Paul Adam

Star Wars: The Old Republic :: :: BT-7 Thunderclap

2012-01-16T21:50:00.004-06:00

So, the game I've been working on has finally been unveiled in its entirety to the masses. I had the opportunity a few years ago (wow, it's been years?) to concept the trooper ship for Star Wars: The Old Republic. It was quite a challenge to make something new that felt familiar, was large enough to house a player, and had a radically different silhouette from all the other awesome player ships in the game. Here it is in all its glory, the Rendili Hyperworks BT-7 Thunderclap:

The icing on the cake was finding out that people were already doing custom lego builds of it. Beautiful stuff. I'm blown away.

Unknown awesome legoteer:

Gilkah Balcada:

I should also note that the Thunderclap's interior was designed by the wildly talented Ryan Dening.

Quickie

2012-01-09T01:41:00.001-06:00

A quick 15 minute sketch.

Space Opera Dude

2011-11-21T12:41:00.001-06:00

A character design for something I'm playing around with in my freetime.

Beast of Burden

2011-11-17T23:20:00.004-06:00

Drilling down on the creature from a previous post just to brush up on some creature design and get the cobwebs off my drawing table.

Sketches and Studies

2011-09-15T01:30:00.002-06:00

Life Drawing

2011-09-13T22:39:00.002-06:00

Haven't been to life drawing a long time. Oh the rustiness. I like how these turned out but there were many many horrid mutant sketches that led up to the following. I really missed the discipline of drawing a model. Here are the fruits of this week. Hopefully I can make this a weekly exercise again.

Dark Path

2011-08-23T19:41:00.001-06:00

Kum Automatic Long Point Pencil Sharpener

2011-03-10T01:17:00.004-06:00

I know this bad boy has been available for some time and that pencil dorks all over have been snatching these up, but no one told me about it so I thought I'd help spread the word.

For the longest time, I've been looking for a travel friendly pencil sharpener that produced a nice long point like the electric sharpener I have at my desk. I've had to rely on clunky, messy, battery operated sharpeners or this piece of crap:

I hate those stock sharpeners so much that I just carry several pre-sharpened pencils with me or just stick to mechanical pencils when I'm on the go. For years I searched for a long point sharpener at brick and mortar art supply stores with no luck. It finally dawned on me to search online, and BEHOLD I've found the answer: the Kum Automatic Long Point

They're fairly cheap, easy to use, and travel well.

First off, here's the kind of point you get from a stock manual sharpener:

It's fat and won't last very long.

To sharpen a pencil using the long point sharpener, sharpen the pencil in hole 1 to remove the wood from the lead. You wind up with a rod of lead which is useful by itself for loose broad sketching or shading.

Then sharpen the pencil again in hole 2. This refines the lead rod into a desirable long point.

Here we have pencils sharpened with (from left to right): stock, kum long point, and an electric sharpener.

The Kum comes in a smidge shy of being as nice as an electric, but it's astronomically better than your standard manual sharpener.

Some folks complain about the stage 2 sharpener breaking their point off, but I have yet to have this happen. I've used the Kum for about 6 months now without issue.

Enjoy!

Cave Girl and Tyrannosaur

2011-03-04T02:24:00.000-06:00

Jedi Colorfied

2011-03-03T01:39:00.001-06:00

Jedi

2011-03-02T00:48:00.002-06:00

Another addition to the sketchbook which will be available at STAPLE! on Saturday and Sunday.

Birdosaur

2011-02-26T18:45:00.000-06:00

New Ashcan on the Way

2011-02-25T02:18:00.002-06:00

I'm putting together a new ashcan for Staple. Here's a preview. More to come.

Strongman Volume 2: Oaxaca Tapout

2011-02-01T22:43:00.004-06:00

I recently wrapped the cover for Charles Soule, Allen Gladfelter, and Robert Saywitz's Strongman Volume 2: Oaxaca Tapout. It should be hitting shelves soon, so get your butt in gear and pre-order! And if you haven't read the first volume snag that badboy too.

You can sign up for pre-orders on Amazon here:
http://www.amazon.com/Strongman-Two-Oaxaca-Charles-Soule/dp/1593622066
And here's the Previews code: NOV100688

Alien Fauna - Common Matapor

2010-10-20T21:33:00.005-06:00

Found in nearly all temperate climates, the common matapor feeds on grasses and insect larvae. They travel in herds and are sometimes found to be aggressive especially mothers with young and males competing for females. The horns on their brows are used for defense; males also use them as weapons during mating season.

GIM Podcast Interview

2010-10-13T22:24:00.003-06:00

I recently did an interview for my friend Aaron Canaday over at Games Industry Mentor. I say "um" a lot and talk about what it's like to be a concept artist and some other possibly useful stuff for folks who are trying to break into the field. Go check it!

ESB Speedpaint and Party

2010-09-22T01:32:00.006-06:00

I thought I'd take a stab at doing one of them speedpaints that all the cool kids do these days. Rather than do something straight out of my head, I decided to just practice with some reference and avoid color picking. So, here's one of my favorite shots from Empire Strikes Back.

Speaking of Empire Strikes Back, my good friend Alicia Traveria threw an awesome Empire Strikes Back themed birthday party recently. She made some posts on her blog detailing the spread and how to make your very own Luke Skywalker pinata (with dismemberment action!). It was so awesome that it got featured on a couple of my favorite sites. Kinda weird seeing my wife show up on the front page of io9 wearing a Darth Vader mask.

Pazow

Sketching at the Austin Zoo

2010-08-31T20:55:00.003-06:00

Despite what you may think, the Austin Zoo is pretty awesome. When I first heard about it, I thought it sounded sad and crappy. True, it's not very flashy, but the animals are well taken care of and the way the animal paddocks are set up, you can get extremely close to the animals. I highly recommend hitting up the Austin Zoo if you're looking for exotic animals to draw. Here are some sketches I did this weekend.

Life Drawing and Non Life Drawing

2010-08-18T00:35:00.002-06:00

Trying to get back into the swing of drawing in my off-time.

Fragments

2010-07-29T01:22:00.004-06:00

I keep posting on here so sporadically. Not a whole lot of time lately for full-on drawing. In an effort to have some regular content, here are some odds and ends from my hard drive. I'll see if I can't dig up more soon.

Magic Fingers MacDoogal: The Sculpture

2010-04-26T22:04:00.004-06:00

My buddy Mark How has taken it upon himself to sculpt a character I drew a while back.

Check it!

Is this thing on?

2010-04-19T04:41:00.002-06:00

I just migrated my blog from its old address back to here. I'm still kickin' the tires and making sure everything's working. If anything seems busticated lemme know.

This blog has moved

2010-04-19T00:56:00.003-06:00

This blog is now located at http://untameduniverse.blogspot.com/.
You will be automatically redirected in 30 seconds, or you may click here.

For feed subscribers, please update your feed subscriptions to
http://untameduniverse.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default.

Mutation

2009-08-06T23:16:00.002-06:00

I was thumbing through my buddy, Paul Richards', sketch collection and was totally inspired. I picture this guy whippin' out a guitar and belting out "A Country Boy Can Survive." Here's some Beechnut in yer eye!

Star Wars: The Old Republic

2009-06-01T20:52:00.003-06:00

I mentioned before on here that I'm working on Star Wars: The Old Republic. Last Friday, Bioware debuted a Developer Dispatch featuring those of us on the team that worked on the Trooper class. I got to be in the video but my 'stache does most of the talking.

Developer Dispatch: The Trooper

Also today we unveiled our big awesome cinematic trailer. I did the designs for the troopers and lightsabers. Check that badboy out.

Star Wars: The Old Republic Cinematic Trailer in HD

The Woman and the Dragon

2009-05-18T19:03:00.002-06:00

Around Easter I was part of an art show called "Biblical Proportions". Each participating artist was asked to pick something biblical to depict. I went with the powerful imagery of the Woman and the Dragon from Revelations.

And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars.

And she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered.

And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads.

Revelations 12:1-3

I've gotten so used to doing all my work digitally as of late and I was beginning to feel REALLY rusty, so I busted out the watercolors. Rusty is an understatement. Here's a bit of the process, warts and all.

Colerase sketch:

Having not worked traditionally in a while, I did a digital study of the colors to figure out my palette and whatnot. I adjusted some of the dragon anatomy while I was in there.

I painfully transferred the line work to watercolor board (I need to figure out a better way to do this) and started laying in some of the yellows and reds.

Little by little it started to come together. I did some of the finishing touches with acrylic.

Here's a High Rez version.

All in all, it felt really good to do a finished color piece in traditional medium. Hopefully I can get around to doing these more often. There were a lot of talented cats at the show. Check them out here.

Strongman Back Cover

2009-04-23T01:09:00.003-06:00

I had a request to post the back cover as well. It's a bit different than what wound up in print but here it is:

Looking for a copy of Strongman? Ask for it at your local comic shop or snag one HERE!

Staple! Cometh

2009-02-08T12:00:00.004-06:00

It's that time of year again. Austin's big independent media expo, Staple!, is coming up on March 7th. I'll be there with my standard supply of sketchbook ashcans. I finally got off my butt and made some postcards and t-shirts too. I'll be splitting a table with Charles Soule, writer of a new book coming out of Slave Labor Graphics called Strongman. I did a cover for him a while back. He'll have books on hand.

Strongman cover (title graphic by John Rubio:

Axe Bunny T-Shirt:

Life Drawing - Cami

2009-01-31T14:08:00.002-06:00

Yay. More life drawing. It's funny, I'm so used to being able to hit undo or transform something into place if I mess something up in a drawing these days. Ya can't do that at lifedrawing... BUT you can do it once you get home and scan it in. Take that undersized head! I also added some white into the drawing. Thank you, Photoshop.

Life Drawing - Molly

2009-01-19T17:11:00.003-06:00

I finally got my ass out of bed early and hoofed it to lifedrawing this weekend. Molly was a fantastic model, I didn't quite capture her likeness but I think I'm in the ballpark. I usually prefer the quick pose format for life drawing, but the long pose format was just the discipline I needed.

Star Dude

2009-01-05T01:54:00.002-06:00

Since I last posted, the project I've been working on has been announced. For the last year and a half I've been working on Star Wars: The Old Republic. If you haven't already, check out the official website (http://www.swtor.com) for concepts, trailers and other media.

In the spirit of Star Wars I did a quick sketch of some unrelated random Star Warsy goodness.

Study Buddy Exercise 2 :: Palette

2008-09-10T22:05:00.003-06:00

Wow, I really need to work on my color perception. This thing totally owned me. However, I managed to not sample any colors from the original. Yay me.

Toast

2008-09-08T23:16:00.002-06:00

My buddy, Clint, has an awesome lil character named Toast. So, for Clint's birthday, I thought I'd take a stab at doing my own version. I think I spent way too much time on something so simple but, here's the final drawing along with the prelims.

I did a couple doodles until I had something I liked. Here's my rough. It's pretty sloppy but it was close enough to what I was going for.

Next, I lightboxed my rough. I fixed little mistakes here and there as I went. Toast looked really good with his scarf so, since butterflies don't normally live in the cold, I had to nix it and use a bird instead. I don't think the art police would bust down my door for a butterfly, but it made more sense to me this way.

Ugh, more problems. Crooked bird, weird feet, squashy head, no background -- bring on the Photoshop!

That's more like it! Now time for inks...

I hate redrawing stuff over and over like this but sometimes what's in your head doesn't fall out on the page right away you've got to keep pushing forward, right?

Anyway, if you want to see more awesome Toast art head on over to Clint's blog!

Study Buddy

2008-09-01T22:08:00.003-06:00

My friend Paul Richards cooked up something cool on his blog called Study Buddy. You essentially team up with a friend and give each other exercises in Mass, Palette, Detail, and Composition. Each exercise should take about 5 minutes. Here's the first exercise on my list for mass:

Bleh, I can already see all kinds of mistakes on this, but that's what this is about. On with the learning!

SDCC 08 and Zombie Sketch

2008-08-08T00:17:00.005-06:00

A big thanks to everyone that came by my table at San Diego Comic-Con this year. It was also great to see some fellow artists in person. I'm still catching up on sleep, email, and work. Big props to Zach, Christopher, Paul, Faith, and Karine for keeping an eye on my stuff as I snuck off for swag runs. I had a blast doing sketches for peeps. It was so hard to give all those babies away without having scanned them. If you got a sketch from me and feel like scanning it in please email it to me.

I've been listening to a lot of Stephen King audiobooks and the Shining soundtrack late at night. I now have to check the back seat of the car, closets, and behind shower curtains for ghouls. I found this guy shambling around the back of the house. He stood still long enough for me to do a quick portrait.

Dragon Study

2008-03-31T00:59:00.002-06:00

I've been trying to improve my big reptilian skills lately. Here's the result. Things got a little noodley towards the end. Next time I'll plan it out a little better. Man, I wish I had someone kicking my butt to get this stuff right 10 years ago.

ANIMAL BAND!

2008-03-17T00:45:00.002-06:00

*click to enhance bigosity*

My good friend Christopher just published his first children's book, Animal Band! Above is the adorable main character of Animal Band, Thomas. You can pick up the book at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. It's a great book for the wee ones... but you don't have to take my word for it.

Congratulations, Christopher!

"Butterfly in the sky, I can go twice as high..."

Woodland Elf

2008-03-12T00:40:00.003-06:00

*Click to bigulate.*

Here's a little dude for my woodland goblin to eat. Maybe he would just beat him up and take his farthings.

Staple! 2008

2008-03-03T20:50:00.002-06:00

I've finally recovered from Staple!: The Independent Media Expo 2008. What a great show. Big thanks to everyone who came out. And extra big thanks to people who stopped by my table! I was out there selling my latest Sketch Ashcan. Here's the cover:

If you weren't able to make it out to the show and would like to buy a copy, send me an email. They're $5 (shipping included). I've also got the 2 previous volumes reprinted if you'd like those as well. Each book comes with a little quickie sketch on the inside front cover.

Speaking of quickie sketches, I did one for someone at the show but they forgot to come back and pick it up. I thought it turned out pretty cool so here it is.

If you were at Staple this past weekend and forgot to pick up your book from me, please send me an email and I'll mail it off to ya.

Woodland Goblin

2008-02-07T23:26:00.000-06:00

Just something I was doodling on at the coffeeshop the other night.

Happy New Year

2008-01-02T01:55:00.000-06:00

Life Drawing Via DS

2007-12-03T01:21:00.000-06:00

click to enlarge

The other week I went to a life drawing session. I decided to go late in the day, so I only had my standard sketching supplies. I like to have something a bit blendy or big like charcoal, a grease pencil, or black prismacolor and some newsprint, but I didn't have any of that. I then remembered that I had recently loaded Colors on my DS. This is the result. I had a few hiccups. Turning the DS sideways for drawing in a vertical "portrait" orientation was near impossible. Also, if you accidentally touch the drawing surface in two places at once, you will draw an unpleasant streak across your screen. I'm sure there is a way to use this to your advantage, but at the time it was annoying especially with no undo. All in all I think it turned out to be a fruitful experience.

Magic Fingers MacDoogal

2007-11-29T00:35:00.001-06:00

I recently participated in Sam Hiti's Fistacuffs competition in a tag team along side talented bastards Alicia Traveria and Zach Taylor. Our team was "The Handicapables." Above is my contribution: Magic Fingers MacDoogal. MacDoogal is a fearsome opponent with his wicked-magical fingers, magic hat, and horde of demon bunnies, but above all else he is a gentleman. Head on over to the FACA blog to see how we did!

Workin' the Space Warehouse

2007-11-05T00:35:00.000-06:00

I hit up Wurstfest this weekend. There's nothing quite like meat on sticks, pastries, beer, and polka to let you know you're alive.

Jenna Toejam

2007-10-30T11:11:00.000-06:00

Wow it's been a while. Above is Jenna Toejam. I entered her in the Fist-A-Cuffs Arena-Girl competition. Hopefully she'll make the cut!

I'm going to push to post more frequently than I have been. We'll see if I actually follow through on that. So much of what I've been doing lately has been under wraps. Happy Halloweenween everyone.

Zombie Fish Dude

2007-06-08T01:24:00.001-06:00

A while back I posted a sketch of this guy on my site. I decided to go back and give him the paint treatment. He wound up changing a bit here and there. I guess he's less of a zombie now and more just plain evil fish dude.

Nice Ink!

2007-03-25T19:42:00.000-06:00

Demons, Ducks and Flatstock 12

2007-03-18T22:53:00.000-06:00

I went and checked out Flatstock this weekend. Tons of fantastic art. I bought a rad shirt from Burlesque of North America and a deck of playing cards from Gigposters. My fiancee is really into Eleanor Grosch's work so we grabbed up some of her wares as well. Much fun was had by all and I recommend going to this next year.

Dump

2007-03-13T14:51:00.000-06:00

Werewolf!

2007-02-27T03:36:00.000-06:00

Playin around

2007-02-24T15:08:00.000-06:00

In Her Cons

2007-02-07T02:00:00.000-06:00

Live and Let Mustache

2007-01-22T02:33:00.000-06:00

Part of a larger piece I'm working on.

Goblin nasty!

2007-01-22T02:14:00.000-06:00

Huggie Huggie!

2007-01-15T01:27:00.000-06:00

Too Much Sleepytime Tea

2006-12-10T23:06:00.001-06:00

Something Fishy

2006-12-10T23:04:00.000-06:00

Yaaaa-cough cough hack-ack-aaaaaarr!!!!

2006-09-24T23:10:00.000-06:00

I haven't been drawing all that much lately due to a nasty lingering cough I've had for the past 3 weeks. Thanks to some great drugs and sleep I'm on the upswing. I meant to post this for speak like a pirate day.

Stupid Tales

2006-09-06T21:47:00.000-06:00

I'm working on a fake pulp cover sketch for a friend here's the thumb I worked up over lunch.

Cthulu Head

2006-09-01T00:28:00.000-06:00

Rise of the Swoofs!

2006-08-31T23:59:00.000-06:00

I did this for the Character of the Month thread over on the ASG Board.

Demon

2006-08-31T00:01:00.000-06:00

Just got up from a nap... on the floor. No bed for me. If I get in bed, I'll convince myself to stay there until morning. Too much to do. I've been pretty excited about Pan's Labyrinth lately and this fell out of me. I'm trying to work on my inking. Not quite there yet.

The force, it's got a lotta power

2006-08-30T17:22:00.000-06:00

Man, my name is too damn common. My URLs, emails, and personalized plates are always already taken. I'm jealous of my friends with unique names. Manton, Litsa, Melita... you are all bastards. Nothing important to say right now. I'm just dipping my toe into the awesomeness that is Blogger. I might post some images later.

Over and out.