I was recently commissioned to create this illustration for an article that ran in Prism magazine, published by the American Society for Engineering Education. The article was on hydrogen power, which a few years back, was a promising alternative energy. Now, however, it seems to have all but been forgotten as electric vehicles have taken the lion’s share of research funds and public awareness. This was one of those dream projects combining the warm fuzzies I have for retro sci fi with my interest in alternative energies. Many thanks to Stacie Harrison at ASEE for sending me this project.

I thought it might behoove me to grow up a bit and stop sending out grab bags of miscellaneous clips to those who inquired about my animation samples. So I present you with the first-ever Sledd Studios Animation Demo Reel. Enjoy.

Credits: Virtually every single aspect of this reel, right down to the soundtrack, was created here at Sledd Studios. The one exception being the stock model of a desktop computer that shows up a few times starting around the 1-minute mark, and I’ve got my eye on him. Love it or hate it, I take the blame.

It’s no secret. I like comics. I have flirted with comic-esque stylings in my artwork since pretty much day one. Not too horribly long ago, however, I decided it was time to get a bit more serious than my typical coquetry could afford.

As a digital artist, whose first line of offense are 3D apps (Cinema 4D and Modo), my two primary concerns were speed and style. The speed part was the primary hurdle, since 3D artwork just takes a fair amount of time. Not that non-3D art doesn’t, but the bulk of work in 3D is essentially a huge amount of “prep” work before you can begin creating anything resembling “art.”

Style wasn’t as much of an issue since I wanted to retain most of my existing look, but I wanted to imbue it with a similar warmth and grit found in some of my favorite graphic novel works. Some trickery needed to be implemented in order to combine the two.

So off and on over the past couple of years, I have been working on a number of techniques and habits which I could apply to my existing style to give it said warmth and grit, while not deviating too much from my existing workflow. The hope being that I would not only wind up developing a viable practical solution for storytelling, but also add a few extra flavors to my usual editorial and advertising fare.

I have been sneaking a few of these tricks into jobs for a while now, but have recently begun production on a project which finally brings all of this R&D to bear, and I thought I’d share. I have added some samples to my portfolio for your perusal and, with any luck, your enjoyment. Keep your eyes open for future updates and I’ll see you next time.

Greetings and Hallucinations, everyone!

Just a quick little update to inform everyone that I recently signed on with stockillustrations.com in the UK to broker my stock deals. Although I’ve offered stock rights for years to those who asked, I decided to finally make it formal and pick a company to handle it.

At the moment, I’ve only uploaded a few pieces but I’ll be adding to it as time allows. I’m known as John 00424 (yes, I’m either an android or a clone, not sure which) and you can find my stuff here:

SLEDD STOCK

Or via the new navigation link to the right.

Feel free to continue to contact me personally for these transactions, especially if you need the pieces customized in some way, but if you just want to get in, drop a credit card number, grab your art and get out, give these guys a shot.

Until next time,

Toodles.