This is my latest bit of Blender work. I’m really pleased how it came out. It’s a near future space station. Modular, like the ISS, but bigger, much bigger. In orbit – somewhere.
I really enjoy designing and building stuff that looks plausible. Like NASA/ESA stuff – but from maybe twenty years in the future.
I’ve been learning some 3D. I’ve been trying, and failing, for years to get to grips with 3D software – downloading trial versions of Cinema4D, ZBrush, AutoCAD… and trying out free software such as SketchUp. I also tried Blender a few times – and found it similarly baffling. After years designing for 2D, I just couldn’t get my head around that extra dimension.
Until…
I found a Tutorial by CGMasters, helpfully called Blender for Complete and Total Beginners. Target audience right here. And it was great. Rather than just showing you what to do to build something, this course by Chris Plush, actually explained WHY to do things in order to build them. So instead of learning to model a 3D glazed donut (a tutorial everyone seems to try), I learnt how to use Blender’s tools to build a little desert island scene.
The course covered the basics so well I was able to go away and start building my own models straight away. I’m not on commission by the way, but I really do recommend that course. So what have I built in the last few months since I started learning Blender?
I’m amazed at how quickly I’ve picked things up, and that’s absolutely testament to how good that course is, and how powerful Blender is, but I still have a LOT to learn.
Next on the list are more spaceships and perhaps a scene from Bladerunner or Star Trek.
Hopefully I’ll be back soon with more multidimensional goodies.
As ever, it’s been a while. I have been pretty busy with a few jobs though, so I hope you’ll forgive me.
A couple of long term projects are just coming to a close, giving me a bit of breathing space – very welcome, but also leaving a big gap in terms of income – not so welcome. Definitely time to cast my eyes around for some more work.
Much of my work in the last year or so has been in the TTRPG (Table Top Role Playing Game) space, either on games themselves, or on some associated illustrated bits and pieces. There’s a big game coming out this year, called Zeo Genesis – which is a Warhammer 40k style game, set in the far future. I worked on a range of stuff for the game, from concept art for spaceships, to scenery designs, and even some work on the logo and design of the rulebook. The other big project, was An Infinity of Ships, which is a ‘system agnostic’ toolkit for sci-fi rpgs. It can be used by GMs, players, or game designers, to help flesh out their world building and to give some weird flavour to their games – particularly with regard to spaceships. Here are a few of the 80+ images I created for An Infinity of Ships.
I’ve also recently been playing around with some ideas for a comic – not that I’ve actually written one. I did a sketch (below), and someone suggested it looked a little like a comic cover, so I made it in to one.
I really liked how this looked, so I decided to create a few more. There’s no real story for the comics yet, just this short outline I posted to Twitter…
One more job they said. One more job, then I can retire. Retiring at thirty isn’t unheard of, but it’s unusual enough to get me some curious looks back at The Mission. Not everyone’s been thirty as long as I have though. I’ve earned a rest.
Maybe, just maybe, something will come of this idea. Perhaps. And if not, it’s a fun little project just making covers.
The next thing on my schedule, is promoting a little offshoot of the Infinity of Ships project, called An Infinity of Pins. It’s a project which is part of ‘Pintopia‘, from Backerkit. 20 creators producing enamel pin badges, and there’s a cross-promotional and collaborative aspect to it. There are a bunch of spaceship pin badges, based on my illustrations, that you can pick up. I’m really looking forward to getting my mitts on some of these myself.
So while I’m looking for work, and promoting these projects, feel free to have a browse and sign-up and back them if they’re your thing. Meanwhile, I might just be writing a space horror rpg of my own.
Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you soon (not literally, that would be spooky).
I finally have a new outlet for prints. It’s been over half a year since Ellipress closed down as an artists’ print store (mainly due to Brexit tanking sales from Europe), and I’ve finally replaced it.
I now sell prints over at INPRNT. I’ve heard great things about the quality of the products there, and lots of artists I admire have their print stores with INPRNT. I only have a handful of prints available right now, but I’ll be adding more every week for the next couple of months.
Currently I have the following prints available (which can be bought in a variety of sizes)…
If there’s any of my work you’d like to see available as a print, or as another type of product, do let me know. There are also options on INPRNT for things like cards, phone cases, stickers etc.
The Rackham.The Black HenThe Knucker Hole DragonThe Alp LuachraInitial sketchbook doodles.The Water House.Mining Droid II.Creature Under The Rock.Day 29 of Inktober. 4112 likes on Instagram.Day 28.Hillside Cityscape II.Sketched out and the inking started.Finished.Spaceships.
I’m now happily accepting a new round of illustration commissions for 2023. If you’ve ever wanted to own some original art – and you like my work – now’s your chance.
Commissions
If you would like to buy an original drawing, email me at rob [at] thisnorthernboy [dot] co [dot] uk , and let me know what kind of thing you are looking for. While you can ask me to draw absolutely anything, it’s probably best to stick to subjects and themes that you’ve seen me produce already. I’m not saying I’d never draw a portrait of your cats, for instance, but it’s unlikely. Some subjects I love to draw are:
Ships and Lighthouses Isometric buildings Robots Astronauts Spaceships Imaginary places
What you’ll receive will be a black and white pen drawing, on good quality, 220gsm cartridge paper. If you would prefer a colour illustration – let me know and we can have a chat.
You can also request for the illustration to be landscape or portrait in orientation.
I can’t guarantee that every request will be something I’d be happy to draw – but I’ll do my best. If you take a look at previous posts on this blog, or on my Instagram page you can see the kinds of thinks I like to illustrate..
What will this cost?
For an A5 (148 x 210mm) commission I charge £95 + post & packaging. For an A4 (210 x 297mm) commission I charge £175 + post & packaging. For an A3 (297 x 420mm) commission I charge £275 + post & packaging. For an A2 (420 x 594mm) commission I charge £475 + post & packaging.
When you email me to request a commission, if you can include the address you’d like it shipped to, I’ll work out the cost of postage and let you know. If you’re happy with the overall cost I accept payment by PayPal or Bank Transfer.
When will you get your drawing?
I aim to complete and post all illustrations within six weeks of receiving payment.
PLEASE NOTE: This post is regarding private, personal commissions. If you want to discuss a commercial proposition – illustrations for a book, game, or anything else that you would be selling, then please get in touch directly.
I’m currently working on my Innsmouth story, and debating what form the final ‘thing’ may take. It’s being written directly to twitter, and also catalogued here in a regularly updated blog post. I do want it to be a physical product at some point. My initial thoughts were that I’d publish each chapter in a little book. Nothing fancy, just an A5, stapled, two colour book, printed on uncoated stock. Maybe collect all the chapters together in a slipcase at some point along with some prints or postcards. Sounds pretty nice I think? As I’ve been writing more and more of the story, I’m also thinking that perhaps, maybe, it’s becoming and actual book. The kind of thing I’d approach publishers about. That’s maybe a bit further down the line though.
In the meantime, while thinking about how or what to produce, I got to thinking about Kickstarter as a funding avenue for it, and it struck me that I’d never shared the stats from my last project. My Weird Field World book, surpassed all my wildest predictions. I set the funding goal high enough to cover all my costs if I sold 150 books. In the end I sold 800 exactly through Kickstarter, while having enough funds to order a couple of hundred extra copies that I sold through my store. I really enjoyed the process of crowdfunding, and Kickstarter was a pretty simple but powerful platform for it.
So here are some stats about the campaign. Nothing particularly scientific, but interesting – particularly if you have any thoughts about running a campaign of your own.
Original funding goal – £2500
Final total – £32102
Backers 900 (ten withdrew after the campaign ended)
Initial goal reached in just 36 minutes.
527% funded in 24 hours.
Average pledge – £35.67
34% of backers came from Twitter.
Just 4.5% from Instagram and 2.4% from Facebook.
8.5% organically through Kickstarter.
8% of backers went for a digital download of the book
57% went for just the physical book
33% went for book plus other rewards
36% of backers were from the UK
28% from the USA
4.25% from France
3.6% from Canada
2% from Germany, Australia and the Netherlands.
Furthest a book travelled – 11,659 miles to New Zealand
And least travelled – less than a mile.
US states with most orders – California 41, Texas 23, Washington 19, New York 15, Illinois 13.
US states with zero orders – Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Idaho, Montana, Nebraska, N Dakota, Rhode Island, S Carolina, S Dakota, W Virginia, Wyoming.
If you’re thinking of running a Kickstarter I would highly recommend it, and if you have any questions – feel free to ask.
At the beginning of May, I travelled to Iceland. Somewhere I’ve wanted to visit for many, many years. It did not disappoint.
Iceland really is the most remarkable place. It is staggeringly, jaw-droopingly, beautiful. The landscapes can seem impossibly vast and ancient. The people are incredibly friendly and welcoming. The food is fantastic. It’s expensive, but definitely worth visiting.
I travelled with my dad. Flying in to Keflavik airport and hiring a car on the 1st of May, and we spent the next two weeks driving around the entire ring-road, plus the Westfjords – for a total of just over 3000km.
Below are a selection of my photos from the trip. I’ll do another post soon breaking things down in to areas or sections of the journey.
A mastodon (mastós ‘breast’ + odoús ‘tooth’) is any proboscidean belonging to the extinct genus Mammut (family Mammutidae) that inhabited North and Central America during the late Miocene or late Pliocene up to their extinction at the end of the Pleistocene 10,000 to 11,000 years ago.
Mastodon is also a social media platform (kind of).
If you are a user of social media, you’ll be well aware of the shockwaves that Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter is having. His libertarianism, free speech absolutism, and – let’s be honest – general dickishness, doesn’t sit well with many Twitter users, and many are preparing alternative profiles and presences elsewhere. One of those places, is Mastodon.
Strictly speaking, Mastodon isn’t a social network platform, it’s an open-source protocol, and one of the uses of that is to create very ‘twitterish’ server instances. It sounds complicated, and it certainly isn’t as straightforward to get your head around as Twitter, but once you’ve set up an account, the experience isn’t dissimilar to early Twitter. One of the very confusing elements for new users, is that Mastodon is decentralised, and hosted across many different servers, all with slightly different rules, topics etc. But, the key thing to know when signing up is that regardless of which server you choose – ‘art’, ‘social’, ‘gamedev’ – you can follow people on any other server, and their content will show up in your feed just like on Twitter.
So, I’m there, and many other creators, artists, journalists, actors… are also creating accounts. It’s well worth a look. As there’s been a pretty big surge in interest lately, it can get a little slow at times, but stick with it.
Hi all, just a quick update to say I haven’t forgotten about my blog, or those who read it. It’s been a bit of a crazy year, and time for writing, and the headspace I sometimes need to do so, has been in short supply.
I am intending to get back to writing more regularly, and hopefully I can kick that off in a few weeks time.
Until then, here’s a recent mecha illustration for you. Drawn on the iPad, in Procreate. I’m working digitally quite a lot at the moment. Commercial work – I’m doing some concept art for games – means fast turn arounds and frequent iterations and amends, so digital works well.
Quite a bit probably as it’s been a while since I’ve blogged.
I’m just over a, thankfully mild, bout of Covid. Omicron finally caught up with me after two years of dodging it. It does seem like this latest variant is getting just about everyone this time. Stay safe and well everyone. Get jabbed, wear a mask.
Work-wise – I’ve been doing some concept art for a sci-fi video game which has been a nice change of pace. Producing lots of variations of spaceships, refining and finessing them. Lots of fun. I also did some illustration work for another video game, this time a fantasy/gothic themed one. Again great to do something a little different. I think I learnt quite a bit working on both of these, and as there’s likely to be much more work from both, plenty of opportunities to level up.
Personal work – I’ve continued working on both my Innsmouth and Weird Field World projects. Adding illustrations and background writing and fiction and fleshing out the worlds. I still have plans to produce a book of the first chapter of Innsmouth. And of course, book two of the Weird Field World – titled (somewhat unsurprisingly as) Weird Field War is in the works.
Raptor 01 – a new enamel pin badge, based on a design from my Deep Space Fleet II poster. You can buy the badge here. There are plans to launch a Kickstarter at some point to produce a whole fleet of enamel spaceship badges.
I’m still out and about as often as I can taking photographs. I’ve had a slightly dodgy achilles for a while now, so I’ve had to take things a little easy. One of my favourite recent photos, taken at the London Wetland Centre.
Iceland – I’ve wanted to go to Iceland for a very long time, and I’m finally going. At the beginning of May I’ll fly out, with my dad, for a two week road trip around Iceland’s ring road. It’s 825 miles through some of the most amazing landscapes, and I am very excited. I’ve got a drone for the trip, so fingers crossed the weather allows me to use it to capture som of this big sweeping vistas. I am very excited. Expect several blog posts about my trip once I’m back.
And that’s you all caught up. Is there anything you want to read about? Any ideas for future posts? Let me know in the comments.
this northern boy 