Friday, June 29, 2012

Photos from my 30th Birthday!

Yesterday was my 30th birthday and it was awesome. I'm going to write a bit more about turning 30 and how that feels, but for now, here are some photos from yesterday.

We took the ferry over to Peak's Island, off the coast of Portland, Maine. Relaxing and exciting at the same time. Love living here.

Just a quick few. More to come!














UPDATE: Here are some of the awesome gifts I got!

Me love audiobooks! Never thought of the JAWS Audiobook!
What a great thought that was! Thanks, wife! 


My older son picked out this awesome Mustache Belt


After we got back dinner on from Peak's Island, my wife and I played some old DOOM




Good day... :)

Oh, and I got to upgrade my phone from a Droid X to the


Got to cheaply upgrade my phone! Happened right at my birthday. Perfect timing. 

The Maxx is incredible! I had the Droid X, but the battery would last about 2 hours tops with all the email, picture taking/uploading, video, drawing, all the stuff I was using it for. It was huge problem. But NOW! NOW I SAY! My Droid Razr Maxx is lasting 24 hours!!! Unbelievable! It just goes and goes. I literally charged it yesterday at 11am and it's still got half a battery left! And seriously, I'm doing heavy stuff on it ALL the time! SO happy I got it! And that's just the battery.


The phone itself is fantastic. Covered in Kevlar, insides are waterproof. Super fast and powerful. Brilliant screen and camera (plus flip camera on the front to take pictures of yourself). HD 1080p video camera! Just awesome!








Sunday, June 17, 2012

DOWNLOAD: Ray's 70 Pro Inking & Concept Art Brushes!


RAY DILLON'S PRO INKING BRUSHES!

See the video below to watch these brushes in action! Just a quick example, but should give you an idea of what's possible both in ink and white over ink.



Art, Video, and Music by Ray Dillon

GET 70 ORIGINAL BRUSHES FOR $15!
Great for inking, illustration, & concept art!

Get the same tools I've used to ink for Marvel, DC, IDW (and many more comics publishers) as well as create concept art and animation for Ridley Scott's "Prophets of Science Fiction" for The Science Channel!

Natural brushes, dry brushes, textures, halftone pattern, fx, and organic repetitive objects:
chains, leaves, windows, bricks, scales, birds, trees, bubbles, glass shards, glass, spiderwebs, stars.


And you know the cool cross-hatchy textures around figures in panels? Some of those, too.

Fast and efficient! Yes, you're capable of rendering a million bricks or leaves or shards of glass or windows or whatever, but you don't always have time to do that and you're probably past the point of needing to proof that you're capable of that. I've created organic variation brushes that allow you to look like you did have that time! And you can always work with them after you've laid down your base to give it your own spin. We have the technology to take out the time-sucking repetitive tasks, why not use it??

I've developed these brushes after 10 years of thinking "Man, I wish I had a brush that could ______!" and "I am so sick of drawing/inking ______!" Fill in the blanks. Finally just made all the brushes I found myself needing over and over again!

 

*Will be emailed to the email address attached to your Paypal account
(unless you make a note otherwise) after you purchase! 

The following are really quick examples of what can be done. 
Real inking takes time and fines, of course.




The following are really quick examples of what can be done.
Real inking takes time and fines, of course.





Real pages from Marvel comics and other publishers using these same brushes!










Image created very simply with my hatching brushes (see neck)
birds and sharp leaf brushes for the bats. Took about 10 minutes.

Also includes my realistic pencil rendering brush!









Thes are examples of real pages for Marvel and others that I've inked using these brushes!

Sunday, June 10, 2012

My wife, Renae De Liz, is going to be okay, but she is in the hospital. :(


Hi, everyone-

Been avoiding saying anything publicly because I didn't want to cause worry prematurely and wanted to make sure I had more information and talked to our immediate family first.

Renae is recovering right now, just very slowly.
Our medical bills are around $75,000 (no insurance).

She has an infection that has spread into her blood and kidneys, as well as pneumonia and some other things we're worried about, but I don't want to say anything there until test results are back. As of today she's doing a bit better and we're told after perhaps a week in the Critical Care Unit she should be mostly recovered. It got really bad and we almost lost her. :( Been a very rough couple of weeks. We're behind in work, income, communication, and our nerves are just shot from all this. (I can't even think about the likely $30k or more in medical bills we're racking up here with no health insurance and we don't qualify for assistance...)

So, please understand that we're unable to get back to everyone checking in on current or future projects, Womanthology copies, or anything else right now. Please give us 2-3 weeks. I'll do my best during that time, but can't promise to get back to everyone. Renae will likely be in CCU for a week or more, not sure how long she'll be in a recovery room after that. My focus is taking care of her and the kids during this (which I can't do at the same time because Critical Care doesn't allow kids).

I just can't keep up on all these messages right now, but I'll do my best. If you could help by spreading the word so no one out there is getting frustrated by not hearing back from us sooner that would be amazing. Particularly on Womanthology. If you happen to see someone asking about it, please direct them here and to the updates on the Womanthology Kickstarter Updates page, which should answer all questions. Books and other rewards are in process as quickly as we can get them out. Most of them are done! But we're sorry for any delay this might cause, if any. It's mostly out of our hands at this point and just about everything is already on its way to the backers.

So aside from a few pre-scheduled tweets and blogs to keep things running I'll be away from the computer most of the time for right now.

Huge thank you to Stacie Ponder (check out her movies and comics!) for helping with the kids while I visit Renae and to Renae's sister Kimberly De Liz (check out her art!) for offering to fly all the way over here to Maine to help with the kids.

And to everyone who already knows and has offered their support and love and everyone who surely will. Thank you.

Get Well Cards!

Oh, and if anyone wanted to send Get Well cards, flowers, chocolate, or anything like that to Renae that would be so sweet!



(Keep in mind that is the Critical Care Unit so nothing too elaborate,
but once she's in her recovery room you could send real elephants and stuff).
That would make her feel really loved and special (which she is!)

~Ray




Are We Taking Donations?

Wow! I'm overwhelmed the amazing support, love, and offers for donations. We've even gotten a few already! Wow! Thank you! Generous people!!!!!

The answer is:

Kinda?

Part of me (the scared part) wants to say, "Yes, please help!" But ... some of you might remember a few years back, when we lived in Kansas, and we were about to have a baby and things with the home we were trying to buy (and had been living in for a year) fell through and we had to move in 30 days and didn't know what we were going to do. Back then we asked for donations and took on a ton of commissions and new projects to try to raise the money to save the house. Despite all of our efforts (and yours) it still didn't work out, but we moved to Maine and life is incredible here and we're actually glad now that we didn't stick our roots down there, even if we loved the house.

Everyone was SO generous and helpful, and in fact we still owe some commissions from back then (moving across country and having a baby who didn't sleep for his first 2 years is like jumping in a time warp). So I know we totally don't want to be the people who are like "We need help AGAIN!" You know? And this is something that we can probably work out. We might be paying these medical bills forever, but it's not the same as needing to raise a certain amount by a certain time to save a house or to have a major operation to save a life or anything like that. It's just going to be some really, really bad debt that we were really hoping never to have. Taking a huge bite out of our future plans and the getting ahead of debt that we've been hoping to do forever, that's for sure. BUT, right now we don't have any dire need and there are a lot of people out there who probably do.

Also I can't ask Renae our thoughts on this yet. She'd probably think you're all amazing for wanting to but not want to bother anyone for the help. That's just who she is.

SO, with that in mind (the fact that we've gotten an amazing amount of help before and this isn't an urgent and dire need ... at least not yet ... knock on wood) if you still want to help and totally have it to spare (if you've got your own financial worries, please take care of you and yours first) then you can donate by clicking this button:






But please read the above information before you do that. We'll probably be fine without donations, but of course they would help! But there are people who need it more, too. 

You're all just super incredible people for being so sweet and supportive and wanting to help so much.

THANK YOU!!

~Ray

Sunday, June 03, 2012

Big Nose Man - Digital Pencil Rendering



STOLEN! (From my own Sketch Blog

)Just a quick example of digital pencil rendering using
the brushes I've created to mimic traditional pencil drawing.
Plus, I spend so much time drawing very specific things that
it was fun to just mindlessly doodle for about 5 minutes on this.

If interested in purchasing my brushes

This art is available to license as well. Same email.



My Projects: StoryNarration | urMonster | YourKidsArt