Back in March, I was contacted by a small publisher in Italy about the use of one of my drawings as a cover.
I don’t speak Italian, so here is what I know about the book from email with the publisher:
The book is a story of a lady who lived with breast disease. It is divided into three parts, one in which there is the discovery of the disease, the second with the intervention and treatment, the third with the complete healing. She tells of her emotions, feelings and the way that this disease has provided up to the recent healing. The publisher is ‘Apogeo Editore’ and the website is www.libreria-Apogeo.it.
I was very impressed with the production quality of the book and I’m really happy with how they used my drawing. Grateful for the opportunity to be involved, too.
The United States Postal Service delivered a special surprise for me today: three copies of Chaosium’s Basic Roleplaying book. I’m excited to have seven spot illustrations inside.
These are among my first illustrations for a published roleplaying game, and it feels pretty good to see ‘em printed.
You can see more of them in my portfolio. They’re on my “Eric M. Smith, Illustrator” Facebook page, too. I promise that very soon I’ll have lots of new illustrations up in both places. Just waiting for the books to be published.
posted by Eric at 5:15 pm • Filed under: illustrating
To do: figure out why, when settings are identical, one scanner produces the gritty, low-res scan on the left and the other produces a pretty close facsimile of the actual sketch.
The left-hand scanner is the big one, the 11X17. I got it because I work bigger than letter-size most of the time and I dislike piecing scans together. I usually have to do a lot of work with its scans to make them satisfactory.
The right-hand was a cheapie scanner I picked up on a whim maybe five years ago. It has been stepped on (trod upon, for my friends across the pond, and also Trev and eFlo,) knocked to the floor by the kitten; it definitely has rattling pieces inside it somewhere, but it still works terrifically. It’s just small.
“You can’t always get what you want,” said the man wiser than me.
Something I have been meaning to do for awhile was to sit down and try to learn Google SketchUp. I was intimidated by it, having had some headaches and frustration with various other 3D programs, like Blender, 3DS and Maya. After working through the video tutorials, I found out that SketchUp is nowhere near as complicated, and is actually very fun to use. SketchUp is not a scary spider and will not throw me in the basement.
Here’s a couple of views of my first try, a fighter or maybe scout-class spaceship with varying degrees of detail.
A Little Spaceship
It took me a couple of hours to model this, but I think I could do it in half that now. Seriously, the tools in SketchUp make it that easy and fast.
Pew-Pew Vroom!
I’m working on a science fiction project right now and I intend to build some ships of various sizes, as well as a funky spaceport, to help with drawing various angles in perspective.
Update 06/27/08: Since this post, two companies have written to me about mentioning their Google SketchUp plugin or other product. I don’t mind at all, but it’s interesting that I’m getting this kind of response to one small post about SketchUp. Is there that little buzz about SketchUp right now that even the humble Glimbit blog gets some attention, or are these two different companies just actively and aggressively marketing their products anywhere and everywhere SketchUp is mentioned?
At any rate, I don’t intend to post much about SketchUp, but if I try out those plugins, I’ll post my thoughts.
Jen and I took a walking tour of the beautiful College Hill in Providence on Sunday, taking note of many of the important locations of H.P. Lovecraft’s works and life. We followed the wonderfully helpful map created by the kind folks at http://www.hplovecraft.com.
Poe and Lovecraft used to wander amongst these graves at the Cathedral of St John Episcopal
The inspiration for the house in Lovecraft’s “The Shunned House.”
The Fleur De Lys Studio, where great Cthulhu was first envisioned in stone.
The building given as the home of the artist in “Call of Cthulhu”
Founded in 1638 by Roger Williams, this is the oldest Baptist church and the mother church of the Baptists.
A library near Brown University frequented by Lovecraft, also Poe.
Having a sit down next to the Van Wickle Gates outside Brown University.
John Hay Library, across from Brown University, holds the largest collection of Lovecraft manuscripts.
H.P. Lovecraft Memorial
H.P. Lovecraft Memorial
The Samuel B. Mumford House, Lovecraft’s final home. Moved to this location from a spot next to the John Hay Library.
The Prospect Terrace park, with Roger Williams watching over Providence. One of Lovecraft’s spots.
Lovecraft’s home from April 1926 to May 1933
Lovecraft’s grave marker behind the Phillips family monument
“I am Providence” - Lovecraft’s Grave Marker
“I never can be tied to raw new things,
For I first saw the light in an old town,
Where from my window huddled roofs sloped down,
To a quaint harbour rich with visionings.
Streets with carved doorways where the sunset beams,
Flooded old fanlights and small window-panes,
And Georgian steeples topped with gilded vanes ~
These are the sights that shaped my childhood dreams.”
This past Friday (12/14) I joined a bunch of fans in Cambridge and we marched around the Harvard Lampoon building, picketing and rallying for writers to get a fair deal from studio corporations. At the heart of the matter is the piracy the studios are committing by selling the work of the writers on the internet, but not giving the writers their share of the money they make.
Hey, greedy media moguls, Rob Kutner said it best: Learn to share.
Here’s my no-frills, unedited audio recording of the rally inside the church, with speeches from Jamie Paglia (Eureka), Joss Whedon (Buffy, Angel, Firefly) and Rob Kutner (Daily Show) and a question and answer session with the supporters.
Here’s a video of this quick sketch of you-don’t-know-who, (because it looks nothing like him.) (sigh.)
Not a really great sketch, but like a public speaker who watches videos of himself to improve, this is kind of helping me critique my style. I recommend the exercise to you drawers out there. I used CamStudio, (a free desktop video recorder,) Photoshop and a Wacom tablet. Windows Movie Maker does a fine job of speeding up the video, or if you’re on a Mac I think there’s a nice video program there, too.
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