Illustrator taking the plunge

[NPC David Hamilton]

Greetings, all!

Yet another freelance illustrator tossing his hat into the ring, so to speak.

I am available for contract illustration work, private commissions, conceptual art, you name it. I have a very distinct comic\animation style, and I work mainly in the fantasy and sci-fi genres. Most of my work is mixed media (water colors, goache, pen and ink), but I have worked with oils, acylics, etc. My most recent published work is a series of black and white illos for MicroTactix Games.

Now for the excuses:

I am totally HTML ignorant, and know NOTHING about web design, but an online gallery is a must for us freelancers nowadays. So, for now, I decided to make use of the free web space that my ISP provided....(ain't "Click-n-Build" the greatest?....well...ain't it?....ahem.....well...maybe not...)

So, please, don't give me any advice about jazzing up the website....It will just be lost on me.....

But if you would be interested in checking out some of my illustration samples, just follow the link and flip through the pages....You can drop me an e-mail if anything strikes your interest, or drop a post here on the forums....(I'm a lurker....)

http://home.earthlink.net/~dbhamilton/

On a side note:

If it's not asking too much, I would really appreciate it if some of the regulars here would take a second to check out my work. Not to slight anyone else, but I have seen their work, and it all rocks.....ALL OF IT.....In particular, Storn Cook, Rick Hershey, Matt Drake, Eric Lofgren and unheiliq......if you guys could give me a look and any advice, I would be in your debt.

Thanks for your time,

David Hamilton
dbhamilton@earthlink.net

[NPC Eric Lofgren]

Hey David, good to see you here. The color stuff is new to me. You have a very good color sense, nice and rich, keep at it. Did I miss your B&W at your site? If I did, I'll try and get there later to have a look. One point, though, always be religious about anatomy. No matter how stylish a piece can be, it still needs to be grounded in the basic priciples. That being said, I'm well aware of what you can produce and you're obviously getting the work. One other thing,you may want to consider cropping a bit more on some of your pieces. I took the liberty of cropping a copy of the "Sorceress" piece (which is quite nice,Btw)and it did look quite a bit more "vibrant". It can be a bit frightening to come to terms with, as you can wipe out hours of work with a single keystroke, as it were, but it can be liberating sometimes and if you can design with a tighter composition in mind, this can be avoided to begin with. Overall, I hope you don't think I'm being too critical, because I like your work and you have a good "style", which is very important. I look forward to seeing more.

Eric Lofgren
www.ericlofgren.com

[NPC David Hamilton]

Eric,

Thanks for the reply and the comments.

Yeah, there is a link to my black and white stuff on my front page....there are three pages all together

just chalk it up to my ignorance of web design

most of the black and white stuff I have up there is stuff from my MicroTactix job....I saw your recent work for MT, and it's great

when I was working on mine, I was really timid when it came to adding a lot of details and "fluff", because I knew the finished product was gonna be like an inch wide...but now that I've seen yours and some others, I wish I had just gone for broke!!

Could you give me a little better idea about how you cropped the "Sorceress" image?....I actually cropped a good bit out of it to begin with, and I'd like to get more of your take on it....

Thanks again,

David

[NPC Matt Drake]

David,

Before I comment, I would like to point out that my illustration stuff does not, in fact, rock. I am so thoroughly unable to rid myself of my comic-book roots that my figures are very 2-dimensional, and I seem to be incapable of decent backgrounds. My composition is usually way off, and I have almost no dedication to drawing 'the complete picture.' My one or two action pieces even look stiff and posed. I appreciate people saying nice things about me, but I must admit that if I was as good as I want to be, you would not say, 'good work!' you would say, 'Holy Shit!' and take your life in despair.

That said, I liked your work. I'm going to make a list of good stuff, then a list of bad stuff. Then everyone will think I'm an asshole, and they're right, I am, because I'm jealous of Eric Lofgren.

Things You've Got:

Great imagination - your pictures show lots of creativity and are exciting to look at
Awesome attention to detail - your backgrounds are vibrant, and the frame around Gandalf is gorgeous
Motion - Especially evident in the sorceress
Patience to complete a piece - your illustrations are not lacking in content, and look done
Great color sense - Schools can teach color sense to a degree, but you appear to have a basic, innate understanding of color

Thing's You're Missing:

Anatomy - A little goes a long ways. Take a Drawing From Life course, or just buy a book on Anatomy for Artists and draw your way from start to finish
Dimensionality - Like me, many of your images lack depth. Yours have more than mine, but many of the faces still look very flat. I would tell you how to fix that, but if I knew, I would fix it myself and my art would not look as flat

Well, there you go. Now you may call me names. Tiama'at is fond of calling me 'fucktard,' which is fair.

Matt Drake
www.spectrepress.com

[NPC Rick_Hershey]

Hi David,

Well I just went over to your site and checked out the stuff. I have to say my prefered work is your watercolor pictures. Overall though I enjoyed everything. I'm a big fan of the old fairytale illustrations and I was reminded of that in your work. Personally I think you need more samples of strong B & W images, as a painter you're on your way, but I think at present you may have better luck doing and improving your B & W linework.

Overall- Good stuff, and in my line of work I see lots of artist portfolio's and you're better than most.

Thanks,
Rick Hershey

[NPC David Hamilton]

Rick and Matt,

Thanks for taking the time to check out my samples and for the honest replies...rest assured that I will take your advice to heart, and will keep you all notified when I update the site with anything new.

And thanks for keeping things lively and interesting here in the forums....I hang around here most of the time just to read some of the off the wall stuff you guys come up with!!

btw Matt:
"fucktard" ??? thats a good one!!....and here I thought I was the only one who talked that way!

later,

David

[Storn]

Originally posted by NPC David Hamilton
Greetings, all!

Yet another freelance illustrator tossing his hat into the ring, so to speak.









If it's not asking too much, I would really appreciate it if some of the regulars here would take a second to check out my work. Not to slight anyone else, but I have seen their work, and it all rocks.....ALL OF IT.....In particular, Storn Cook, Rick Hershey, Matt Drake, Eric Lofgren and unheiliq......if you guys could give me a look and any advice, I would be in your debt.

Thanks for your time,

David Hamilton
dbhamilton@earthlink.net

Well, I'm flattered that you want some advice from this neck of the woods. The other guys laid down some very good advice on anatomy, two-dimensionality.

I think it was Drake complaining about a lack of dimensionality, to that (and If I got the wrong person, I apologize), shadow is the key.

I often put a little "LS" in a circle for light source right on my illustration service. It stands for Light Source and I look at the forms in the illo and shade the side away from "LS". Might put highlights on the surface facing the "LS"

For David, I've got some color theory to lay down on you. You have a very bright palette, as do I. Bright palettes don't often read as "real", but more cartoony. Which is fine in of itself. I'm striving to get my color more realistic and the trick is grays. MOst of the things in our field of vision at any one time is a variation of gray, green grays, blue grays, brown grays and so on and so forth. Then splotches of pure chroma will be places of intense visual interest. Allowing you to manipulate the eye of the viewer to go where you want them to.

Lastly, you have a tendency to place your figure pretty front and center. Start thinking about different angles, low or high. High angle (or "bird's eye) tends to isolate a figure... useful for illos about loss or sadness, low angle, (worm's eye view) makes the figure powerful and imposing.

Hope this helps.

[NPC David Hamilton]

Storn,

Thanks for the advice, and I will definitly have some experimenting to do with my work with all the suggestions I've gotten here.

I first found your work at a site called the Illuminators guild, but that site hasn't been updated in a REALLY long time...any ideas about what might have happend there?...

thanks for the reply!

David

[Storn]

Originally posted by NPC David Hamilton
Storn,

Thanks for the advice, and I will definitly have some experimenting to do with my work with all the suggestions I've gotten here.

I first found your work at a site called the Illuminators guild, but that site hasn't been updated in a REALLY long time...any ideas about what might have happend there?...

thanks for the reply!

David

I dunno. Illuminator's guild sorta up and quit. I haven't tracked it down, because I got so busy with regular publishers that I really didn't have time to handle a large amount of comissions anyway. If anyone else knows, I would be curious.

My website should be in the signature. It needs updating too, I should get to it in about a week and 1/2, but I'm in the midst of moving my household to a new location.

[Ranko]

HI,
first of it occured to me that you might get a better reception if you created an account here in stead of posting as an NPC. Just a feeling I wanted to share (maybe people would be more comfortable if they could see your profile).

But if you would like I could redesign your pages as I am a web designer, and just because I'm having a good day or so I'd do it for free. Drop me a line if you are interested.

Best
R

[Eric Lofgren]

Hey David, if you can see this attachment, you'll get an idea of what I meant. You can see that by centering the main focus, the "whole" compostion begins to interact with itself and becomes a bit more dynamic. A very good friend of mine who is also an extremely accomplished fine artist, taught me that to have a strong positive focus (subject) in a painting, you have to be aware of the negative space around it. That's what I've done here as much as I could. In a very simplified manner, it's like that old visual trick of the vase silhouette; look at the black area in the center and you see a vase, focus on the white areas around it and you see two people face to face. It's the images of the two faces in white (negative space) that actually create the vase shape (positve space) in the middle. Do you get where I'm going? Anyway, just something to consider for later.


Later,
Eric (gettin' kinda preachy) Lofgren
www.ericlofgren.com

[unheilig]

have you considered animation?
your stuff looks like it should be moving.

nice bright pallete (realism is over-rated)
your stuff is fun to look at. That's a BIG compliment.

even some big industry heavies don't make art that's "fun" to look at.

I would do some research on composition, though. and lighting.


my best advice about the industry (and advice I don't expect you to take, since I didn't) is to get out. run, don't walk.

it sucks. Its thankless.

no one wants to pay what rpgs are worth, so game companies are forced to keep them too cheap, which in turn limits their ability to pay contributors well. Its not their fault, that's just the way the industry works. Maybe we can someday change perceptions, and companies can charge what their books are WORTH.

why do I do it? I just can't resist a cool project. Right now, i'm fortunate to be working on two VERY cool games... Starchildren by XIG games, and The End, by Tyranny Games. I should almost pay these guys for getting to be in their books.

Just tread carefully. You're dealing with companies ran by gamers, not businessmen. It's often a gamble to even get paid at all. Its a back alley industry, and we're all just mangy mutts looking for scraps.

good luck. you can e-mail me anytime at unheilig@yahoo.com

unheilig.