2010/2011

 This year I decided to focus on why I have been playing video games so much and work through my problems with aggoraphobia, looking into my previous works, actions and thoughts and using my work as a means of therapy. As World of Warcraft has become a huge part of my life in the past couple of years I decided to base my escapism around it and develope pieces of work to do with avatars, another world outside my real life. Mostly using photoshop since I mostly did paintings last year, but I plan on using paint for some of my work. My influences are from a sci-fi/anime/fantasy art magazine called Imagine FX, H.R. Giger, Interactive video games, sci-fi, fantasy art, myth and legend, dragons and beasts, and artists like Paulo Uccello and H. R. Giger and Dan Scott who is one of the digital artists from my Imagine FX magazines.

 St George & The Dragon
Website

 Giger's Alien
Website

Dan Scott's Drek'Thar
Website

Simon Eckert's In Command
Website

Sam Didier
Website

Giotto
Website

Chris Collingwood
Website

Battle of Salamis, 23rd September 480BC by Wilhelm von Kaulbach.
Website 


Upon trying to mend myself from my anxieties and escapism I wrote down a log of bad memories which I believed to have caused it, after trying out a few ideas for my work I decided to use my log as a story and combine my main characters story with my own. This was one of the ways in which I could tell my story without me actually telling it, but through my character. After much experimentation and rewriting I began working line art images into the story and combined the two. Each paragraph per page with a line art image to go with it summing up the paragraph. I experimented with scaling, letter fonts, image size and portrait or landscape. Mostly working with in game screen shots and positioning my characters to create the expressions and poses needed for each paragraph and then drawing them as line art images on photoshop.

 To see more click here

I then went on to experiment with more screenshots and draw in some of the information like health lost in battle, healing done to me, damage done to the enemy and also included other peoples characters in my images.

 Gamon Stands Strong


Experimenting with layering and using some line art images from majuub's story and works from the year before I created 2 layered images of line. I found these to be a little different to my usual style but I found them show that alot is going on in the images, all of the characters interracting playfully and fighting.

Untitled

Untitled

After watching a digital artist named Yapi Santiago who draws characters like me, I decided to commission her to produce a piece of work to my specifications. 2 characters sharing some alone time in the comfort of eachother, tier 11 armor, specific weapons, in un'goro cave.

After experimenting with positioning and trying to create work that had some sort of story or captured an event. I began placing specific characters together and trying to perfect my line art drawings some more.

A Time To Mourn

The Wolves Are Upon Us!

Experimenting with color I began colouring one of my line art images to try make the image complete, adding a moon to the image and putting in a background I felt the image was better than the original but still lacked the look I was after.

‘I have always been interested in video games from a young age, completing them and moving onto the next, but in my teen years I had a hard time and it resulted into my escaping into my gaming and virtual worlds. My work is mostly about the most challenging game I have played and still not completed, which i have made lots of friends around europe. My work helped me deal with and understand my escapism and deal with my problems with aggoraphobia and the need to deal with my problems rather than escaping into the computer screen and not feeling or thinking about anything but the game and what happens there.’

Shaun Project Space


Finally nearing towards the end of my experimentation, I decided to involve backgrounds and more characters than usual, creating fight scenes, events in game and adventures of the characters on my account and guild members or friends. I found these images to be very successful and I will begin to work these onto canvas with paint as the end of the year approaches.

Defending- This one being one of them I felt worked well but I made the goblin characters too large and drew a foot coming through the cloak so minor changes need to be made.

Spell Reflect- This one was made from a memory of a friend in combat with the opposing team, the alliance. His character Onika a warrior fighting against a human mage and winning, placed in an arena making the image extremely better than the original characters in a blank space.

Double Attack- This one is a boss fight featuring my raid group of 10 people, features 2 tanks, 3 healers and 5 damage players and the boss is Chimaeron in his lair. Characters and boss placed onto a background, drawn as line art. This will be my final piece painted onto a big canvas with a video or sound piece of this encounter. This will take part within the Reg Vardy Gallery or Shaun Space during August within University of Sunderland's Ashburn House.

Majuub's Statement

2v2

3v3

Relentléss

Majuub and the Dragon

Majuub and the Dragon Pop art



When I had my Shaun Space crit, I was often asked how some others who didn't know what my work was about would think my work was about, find it interesting or would it fit into art practice. Even though I do believe that my artwork works as it is, I decided to use a different style of artwork and voice my opinions of that in my work. As seen above I used Andy Warhol's massproduced Popart images to make my own versions and created my own version of Paulo Uccello's St. George & The Dragon and also made a pop art version of that too.

Majuub's Entry (my entry)  0 votes

Asiohu's Entry  9 Votes

Naara's Entry  2 votes

Fennic's Entry  6 votes



While studying at uni I also started an online competition for some of my guild members to take part in so that I could see what others would do with the subject I was using and gave them a brief which was 'Drunk and Disorderly' which meant that they could use anything in the game so long as their work was of a character in a drunken state with an entry fee of 50 gold. The Winner was Asiohu who won over 1000 gold in WoW currency.

I also started hosting in game events on a friday evening with gold prizes called Take My Quest, dressing my character up and appearing in one of the zones in game at 20:00 gametime or 19:00 English time. Once those who signed upto take part arrived to my location they were given a quest to collect items from killing creatures or playful games rewarding the first to hand in the quest or to win a competition or challenge a gold prize of 500 gold and second and third place a smaller prize depending on how many sign up for the events. My inspiration for this was from watching Sharm's WoW parody music video, Take My Quest.

Some of my work involves people I have often met online within the game and from my guild Dark Elders of Darkmoon Faire. However in my painting Double Attack and other works, I mostly involve certain people from my raid group, also featured in many recorded and edited videos of raid encounters. These characters/people are:

1. Majuub  - Goblin Blood Deathknight
2. Endarion  - Troll Fire Mage
3. Laefana  - Troll Restoration Shaman
4. Zarfen  - Tauren Restoration Druid
5. Tygore  - Tauren Survival Hunter
6. Deathphoenix  - Orc Unholy Deathknight
7. Fallinn  - Blood Elf Fire Mage
8. Medaea  - Blood Elf Holy Paladin
9. Khales  - Tauren Feral Druid
10. Exilancya  - Blood Elf Discipline Priest
11. Onika  - Goblin Protection Warrior
12. Shadire  - Undead Assassination Rogue
13. Elajin  - Troll Destruction Warlock / Elea  - Orc Fury Warrior

Double Attack
Unfinished painting right now but it is going to appear in the reg vardy gallery when completed in august based on my raid group pushing on through the game content trying to be the top raid group on the server. Most raid nights feature either clearing most of the raid content in one night or 2 and progressing onto attempt the more challenging encounters, this requires alot of knowledge of tactics of bosses, how to play your class and communication.

Fine Art Year 1 Begins

At the beginning of the course I found myself experimenting with painting and other things again before settling on mostly painting. At first for a project I painted a view from a photo I took while sitting on rocks at the beach in South Shields, trying out painting on a bigger canvas and painting with my fingers.

When the personal projects were starting to be selected by most I decided I would focus on my characters, being the nerd that I am. I worked on a number of images of different races and classes from world of warcraft which were from my own account and used them placed on canvas or paper with paint as an art form with no backgrounds, no reason for not having a background with it really, just I had no idea of what to do with them after they got so far.

 Majuub the deathknight

Feral Uub

Faerína the fire mage

 Majuubs wedding

 Merry Undead Christmas

Majuub Transforms

Sphirit's Pillow

 Highest roll on 25 man icecrown axe

I then went on to experimenting with inks and abstraction which I quite enjoyed, I managed to kind of get the images on canvas how I wanted and gave them suiting titles to fit into my project. One being the colours clashing as if they were enemies, some mixing, some dominating, some losing, the other looked to me like a dragons lair with fire and bones scattered.

Onixia's Lair & Warcraft

I went on to work with photoshop and record in game during raiding and so on, while watching many machinima music videos featuring world of warcraft I decided to make a parody of my own but base it around me being so shy and used a song me and an in game friend used to sing together over ventrillo.

Aged 18/19

From my Btec course I was supposed to go onto the foundation right after but I got a letter after waiting a long time saying it was not suited to me..bit late and extremely bad timed since I had no time to apply to a new course, I turned up at South Tyneside College asking about courses I could apply for and was given an email for Mike Collier who teaches Foundation/Level 0 Art and Design which began a few days after my interview so I was extremely lucky, I went through a lot of experimentation with different styles in paint, photoshop, drawing and through many projects involving fashion, animation, painting, digital, photography, and video.

South Shields Beach Photo

Dive (Shortly after the skater landed he fell and hurt his leg)

Near Dark Single Cover

After the experimenting phases I came out with a body of work but then went onto do personal projects which covered my messy and destructive nature in my art, including slashing and setting fire to a canvas.

 

In sunrise you can't hide (zombie outbreak and a lone sniper is revealed after hiding)

 Untitled (painted a canvas and removed the tape to ruin the image I had created)

Untitled (same technique but this time I used it to make orderly blocks of colour and then threw paint over it to mess it up)

 Destruction

Then going on to my obsession with horror movies and the idea of possession, demons and other things like zombies. After experimenting with that project I produced alot of photography and painting work.

 Demon in us all

Demon in us all

Demon in us all

Demon in us all

I then decided to focus on the biggest influence on my life, or the biggest part of it which was video games. Being the way I am, shy and not very outgoing I usually went to go onto the Dance Machines down at the amusements so decided to base a project on that, I made several pages of a comic, video'd myself on the dance machine and edited a program to make my own steps and layouts for songs I enjoyed at the time. Getting others to take part and play the game and showing the comic and video piece together in an arcade theme.

Dance Dance Revolution

Dance Dance Revolution

Link to the comic here!