I sketched a background music today.. melancholic doom metal something… have to program drums still. 

About 1/10 of the backgrounds ready now. I guess you should be able to see the setting of  the “story” from this piece. It’s one helluva gif so this might be my last update until it’s ready. It seems this wordpress doesn’t support .swf.

//Actually.. I could update this file here from time to time:   and now you’re a million miles away 

it might lag because there’s no preloader yet..

I’m doing a little animation work so I don’t have time to make any additional sketches. Instead I might upload these progress pics. Now I have the character mostly animated, without the ending scene though. I think I got the walking quite correct.. being my second try ever.

I was watching the extended edition appendices of LOTR and got greatly inspired (once again..) by the amazing concept art by John Howe and Alan Lee. In particular these isometric and bird’s view sketches of Osgiliath and Riddermark. Obviously I cannot reach the same level of detail and harmony but still I wanted to try and start from the top corner, work my way down to the bottom and see what comes out from my brains. I used a little reference on the mountains, to see how they are formed. But still just a ’stream of consciousness’(?) or smthng.. :P

Now post-mortem as I look these houses I notice that there are some factual errors in the architecture. All of them are quite medieval and that’s good. The church is clearly Norwegian, as are some of the peasant huts, while the lord’s manor is definitely English. And there are few log barns which I’m not sure if those have been seen outside Finland… oh well.. too lazy to correct anything.. anyways, this could be located anywhere around southern Scandinavia and western Europe. 

Medieval village

Three themes: Night, Stars and Hold My Hand. 60 min photoshop speedpaints.

Night

Stars

Hold my hand

This morning I killed time in Café Saara in Kirkkokatu, Oulu. It’s right next to the city hall, and I recommend it for everyone. I’ve got to say they make the most excellent coffee and Reindeer Croissant was delicious too. This view wasn’t too good but all the seats with clear vision to city hall where taken. Shame, I’d have liked to draw it but some another time then.

No vanishing points whatsoever, I tried to draw looking at the paper as little as possible, so perspective is quite off.

Kirkkokatu.

I ended up chatting so much in msn that I almost forgot to draw anything. That’s why this turned out this simple and unimaginative. I’ll probably paint this scenery in photoshop tomorrow.

Snowy mist or misty snow

First snow, yay! I decided today to take a hike with our dog, Kiske. We walked some 4 kilometers in forest before it was to dark to see. It’s so hilarious when the puppy jumped all over snuffing everything, the walk overall made me feel really good. Love this proper first snow. Not some lousy mix of water and snow we had last year all the time. Tomorrow morning I’ll go hunting, it’s easy to find tracks now, and today I already saw two flocks of forest birds. Riekko.. whatever it be in english..

First snow

camera phones ftw!