Some Little adventures from my work!

This time I want to post some of the recent things I've been doing at my work at Mstech. I've been working there as a designer/ilustrator for about a year, and it has been a great working, learning and growing experience! I have already posted some of my work there on my portfolio (if you're curious, just click at the "vandalk.com" link at the top of the blog) and I'm already preparing an portfolio update soonm but I wanted to share here a little experience in concept art, pixel art, and sprite making I had the opportunity develop at work, about 2 weeks ago. It was really fast, with short deadlines, about a week, but it was a good pratice and experience!

This were some quick concepts I did after talking with the programmer and deciding what we would do!

 And these are the sprites I did for the rest of the week, first the sketches to make sure the animation was alright and so that the programmer already had something to use, and then the final pixel art.

After that I had to do a job of 6 illustrations for a graphic in a presentation, in two days! I became aprehensive in the begining, fearing for the deadline, which I in fact had to ask for another half a day, but I was happy to explore a more simple and fast style, and even though I had to overlook some mistakes in the drawings so I would finish them in time, I really liked the results!

 And lastly, I just made an account on tumblr! Take a look over there" http://vandalk.tumblr.com/

Hope you like it!

Table for 2

Even after a whole day of work, already dressed on their pajamas, and having a simple sandwich for dinner, they can still be romantic!

Drawing for a weekly assignement from a group at Deviant Art!

This week I started to study the dvd Blend and Paint to try to add 3D to my workflow, and this image came from one of the first exercises from the dvd:

I hope you like it! And every comment, critique or suggestion is welcomed!

Here goes more studies from Pixel Lovely that I dd since my last post!

I also posted on Deviant Art a collection of studies I haven't posted here, if you want to see them just go here: http://vandalk.deviantart.com/art/Lot-s-of-green-people-283706136

More Pratice and 20 Minutes

Here goes another part of a 30 minute class from pixel lovely, that I did last week

And this is a drawing I did today, which also started as an exercise on pixel lovely, but since I really liked the reference photo I saved it and decided to kind of speed paint it, with a time limit of 20 minutes, so that I could post is at a DeviantArt group in which this week's challege is "20 minutes of your time"! I think I spent around 18-19 minutes on it, right on time!

Slow Start

The year has started really slow for me, or really busy! I started the year moving houses, going back to work between many other things, and so far I have drawn very little!

But, meanwhile, I read the book "Color and Light" from James Gurney, a Fantastic book by the way, and I'm incoporating many of the things I learnt there to my work, I played game, I went to my first anime and manga convention and last saturday I had a one day workshop with the amazing Roger Cruz at Quanta Art School!

Now after this times of resting, reading, learning and distractions, I hope to come back with lots of activities and drawings! So here goes one drawing from the last prat of a 30 minute class at pixel lovely (http://www.pixelovely.com/gesture/figuredrawing.php)

Compassus

Finally, after one semester of graduation projetc plus a couple months of adjusting, I bring you the Compassus engine! Compassus is a navigation system for "infinite canvas" comics! "Infinite Canvas" comics are comics that use the computer screen as a window, not as a page, and in that way are free to expand through space!

Here goes some examples of such comics:
http://emcarroll.com/comics/josearcadio.jpg

http://emcarroll.com/comics/haresbride.html

For more comics from Emily Carroll go here: http://www.emcarroll.com/comic/

http://chapter01.wormworldsaga.com/EN/Index.php

http://scottmccloud.com/1-webcomics/zot/zot-01/zot-01.html

So, inspired by the book "Reinventing Comics" where Scott McCloud brings up this idea of "infinite canvas, and challenged by the dificulties of navegating through them, I started my graduation project with the goal of creating a navigation system that would make it easier to read this kind os stories, and also free the author to go in any direction. Experience it working here:

http://www.vandalk.com/claedudu/claedudu01_EN.html

As you can seem Compassus offers some ways of navigating through the comic:
-Click and drag the comic in any direction.
-Double click anywhere on the comic.
-Using the keyboard arrows.
-Using the map, either by draging it's screen area, or double clicking anywhere in it.

If you want to use the Compassus Engine in your comic, with the map and everything else, you just nees to download the following file and customize the template in it!

Compassus Full

In it there is a template web page, and all you need to do is change the images and the text descriptions to fit your comic. You can change the appearence of it howhever you like by editing the CSS. The only thing you need to do after customizing the page is filling in the informations required by the file "config_Default" as that is the file which will adapt the Compassus engine to your story. But if you have questions or need help to understand how this files work, send me an e-mail, danielvandalk[@]gmail.com! I plan on doing a more detailed tutorial when I have some time.

If you already have an comic and you only want to add the navigation tools, or if you don't need the map in your comic, then you can download Compassus Light Weight version. This is a more compact and easier to install version, where you don't have to configure anything on it, nor adapt your web page in any way, all you have to do is add the two files that comes with it, the jquerry file and the compassus file, to the HTML file of your comic or web page! This will add the navigation functions to your page, the click and drag, the double clicking and the keyboard arrows.

I would like to take this time now to thank Cátia Ana, who helped me in the beggining of the development of this engine, and used the prototype of it in some of the chapters from her comic:

Capítulo 07

Capítulo 08

Capítulo 09

Capítulo 10

The Diary is a story that deserves to be read since the beggining, so go to chapter one and start reading now:
Diário de Virgínia

In Just a few words:

Compassus - It's a navigation engine for "infinite canvas" comics.

Compassus Full -  Full version of Compassus Engine, with the navigation tools + map + template
Compassus Light Weight - compact version of Compassus Engine, i has only the core functions of compassus, it's navigation tools, and it's ready to function on any website/comic.

But this is just the beggining. Compassus is an open project and still need to develope in many areas, like:

-A version for mobile/smartphone/tablets.

-A way to navigate between chapters.
-A bookmarking system, where you can start reading a comic from where you last stopped

-New ways to navigate.

Therefore, every contribution is welcome, be it a doubt, questions, sugestions, ideas, corrections to the code or even new code with improvementes or added functions, anything! Just comment, bellow, send an e-mail, I don't know, let's talk about it, and make it better! Oh, and if you use Compassus anywhere, drop me a link for me to see it too!

That's all folks, see you next time!