What better time for a website overhaul then at 4am? I took some advice from various sources and streamlined the site even further to the point where you only get what you need: art and contact info. I’m still trying to think of a more effective way to display the progress works more simply - if anyone has some suggestions please let me know. I also eliminated a large portion of older stuff I didn’t think held up very well anymore. Time to restock the site with new things!

Calling this one done. Thanks guys.

I’m back from the West Coast Trail and am continuing work on the fungus creature. I’m still adjusting the body layout some and almost have it all figured out. I still have to touch up the pelvis area and define it more. I also have a quick mock-up for the front/side/back in silhouette form and a few color comps, let me know which you guys like more - remember its supposed to be a hyper-intelligent-space-faring-fungus-creature. I’m going to start working on some of its attacks/infection strikes soon. Peace.

Ive really been taking a close look at the works of Richardo Delgado lately and have been letting some of that seep into design of this guy.

All done with the Franklin Wendigo re-design. I think.

Written by Sean Bigham 1 comment

Pluggin away for another day i guess. Just about finished the Franklin Wendigo… and have another set of sillouettes which are the final batch before i start the final. Progress updates on that will start soon.

Since I’m in the process of re-evaluating my portfolio I’m going back in and redesigning a few characters from the past year. This will be the start of Wendigo-John-Franklin. The original design was pretty tame and was pretty hard to read so im redoing all the linework and placing him in a more menacing/creepy pose. Still a bunch of word to be done on him though he should be done in the next day or so.

What can I say, I have a bit of free time these days. Here’s another pass at some more silhouettes and some quick speed painting tests for a commission involving birth trees (whoops no birch trees in that first one oh well.) First one is from reference the rest are not.

Well its almost been a month since my last update and alot of stuff has happened between then and now! First off I attended the San Diego comicon and got to meet many of my long time heroes: Geof Darrow, James Jean, Kent Williams, Chris Sanders… a really invigorating experience. After that I had less than a week to pack up and move back to BC where I’m currently residing. Over the next while I’ll be redesigning various elements of my portfolio for submission to various companies. In the meantime, PRACTICE.

Random silhouettes for alien space creatures.


Fungus-ey creatures for a new project Andrew and I are working on.


Random face sketches.

** Scroll to the bottom of this post for video goodness **

The problem with the way most video cameras render an image is that their sensors are terribly small. The average sensor size is 1/3″, a tiny fraction of the size of a full super 35 film frame, or even a 16mm film frame. The image captured is essentially a cutout of the image you would see with a larger sensor, for example:

You have the exact same depth compression and depth of field properties with the large sensor, just a smaller view angle. So a wide angle lens for a traditional format becomes a long lens for consumer/prosumer video… but it still has the geometry and depth of field characteristics of a wide-ass lens. There is a subtle wierdness that comes from this, and many people are able to pick out that material shot on 1/3″ sensors is video, even when the frame rate and shuttor speed and other properties are brought in line with film, although they may not be able to express why.

There are several companies that produce professionally engineered devices to resolve this problem. The trick is to render the lens’s image on a full sized frame, and then record that frame with the video camera. The frame being recorded by the video camera is 2 dimensional, so the depth of field and geometry characteristics of the video camera’s ultra-wide lens will have no effect on it.

All of these devices, however, cost well over $1000. So instead, I mounted an old Minolta SLR camera to a piece of wood. And then I ripped the back off of the Minolta, glued the mirror into the open position, and glued a piece of unmarked ground glass where the film frame would normally be.

I then screwed a macro lens to the front of my Canon HV20 so it could focus on this frame right up close, and then I mounted that to the wood as well.

The horrible masking-taped construction paper is to block out light that isn’t coming from the lens itself… I really should find a way to make it more attractive.

And the end result, although The Beast itself is ugly, is fairly attractive, I think. I had nothing and no one better to shoot, so I’m afraid you’ll have to watch the family dogs fighting.

And here, without further ado, is The Beast in action:

Untitled from Andrew LeBlanc on Vimeo.