ALEXANDRIA NEONAKIS

SKETCHES & ILLUSTRATIONS | alexneonakis.com

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Process: Ana & Pharah

here’s the breakdown of my process. I started with a different sketch entirely, but realized pretty quickly it wasn’t telling the story I wanted so i switched to the side shot. 

My process is 90% me just redrawing the thing over and over again until it looks half decent.

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Pharah and Ana

“I’ll love you forever, I’ll like you for always, As long as I’m living, My baby you’ll be” 

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Little Mercy comforting little Pharah

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Lord of the Flies cover

I tried masking fluid for the first time with this one. Lord of the Flies is one of my all time favorite books. gouache + watercolor

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Nate’s Journal 

I was given the super fun task of illustrating Drake’s journal for Uncharted 4. These are my favorite 10 spreads, there are 33 in total. I also did a lot of the handwriting for handwritten note pickups. (writing was primarily by Josh Scherr) 

I think the coolest part about the whole thing is my young nephew and cousin came to visit me at the studio. I was showing them some stuff I worked on and my cousin goes “so wait... is Nathan Drake’s handwriting your handwriting?” I think my cool aunt/cousin status tripled that day hahaha

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Plein Air - Seattle Some studies from a weekend trip to Seattle. I tried something new with these, watercolor underpainting with gouache on top.

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*SPOILERS AHEAD FOR UNCHARTED 4*

Uncharted 4- Kids’ room designs 

I was tasked with designing both Nate’s orphanage and Cassie’s bedroom for Uncharted 4. These levels bookend the game, and showcase two very different childhoods.

I worked with Neil to establish the mood in these two pieces with lighting and set dressing. Where Nate’s room is stark and empty, mostly dark with cool lighting, Cassie’s was to be lit with soft, warm light. Her room is full of stuff. her walls are covered in posters, pictures and evidence that she’s lived a pretty awesome childhood so far. She’s messy and a bit careless with her things, as many kids with lots of stuff tend to be. Nate’s a character who we know to be vibrant, adventurous and creative. We wanted to really drive home how his room didn’t really reflect any of those aspects of his character.

I thought about my own upbringing a lot while working on these rooms. My dad was raised in a tiny village in Greece where he had little to nothing in the way of toys clothes or books. When he moved to Canada and they had me, he worked hard to make sure I had everything he didn’t. I imagined this same sort of relationship between Nate and Cassie. I imagine that when he gave all of the treasure hunting stuff up he did it to make sure Cassie had a better childhood than he ever could. 

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Broken Age Exhibition pieces

These are the two paintings I have in the upcoming Gallery Nucleus Broken Age show. Since Vella’s world is more chaotic and organic, I did hers in gouache. Shay’s world is a lot more structured and inorganic so I did his digitally. 

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Young Drake and Sam

In a week or two I’m going to post some more spoilery things that I worked on for Uncharted 4. In the meantime, here’s some story exploration sketches of the brothers.

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I took some photos of my painting kit for A friend but figured I’d share it publicly for anyone who’s interested in trying outdoor painting with gouache. If it’s something you want to get into, you can start out pretty affordably.

I put all of it in a maxpedition travel pack from Amazon (I think mine was 30$). That was probably the most expensive thing other than the paint. There are lots of kinds and colors and you can Velcro stuff to the front of it. Patches I guess, customize it :)

For paint I like Winsor & Newton, i haven’t tried any other kinds I might eventually, but I get the pro grade stuff. If this is something you want to try you don’t need to spend a ton of money up front on quality paint. Just get the student grade kits they’ll work fine.

I use a warm/cool limited pallet: alizarin crimson, cadmium red, cadmium yellow, lemon yellow, ultramarine, cerulean blue, burnt sienna, Naples yellow, yellow ochre, white and black.

A couple of the brushes are on the nicer end but most are student brushes. My favorite brush is a cotman student watercolor brush (it’s the blue handled chisel brush above the fan brush). I think it was 3$. That big one at the bottom is from a 5$ pack of cheapy brushes those work great.

My pallet is made out of an Altoids tin with empty half watercolor pans sticky tacked into it. I just add water and reactivate the paint each time so I’m not wasting it as much as I was on a stay-wet or other shallow pallet. I mix on a little ceramic dish. You can also use any other flat surface that fits in the pack

I carry two little plastic jars for water, as well as the bottle in the bottom left that has a small tip so I can add little drops of water to my pallet to reactivate it. There’s also a rag (to not waste paper towel) toothpicks for mixing my paint, masking tape for taping off the edges, a sponge, a pencil and a kneaded eraser.

I hope you find this useful!

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Huckleberry fruit tart Huckleberry in Santa Monica makes the best fruit tart in LA. I did a little gouache study of one The handlettering portion I did first in case I messed it up. My hands were so shaky.

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Snail on a succulent paint I included the WIP shots for this one. I tried a new process where I did a rough painting on my iPad, printed it, traced it onto watercolor paper using a lightbox and the did the final painting.

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I've been trying to get better at gouache painting. These are studies from the past week.

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Some iPad sketches of some li’l bloops from today.

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Dandelions

A little pattern. I’ve been experimenting with surface design. I love it so far. It’s such a nice way to pull together some of my favorite things to paint.

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Witch Sisters

I got an ipad pro with the pencil and have been playing around with it. This one was done in procreate. 

My review of the Pencil:

my general view on this thing is it’s super powerful, feels great to draw on, maybe even better than my 21 inch cintiq. However, It’s still missing something for me. I feel like I can definitely sketch and get a great start on here, but I’ll still need to finish in Photoshop.

It’s so nice just to straight ahead paint or draw, but I’m a person who likes to put some stuff down, then select pieces and move/scale them. That’s clunky on the ipad. It’s possible but it slows my work flow to a crawl and I found myself sort of trying to avoid it. Might be a learning curve thing.

I’m also very reliant on adjustment layers and clipping masks, two things you can’t do. (as far as i can tell? the UI of procreate leaves something to be desired. it’s minimal but I don’t know what any of the icons mean and i can’t find some of the more hidden options quickly... that’s... a whole other review and I’m kinda particular about UI heh)

I’m sure as I play around with it I’ll find workarounds, but as of right now I’m still super happy with it. It will by no means replace my desktop set up but I didn’t want or expect it to do that.

Instead, it allows me to sit on my couch and sketch up quick mocks and ideas that I can then take into photoshop and finish.

I feel like my biggest hurdle right now is just sitting down in front of the computer after a long day or week of work and mustering up the energy and inspiration to make something. If I have a strong start I will be so much more likely to want to do this now.

So overall, definitely worth it for me. It certainly is a step up from the cintiq companion which is gathering dust on my shelf. it won’t replace my desktop set up but i don’t expect anything to anytime soon.

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Animal, Vegetable, Mineral