Introduction

Greetings. My name is Niklas Jansson. I'm currently 31 years old (1977) and reside in Sweden. I like to draw, paint, model/sculpt, code, design games, assimilate bits of obscure information and basically do anything which is creative and kind of geeky.

I've always been drawing, and I played a lot with model clay as a kid. I focus mainly on character design, meaning I mostly do pinups of robots, monsters, humans or vehicles. I discovered digital coloring and painting around the time of the millenium shift. Before that I painted a lot with acrylics, so I'm familiar with both digital and natural media. For concept work I prefer working digitally, especially when dealing with color. It allows me to experiment a lot. Also, lately I bagan to notice that my eyes are a bit skew, so all my figures lean a bit. This mean I have to flip and 'unscew' digitally (or use a mirror when working traditionally).

The Commodore 64 introduced me to BASIC when I was quite young. Later I got an Amiga, but I wasn't very good with Amiga Basic. Eventually I bought AMOS and made a few games with it, but there was no internet back then and I didn't have a modem. I don't think my games got very far in the wild. Now I use BlitzMax. It's quite scalable, being a BASIC based language as well as having some more advanced OOP stuff. I mostly use it for tools and game prototyping.

I also have experience with more C oriented languages such as Quake C (and other game mod languages) and a bit C/C++. Recently I enjoyed FCEUX's LUA capabilities. I'm not very good with the ASM debugger though, but I'm learning. When I do research for my projects I often have to dump data from games, and it's kind of fun to figure out how things were stored, perhaps finding hidden messages and unused graphics.

Then there's web page 'programming' which I don't particularly like. I have some experience with HTML, CSS, JS, PHP and I've also dealt a bit with Perl, ASP and SQL. I still have a Java book on my shelf I've never get around to reading. I really need more hours per day.

Favorite things

I have a lot of favorite artists, and I don't even know the name of some. To drop a few names though: Paul Bonner did some amazing orks for Games Workshop back in the day. Simon Bisley needs no introduction. Judgement on Gotham is amazing. Nadeara Bukichi does excellent flat volumes. Shimada Fumikane renders well too, and does great mechanical designs.

I listen to all sort of music, but prefer stuff like NIN, ToN, Tool, mod/chip/sid. It's hard to list all the movies I like, but I have to mention a few outside the mainstream: MoonTrap, Excalibur, Barbarella and Flash Gordon.

My favourite (if I have to pick six) Pokémons are: Scyther, Diglett, Typhlosion, Furret, Magnemite and Tentacruel.

I dislike social activities, esp. applauding, singing and dancing. That stuff makes me cringe.

FAQ: Contact

Yes. I'll reply if I remember and aren't absorbed by some project. If I don't reply, it probably means that I thought I would reply later and the message scrolled off the first page of my inbox, and into oblivion. Occasionally I visit there and reply to the forgotten ones.

Because I'm paranoid I keep my email as a little rebus. The answer is Diglett. It's that little potato-like Pokémon with a big nose (just like me) (and soon I'll have the same hair style as well).

Gmail: Rebus

My Art Tutorial is a compilation of feedback I've given. That's why it's a little messy. If you want crits on a specific piece, well, I'll probably end up saying what's already in my tutorial.

Not anymore.

FAQ: Work stuff

Yes, when I need the money. I have a company called Android Arts and an 'F-Skattesedel'.

It depends. 200 to 1000(+) USD for a 'piece', mostly. Over 50 USD per hour.

Aside from the stuff which is published on my various sites, I've also done: RPG stuff (D&D), Videogame stuff (Kuju/Nintendo), Various game pitches (under NDA), Cortex Command (DataRealms), Movie concepts (Disney), Miniature concepts, The FSM, Newspaper illustrations.

I'm not quite sure, I don't keep track of what happens to everything I do. I do work for Cortex Command intermittently though.

No. I'm passionate about being faithful to the original, taking on the challenge of working within design constraints. Just changing a few things feels half-arsed and disrespectful. Changing everything is no fun, because there's no challenge and it means starting a completely new project anyways.

No.

Actually, I don't really like doing art, especially not illustrations. It's mostly just a laborsome process, just like programming. I've had to learn doing both because they're needed when realizing universe design... which is what I really wanted to do all along. I've made very few 'art for art's sake' paintings. Here's a Lizardman I drew when I was 13.

Other people's ideas are not as fun as your own, and I like, and need, to be passionate about what I do.

I knew it! Woohoo!

FAQ: Misc. Stuff

I currently have an iMac 24" with a 22" Lenovo ThinkVision. I keep the latter flipped so I can browse, do text editing, and work with other vertical documents. I also keep refs on it when painting. Painting I do in Photoshop CS3, and I use a Wacom Intous A5 Wide Special with that. It's a bit smaller than my old A4, but it works. The new tablet came with an Airbrush pen. It has a little scroll wheel which is great for controlling the opacity of the stroke.

I think it's more interesting if everything is not visible at the first pass. It creates a feeling of inexhaustibility. Actually, the entropy increases and I have surrendered to that principle. It makes it easier to update.

I'm lazy and unfocused. Too many projects. It's hard to get anything but fragments down on paper. I only upload new project pages when I have achieved a certain critical mass.

No.

The pages which are clearly public, sure.

• LEGO pieces. Especially joints for small scale mecha, and equipment for mini figs. A tabletop gaming system on top of that.
• LEGO-ish system, but for OER ZOIDS.
• 1:72 Sci-Fi miniatures line for use with 1:72 scale kits.
• Elite (space trader sandbox) game.
• Something with Tower of Druaga, Hydlide and Valkyrie no Bouken.
• Strategy game (topdown RTS) for the Nintendo DS.
• Naval RTS for handheld platforms.
• Tribes (PC).
• Robotron 2084 (arcade).
• Adventure (Atari 2600).
• A steampunk era space opera, minus the steam and punk. Maybe more Diesel era.
• A SuperCars II clone.
• Solar Jetman / Gravity Force 2 / Oids.
• Procedurally generated Elite / Noctis game.
• Some new Paradroid material.
• and more...

In a very loose sense, perhaps. I just wanted to avoid writing my name too plainly. Labels are pretty silly because they're too broad to be applied to someone you don't know. If you apply them to yourself you confine yourself, becoming ignorant, and you also risk getting aggressive when just the label is attacked.

This is a FAQ, but since I'm not responding to any particular person here, I can be a bit more honest (or blunt, or rude) than I could be in a personal correspondence.

FAQ: Art usage permissions

Sure.

I prefer to have control over how my art is published in case I want to update it. Feel free to use my tutorial in education though.