A place to put a few things

How to start? Just start. I often have to remind myself that bit of good advice. My name is Doug Burbridge, I'm 24 and this blog's goal is to share my journey to take my hobby and turn it into a profession and lifestyle. I am an artist, a digital artist, aspiring concept artist and illustrator, more importantly I’m an ideas guy; a conduit of projecting an idea to an image. My thing is characters and character design. This blog isn't strictly about showing off my art, it's not just about business, it's also about how I'm making that art, who I’m studying, what I've learned, why you might ask? So, I don't forget what I've learned.

So let's get started, who am I? If you asked me that a year ago, I would have proudly said that I was a Founder & Leader for an Online Gaming Community for Planetside 2, for three years, with up to 700 members. One of those members became my girlfriend eventually, and is my biggest supporter yet. We kicked it off with a vacation in Vegas for a convention, SOE Live 2014.

Truthfully, I've always been an artist, ever since my mother gave me a pencil & paper when I was little, I drew batman, over and over again. It made my teachers insane, they asked my mom, “does he draw anything else, can he?” Eventually I became the art kid of the class. After a divorce and a few years I moved to be with my mother in New Jersey and was lost throughout Highschool, I even had a cool Intro to Maya course that gave me a basic 3D understanding. However, despite this, I was still lost. It wasn’t until the end of my last semester that I realized world building, character making and the designing of weapons, vehicles and machines all came under one roof within art - concept art. Although I had graduated, I had no actual idea on how to get there...or even where to start.

Fast forward to 2014, at SOE Live I got to meet an idol of mine, the Art Director of Planetside 2, Tramell Ray Isaac. He gave me some solid advice that helped get me on the right track. At the time, I had the ambition of going to art school, specifically Art Center College. However, after being given said advice from TRay, along with artist Noah Bradley'a artcile about not going to art school, I said, “fuck it. I’ll teach myself.” I decided not to be that guy in debt, but the guy that overcame shitty odds.

I decided I needed a change of environment if this was going to work, escaping into artwork wasn't good enough to do the job, so I moved back to my fathers in Missouri. In the summer of 2015, I had a glimpse of how hard I could work: uninterrupted, unmoved, and finally focused. That didn't last too long. I had to get a job with a set of skills I didn't have, tried to make the best of it. Decided it wasn't for me, and moved out with my girlfriend to our own place. Calm, quiet, relaxed and focused.

So there it is, most people say hello, but I went ahead and shared my life story. Since moving in I've been cracking down by studying, reading amazing textbooks on art such as “Drawing the Heads and Hands” by Andrew Loomis, “Dynamic Figure Drawing” Burne Hogarth, “Dynamic Anatomy” by Burne Hogarth (thanks to my HS Art Teacher, I should have opened that book a lot earlier to actually read it) and “Color and Light” by James Gurney. Below are some of the studies I did with all those anatomy textbooks.

Head & Feature Studies using Loomis Method

Torso Studies of Hogarth's work
(bottom right my own shenanigans)

Leg Studies of Hogarth's work

Outside of those traditional studies, I've also been listening and watching lessons, tutorials and interviews from industry pros of today. I owe a lot of my education to Matt Kohr with CtrlPaint, Anthony Jones and Shaddy Safadi. The Laws of Increasing Awesomeness are going to be my compass henceforth. Naturally I drool at the work of those, at the peak of their career; people like Dan Luvisi, Maciej Kuciara, Eytan Zana, and others they all serve as a reminder to me that if their hard work can get them there, so can I, right?

My Rulebook

Ultimately to say I'm a self-taught digital artist, would be a lie. I'm a student to the masters before me, and those around today. My appetite for knowledge is just as intense as my actual appetite for food, and I'm a big guy!

So, more importantly, I'm here to share my art and process. So let's get to it.

Recently, most of December, I've been working and studying full color compositions, because well I got sick of looking at linework from anatomy studies. Besides, it was time to learn something outside of anatomy so my quality could improve because it's still bad.

Out of the gate I went to my comfort zone, let's do a study of a pretty lady's face, because let's face it my faces are still rough and they need work. So I considered this a culmination of all that anatomy study plus some color & lighting practice. This was the final, I was and still am super proud of it, but know I can still do better.

Used a film grain effect thanks to Dan Luvisi

Using a photo ref, for both the anatomy and scene lighting I came up with a composition featuring Motoko Kusanagi from Ghost in the Shell. I felt its composition, at the time, was pretty nice, it came out quick and read well early with the lighting. Below are a handful of iterations. I decided to hold off on full render until after the holidays. I regret that now, but, more on that later.

Basic Sketch + Paint

Deciding the Scene

Does depth of field look cool here?

Introduction of Red/Blue Light Blending

Anatomy Fix - Thanks Liquify Tool

Final Rough.. Note, maybe different pants for classy sake.. 

After this I decided to mess around with something different, how quick could I sling (digital) paint down to make a scene. Well, it more or less came from when I was working on gestural figure warm-ups in the morning, One of the poses reminded me of a woman in a kimono, so since my girlfriend is all about Japan I decided to surprise her with this quick paint. It was done in about an hour of work. Most of the time wasted went to noodling around with techniques. I was impressed with what I did, and so quickly. Something I must get better at if I aim to become a concept artist. Quick to produce, and easy to read, right?

Tried using photos for texture detail, levels adjustment broke some values, oh well, it's super rough.

To future and current readers, this isn't the beginning, but it is a huge step forward for me in my pursuit of becoming a professional. Naturally I don't want to be alone in this journey, so that's why I'm sharing it with everyone, also I desperately need peers!

Unfortunately late Christmas Night, going for that extra piece of refrigerated cold fudge, I cut myself like a dumbass with a butterknife, a visit to the ER and 5 stitches later here I am. Stitches come out on the 4th, and this is why I regret not attacking the render on the Motoko piece. Luckily I wrote this out, and can still do eye-based practices and can still paint blobs! I'm currently working on some thumbnail studies of scenes from the movie Oblivion, again focus on composition and "storytellingness." Those will get shared here in a few days.

Lastly, I also have several Ctrl-Paint portfolio builder courses to check out, hopefully I'll have more design than just pretty women to offer in my portfolio!