ned rogers illustration

Long time no posty.

2012-02-28T23:09:00.003+10:30

Well, it's been a looong time since I put anything up here. Does the 'I've been busy with work stuff' excuse still fly?

These are a few personal pieces, the cave is still unfinished.

Spaceman Spiff redux

2011-10-13T22:12:00.003+10:30

I feaking love Calvin and Hobbes, it's one of the things that got me into drawing int he first place. I got to thinking what some of the aliens Spaceman Spiff encounters on his travels would look like if they were brought into a more realistic world. So this is my attempt at one, it's not a super close representation of anything specific but I took my original inspiration from Mr Watterson's amazing cartoons.

2011-10-12T15:22:00.002+10:30

Hey guys,

Monkeystack latest project is now live,

Double Happy vs. the Infinite Sadness

Head on over to the website for all sorts of news, giveaways and updates on the project as they come.

Plus there's the Twitter and Facebook groups for even more social networking if that's your thing.

Website

Facebook

Twitter

Enjoy!

Rocketeer

2011-10-08T00:10:00.001+10:30

Got this one finished as far as I want to take it. I think I'll design a few more things from this universe before letting it go. Good fun.

2011-09-26T22:58:00.001+09:30

Whoops, it's been a while. Quick sketch from tonight.

2011-07-06T15:48:00.001+09:30

Some sketches of various western themed.....things.

Colour study

2011-06-20T22:32:00.002+09:30

Quick study based on a photo, mostly for colour and texture practice. Colour is ok, textures aren't great. Practice practice practice.

2011-05-28T15:39:00.001+09:30

Clouds are awesome. How awesome are clouds? Quick 30 min sketch this arvo.

2011-05-20T18:49:00.001+09:30

Some things from the CDWA workshop

2011-04-20T23:39:00.004+09:30

Here's another new piece, again for a competition. Picked away at it over about 3 days.

2011-04-12T22:06:00.003+09:30

Here's a piece I whipped up for a competition. If you're on facebook feel free to vote for it if you deem it worthy of your praise.

If the internet isn't a tool for shameless self promotion then I'm not sure what it's for!

http://apps.facebook.com/contestshq/contests/108409/voteable_entries

2011-03-10T22:26:00.002+10:30

Wow, it's been a while since I did any work at home that I could put up here. Which is bad.

Here's a study which took me a little over an hour. Only used 2 brushes, custom shapes and the selection tool in an attempt to be more efficient and actually think about what I'm doing.

2011-01-14T12:19:00.002+10:30

Been playing a lot of Red Dead Redemption. Probably too much. But it made me actually paint something on my break, so it's can't be all bad for me.

2010-11-04T20:23:00.002+10:30

Quick character from a lunchbreak and a bit more.

2010-10-03T22:46:00.001+10:30

Been a while since the last update. Here's an early peek at a personal piece.

2010-09-09T22:27:00.001+09:30

Quick blast from tonight. Pretty weird.

2010-08-29T23:02:00.001+09:30

Did another version of the last one. A little bit more populated.

2010-08-28T14:27:00.003+09:30

Quick concept from after work.

2010-08-15T22:28:00.000+09:30

Quick little cinematic thingo. Around 1.5 hours

2010-08-10T21:19:00.002+09:30

Started a new job which has pretty much stopped me painting in the evenings. Until now. Just a couple of thumbnails that were swimming around in my head today.

2010-07-31T19:42:00.003+09:30

Quick sketch. Shanty hideaway. Probably full of pirates.

2010-07-07T11:34:00.002+09:30

The last sketch didn't sit well with me, I hated it when I looked at it again. So here it is again after another quick pass. Still not my favourite but it's served it's purpose now.

2010-06-29T01:27:00.000+09:30

Quick enviro. Mushroom Kingdom, or something. I'll figure that out later.

2010-06-24T16:51:00.000+09:30

Quick thing.

2010-06-20T20:44:00.000+09:30

A Spanish conquistador pirate. Yeh.

2010-06-07T22:13:00.002+09:30

Sketch from tonight that will probably turn into a painting. Shazam.

2010-05-22T01:53:00.007+09:30

So I finally managed to get this running on my home machine after trawling through page after page of codec notes. But anyway, it's a quick comp test from a Monkeystack project from a couple of months ago. My side was the design and production of the set and most of the assets, Alex Graham comped it together, animated the shot and drew up some quick characters to add in.

2010-05-21T00:36:00.001+09:30

A bit of an update on the last piece and some wips of the current piece I'm working on for exhibition.

2010-05-10T22:00:00.002+09:30

Had another hour or so to put into this tonight. Having a lot of fun with this, plus it's for a good cause so everybody wins. The piece doesn't actually have to be done for a little while yet, so I'll probably just bumble along until I think it's done I guess.

2010-05-09T16:28:00.000+09:30

Progress report. Getting there.

2010-05-08T16:39:00.003+09:30

So ArtOrder is running a project "Discover a Muse" in conjunction with Veronica Kotlajic to support Discovery Arts. Click on the banner above to head on over to the site to find out more if you're interested. I've also put up the sketch up my contribution.

2010-05-08T02:02:00.001+09:30

Quick 30 min sketch before bed.

2010-05-06T16:11:00.005+09:30

A matte painting I did for a bit of practice. This is a completely new kind of work for me, I'm fairly happy with how it turned out considering. So much to learn though.

2010-04-30T01:31:00.003+09:30

So this is for CHoW on ca.org. Almost finished, just needs a little bit more polish and some more text.

And also I just realised that ca.org actually links to cocaine anonymous, so just in case anyone wasn't entirely sure what I was referring to, it was conceptart.org.

My cocaine habit isn't that bad yet.

2010-04-28T18:28:00.002+09:30

From work today. New age golems.

2010-04-23T19:13:00.002+09:30

Beginnings of a piece, a comic cover.

2010-04-20T15:48:00.002+09:30

Here's 2 more moods pieces I did for a redesign of the Triffids. Plus one I already posted, but can I be bothered cropping the image? Not at all.

2010-04-13T00:05:00.003+09:30

Redesign of the Triffids. I imagine them more as a hive mind type creature, that sends out a crap ton of creepers that engulf the environment and bring back delicious meats to be ingested. Mmmmm, bacon.

Sorry. What?

2010-04-12T00:03:00.001+09:30

Quick sketchy before bed. It'll get a second look tomorrow. Night.

2010-04-08T12:30:00.002+09:30

So here's a thing. Not really finished but I've run out of excitement. Probably polish it sometime later.

2010-04-07T11:16:00.002+09:30

Something a bit different. I don't really do much of this commercial work, not sure if I can stand it too much. But I thought I'd put it up since it's what the cards below ended up in.

2010-03-30T15:09:00.001+10:30

A set of fake trading cards running from the 50's to the 90's. Going to be comped into a larger piece.

2010-03-29T10:20:00.000+10:30

Quick piece before work.

2010-03-18T00:33:00.001+10:30

The whole character sheet of a piece from a few weeks ago.

2010-03-17T23:57:00.003+10:30

Character design. Unfortunately the rest of the family is languishing on a server somewhere else until I remember to take them home with me. But they'll be up next week.

These characters fit into the same universe as the background plate a few posts back. Russian occupied New York city in the not too distant past. I imagine they've recently looted a camping store or two.

2010-03-17T23:38:00.002+10:30

Just a quick project from work. Coming up with some Google logos to celebrate HP Lovecraft's birth. There were a couple of other themes, but these were my favourites.

2010-03-08T00:51:00.005+10:30

This was an old piece I dug up and almost completely repainted. Only the pose is the same. The main reason I did it, apart from having an excuse to look at pretty girls for hours, was for 'Not Your Father's Pin-Up' a collaborative blog for all things pin up. So if that's something that blows your skirt up, head on over and have a look.

2010-03-06T00:14:00.002+10:30

Sticking with the power armour for the moment. I seem to go through a phase where I have to paint something with power armour in it, but unfortunately, try as I might it's always been something that ends up frustrating me to no end. I just can't design the stuff quick enough to stop myself from smashing my head against a brick wall when I paint it. But anyway, I thought this was going to be another piece that I would poke at for too long and then walk away from, but I think I may have managed to pull something worth finishing out of it.

2010-03-05T14:27:00.001+10:30

Not really feeling it today, this was a struggle and I'm not even happy with it. Sigh. Couldn't loosen up and kept getting bogged down over thinking everything, and I wasn't even getting it right in the end.

2010-03-03T21:45:00.003+10:30

Quick study tonight. Back to the old abandoned Russian countryside theme.

2010-03-02T22:15:00.002+10:30

Final matte for an animation currently in the works. Hopefully will be done fairly soon, but that's not in my hands; I don't have the animatey touch.

2010-02-25T23:54:00.002+10:30

Piece from tonight, must have been channeling Sparth. Done mostly with a terrible headache because I couldn't find my glasses. Then I remembered they were in my bag, right where I'd left them. Goddammit.

2010-02-25T18:17:00.003+10:30

Hello internet.

Just a couple of pieces today. One is a concept for some background plates. Set around Bowling Green in NYC in the aftermath of a Russian invasion.

The other is just some spaceship. It was meant to be chasing a Mongol on a horse, but I hate drawing horses and I just couldn't get it to stick so I cut it out. Maybe I'll try and add it in again or in another piece since I still like the image in my head.

Anyway, I thnk it should be pretty clear which is which, but feel free to ask if you're having trouble with that.

2010-02-19T00:36:00.003+10:30

So this idea has been living inside my head for a while. I just thought it was much funnier if Hamlet was a zombie, and was holding his own head. That's way funnier right? Yeh... it totally is.

Still not finished yet, needs more polish in the main areas, and I need to pull the colours out of the mud a bit, but it's late. Hopefully the jpeg compression hasn't made it too dark.

2010-02-18T19:34:00.003+10:30

Touched up a bit more. Changed a few elements. Going to call it done, since it was never meant to take more than a day in the first place.

2010-02-15T21:05:00.001+10:30

Elves with guns.

2010-02-11T00:37:00.002+10:30

What is it? No idea.

2010-02-09T22:48:00.004+10:30

And another one from today. About 4 hours in it so far, will do more later this week.

*edit*

Just did this little sketch of the pilot.

2010-02-08T23:54:00.001+10:30

Colour rough of a project from my internship that I knocked up over lunch.

2010-01-20T21:50:00.000+10:30

Quick sketch tonight. About 50mins.

2010-01-11T21:09:00.001+10:30

Just tweak a bit to add some more depth

2010-01-11T14:37:00.001+10:30

This was just a happy accident. Went through my brushes culling all the old ones I never use and this somehow started to appear. Didn't get done organizing any of my brushes, but at least I came out with something.

2010-01-09T15:16:00.001+10:30

A little something from today.

2010-01-08T10:51:00.002+10:30

Slight diversion from the cricket yesterday.

2010-01-04T22:09:00.002+10:30

Got into the meat of thois piece tonight. A few things to throw it and the bottom and a few details to tweak, then some colour, then a final pass and it should be just about done. Then I'll open it up again in a few days and hate it and finish it again. Oh yeh and I need to block in a cityscape in the background.

Crap.

2010-01-03T20:40:00.002+10:30

Well that was a nice little holiday. Now if I can just pull myself away from Modern Warfare 2 and back into photoshop.... Xmas makes me lazy.

I'll start the new year off with this sketch/progress for a piece I'm working up at the moment. I need to shoot reference for the lighting, so I imagine a fair bit will be thrown out, which will be a bit of a pity for the face since I like the way it's turning out. Who knows, maybe I'll get to keep it in there.

Anyway, here's hoping everyone who visits this blog had an excellent holiday season, that is, if anyone actually does visit. So if you do, thanks. I guess I hope the people who don't visit this blog had a good holiday too...

2009-12-21T21:35:00.002+10:30

This was just a quick 1 hour study to play around with snow. But then I thought it would look good as some old school spy novel cover, so I whacked some cheesy gold embossed font on there and POW.

2009-12-15T01:37:00.002+10:30

Real quick one before bed. Needs more work, but that will have to wait for now.

2009-12-14T20:17:00.002+10:30

Another quick one

2009-12-12T15:04:00.002+10:30

Lunchtime sketch.

2009-12-07T23:14:00.001+10:30

Quick 20 minute sketch. Had to get the idea out of my head.

2009-12-07T20:41:00.003+10:30

Finished up this guy from last night. Pretty happy with how he turned out. He seems like he could do some damage to an antelope.

2009-12-07T18:01:00.002+10:30

Quick mood sketch fron last night.

2009-12-07T14:07:00.002+10:30

So as far as I can figure out, this came into my head because I watched the Iron Giant, then played the Chronicals of Riddick to complete the Vin Diesel connection, which led me to thinking about Pitch Black, which is another awesome movie, then the aliens in Pitch Black, then this happened.

2009-12-07T01:18:00.003+10:30

Some beast from tonight. It was a struggle to get any ideas to stick tonight so I thought I'd just go back and blast out some creatures.

2009-11-28T15:10:00.002+10:30

And polished a bit more. I flipped the canvas and almost fell off my chair when I saw how unbalanced the face was, then I got caught in a few details, fixed the cast shadows, tweaked all the colour balance and ended up here.

And rendered

2009-11-25T16:36:00.001+10:30

A cleaner verion of said garbageman, who has now turned into an escaped convict.

2009-11-24T13:23:00.002+10:30

Another quick one of this Garbageman character, whoever he is. Probably a bit of a dick.

2009-11-23T20:37:00.002+10:30

Quick sketch

2009-11-23T17:03:00.000+10:30

Final version

2009-11-23T00:29:00.002+10:30

Here's todays progress on my alternate version of the concept below.

2009-11-21T18:02:00.002+10:30

I think I've got to a point where I'm happy with this one. I've made a start on another version of the same idea, with a much more dynamic composition, and I'll see which one I think will work better in terms od portraying the idea in the end.

2009-11-20T16:30:00.001+10:30

Started this today, for the EoW comp on CA.org.

2009-11-19T23:33:00.001+10:30

Tonights work

2009-11-19T12:42:00.001+10:30

After dragging this piece through about 3 or 4 different reworks, finally decided it was the massive amount of rock at the top that was throwing everything off. The result is a floating rock mushroom that I am now never going to look at again.

2009-11-16T22:52:00.001+10:30

Quick little thing from tonight. I wouldn't want to live there, too drafty, but you know...it takes all types. And how else are we meant to grow watermelons?

2009-11-15T18:44:00.002+10:30

Something I've been slowly picking away at over the last couple of days.
Probably a little darker on the web.

2009-11-11T23:43:00.003+10:30

Just cleaned this one up quickly and threw some colour on top, couldn't stand looking at it how it was any more.

Some junk from tonight life drawing, all 15 mins or less, and all rubbish. But it is excellent to be practising this stuff again, I clearly need it.

2009-11-06T15:13:00.001+10:30

Piece for CoW over on ca.org

2009-11-04T22:11:00.002+10:30

So this is what happens when you watch too many mafia movies.

2009-10-27T01:56:00.003+10:30

Couldn't let this one sit, so I delayed sleeping until I was happy with it again.

2009-10-26T23:10:00.002+10:30

New piece I've been working on for the last couple of days and a quick sketch from tonight. I was watching A Scanner Darkly whilst painting these, and now I'm incredibly confused.

2009-10-22T21:10:00.002+10:30

Some quick sketches that leaked out of my brain.

2009-10-20T18:26:00.002+10:30

Done for now? I don't really know, I can never tell.

2009-10-19T21:27:00.001+10:30

Given it about 3 hours, still plenty of work to be done.

2009-10-12T00:02:00.002+10:30

Here's a small section of a much larger painting that photoshop saw fit to explode into a million tiny pieces, never to be seen again.

2009-10-06T21:40:00.001+10:30

Birthday present for a friend.

2009-10-04T22:36:00.004+10:30

Quick 30 min sketch for tonight.

And after another 30 mins or so
.

2009-10-02T01:53:00.004+09:30

Another vehicle. These started out as completly infuriating, but turned out to be really fun. And they fill a glaring gap in my current portfolio. Diversify!

PS all my jpegs seems to darken about 10% on the web. It's annoying.

2009-10-01T15:32:00.001+09:30

Playing around with some weird shapes