Alan Martin

@alanmartin-art

Artist | Animator from N. Ireland Worked as a 3d animator & pretend rigger for games, film VFX & short films since 2011. Now back to the literal drawing board.

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Alan Martin@alanmartin-art· 15d

My painting of a Green-tailed Sunbird for this month's ##birdwhisperer Challenge. A5 Gouache on grey card #BirdArt #Art #bskyart #gouache

Realistic painting of a male Green-tailed Sunbird perched on the end of a broken vertical branch. His body is facing the viewer but his head is turned to the left. He has a vibrant yellow breast, black cheeks and there are some flecks of red at his neck. His head has blue/teal iridescent feathers and he has a long curved beak.

Alan Martin@alanmartin-art· 16d

Day 28: Animal #ArtRepostJuly There once was a hen who liked her eggs scrambled, And when she got hungry she went out and rambled. She'd sneak and she'd snoop, For an unguarded coop, And with a feathery scoop, off she ambled. #animation #b3d #birdart #poem #poetry

Alan Martin@alanmartin-art· 18d

Day 26: Realistic #ArtRepostJuly (Another one?!) A small gouache painting of two Black-Cheeked Lovebirds I created for the #BirdWhisperer challenge in February. Reference photo credit: Bernhard Jaeck #Art #BirdArt

Two Black-cheeked Lovebirds perched on a thin branch against a green background. They have mostly green plumage, although the tops of their heads are red, their cheeks are black and they have a bright orange patch just below their throats. They have vibrant red beaks. They're nestled against each other and one is nibbling at the other's beak.

Alan Martin@alanmartin-art· 18d

Day 26: Realistic #ArtRepostJuly This is Nellie, an elephant I rigged and animated for some film VFX shots. The real Nellie lives in Canada but the film was set in Belfast, so a CG double was needed for a few (very) brief scenes that had to be shot locally. #animation

Alan Martin@alanmartin-art· 21d

If you see this, post a monster 🍳

Alan Martin@alanmartin-art· 24d

Day 21: Blue #ArtRepostJuly It's said that if you were to stand on a Blu Tack Beetle, accidentally or otherwise, your posters would be forever cursed to fall off the wall. #b3d #animation #loop #3d #art #beetle

Alan Martin@alanmartin-art· 28d

Day 17: Melancholy #ArtRepostJuly #banshee #illustration #character #art

Pencil sketch with muted digital colours of a young girl sitting on top of an old gravestone. She's wearing a pale old traditional Irish dress and has extremely long purple/grey hair that fades into a wispy trail. She has a sad expression and is absent-mindedly making a daisy chain.
This was a character concept for an unmade animated short about a young Banshee.

Alan Martin@alanmartin-art· 28d

Trees [continued] More outdoor sketchbook scribbleage ✒️ 🌳 🌞 Still trying to find the drawing style that's hiding in the back of my brain, so I'm using the tried & tested method of repeatedly banging my head against a wall to see what falls out. #art #penandink #b&wart #nature #trees #ink #sketch

Pen and ink sketchbook drawiing of an Ash tree, so a black line drawing on a white background. I've used a dense scribbley approach to render the foliage.

Alan Martin@alanmartin-art· 29d

Tree 5 of ? in a continuing series of outdoor sketches. Sketchbook drawing of an Ash tree. #art #penandink #b&wart #nature #trees #ink #sketch

Pen and ink illustration of an Ash tree in a field with some adjoining hedges and a crop field behind it. Its on a double page spread in my sketchbook. I drew this early in the morning so the tree is casting a shadow on the hedge its growing from.

Alan Martin@alanmartin-art· Jul 14

Day 14: Bone #ArtRepostJuly Reverse Skeletor #art #sketch #character #fantasy #illustration

Illustration of Skeletor; arch nemesis of He-Man in the Masters of the Universe franchise. Skeletor is normally depicted as having blue skin and wearing purple armour. Like most fantasy armour it doesn't seem to be designed to cover any actual vital organs. It comprises of a pair of boots, a belt with some kind of spartan-esque loin cloth, and a leathery poncho with dangly bits over each shoulder. He wears a cape (sometimes) and under his cowl he has a yellow skull for a face- hence his name. In this instance I've drawn him with a yellow skeleton for a body and the blue face of a bewildered, miserable, middle-aged man.

Alan Martin@alanmartin-art· Jul 12

Tree 4 of ? in a continuing series of outdoor sketches. A5 sketchbook drawing of a very dead tree. #art #penandink #b&wart #nature #trees #ink #sketch

Black and white illustration of a dead tree from my sketchbook. The tree has no leaves and what branches remain are very dry and brittle looking. It's trunk is conferred in ivy and is partially overgrown by some hedgerow.

Alan Martin@alanmartin-art· Jul 11

Tree 3 of ? More outdoor sketching. A5 pen and ink sketchbook drawing of a birch tree. #art #penandink #b&wart #nature #trees #ink #sketch

Black and white sketcbook illustration of a birch tree.

Alan Martin@alanmartin-art· Jul 10

Tree 2 of ? (the adventure continues) A5 Pen and Ink illustration of an Ash tree growing out of, and possibly back into, some hedgerow. #art #penandink #b&wart #nature #trees #ink #sketch

Pen and ink illustration of an Ash tree. Its a bit lop-sided as its more sparse on the side that doesn't face the sun

Alan Martin@alanmartin-art· Jul 10

Day 10: Above #ArtRepostJuly Best with sound on but with a warning that its a bit loud #b3d #blender #animation

Alan Martin@alanmartin-art· Jul 9

Tree 1 of ? Starting a set of tree sketches. I'll see how it goes, but I'm finding the process quite therapeutic. Plan is to eventually loosen up my drawing a bit- just inking and rolling with any mistakes (like sticking in a last minute crow 🤡) #art #penandink #b&wart #nature #trees #ink #sketch

Pen and ink illustration of a very dead tree. It has no leaves and the branches are drooping, dry and brittle. It's growing out of some hedgerow and is covered in the ivy that most likely murdered it.
There's a normally a crow perched somewhere around the top, so I added him in. He thinks perching on a dead, spooky-looking tree makes him look cool and he's correct.

Alan Martin@alanmartin-art· Jul 8

Took advantage of the sunshine to do some outdoor scribbles #art #humanart #penandink #b&wart #nature

Page from my sketchbook with some ink sketches of trees. Top left and right show individual trees, and across the bottom half is a drawing of a wall of dense trees and shrubbery with a stark white beech tree in the middle.

Alan Martin@alanmartin-art· Jun 15

Reverse-Skeletor 💀 #sketch #art

Alan Martin@alanmartin-art· Jun 11

Wee Burrowing Owl I drew a while ago. Will revisit someday armed with all the lessons from this attempt. #penandink #BirdArt #art

Pen and ink illustration of a small burrowing owl perched on an old pointed and worn fence post that has a heart-shaped hole in it.

Alan Martin@alanmartin-art· Jun 6

If you see this, post your bird art. #BirdArt #art #arttrain #birds #artsky

Pen and ink illustration of a Gyrfalcon perched on a tree stump, originally created for the January 2026 BirdWhisperer challenge. I deliberately drew its head to a larger proportion that reality, thinking it would add character. If that character is 'looks weird' then I absolutely succeeded.

Gouache painting of a caricatured European Green Woodpecker. I say 'caricatured'- his head's just bigger than normal, which helps to show off his fancy red mohawk.
Original reference photo was from the Bird Whisperer monthly challenge.

Alan Martin@alanmartin-art· May 29

Great Horned Owl WIP #BirdArt #OwlArt #art

Photo of a work-in-progress pencil sketch of a Great Horned Owl.

Alan Martin@alanmartin-art· May 18

[Sir David Attenborough voice] 'They'll continue this bizarre ritual for about an hour, by which time, both will be dead: the puffer fish from exhaustion; the seahorse simply from embarrassment. We don't know why they do this. Puffer fish are idiots' #b3d #blender #animation

Alan Martin@alanmartin-art· May 15

If your rig has the equivalent of heel-roll and toe-roll, then there's a technique I used that saved a lot of pain. Its wordy, so I put it in the alt text. Hope it helps/makes sense

To avoid confusion- in case I call my controllers something random you've never heard of:

heel-roll = tilts the foot up onto its heel

foot-roll = bends the foot up onto the ball/arch (I've seen it called ball-roll too)

toe-roll = tilts the foot up onto the tip of the toe

If you can, avoid rotating the IK foot control- might sound odd, but let it take care of the translation only.

For rotation, use heel-roll to lower the front foot from contact-pose into the down-pose. In the attached image you can see the foot control is flat on the ground while the foot itself is tilted upwards. That way you only have one channel/curve to deal with to smooth out the knee pop. I found that if you rotate the foot control then you have a bunch of translation and rotation curves that are all influencing each other and it can get messy.

Same for the back foot- use toe-roll to tilt the foot as it lifts from down-pose into passing-pose. You may get some fighting here as you dial off foot-roll and dial on toe-roll, but its still only two channels/curves to clean up.

It could be argued that this technique is creatively limiting in that it forces you to keep the feet facing directly forward, but I rarely found that to be an issue- certainly on general locomotion.

Alan Martin@alanmartin-art· May 14

Rustle Rustle Rustle #PenAndInk #art #humanart #nature

Pen and ink drawing of three birch trees in ascending height, left to right.
They're in front of a low hedge and their leaves are blowing in the wind.

Alan Martin@alanmartin-art· Mar 12

If you see this, post a robot.

Alan Martin@alanmartin-art· Mar 6

Some outside scribbling. Despite the sunshine, March is far too early for that carry on 🥶 Now convinced that 'au plein air' is french for 'there's a drip at the end of your nose' #art #penandink

Pen and ink sketchbook drawing of a hill with a ploughed field, some trees and hedgerows

Alan Martin@alanmartin-art· Feb 25

15x15cm gouache painting of a pair of Black-Cheeked Lovebirds for the February 2026 #BirdWhisperer challenge. Reference photo credit: Bernhard Jaeck #gouache #BirdArt #Art

Alan Martin@alanmartin-art· Jan 30

Late to the party as usual but happy 10th anniversary to the #BirdWhisperer Project! 🎉 Such a great source of inspiration! This is my submission for the January #Gyrfalcon challenge. Great excuse to finally try a dip pen! #BirdArt #Bird #PenAndInk #Art #illustration

Pen and ink illustration of a Gyrfalcon perched on a tree stump

Alan Martin@alanmartin-art· Jan 15

'Stan by Me' is a short film made entirely in Blender Available to stream now on Disney+ tinyurl.com/23j66z9j Its not a film about old men in speedos, but its also not NOT that #b3d #blender #shortfilm #animation

Alan Martin@alanmartin-art· Jan 15

Its got romance. Romance made entirely in #Blender (sound on 🔊)

Alan Martin@alanmartin-art· Nov 11

If you see this, post your bird art 🐦