Digging up graves..

Back from the dead!

So, last week was my final week as an 'employed' person, at least until I'm broke. I quit my dayjob as a video game artist at Bungie (yep, that Bungie) to start my own company trying my hand at making much smaller games while working from home.

My previous attempts at blogging have been pitifully sporadic, I failed at the internets. Hopefully this time around I'll do a much better job at keeping the internet entertained and elightened about my lazy wanderings.

So to start things off right, here's a total necropost from 2006, reposted artwork from a previous Illustration Friday. I'd done this piece during the halloween where I first tried out absinthe, and had become smitten by the green fairy.

I swear, new stuff is coming.. Promise.. Don't look at me like that. I'M TRYING HERE.

Our house

Nowhere near the middle of the street.. It used to be purple, believe it or not. Now it's a boring cream color.

We did all that rock work ourselves by hand.. Been working on that for about 3 years. The initial load of stones filled an entire flatbed semi-truck. The patio up on top is about 800 sq. ft.

yeah, might as well be dead..

Sorry about the dead zone on posts.. Been up to a lot of things. We've been working on the house a lot, plus we took a couple trips and I went through a hernia surgery.. Facebook also claimed most of my free time. So pathetic.. Anyways, here's a new thing. I got this cool skull shaped vodka.





Here's the story on this thing.. http://www.crystalheadvodka.com

griffin sketch

Happy Easter!

Creeping dead...

Still crawling like the undead..

Back from the grave...

Holy crap, I've been lazy.. Had a month off from work and all I did was take the family to Disneyworld, and a bunch of other boring domestic and nerdy stuff none of you would care a bit about.

I got a new toy though. An HP tx2000 tablet PC. I can draws right on the screens, I can. Fancy. Now I have one less lame excuse for not keeping up on paint practice. That leaves only five hundred more lame excuses before I'm out.

Anyhoo, here's my doodle for tonight.

Well, let's see how long I lumber around out of the grave this time.

Goofin with brushes

Nuthin special, just fiddling with brushes. It started looking kinda father wintery.

Children of the Corn 7 - Suburban Madness

Last weekend we had a rare sunny and warm october day. Knowing it'd probably be the last of it's kind before the typical Seattle grayness and perpetual chilly damp set in, I grabbed the kids and headed out to a farm nearby to do their corn maze and pick some pumpkins.

The farm is called the South 47, and it's this tiny 20 acre thing stuck right in the middle of suburbia, between Redmond's silicon valley of the North, and Woodinville's McMansions of Mormonosity. It's a coop farm, and does a pretty decent job of bringing a bit of farm life to the suburbs, although the corn maze event typically is swarmed by yuppie mom's with cell phones permanently attached to their ears, and yuppie dad's like me desperately trying to make sure their kids have a rare moment of fun that doesn't involve electrons beaming into their eyes.

Blogger's barfing tonight on my attempt to add a pic. Here's a link to our Flickr folder of photos:
Cornmazing '07, http://www.flickr.com/photos/15496926@N08/1626796371/

I Fight Like a Girl!!

Yes, it's quite true, I fight like a girl! And so does my son!
We've both just signed up for the "Fight Like a Girl" 2nd Annual Halo Tournament for the Fight Against Breast Cancer.



All proceeds will go to the Susan B. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. Chances are by the time anyone reads this that the list will be filled for players, since Bungie just posted news of it on their website, but if you're interested you can donate to the cause at:
http://cavegirlforums.com/index.php?showtopic=2617

I'll be posting vids of our, most likely, gloriously crushing defeat shortly after the event. Stay tuned!

So nerdy..

Okay, well, my company released my 'gamertag' on xbox live to the world as part of a media event 'play with the game makers' thing, and now I've had a bazillion friend request from Timmy's all over the world.. It's kinda awesome, and kinda spooky. Anyhoo, if I deleted any of my actual friend's join up requests, plz resend and email me at home to let me know, so I don't do it again. My gamertag is: KidPenguin.

Baaaraaam-uuuu

OKay, we're officially back to crazy suburban farmer status again. After our Grand Goat Adventure, replete with exciting chase scenes, fights, spooky nighttime searches in foggy woodlands, scary old neighbor people, and blood & tears(tm), we're trying something a little more sedate and managable.. Mini-sheep!!





These two handsome bachelors, I'm naming Paul and Dane respectively, are mini french 'Cheviot' sheep. We lucked out and found a breeder right here in Woodinville. These guys can be hard to find, believe it or not. They're about a hand high shorter than regular sheep, and about 2/3rd's the weight.

The wool is softer and finer and thicker, and is really amazing stuff. Not quite sure how much usable skeins we'll get from only two sheep, but I'm sure it'll be enough for Kim to do something with. Her name suggestions were 'Cardigan' and 'Socks'..

Not sure how well they'll keep our grass down, but it's gotta be better than nothing.. Erik's already planning on working with them to start training Tara (our lab/border collie cross) herding techniques. Tara's more than smart enough, and even without training was helpful back with the goats.

Bloody Gold

Well kids.. I know it's been hella long since an update to this dustbin of a blog. Been kinda busy working on teh Haloz3. It was a pretty rough ride to the end, but we just went gold, and by a freak of luck it happened on the same night as a 'Blood Moon' here in the northwest..

But the deed is done and by DAGON it's the most fun game I've ever worked on. Still feels just freaky to have worked on something so big.. We're mostly playing the game and trying to think up fun new game types now.

My workload actually started dropping off earlier in the summer, and we managed to squeek out a bit of family funtime. But it wasn't long until Kim fired up the abandoned mammoth 'Honey-Do' list, and we got back to crunching on our projects around the house.. You can see details on her blog: http://clutterfairy.blogspot.com/

Wee! On the plus side, as soon as we get the wall done and enough stones of the patio laid for a human to walk on, I get to buy one of these babies: http://www.biggreenegg.com/ , and invite people over for booze and bbq. YAY!

Now just to find time for some art again...

Happy Mother's Day

Well, it's mother's day.. ..and I'm workin. Alllllmost there though, and MAN, for the first time in my career it feels worth it. So many years of overtime lost to games that sat on shelves. Not this time.


Hopefully my wife can hold the family together for just a handful more weeks until we're past the crunch. Once this one's over I'm paying her back for the last 8 mother's days that I've cheesed out on because of workin so much.. In the meantime, Happy Clown Boy to the rescue!

Crunchichi Oh so soft and crunchichy!

Been crunching for a long time now.. Don't get to see my kids most nights, so you folks are even more neglected. Sorry about that. I'm sorta doodling on an idea for something that might get some post love this summer, it involves Zen and little stone rabbit statues. Yeah, okay, shut up.

Anyways, here's something my friend Peter whipped together to entertain and enlighten, that almost describes what it's like to be a parent in the games industry. Good times!

c:\ya\later
-gronk

Not dead yet...

Okay okay, this blog is alllmost dead.. But I swear it's not completely dead yet. I'm just in super mega double crunch mode at work. Not even entirely sure why. But I promise I'll start trying to do some weekly sketches again for yah..

Mmmmm.. Toasty.

We finally got our power back on 6 days after the outage began. Thanks to blind luck and good friends, we made it through without any really cold nights. After this though, we'll be turning our house into a CDA bunker..

Life outside the Matrix is cold and hard.. Oh Blue Pill, how sweet you are!

Storm update..

Hi all. Well, Seattle area got hit by a really hard windstorm last thursday. The Gronquist house survived well, we expected problems but lucked out bigtime. Our friends the Millars however got hit really bad. Two trees crashed into their upstairs kitchen around 1am, while they were up checking out the storm. They managed to avoid getting hurt, thank god, but the house is really in bad shape. If you know the Millars, send them your best wishes, I'm sure they'd love to hear them. They've got someone to stay with, and their neighbor's showed up in quantity to help out with moving things to shelter, so most of the logistics of their disaster sound handled okay. Will update more as we hear it.

Right now we're spending Saturday night in a Hotel. We got really lucky, and just pulled in to the third one we tried at the same moment someone called in to cancel a room. Within seconds after Kim signed up for the room, someone called asking if there were any available.. We really can't believe how lucky we were through this all.

We're calling all our friends who don't have power and inviting them over for showers and warm coffee..

This storm really was something else. We weathered it out during the night cowering in our darkened basement because we were sure the ancient giant trees around our house were going to come down. At the peak though, I just had to go upstairs to listen and watch it all, and I swear I've never seen anything like it outside of hurricane country. Peak wind speeds were in the 70mph range, with averages around 40-50mph. Volcanos and earthquakes we're used to, hurricanes just aren't Seattle's thing...

Anyways, hope you and yours are all doing okay. If you need any help once we get our feet back under us, JUST ASK. We feel blessed beyond our measure for making it through this storm so well, and just want to give back to the world some of the good kharma we've received.

Nite, John.

It's beginning to look a lot like..

Well, we're having yet another freaked out November for weather. Seems that the last few years have really started getting weird right around this time of year. My bet is we'll have 70degree and sunny for x-mas.

Anyhoo, hope everyone I know made it through the storm without getting hurt. Next time, I promise I'll have my tractor ready to hit the roads and tow you all to nice warm snuggly homes.

Cheers!

La la la la la.. La la la la la...

A fairy visited tonight..

I don't know what this stuff is or how it got in my house..

..but I think.. I'll let it stay for just a while..

Bath time..

Well, crud, it's wednesday night, time to punt on this week's Illus Friday subject.. Was planning on doing this workup in another painterly fashion, something kinda like Lautrec's non-print work. Gah, maybe some other time. Gotta get to work on some molds and casting pieces for a secret project at work.. :)

Anyways, I slapped some filters on it, and decided it's CyberTrec! "A modern interpretation of turn of the century posters, reinterpreted for a modern age." Take that Art and Grammer!


Click to make big, of course.

TROGDORRRRR!!

Oh man, I am SO doomed.. Trogdor is coming to Guitar Hero.. In just a few short months my basement will be filled with 6-12 year olds chanting the name of this demented dragon like as if in some sort of freakish summoning ritual.. ..and I'll be there with them. DOOMED!!

The Night Way

Been playing around with painterly techniques in PShop lately. Not as happy with this one as the last, but got too much to do around the house to work on it anymore before Halloween, so up it goes! I'm happy with the church, it turned out well, but she's just not what I was hoping for.. :( Anyways, click on it to see it bigger.



Here's some detail of her face at full rez:

Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder..

Oh yes. I'm hooked on the green fairy.. Anything that glamourizes and ritualizes drinking 120 proof glowing green hooch, has to be good.
I might keep messing with her, I might not. I hate her face, it's mushed, but kinda wanna move on.
Enjoy, and crits welcomed!

Jack scratch'n..

Just goofing around with some gestural pumpkins.. The piece I'm working on them for right now is actually going to be a nighttime scene, so these are all wrong, but they're fun to doodle. What is it about the magic of oversized squash that makes us feel 20 years younger?..

Sweet Babybacks Batman!

You just gotta deeply love a job that swings free professional award winning BBQ classes for it's team! Holy Smokes indeed! I'm headed to BBQ University, courtesy of the fine people who pay me to make things blow up.

We've been using Teddy Bear BBQ for catering and I have to say it's by far some of the best in the Northwest, if not the entire continental US.. Smokey-n-tender and not smothered in sugar syrup.. It's gonna be a truly great day hanging with these fine Grand Champion Pitmasters and prying their secrets from them.

Hell, just look at their awards list.. If my middle-aged brain can manage to collect even a tenth of their know-how, I'll be beating you all off with sticks.. Which probably isn't a bad idea come to think of it.

Kharmic Balance

Well, this has been one of the more wild summer's in a long time.. Between multiple art tests for new jobs, a holy terror of a new beagle puppy, live-in human visitors, crunch-time right away at the new job, to the patio project that'd make a freemason's toes curl..

We've been a might bit busy, and the blog has suffered horribly. So here's a little art to keep the handful of crickets chirping at this blog content. These are logo's I did for a couple of summer functions for my wife's 'Un'-church.




If you're a Unitarian and are interested in using these logo's for your church functions, just give me a holler. I figure doing these in some small way makes up for me sleeping in on Sunday mornings while my wife rushes around the house trying to get the kid's dressed in time all by herself..

Playing with fire

Sorry for the lack of posts lately. Things have been pretty extra crazy crunchy frosted insane lately.

Soooo, after over 6 years, half of which was near constant crunch mode, I've finally left Gas Powered Games. It was a really intense ride, and I'd like to think I learned a lot from it, one way or the other.

Anyways, in my time off now, I put together these little art effects tests for a potential gig:



Hope you all enjoy the show!

The Red Note

I'm about as far out of the Seattle music scene as a guy can be.. But nonetheless, occasionally I open my ears. This band is fun stuff, gypsy blues with big horns, or something like that. I dig it. A friend here at work was in a show with them. Sadly, I was too lame to make it to see them. But anyways, enjoy The Red Note.



http://www.therednote.com/tracks/

Interview with Jim Murphy

Pixar's unofficial blogspot links us to this fantastic animation specific interview with Jim Murphy, lead animator for Cars!

Punk baby

Demo Reel

Wow. So much stuff to dig through! But alas, it's in the can until I can make some new decent replacements.

Go here to see:
http://gronquist.com/john