New Portfolio

I have a new portfolio at -

http://stevenfraserart.com/

Ideas Tap Profile

I have a profile at Ideas Tap. This is a social network for young creatives, where I am far too old to take part in a lot of  the commissions. Never the less I have uploaded some work here and occasionally I blog over there as a break from here. My profile can be viewed here.

Behance

I’ve recently uploaded lots of my work and images to the social networking portfolio site Behance. Some of the work has been on his blog and some hasn’t.
There are two links to my Behance Profile and my Behnace Portfolio. Please check out my work and leave a comment.

http://be.net/stevenfraser
http://be.net/stevenfraser/frame

Cartoon Cinema

I’ve created a new interactive application to present my new Flash Animations. This is on my Portfolio website and shows 3 animations. The Dog walking, Dog Falling and the man throwing the ball. These were just animation tests, but I thought this was a good way to present them. I’m going to do some more Flash Animation over the up and coming months so I’m going to create more Cartoon Cinemas.
Please see my portfolio to view the cinema.

Polaroid Picture Illustration - 5

I mentioned a while back that I had created a Polaroid Picture and not posted it. Here it is. This is the fifth Polaroid Image in the series. I'm not sure if I'll do any more. The plan was to create a website to present the images (similar to what I done with the Live Project). Not sure when I’ll get the time but that is still the plan. Either way the images are on my Portfolio and on this blog.

New Showreel - Winter 2011

I've just updated my showreel and uploaded it to Youtube.
It's about a minute less than my last one so I've taken a lot out edited a few clips and added some new stuff. The reel is viewable below. Eventually the link will be unusable when I upload anew showreel and take this one down. My plan is to update my showreel every 3 months. So an update should be due in January 2012.

Flash Animation - Throw Ball

Another Flash Animation, this one shows someone throwing a ball. Just an animation test, but I've added it to my Showreel and the Cartoon Cinema. The image below shows the drawings that make up the animation.

Flash Animation - Dog Walk

Been doing a lot of Flash Animation recently. It's been a while since I've done a four legged walk cycle so I thought I'd give it a go with a dog. The animation is on my showreel and is being presented as part of my Cartoon Cinema, which is on my Portfolio website. More on the Cartoon Cinema later. The image below shows the walk Cycle.

Flash Animation - Dog Fall

Now the I’ve pretty much wrapped up the live project, I’ve concentrated my attention on doing some Flash based animation (in my spare time I am mainly writing - I’ll blog about this later). The image below shows the sequence I’ve recently completed for a cartoon dog. It’s mainly just a practice but I think it looks good.
The final animation will likely make my portfolio.
The animation itself is short and I am about to complete a background for the sequence. I’ll post the final piece up here when I add to my portfolio and I also post up the another flash animations when I get around to finishing them.

Clown Image

Another recent Illustration. It's a clown with a little poem as text.

Octopus Image

Here’s an image I created recently. Thought I’d take a break form life drawing and anatomy and create something different. The text carries on from the text form the Polaroid Pictures. Little poems to counter balance the image.

Life drawing and anatomy sketches 4

I have just added these to my portfolio website. Thought they might look good on the blog as well.

Life drawing and anatomy sketches 3

Some more sketches. Enjoy!!!!!

Without Boarders Exhibition - The Point Eastleigh - Update

I have some artwork on display in Eastleigh. The venue of the exhibition is called The Point. The work in display is some 3D Graffiti.
Just wanted to post a link the exhibition web page as it's cool that I'm mentioned on it!!!!

Polaroid Picture Illustration - 3

The third Polaroid Picture illustration and with this one I thought I’d do something a bit different. I’m getting sick of drawing people so I thought I squirrel might be nice. This has gone up on my portfolio as well as being posted here. The next one will be posted in a few weeks.
At the moment I’ve pretty much got 2 ideas on the go. The Polaroid Pictures and the Live music Illustrations. I plan to create a flash based presentation/website for each of these projects and post them on my portfolio.

Live- 2

Another Picture for the Live Project. This is where I am illustrating images from a live music setting – mainly from photos taken from Fence Records HomeGame Festival. This illustration is of The Pictish Trail.
I am looking to create 5 or 6 images here (maybe more – depending on time) and then present them in my portfolio in a Flash based presentation.
This is the second image.

Life drawing and anatomy sketches 2

Here’s some more life drawing and anatomy sketches. As with the last drawing post, some of these are taken from the anatomy sketches from my day job. These sketches may find their way onto my portfolio. I’m trying to post up some work everyday (Monday to Friday) to keep myself motivated and creating new work. These posts may be some old stuff that I’ve not put on my portfolio and will include some writing and photographs.
Anyway enjoy these 4 sketches below.

Dare 2007- Part 2

I spent the first 5 weeks of Dare To Be Digital designing, creating and animating the characters in the game. I was then going to spend the final 4 weeks creating the game environment models and the last week cleaning up and tying up loose ends. However after 1 week the other artist had done nothing. His knowledge of 3D art and animation was minimal to say the least. He also wouldn’t ask for help and would not admit he didn’t know what he was doing. His major task was to model and texture a house. On the first day I ask him to design the house. He never did it and said he would model it without sketching and designing it first – this was his way of working. However, he did not have much modelling experience. When I asked him if it was going well – he always said yes and that he would have it ready in a few days. I gave him time to do this, even though we were behind schedule. Probably a bad move on my part but I didn’t want to boss him around. I just made the team know that we would have to scale the environment down, as he was taking too long on the house. This was how the first 5 weeks went on.
To cut the story short all the animation, art and promotional art in relation to the game was completed by myself. After 5 weeks I had enough, as a team we highlighted the problem to the organisers and they done nothing. As we only had 5 weeks left it was now my job to complete the art for the game on my own and leave the other artist to - pretty much do what he liked.

To put the problem in perspective the team that went on to win the competition and a BAFTA award had 3 artists. We had 1 – me. I don’t want to bad mouth the other artist but he had very little experience or knowledge and was a member of the team before I was – as mentioned in the previous post I joined the team only a week or so before the competition started. I joined Emergence Games in the understanding that, as the other artist had pitched the idea, he knew the game and had an idea of what he was doing. Turns out he showed the team a portfolio which had artwork that he never created. He joined the team on the backing of the folio and he hadn’t produced all the work in it. I had my work cut out. The organisers of the competition would do nothing as the artist has signed a contract for the 10 weeks and he was prepared to honour the contract.

In Part 3 I’ll talk about why the characters I created are hardly seen in the game.

Dare 2007- Part 1

In 2007 I took part in Dare to Be Digital. This is a Video Game design competition where teams of 5 students form a team to make a video game prototype over 10 weeks during the summer. The teams are made up of Artists and Programmers.
The competition is very prestigious and the reward for the winning teams is a BAFTA nomination.
In 2007 I was very lucky. I was in a team that put forward an application which was unsuccessful. I was then fortunate, as a member of my team knew another team with a successful application who were looking for an artist. I joined this team and we pitched an idea for a motorcycle racing game to a panel of industry experts. The pitch was unsuccessful and the team never got in. I thought my luck had run out- but it hadn’t.
Another team who did a successful pitch were looking for an artist. The team Leader in this team knew the team leader in my second unsuccessful team. So I ended up joining Emergence Games who were in Dare to Be Digital 2007 with the game Forgotten Souls (turns out it isn’t what you know but who you know).
Forgotten Souls was to be a First Person Survival Horror game for the PC. The concept of the game involved a post- apocalyptic world where a child had survived. The world was roaming with daemons who wanted to steal the child. The player had to protect the child by using different found objects (boxes, debris etc) to build up barriers and ward of the daemons.

I could write at length about the competition and the problems the team had. Unprepared, badly organised, lack of vision and basically not knowledgeable enough to make the game the team pitch to the panel.
As I joined the team late I expected the current artist (the team was made up of 2 artists, including myself, and 3 programmers) to have done some concept work – he hadn’t. We were behind schedule before the competition began. This was annoying as teams had to prepare before competition starts and this was a pre-emption of what was to happen during the competition.

In Part 2 I’ll talk about the development of the game and the problems myself and the had.