New Concept Art

I was fortunate enough to be able to go to the San Francisco Game Developer's Conference earlier this week for free – my bud Chris lent me his pass. I was able to show my concept art portfolio to a lot of recruiters from a lot of companies and some were more humbling than others. Some gave me contradictory opinions; the woman from Lucasarts wanted to see more vibrant colors, while another studio commented favorably towards my tendency to use earth tones. Nonetheless I came away with two important tips. One: show your work. This has been told to me before, but I still need a kick in the head sometimes. Include sketches that show how you arrived at your final piece. Some places want to see full front/back/profiles of characters too. Second: the key word is concept, not illustration. The Lucasarts lady liked to see work that was loose and fast but expressed a clear and striking concept. The work of Erik Tiemens and Ryan Church is a case in point; the way they can paint a stunning picture and yet never stray too far into details is incredible and really helps the composition. To this end I'm trying to beef up my portfolio again before more submissions.

These can be seen better at my website www.nathanheigert.com in the concept art section.

Shade Part Two: Now Things Get Interesting...

Here's the latest page from my graphic novel. Finally it feels like I'm getting past the exposition necessary in Part One and into the real meat of the story.

New Shade Pages

A couple of the latest pages from Shade: Part Two. I have a third page ready to color, and when it's done I'll upload these to the website so they can actually be read.

Film Festival Posters

Two posters for a new film festival coming up in San Francisco. The underlying theme of the first poster is community and working together as if within a giant machine. Maybe a bit too "Metropolis" but I like it anyway, and entered it into the Communication Arts and SI contests. The second is meant to appeal to students to make films themselves, and I had to compromise a bit on it. You gotta do what you gotta do, though. Below was my original.

New Art

An illustration expressing my contentment for this year's election results. Yay!

In San Francisco

Finally, I've arrived! My cousin in San Jose has treated me well, and now I'm room hunting in the city. Pics to come once I upload them, but for now, rest easy my friends. I'm home.

Colorado Part 2, Arizona is MARS

Sam and I scaled a mountain, where we made such sweet, sweet sandwiches.

And then it started to snow! My first snow of the year.

I stopped in Four Corners Nat'l Park to support the Navajo Reservation with purchases of frybread and hematite.

I spent a good deal of time in Sedona, AZ with my UU friend Kate Kramer, who worked in this amazing resort and let me soak in their outdoor jacuzzi under the stars. I woke up the next morning to find I was in the middle of an amazing canyon, with red rock all around me. All I could think of was that this must be what the surface of Mars looks like!

And no trip to Arizona would be complete without a visit to the Grand Canyon. Grand is obviously an understatement. There is no way for a human to comprehend the scale of this giant hole in the Earth.

I spent the rest of my time trying to find javelinas in the desert, but alas, no luck this time.