Niko Geyer's Journal

Jack and the Beanstalk

2008-04-17T08:50:00.000-07:00

I'm a big fan of old fairy tales; that's why I couldn't pass up on the chance of illustrating Jack and the Beanstalk when I saw it was this week's topic at Art Jumble.

I wanted to give my giant a more aristocratic look than what you usually see. The guy's got a magic hen, a talking harp to do his bidding, and he is living in a magnificent castle -- he just didn't give me the impression of an unsophisticated oaf. And I must admit I had a lot of fun drawing a big ogre with a monocle!

The Orphan Prince

2008-04-15T00:56:00.000-07:00

I was commissioned to do the new cover illustration for the reprint of The Orphan Prince, a YA novel by Jeremy Lee. It features the royal protagonist of the story and his servant boy, who are about to embark on the adventure of their lifetime.

Photoshop was being cranky and crashed on me while I was in the middle of painting the background -- corrupting the file in the process -- but the coloring came out much better the second time around.

Wanderlust

2008-04-05T11:29:00.000-07:00

This is the long overdue kiriban doodle for Leversa. The kids are going on a journey, but it appears poor little Simon got the short end of the stick.

I think I may be developing a liking for bright colors...

Break Time

2008-04-02T17:05:00.000-07:00

This is a commissioned cover work for the Razor Kid series. Relaxing with friends in the evening sun after a long day of martial arts training, playing video games or reading books -- sounds like fun!

Stuck Together

2008-03-29T20:05:00.000-07:00

I believe Ledin would disagree, but I think he and Landra make for a lovely couple.

Fly High!

2008-03-27T21:09:00.000-07:00

This was supposed to be a warm-up doodle before work, but I ended up spending more time than I originally wanted to. It's Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy.

Kickstart My Heart

2008-01-27T22:10:00.001-08:00

I am glad to announce that we are finally back on track with our graphic novel Fantasy Realms! The plot is about to thicken, so now is your chance to hop on over to our archives and start reading from the beginning or pick up from where we have left off. We will be updating every Monday.

On top of that, our partner in crime Hai started his own webcomic. By Moon Alone is a testament to his craftsmanship as well as his ability as a storyteller. Be sure to drop by!

The Great Escape

2008-01-17T23:31:00.000-08:00

I made my first and only pen pal when I was just a little rascal. I believe it was during the last year of my elementary school career when our teachers arranged a game for all pupils as some sort of summer festival attraction: We would write our addresses on a small tag attached to balloons filled with helium and let them go. They would eventually come down somewhere, and we hoped some random passerby would come across the remains of our little air mail and write us a letter. Of course nobody really expected any results -- least of all the grown-ups -- and as far as I know I was the only person in my group to ever receive a response.

To our surprise, the address on the envelope I held in my hands several months later was nowhere nearby. Apparently my balloon had made a journey of over 400 miles and ended up in East Germany (which was still occupied by the Soviet Union at that time). The sender was a man in his sixties who had found my address tag dangling down from a tree branch while taking a walk.

Over the course of the next two years we exchanged letters on a regular basis and slowly got acquainted. My pen pal had a lot of stories to tell; he had no family in East Germany and seemed to enjoy the distant companionship we shared. He told me that he had to retire early due to a back injury and that he rarely left the house anymore, but he enjoyed collecting stamps. I remember he sent me a very colorful one later. He eventually even wrote about his experiences during World War II, although I am sure he omitted the worst parts. Nevertheless, he never seemed to grow tired of my trivial little tales of childhood. Ocassionally I would send him drawings I made. One of the things he kept writing about was how he wanted to reunite with his brother one day. They had parted ways before the war and lost contact; all he knew about his brother was that he had supposedly moved to London. He never went into details much, but I could always sense an air of regret when he spoke of his family.

When the Berlin Wall fell in 1990 he sounded very excited about finally being able to leave the country and look for his brother in England. That was the first time he wrote enthusiastically about the future instead of the past; it was also the last letter he sent me. I would like to believe he managed to find his brother and make things right.

To my old friend, wherever you are.

Earthbound

2008-01-13T17:50:00.000-08:00

I've been planning to work on something more serious, but after browsing one too many Japanese art sites I was craving to do something cute. Well, here is about the most pitiful thing I could imagine -- a grounded little angel.

Shooting Star 02

2008-01-13T17:21:00.001-08:00

These are Rin and Len Kagamine, the twins from the latest Vocaloid installment. I hope they will eventually release all the voice banks outside of Japan, because I'd like to get my hands on that software one day; in the meantime I'll just oogle the pretty character designs.

Ledin the Menace

2008-01-11T00:43:00.000-08:00

The year 2007 has gone by, and unfortunately it wasn't a very productive one for me. I'm behind with work as well as my own projects, and I can count the personal illustrations I did on one hand. One of my resolutions for 2008 is doing daily sketches; quick doodles of whatever I feel like drawing in between work. I won't be posting everything I draw, but I do hope I will be able to supply semi-regular updates with new art.

My first picture of the year is a stylistic experiment. It's based on an illustration I discovered on DeviantART, titled Link:Lv.2. I tried to stay as close to the original as possible without copying directly; especially the colors are heavily referenced. Be sure to drop by the artist's gallery, her work is very cute and dreamy. I'm a big fan!

Random side note: It appears that Blogger supports various open IDs now -- LiveJournal and WordPress among others -- so feel free to log in when you post comments, even if you don't have a Google account.

Avatar Aang

2007-10-31T03:38:00.000-07:00

Avatar: The Last Airbender is a great show, and after I finished watching the second season I wanted to do an illustration of Aang. He is easily my favorite character, with his cheerful and strong-willed personality.

He is supposed to be standing in front of one of the air temples, but I'm not sure that's obvious. One of these days I'll try not to rush the background...

Little Nemo and the Tall Man

2007-10-18T22:06:00.000-07:00

I like Winsor McCay's Little Nemo in Slumberland comic strips a lot. Ever since I found out that the whole thing went public domain in 2005, I wanted to work on my own rendition of little Nemo.

Those who know the original comic will recognize the last panel as a direct homage to McCay's work. Of course the rest is heavily inspired by the wonderful Shadow of the Colossus.

Hopefully this is only the first of many. If time allows, I would like to do more of these!

Fantasy Realms on WOWIO

2007-09-16T12:44:00.000-07:00

Clay and I decided to start offering high resolution PDFs of our fantasy comic Fantasy Realms at WOWIO.com.

Here is what the official site has to say:

WOWIO is a new kind of online bookstore that enables readers to download ebooks for free, using commercial sponsorships to compensate authors and publishers. Readers get free ebooks. Sponsors get a powerful new channel to communicate their message to precisely the people they want to reach. Publishers get a new means of distributing their books, expanding their readership, and monetizing their intellectual property.

You can download issues of Fantasy Realms, featuring pages at much higher quality and resolution than what you see on the official homepage -- all for free once you sign up. You will be supporting the comic, too, since we get paid a small commission for every download. Unfortunately user registration is limited to U.S. residents at the current time.

P.S. Our arrangement with WOWIO will have no effect whatsoever on our website. All of the content will remain in our archive, and you can still find new pages every Monday.

The Legendary Green Land

2007-09-15T21:38:00.000-07:00

One of the projects Clay and I have been working on for a pretty long time now is Green: A Terra Verde Lendária. I think it has been years since we first announced the project -- an illustrated novella, possibly to be serialized online before we release the print edition -- and we're both very excited about being able to finally dedicate some time to it (actually, Clay finished the first draft of the story a while ago, and is very close to completing the second draft; I'm the one who never seems to find the time to work on Green).

There have been a lot of revisions since then, mostly on the art side. I was never quite content with the style. The original illustrations were done in a painted sketchy style which looked decent enough, but it didn't seem to click with the story. Even with monochromatic palettes, it didn't convey the harsh and depressing atmosphere of the world that these characters live in.

We decided to take a much more graphic approach after that: Solid black inks, some greyscale flats, and painted backgrounds. Unfortunately I was never able to pull that one off properly. The art ended up looking very stiff and the whole setting appeared fake due to the conflicting styles. I eventually grew frustrated with it and decided to shelve the whole project until I would be able to solve that dilemma.

Which just happens to be today!

It will still be a while before I can set aside some serious time to work on the actual illustrations for the book, but that doesn't seem to matter anymore. It'll work out, even it it's going to take a while. For the first time since we started working on this story does everything feel right to me.

Delightful Chemistry

2007-08-20T00:41:00.000-07:00

I love the chemistry between Ledin and Landra. Next week we'll see more of these two in Fantasy Realms -- so be sure to come by on Monday!

My Eskimo Friend

2007-08-19T03:02:00.001-07:00

Sometimes it seems to me like I'm the only person on this planet who doesn't like summer. It's not even particularly hot right now where I live, but I long for rainy autumn days and the chilly breeze of winter. And like that Damien Rice song goes: "I look to my eskimo friend when I'm down."

If I Could Fly

2007-08-15T22:48:00.000-07:00

I did a sketch of Lila (Rico's fairy sidekick from Fantasy Realms) earlier today while warming up for work, and I liked that whole soaring feel to it, so I decided to refine it and slap on some color. She has no wings here, but that was more of a stylistic choice -- and a bit of laziness -- on my part than an oversight.

And unless I discover that I have the ability to fly as well and take off into the sky, we'll start updating the comic again this coming Monday!

Cyan

2007-08-13T21:10:00.000-07:00

Doodle of a cute girl I did for Clay. I dubbed her Cyan (the name came first, I only decided on the hair color afterwards). Although I adore pastel colors, I find myself using a more muted palette most of the time, so this was a lot of fun to do. Did I mention I'm a sucker for hoodies?

Monocle Diorama

2007-07-27T00:26:00.000-07:00

More cartoony stuff. I was torn between two concepts when I started this doodle -- some kid riding on a dinosaur and an ornery man with a monocle -- in the end I just lumped the two together. The guy somehow ended up looking like an older Inspector Gadget...

Little Frogger

2007-07-23T19:45:00.000-07:00

More doodles! I promised Celesse that I'd draw my version of her character Frog, and a dose of cuteness is exactly what I needed right now! Chances are that I'll do a full-fledged illustration of this adorable little fellow when I'm less busy, but this will do for now.

Came out a bit darker than what I had in mind, but I like all the various hues of red. AND HE'S SO CUTE.

You Were There

2007-07-22T23:00:00.000-07:00

I haven't really posted any new art for a while now. I'm mostly preoccupied with freelance work these days, but I decided to take off a couple of hours and do some personal doodles today.

My friend Hai and I agreed to do a rendition of the two main characters from ICO almost one year ago. He finished his picture on the same day, and I kept procrastinating. I always wanted to do this huge, magnificent illustration -- my attempt to do this wonderful game justice. Realizing it would probably never happen that way, I made a compromise with myself: I'll do a quick drawing of Ico and Yorda now, with the option to do a full painting later!

I experimented a bit with the sketchy lines, a more cartoony style (similar to the one I used in my The Secret Garden picture), and Photoshop's painting tools. It was very relaxing not having to worry about clean inks and polishing the colors. I should do more rough pictures like this!

Like a Butterfly

2007-05-14T20:41:00.000-07:00

Fantasy Realms update! You can also see a bigger version of the new header graphic here:

Le Petit Prince

2007-05-13T17:58:00.000-07:00

I decided to start using my DeviantART account again and figured I'd upload an ID picture this time around. Between considering a self portrait or even a photo and using a collage of existing art I had a spark of an idea and went right to the drawing board. An hour or two later I had combined two of my all-time favorites into one neat little package: The Little Prince and Zelda: Wind Waker!

Speaking of DeviantART, I also submitted most of my pictures as prints -- the ones I left online after a massive cleanup, that is. This means you can purchase high quality prints of my artwork now! They come in all kinds of sizes, ranging from 4x6 inches to 20x30. Take a look!

Oh, and psst: Rumor has it that Fantasy Realms might be seeing an update this Monday!

Dragon's Egg

2007-05-03T20:41:00.000-07:00

When asked what my favorite kind of story is, I would be prone to name works like The Neverending Story by Michael Ende, Little Nemo in Slumberland by Winsor McCay or Brave Story by Miyuki Miyabe (which I admit I have only seen the animated movie version of so far). As clichéd as the premise of a modern day kid to enter the domains of a fantasy world may be, I adore the idea of a lush and imaginative realm experienced through the eyes of childlike innocence.

I completed a short story in a similar spirit with a little help from Clay Gardner, and you can read it here:

It started out with a small request: I wanted to stray away from my usual color work to do a couple of greyscale toned manga pages and asked Clay to write it. The original plan was to have no more than 4-5 pages, but the thing just kept growing in my mind as I read through the script. I was hooked. Once I got started, I finished the whole comic in little over a week.

As for the dragon's egg, its very existence will bring about much joy...and much grief. But this is not for our little hero to worry, for by then, this enchanted jewel will have long escaped his grasp into the hands of another.

But that's a story for another time.