Sunday, September 7, 2014

Taking Woodstock Matte Painting




This is one of the first large-scale matte paintings I ever worked on (late 2008) for a film called Taking Woodstock starring Demetri Martin.
There was lots of mud, garbage, and debris to paint on this one.  www.kenmccuen.com for more shots of the created environment.

I'll probably be back in the future with more shots that I worked on.

Afterglow

 www.kenmccuen.com

Reference Photography and Moving Forward

Since first taking up a DSLR a few years ago I’ve been taking scattered phases of mentorships and workshops with pro photographers to learn more about it.


Initially I was mostly concerned with using it as a means of purely reference.  I would draw and paint from the photos (an approach taught to me by a handful of master book cover illustrators — IMC)  It made me the odd-ball of the smaller classes.  Most of the photographers I met tried to do as little post-production on their work as possible.
A lot of the workshops included photographing a professional glamour/dancer/fashion model of some kind.  I would provide some of the photos at the end of the workshop if they requested them.
As some of the models I worked with fleshed out their model agency profiles my photography started showing up in their portfolios.

I only started photography as a means of building my own references and understanding how to manipulate lighting. I think it’s a really great honor that they deem my photos worthy enough for their agency portfolios.

Wednesday, June 18, 2014

I'm Back!

I just got back from the Illustration Master Class 2014! – more info on that soon.

I realized that I haven't been updating my blog all that much, but I have been accumulating lots of content that I might like to post in the near future.

Here are some new and (updated) images that will hopefully deserve their own posts soon – with process/info etc.







Monday, April 14, 2014

A Preview

Here's a a cropped preview of a new piece I'm working on


Sheridan Grad Show

The Sheridan Illustration Program (which I’m alumni of) just had a very spectacular grad show last Thursday.
http://www.sheridanillustration.com/

Looks like the portfolios of each student are still viewable on the website. There’s a lot of great stuff.

Sunday, February 9, 2014

Concept Art Article



http://howtonotsuckatgamedesign.com/2014/02/lets-get-real-concept-art/

http://howtonotsuckatgamedesign.com/2014/02/lets-get-real-concept-art/


This is a really well-written article on some of misconceptions of what “concept art” actually is.

In other news I also added some film concept art images to my portfolio on the main page:

www.kenmccuen.com

Thursday, January 2, 2014

Color Flats

Hey Ken,
I noticed that you use color flats in your process. I was wondering what they are and the purpose that they serve?

When I started doing work for clients I found most of their revisions on finals to be color revisions.
It helped if I had every major piece of the illustration as a flat shape of color on its own layer. I could go back and easily select an individual piece if an art director wanted the character to have a different color hat or scarf.
I find it helps a lot in my workflow. I can spend a solid block of time cutting out complex shapes of the drawing rather mindlessly and then decide on the final palette all at once at the end.