Days come and go

Two days ago I turned 25! Feeling quite... normal, I guess? Indifferent would be the best word to describe it.

So, lets celebrate this. Let's do the same thing that we did last year: Give me ideas to draw and I'll draw them. I mean come on, I really need to do something now that I have a 2 week vacation from work. If I don't, I keep doing stupid tests like this on photoshop:

Lots of sparkles.

And now an announcement..

In case you didn't know, an art book of Angry Birds has been released (few month ago)! It has art from game department, concept art from animation department (there's few storyboard panels made by me!) and some behind the scenes information of different projects and game launches. Our book department did excellent job putting all this together!

If you want to have a sneak peek of the book you can check it from Parka Blogs. He reviews all kinds of art books (mostly from games and animation) and gives you good idea what to expect. I usually check his reviews before I buy any new additions to my collection.

You can find Angry Birds: Hatching a Universe from amazon.com or amazon.co.uk. In Finland the book will be released 15.6.

Woo!

Ice Bird experiment

Last night I was angry at myself so I did what every sane person would do in that kind of situation: I crafted something Angry birds related out of paper. And behold! A fake 3D Ice bird!

Now I want to make 3D-ish paper craft of all the birds flying in space. That would be so cool.

"Riddle me this.. Riddle me that.."

I know few people who would scream at me for using this kind of colour combinations but.. who cares? It's  Halloween! It's supposed to be horrible!

Yellow is dressed as The Riddler from Batman Forever (1995). 

And of course sketch version:

Tiny tiger cub in the jungle

I was asked to do some cards long, LONG time ago, so I made... one.

 Some photos of the process..

Here's the finished work of the Green bird

I gave this for my mother as a birthday present. She loves Angry Birds!

"And we're launchin', and we're crashin'.."

Here’s a sneak peek of my other unfinished project that started two days ago..

That’s right! It’s the Green bird! In fake 3D!

It wasn’t that hard to build but it took forever to glue every pieces together. And of course because it is quite small it is a bit tricky to handle.

I don’t like the pigs, especially the one that has mouth open. There’s something off about it and I spent almost an hour trying to figure out why. The Green bird isn’t perfect either but for a first attempt it looks ok.

Background is still unplanned (obviously). A background from "Summer Pignic" level could work well here.

Since the beak worked out so nicely on Green bird I wondered would it work on Mighty Eagle too. I made two tests for the beak.

The top is a little more cartoonish and the bottom one is a little bit more “realistic” beak. If the top one was a bit longer it would be perfect for Mighty Eagle.

And yes, I admit. I should focus more on my animation project than this. But.. this is much more interesting! I’m still quite new to these paper craft things so everything about it interests me!

AB: Year of the Dragon

To celebrate Rovio's newest animated short, I will upload here an Angry Birds themed card. I made it on my last day at Rovio. Well, not literally my "last" day, I still work there but.. err.. anyway!

I was planning to upload this card on the same day when it was made but I decided to wait. The card was heavily influenced by the animated short that we were working on that time, so I thought it would be better to let Rovio first upload their animation and after that put this card here.

Normally I don't make huge colour corrections for these cards, but here I had to make Yellow's feathers and White's eyebrows and hair more visible. I knew I shouldn't have put so dark grass behind White. It should have been a little bit lighter but it was too late in that point. I seriously should plan the colour palettes first before making these cards.

 Oh, yeah! The animated short!

I made the storyboard and some clean-up for mouth animation.

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!

Since I am too lazy to draw a card, I'll share this with you all:

Best combination ever!

Happy Holidays everybody!

Working at Rovio

 Wow, two posts on the same day. Who knew?

Once again I am talking about Angry Birds. Official stuff this time.

Like I said before, I started an internship at Rovio Entertainment on November. I really enjoy working there and I have learned so many things! It took some time for me to adapt the style and learn how things are done there, but I think I am finally getting the hang of it. This wouldn't have been possible without wonderful co-workers!

Not so long time ago we finished a commercial where the Angry Birds advertise Samsung's new phone, Samsung Galaxy Note. This wasn't my first Angry Birds project (my first AB project was the Ham'o'Ween short where I did a draft storyboard) but it was my first time working on AB project with other people at Rovio.

The commercial goes very fast (it's only 15 seconds long) so you might not be able to notice everything on first view.

I inked and painted digitally the backgrounds for this commercial. Layout and colour keys were done by insanely talented Jean Michel Boesch. I also drew the christmas hats and made lineart for the phones. The phones were beautifully coloured by Veronica. Oh, and I also made storyboards for this.

And just to let you know: I am not allowed to publish backgrounds, storyboards or anything "behind the scenes" related stuff of Angry Birds or anything that I do at Rovio. I can only show here the finished product that has already put on Youtube and some fanart.

Wow, this is odd. I have been so busy with the work that I haven't managed to draw anything on my sketchbook. HMM. How did this happen?

But luckily there's still some drawings in my archive that I haven't uploaded here!

A lioness' head. This was done to waste some time. How creative, indeed.

I also found tiny mood sketches done with green ink. I made these while watching Disney's The Beauty And The Beast documentary on DVD.

Sorry. Nothing else this time.

Bird attack!

Alright! I'm going for internship to Rovio for two months. I will be doing awesome stuff, like storyboards and graphic design. This is great! GREAT I tell you!

To celebrate this I will now upload plenty of artwork! Of birds!

Red listens some awesome music. What ever it is, I want to listen it too.

Oh, and I should mention that I found out few days ago that there's an official Angry Birds picture that resembles this pic. And it is this. Now I feel silly.

A hawfinch!

In my head this character is a female but everytime when I colour this character the colours resemble more male's colouring. I have to stop being lazy and just find some photos of female hawfinches for reference.

I'm not so into drawing lineless art but I have to admit that sometimes it is quite fun.

A badass crested tit! Or an evil, emotionally confused, wrongly accused, and attention seeking crested tit... who looks badass.

This is what happens if you combine a giraffe and a hummingbird. It's cute, unnecessary and it doesn't make any sense.

And because this weird creature is so adorable you can have him as a wallpaper for your desktop! Neat, huh?

Download fullsize wallpaper from DA!

That's all folks!

At least the paper looks old

Since I have an insanely huge sketchbook (height 42cm and width 30cm) I can't scan my drawings. I have to take photos of them and of course that means that quality won't be as good as I want it to be.

As a drawing the lion doesn't look like a lion, but.. for some reason I still like it. What the-

Last year I drew lots of giraffes. I think my new obsession is drawing owls.

 A... a bearded baboon with.. umm.. Your guess is as good as mine.

This is a proof that the best drawings happen when you don't fully concentrate or try too hard. Which also means that you end up drawing pretty weird looking stuff.

In English: "Adrenalin actually enlarges pupils so, in theory, the birds should look like this. Super-cute."

Behind the scenes: AB: The Motion Comic, part 1

Alright! Here's something related to Angry Birds: The Motion Comic.

These are the very first sketches of Red. The design is off in almost every drawing because I was struggling with the shape. Even though the Angry Bird characters are made of simple shapes, it is hard to make that shape to work when the character is showing emotion or doing something physical. The characters don't have feet or wings so you have to focus on the face. Everything has to be clear, the viewer has to know what the character is thinking so that he/she can follow the story. That means that you have to use very extreme expressions but tone it a little bit down so that it suits the mood and the style. It's tricky but also fun.

Some of you may have noticed that Red gets a black eye right from the start when the pigs attack. That black eye will be on his face to the end of the story. That little detail may not look special, but that alone makes the story more grittier and more personal to the character.

And now about the DVD...

When the first episode was finished, we made a DVD version of it and sent it to Rovio. They were amazed and said that they don't get gifts like this very often!

The back of the DVD case isn't special, it has screenshots of the comic and the text is the same as on youtube.

And of course I had to draw silhouettes of the characters on the DVD. Can you recognize them all?

See you all next time!

Angry Birds: Motion comic

It's time to show what I have been working on. A little "tribute" to Angry Birds. Or should I say, a little bit more "dramatic" explanation how the war between the pigs and the birds started. Why? Just because.

I'll write more about the video later. Maybe I will show some sketches and storyboads.. who knows.

You can find more information and news about the video from Facebook and Twitter. And if you like the music and want to hear it without sound effects, it can found here.

It's not blood

A warm up that turned out to be fan art. Freaky.