all was going strongly in that front. I just though I'd add this to show what was happening in terms of more traditional art, and that I wasn't just drawing the stuff from my 'phases'.
I'd started off at...well I'd call it a pretty bad place artistically. The drawings were rather cartoonish and blobby, they'd never really been done with references, and just generally, they were bad. But I persisted. For far, far longer than I ever should have done. I began to use references and started using better materials. Before long I'd begun to develop something close to a style. Sure it wasn't accurate to the models or official artwork proportianally but I liked where my style was going. For the first time I genuinely liked where I was at with my art. It felt like I was doing something good. It was about this time that I started my deviantart account and began to get positive feedback on my art and a small following. This really became a driving force for my art and helped seperate the good from the bad. The Space Marine era went on for quite a while. At least 3 years. Towards the end things were getting pretty decent. Whilst my proportions were still slightly cartoonish, the art was getting great. I'd started empolying shading to my art and trying to go for a slightly more realistic feel. I'd filled an entire sketchbook with these things and even umong my school my art was getting known.

Admittedly doing most of my drawings in lessons contributed to that. It was late year ten when things began to dry up in the warhammer front. I'd taken to drawing other things a bit towards the end of my sketchbook. Cars, pictures of my Bionicles, Iron Man. I guess I was just getting bored of space marines. It was somewhere around that time when I draw what came to be known as the Soulbot, and ushered in another phase for my art.
I realised that the skills I'd learned over the last few years could easily be applied to other things. I'd begun to experiment with higher levels of detail and I was liking it. But one of my key limitations in school was the lack of references. Everything I drew was going to have to be from my head. So I began drawing robots. This was when things exploded somewhat.

Before I detail the start of the current era, I figured I should bring up my big success story: The Doodle Wars. This is the series that culminated in the stickman battle you saw earlier. At some point decided it would be cool to do another stickman fight, but on lined paper using the lines as floors of a building. At some point early on I broke my usual standards and didn't colour the different sides in opposing colours. It all became a uniform purple. This was an unprecidented success on deviantart, and spawned six sequels to date. The sixth entry in the series proved the most successful by far, getting awarded Daily Deviation status on deviantart and garnering some 40,000 views. But after then I tried my most ambitious one and made a larger, far more packed entry. And I made it too intricate. Too intricate for Deviantart's thumbnail size. Sure it was popular, but it never reached the groundbreaking levels of the last entry in the series.It's at that point the doodle wars has been lefty or now. I daresay another one will come soon, but I need a new purple pen.

So yeah, Robots. I started creating different body shapes and decided to throw character stereotypes into robot form. Whereas the space marines got off to a rough start, with the robots it was GO from the very beginning. I began by rendering them in a similar style to the space marines, albeit with more detail. But as my style progressed and I became better at applying detail, I began to abandon colour in order to draw more attention to the linework. After then I continued drawing robots. Whilst the number decreased due to the pressures of schoolwork and later university work, the ones that were produced were nothing short of awesome. The last proper one was Bigger Chris, who was the biggest, most detailed piece I've ever done. And it was good.

Despite my robot output thinning towards the present day, I started progressing my abilities at drawing people again with one of my A-Level units. It was the first 'Free Choice' module, so I focussed my attention to superhero comics, and for my final piece, I began what would become the revival of Captain Cool.
Right now I'm continuing to improve my abilities in people-drawing, by trying to incorporate it into as much of my uni work as possible. Over the summer I'll be starting on a revamped issue seven of Captain Cool, which will be the final issue of the 'original series' before moving the series to a new format, potentially as a webcomic. I also plan to do a LOT of robot drawing over summer to make up for the lack of it I've done this year.

So yeah, that was how I've got to where I am now.