Borderlands 2

Hi guys, I'm back again.
"So soon?" You ask?... Yeah I... Don't get out much...
Anywhoooo... I would like to talk about something which has inspired my recent works, which I mentioned in my previous post, but I will show you again should you be a newcomer...

As some of you may know, I am a massive fan of comic-books, ESPECIALLY Marvel comic books. And because of this, I have spent a lot of time attempting and re-attempting to draw in a comic-book style, to no avail. Here are a few of my previous attempts:

Sorry they are so disorganised, I tried to put them in order, but Blogger and I had a creative disagreement. They are basically my attempts over the years, some are okay and others are... Not-so-okay...

I then went on to play one of the, in my opinion, greatest games this year...

Thats right, Borderlands 2!

Like many, I hadn't enjoyed the first borderlands much, it got boring QUICK. But I did love the style, A LOT. Which is the only reason I gave Borderlands 2 a shot. Right from the beginning with this game, I could see that this was a HUUUUGE improvement over the last. I love the character classes and the game is even funnier than before. There are a lot of easter eggs thrown in there too (like the minecraft cave and the hangover-referencing psycho). People do complain, however, that they spend a lot of time looting and it annoys them... This is a ridiculous excuse not to play an amazing game. You don't really NEED to loot, unless you want money or ammo, you can be pretty positive that there won't be any weapons better than the ones you have unless you come across one of the big rare item chests. However, I don't see this as a bad thing at all, I'm an obsessive compulsive gamer, which means I make sure I explore every nook and cranny of a level and cant help but loot every lootable object in the vicinity. Overall, I would definitely recommend this game to others, ESPECIALLY if you played the first one, just so you know how much of an improvement this is. It took me a long time to persuade my best friend to play it just because he was so disappointed by the first one in relation to the hype it received. 

But, I digress, the whole reason I brought this up was to tell you what inspired the works I've been doing lately. I simply wanted to try and emulate the borderlands style using 2Dimensional media. I don't feel I was successful in doing so, however I feel I WAS successful in producing my own comic style as a bi-product, one which I am very proud of and happy with. I like the style of this game so much, I got one of the release posters from work and brought it home to sport proudly upon my bedroom wall. It's also a good creative motivator when I'm procrastinating, just to look up at that is enough to recharge my creative energy.

That's pretty much it for today's post, thank you so much for reading.

My First Post

Hey there, and welcome to my very first blog post.
My real name, if you must know it, is Connor Handley. I have achieved little in my life so far, but aim to use my creative talents to bring me some sense of accomplishment. I have attempted, using many medias, to bring my works to the eyes of many. The first of these, which I have updated since my 9th year of education, is my deviantArt account, which you can find here: http://www.iamherecozidraw.deviantart.com/ This contains a large gallery of my work from the past 5 or so years, however, I've neglected to update it lately as I keep forgetting, it doesn't get much 3rd party attention. My second major failed attempt to draw attention to my works was via YouTube, if you would like to see my channel and the unconcluded and abandoned videos which it holds, go here: http://www.youtube.com/user/TheDblTap. My third attempt, while not a complete failure, is still somewhat unsuccesful, although I feel it grows more succesful with each follower. I of course, speak of my Twitter page, which you can find here: https://twitter.com/TheDblTap
So, as you have probably noticed, the need to create this blog comes from some strange, deep-set desire to get my work seen by others, to make it all seem worth it, to make my life, and the amount of it which has been spent hunched over a laptop on photoshop creating ever-improving artworks, has not been a total and utter waste. So I reach out to you people of the internet, you glorious wonderful people, in the hopes that you will not only enjoy the work which I bring to you, but feel the desire, which I do, to share my works with  people, to tweet and re-tweet about it, to spread the word of how the somewhat unseen Connor Handley has dedicated his life to the alias of 'DoubleTap' and how his every waking hour is spent producing works of art, both terrible and wonderful, all with the purpose of bringing wonder, amusement and inspiration to hundreds, even thousands, of people he doesn't even know exists.
But of course, I always expect much more than reality brings forth, I'm a very naive person and it will forever be my downfall.
Now, to get onto what, I expect, many of you came here for, my artworks. I will not talk of everything I have produced since the dawn of my talents, I will simply begin where you have joined me, in the present. If you should ever desire to delve into my creative past, I would suggest that you click on the afforementioned deviantArt link posted above, and hope that you find just a few minutes of amusement from the creations I have stored there. But, as I said, I shall begin with present works and we, I and whomever wishes to join me, shall venture into my future, untold and unknown creations together. At the moment, there are two main projects which I have dedicated myself to. The first of these is a collection of digitally produced portraits I have painted within photoshop.

These images are in order of when I drew them, as you can see they progressively improve. The first one, the one which started it all, I actually did because I was on Cobie Smulder's twitter (as I am a huge fan of both the Avengers and How I Met Your Mother) and I saw that she had been retweeting and enjoying a lot of the fan-made artworks of her characters, I decided to give this a shot in the hopes she would see it, alas, she did not... The second painting, I did because Barney Stinson is my favourite character from my favourite TV Show (HIMYM). At the time, I thought this was the best thing I ever did, but as it turns out, it paled in comparisson to what I was about to produce... The Doctor Who painting, this painting proved a huge success on twitter, with over 50 retweets and equal amounts of favourites I was incredibly happy with the result. This, so far, remains to be one of the best paintings I have ever done. The next painting, of my favourite actor in one of my favourite movies (I drew him as Sherlock Holmes because I have drawn Iron Man/Tony Stark many times...), while a great painting, was still not as good as the Dr Who one. Although I am especially proud of the detailing on his waistcoat. The final painting (so far) is of Jim Parsons as Sheldon Cooper. I am not very pleased with this painting, 3rd party onlookers frequently tell me this is a great painting, but I feel it is missing something... It doesn't quite look like him...

Unfortunately, while I still uphold this as an 'ongoing project', most of my time has been spent at my new part-time job and working on my second project. I do not wish to give much away about this project as I am hoping it will become something much greater than originally intended, but what I will offer you is this image...

One last thing I'd like to mention before I end this post, this is, in my own opinion, the best thing I've ever done, I did it as practice at first, around the time I was doing the digital portraits, but it soon turned out to be a really great, realistic digital painting and one of my best pieces, EVER...

Okay, well, thank you all so much if you read this, and please, continue to read on, I'll try to keep these a little less wordy in the future, I just had a lot to say for my first post. Don't forget to follow me on Twitter! @TheDblTap