Jim's Drawing Board

Rounding out the year

2011-12-16T11:35:00.000-08:00

As usual in the life of a freelancer, this year has been a wild ride. New clients bringing new challenges, as well as trusted clients from the past returning to recreate some magic. Insanely busy and deadly slow. Onsite, Offsite, and halfway around the world. Teaching, learning and creating. All in all, not bad.

To wrap things up, here's a piece that was a departure for me in many ways, the most notable of which was that to create it, I went back to my old nemesis, Corel Painter.

more after the jump...

I've always had a love/hate relationship with Painter. The brushstrokes are exquisite, and very tunable. The blending that happens when two colors meet fairly approaches what actually happens with two pigmented liquids. There's many things to love, but for those who began their digital careers in photoshop ( as many do), the interface is a foreign land that does not suffer strangers gladly. More importantly, for the realities of a production environment, Painter just does not have the capabilities required to do many of the tasks that need to be done.

For that reason I've neglected using it for many years, but the nature of this commission inspired me to go in a different direction, so I started by laying down the rough in Painter, then bringing it into CS3 for refinement and adjustment, then back again for a new round of brushstrokes. Many rounds of this later, I have a renewed interest in the joys of Painter, and I look forward to using more in the coming year.

All the best to everyone out there

The humble paint over: more Skylanders

2011-11-28T11:39:00.000-08:00

Sometimes concepting can be a less than glamorous affair, such as when you're handed a screenshot and told to spruce things up a bit. However, there's usually a way to give things a little magic if you have a solid idea in mind.

The screenshot:

The paintovers:

and the layers that got me there ( click to animate layers )

Freelancer's Guide part 4: Release

2011-11-02T18:46:00.000-07:00

The best day for a freelance designer, aside from the day that the check clears, is the day that you get to show your work.

Usually this is a straightforward affair-once the project ships, you're in the clear to show your stuff. Sometimes, though, things aren't so smooth. The most common scenario is that the project is shelved indefinitely, which means your work is in limbo- you can't show it because in theory the project could go live at some point, but in the meantime it's just gathering dust somewhere. A canceled project on the other hand, though painful, usually means that your newly orphaned work is immediately showable.

Personally, I like to get a written release before putting anything up just to be sure. International release dates, "Art of" books and other ancillary material complicate your ability to self promote, so when in doubt, ask. I've seen more than a few artists drop something on their blogs and then get dinged for it within hours. This is especially true if your project is high profile.

The reason for all these useless words is that Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure is finally out!! It was a great project to work on and gave me a chance to work in a different style from most of the projects I do these days. I'll be posting works from this game from time to time, but for now, The Undead Dungeon!!! Make the jump for some swell pics...

Viborg, sweet Viborg

2011-10-20T10:06:00.000-07:00

Just got back from another teaching gig at the Animation Workshop. As always, very inspiring to be in a room with that much talent. I think I may get more out of it than the students ( many of which were industry pros for this masterclass ).

Here's a small sampling of the trip

much greener than the last time I was here! And slightly less cold!

more after the jump....

Geniuses at work

Yes, there is Mexican food in Denmark. Sombreros too!

critique time!

Danish Cat sez: feed me!

Urban bustle

...bucolic splendor...

...and of course, culture...Viborg has it all!

And on a somewhat unrelated note, I've recently found that if you do a google search for 'outstandingly ridiculous', this site comes up as the #2 result! I've hit the big times now!

And now for some variety

2011-09-18T23:30:00.000-07:00

just a bit of tinkering around during down time

Costume design

2011-08-17T12:45:00.000-07:00

not nearly enough of this in my work, which is odd since i do enjoy it..let's see how many I can crank out..

ship study

2011-08-10T09:38:00.000-07:00

Pulp

2011-07-27T19:28:00.000-07:00

I really should have been a pulp artist. There's really no other job where you can paint such outstandingly ridiculous subject matter and get paid for it, with the possible exception of concept artist. It's also interesting to note that it's nearly impossible to try to mock the genre because whatever dumb idea you're thinking of, some poor uncredited shmoe in the 30's already did it, and dumber.

On another note, it's been ages since I've painted anything this directly in photoshop-I highly reccomend it...no filters, gradients, or masks..just one layer and your favorite brush. Just like in the good old days, except without the toxic chemicals.

On an yet another unrelated note, I seem to have acquired the power to conjure Lee Van Cleef at will, so I have that going for me too, which is nice. I hope this power comes in handy some day.

Gardens of Babylon

2011-07-07T13:20:00.000-07:00

I have gazed on the walls of impregnable Babylon,
    along which chariots may race,
    and on the Zeus by the banks of Alphaeus.
I have seen the Hanging Gardens and the Colossos of Helios,
    the great man-made mountains of the lofty pyramids,
    and the gigantic tomb of Maussollos.
But when I saw the sacred house of Artemis that towers to the clouds,

the others were placed in the shade

For the sun himself has never looked upon its equal outside Olympus.

- Antipator of Sidon,

c. 2nd Century BC

Mobile Combat Drone

2011-06-30T10:46:00.000-07:00

quick study, about 3 hours or so

playing around

2011-06-01T13:15:00.000-07:00

Here's a quick landscape exercise from this morning...nothing fantastic but blobby alien guys floating through the sky is always fun.

The interesting thing is during the course of trying out some techniques, I stumbled onto this effect which is just the threshold filter:

I can think of about 7 jobs this effect would have really been great for...ah well...better late than never.

d'artiste: Character Design now out

2011-05-28T11:48:00.000-07:00

and featuring this oldie but goodie.

good ol' zombies...

check it out here!

Just because, that's why...

2011-05-14T10:35:00.000-07:00

Landing on Genericus IV

2011-05-04T10:30:00.001-07:00

just brushing up on the ol skills

From the archives

2011-04-20T12:31:00.000-07:00

Today we have some recently declassified concepts for a project from the good folks at Villian LLC.

Character design for games is always a tricky affair because there's a balance between tech and aesthetics that must always be watched. This becomes even more pronounced when the game is for the iPhone. Fortunately, with a strong AD, as they have in Tim Nice, it's possible to find a middle ground between being shackled by poly counts and joint limitations, and the crazy machinations of the concept artist ( what if we put rocketpacks on their feet and they could jump all over the place??)

some human trooper armor

and some crazy aliens

the tech restrictions really hit the alien designs more because all of the interesting things that would set them apart required more resources..so Tim chose to emphasize the surface material, since the shaders were the one thing that the engine was fairly forgiving in. A bit of that process can be found below:

personally, I'd have gone in a different direction with the heads, but in the end I think we got some pretty interesting designs out of it.

Branching Out

2011-03-10T18:57:00.000-08:00

Home at last

2011-03-07T10:44:00.000-08:00

So, the last week of February I had the opportunity to teach at a lovely little school called The Animation Workshop, located in a neat little town in Denmark. To say that the atmosphere here is inspiring would be the understatement of the year. The senior class is working on several short film projects which I got to advise on, and let me tell you, these guys really know their onions.

Student studio space, which will prepare them well for the chaos of industry life

some very cool maquette work going on

very cool town that I got to wander around in

some members of the Væsen team

A couple of crazy swedes who somehow wandered onto the premises

All in all, a fantastic experience and a fantastic school...I look forward to returning.

check our their work here!

You say you want a revolution....

2011-02-11T18:03:00.000-08:00

well you know, we all want to change the world...

Down Time means

2011-02-10T10:34:00.000-08:00

doing whatever stupid ideas come to mind

Social Networking

2011-01-28T18:22:00.000-08:00

Exploring the social landscape and broadening one's network, before it was cool.

First post of the year and in a long time due to some long overdue down time. The idea of strangers in a strange land seems appealing to me at the moment as I'll be one myself in short order.

Hopefully more to come soon!

Freelancer's Guide, Part 3: The Caged Bird

2010-11-30T11:25:00.000-08:00

The world of the freelance artist is alot of hurry up and wait, not unlike being at the front of a line to receive a punch in the mouth.

The interesting thing is that you never know when you're going to suddenly have a small gap of time where you've got nothing to do. You may have 3 projects going simulataneously, but there will be one day when one art director is out sick and can't give you any feedback, one is in hawaii for the week, and one is just a jerk who can't be bothered to answer your emails for days at a time. And just like that. you'll have a half a day on your hands.

You may be paralyzed by this new found free time, just as a caged bird won't immediately fly out of an open cage..you've both forgotten how to be free. At some point during the last 6 months of drawing zombie pirate robots, all those thoughts of doing a nice landscape painting or learning some new media have gone from your mind. So, the lesson for today is: do not waste these precious moments. They are sparkling jewels in otherwise muddy sludge of your schedule. Do some personal work...read some tutorials...figure out what on earth the high pass filter is for in photoshop and why anyone would want to use it. But regardless, do something.

In that spirit, here's a rough study for what will hopefully become a polished matte at some point when my schedule opens up. one of the areas which I'm sorely lacking in is matte painting, so with any luck, that'll be my area of focus in the coming year.

On another note, for anyone that remembers this guy:

He's found his way into the latest edition of Exotique, from Ballistic Publishing. This is kind of odd considering these books are generally full of sexy robots and all, but go figure. Monstro, you've hit the big time!

really?

2010-06-25T16:44:00.000-07:00

Ok so for the last 2 years I've been hearing how great Transformers was from pretty much everyone.. I refused to see it on principle, but when it was on TV recently, against my better judgement, I decided to watch. This represents my viewing experience fairly accurately:

After having lived through this supernaturally stupid cinematic experience, I would like to make the following request: if you saw, and enjoyed watching this movie, please raise your hand. Now, use that hand to slap yourself across the face repeatedly until you no longer have the urge to give your money to Micheal Bay.

thank you.

Into the Vault part 2

2010-05-19T14:34:00.000-07:00

Nothing too earth shattering today...just an old commission that seemed worth posting..

Happy PYKtWD everyone

2010-04-22T16:00:00.000-07:00

another Maddox commissioned piece from the archives

And now for something completely different

2010-03-29T13:56:00.000-07:00

Allow me to introduce you to my brief segue into scientific illustration with this tough customer: Edaphodon hesperis, a bitey fellow from the late Cretaceous, coming soon to a research paper near you!

Out of the archives again

2010-03-15T09:58:00.000-07:00

2010 has been a wild ride so far and with any luck I'll have some good new stuff to show soon, but in the meantime, here's an older work from an online game. No masterpiece to be sure, but at least it was quick and painless

and the rough

update: so I had a question on my reference procedure, so I thought I'd take a minute to go over my process. Thanks to google and other image searches, finding the reference you need is mostly a matter of how good your vocabulary is.

For example for the interior details, I knew the style of house I wanted, but you can't exactly do a search for "cool old stone house with a window". So you have to be tricky. First I tried 'fireplace' and 'hearth' and 'mantleplace' and similar terms because these houses always had these things. I then tried looking at old english pubs, which generally have the same kind of construction, but they were usually filled with people, or too fancy. It's funny, but you just never know what words will get you what you're looking for, so it's a bit of an art to keep coming up with different words that will trigger new images.After more strike outs, I found the magic words: 'slave quarters'. Alot of historical museums have empty rooms set up with period detail, and the construction and details were close enough that I could use alot of what I found.

Once I have all my material, what I find important to do is to put it all together on one sheet so I can see everything at once:

So there's some things in there for detail reference, light reference, palette reference, and human reference. I try to keep everything fairly equal in size otherwise I end up ignoring the smaller images and over emphasizing the big ones. ( in this case I broke that rule because of the importance of getting the interior correct.

So, all in all I'd say it was a couple hours for reference mining and maybe just under a couple days ( including feedback turnaround time ) to complete the image.

Into the Vault

2010-01-29T18:46:00.000-08:00

So as more of the work I'm taking on is under stricter NDAs, I'm heading to the vault today to find some stuff that hasn't been shown before.

So this piece started life as a project pitch image, done fairly hastily for the purpose. Then a few months ago during a lull in my work I pulled this out and worked up some of the elements I was never happy with and pulled together the background a bit better. So, give it a few more years and maybe I'll fix some more stuff and I'll finally have something.

On an unrelated note, as professional work takes up more of my time, it gets harder to find time for personal work, so I have to make a conscious effort to make room in the schedule for it. So here's my list of priority works that I'd like to get to this year:

- more zombie related work
- a 40's pulp cover piece with dames and whatnot
- a follow up to the whale sub piece that follows the continuing zany adventures of the whale sub
- something giant robot related

That's all I got for now, but I'm open to suggestions if anyone's got any bright ideas.

New Year, New Stuff

2010-01-08T12:19:00.000-08:00

So in the name of progress, I've finally gotten myself a new wacom tablet, finally retiring my trusty old 6x8 which I've had for about 8 years. In it's place, I've gotten a shiny new intuos 4 tablet in a large size:

It's pretty nice with a cool display and customizable stuff and even an assortment of nibs to give different feels across the surface of the tablet. It also can be flipped to accommodate south paws, which is much appreciated.

Of course, getting a new wacom always takes a bit of time to get used to, so whenever I've gotten new ones at work, I usually open up a new doc and doodle away a bit to get the feel right. So that's what I did today and in the interest of ringing in the new year, I'm posting it here for your viewing pleasure:

Now, you may be asking yourself: " Is this a picture of Chewbacca puking on Charles Darwin?"

Let me assure you that is exactly what that is.

Year 1

2009-12-18T11:43:00.000-08:00

Exactly one year ago, my employment at a small game studio in the bay area ended after 8 years.

My time there was invaluable in my early development as an artist, but you can only trade progress for security for so long before it takes it's toll on you. After awhile, the niche you carve out for yourself becomes your cage, and you become frozen in place in exchange for a weekly check, fresh organic fruits in the lunchroom, and a generous discount at participating bay area YMCAs.

In January of this year, I began a strange journey in the land of the freelance illustrator. After years of meetings, spreadsheets, and progress reports being my primary concern, illustration seemed like a foreign place. Now it's December and well over 100 works later, here I am. And, minus much work which was either redundant, in progress, or under NDAs, here is what I did:

I tried to keep things in chronological order but about halfway through it became a free for all. Much thanks goes out to the clients who were able to help me grow in this new year, and thanks to anyone who might have taken the time to drop by my blog along the way.
I’m looking forward to year 2.

-j

Lighting Studies

2009-12-11T11:23:00.000-08:00

So I was rooting around for something to put up and I found this little study I'd done several months ago for practice. It's not gonna set the world on fire but I think I got some nice time of day feel out of these.

So in the process of digging around, I came across all the work I'd done this year. Now a couple weeks ago, a friend happened to ask how many pieces I'd done this year, and I realized that I had no idea, but I guessed that about 50 was a reasonable number. As it turns out it was alot more than that, and it was quite a shock to see it all together. It's been a heck of a journey for me this year and to be able to look back on it all at once is quite an experience. So, for my final post of the year, I'll be putting it all together in one image for my readers ( if any ) and for posterity.

Stay tuned and check back soon for some montagey goodness.

As promised

2009-11-16T13:15:00.000-08:00

Our 26th president never looked so good...

On another note, sorry about the lack of updates but I'm in too-many clients-at-once-madness right now. Hopefully some better and more frequent updates are to follow if I don't fall over in the next 2 weeks.

Decisions...

2009-10-22T12:01:00.000-07:00

Since alot of the stuff I'm doing is under wraps for awhile, I'm going through some stuff that I did earlier in the year which I never got to show. So I narrowed it down to this piece ( a portrait of Maddox as Moses ) or a illustration of Teddy Roosevelt in spandex underpants.

After much deliberation I settled on this piece because I feel that the Roosevelt piece needs more of a write up than I'm able to give at this time, and I don't want to compromise the dignity of the image.

So anyways, here's Maddox as Moses, complete with in progess work ( Courtesy Maddox and Alphabet of Manliness extended Edition) .

Freelancer's Guide part 2: Deadlines

2009-10-08T12:03:00.000-07:00

The Second Rule of Freelancing: The best jobs will almost kill you, but you'll be glad you took them.

At some point every freelancer will get the call: I need these 10 things in 10 hours. Yes, I know it's impossible so here's some extra money.

I always dread these, but a small part of me is excited at the challenge, followed a few hours later by the part of me that wants to punch myself for always taking these jobs. It's amazing what some crushing pressure can do to your work. To that end, here's some 1 hour pieces done under just those conditions..not masterpieces by any means but not too bad all things considered ( All work courtesy In Character Games ).

This may be the best crazy guy expression I've ever done.

Fully half the hour on this piece was spent lovingly detailing the star wars blanket. I think this one may be my favorite.

Not sure how good of a shield my monitor would make, but it works for this guy.

Car Salesman, Zombie Killer, Bad Ass

good ol containment suits- no face to draw...

OK at this point my hand was cramping up so I used a previous sketch of the background.

Man that brought up a bunch of painful memories..you know what, I'm never doing this again!

Swingsetasauras at Sunset

2009-09-21T12:33:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, I guess there just isn't a whole lot to say. Hopefully the illustration does the talking.

I hope he catches whatever he's hunting.

The Freelancer's Guide, part 1

2009-09-11T10:20:00.000-07:00

Freelancing is an interesting exercise in controlled chaos. If you ask me it's a miracle that anything ever gets done on a freelance basis, but that's a subject for another day. The subject today is the First Rule of Freelancing, and that is: whichever idea you like the least is the one the one the client will pick. Consider this set of sketches that I did for In Character Games for the game After the Dead which you can play on facebook here.

These sketches are listed in the order I did them. Now when I'm doing sketches unless I know exactly what I want, my first idea is usually not my best, but I throw it in anyways. Personally, I think sketches 2-5 each bring a unique idea and mood to the narrative of the game which was related to me. I felt the first was a bit flat somehow, which of course guarantees that it's the one the client picked, which is what happened.
Fortunately, the axillary to rule 1 is that you can always make it better, and fortunately the client knew what he wanted for the most part. So with a little back and forth, we managed to find a way to achieve all of our goals which resulted in the follow piece:

and thus all was well in the land of the zombies.

The 13th month

2009-08-24T12:11:00.000-07:00

So August 25th is a significant date as it marks the release date of Maddox's latest book and calendar. If you know who Maddox is this is doubtlessly great news and if you don't, take a look here.

In the meantime, to commemorate the event, here's one of the images that will appear in the calender.

Oftentimes, when attempting to create an image with content this awesome, failure and personal injury can result. Fortunately under the tutelage of Maddox, we were able to safely contain the awesomeness without any bodily harm to me.

When he first approached me about this particular image, Maddox had only a vague concept in mind. Although he knew he wanted an image of something getting kicked in the groin region, he was not sure what, nor by what. So after an exhaustive research phase, we discovered that the most empirically awesome participants would be a shirtless guitar playing guy in the role of the kicker, and a rhinoceros as the kickee.

After completing the vignette, we could tell something was missing but we weren't sure what. Here is where the importance of having a good working relation with your client really comes into play. Maddox did some research and found the awesomeness could be increased by a factor of 6 with the addition of a nuclear mushroom cloud in the background. The rest was history.

So on the 25th go out and buy the extended version of Alphabet of Manliness and the accompanying Calender of Manliness soon thereafter ( in which this image appears in it's high resolution semi-gloss glory ).

More images to come!

quicky

2009-08-17T13:36:00.000-07:00

please...think of the plumbers

Whale Sub, or A Little Sprezzatura

2009-07-27T09:12:00.000-07:00

Sprezzatura is the fine art of making a difficult thing look effortless. Although I'm more of an expert in making easy tasks more difficult, I'm finding that illustration is an excercise in sprezzatura.

This piece, creatively titled "Whale Sub" was a careful study of putting just enough information to imply that this is a complex piece of machinery. I went through several iterations where I discovered that just one extra pipe or detail made it look labored and over worked. The same with the decking, where I initially tried laying in individual planks to convey the feel of the hull. In the end, it was far more more important to get the gloss from the wetness of the deck and the water dripping down the deck. I'd post up some of the in progress stuff but it's generally a horrible mess of trial and error.

And besides I wouldnt want to ruin the sprezzatura...

"The Pilgrim", or "1 day Painting Step by Step"

2009-07-22T16:55:00.001-07:00

Done for the card: The Pilgrim, creation time: roughly 8 hours including thumbs and reference

step 1: create a quick thumbnail with color and value compostion worked out and some detail represented. Light is very important at this stage.

Step 2: Realize that the client is talking about the middle eastern religious type of pilgrim, not the thanksgiving type. Repeat step 1.

Step 3: After approval, continue to refine the color palette, starting with some photo elements if necessary.( note: the use of photos is sometimes a necessary compromise when working under tight deadlines. It can be thought of similarly to underwear: effective when used properly, but don't let anyone see it)

Steps 4-6: refine the things you can, kick out the fancy-dancy stuff you can't get to.

Step 7: exhale.

The Double Agent

2009-07-17T10:43:00.000-07:00

So I've recently been working on some illustrations for an online card game called The Far Wilds and they've been kind enough to let me post my work so I'll put up some of my more exciting ones in the coming weeks.

These paintings have been a bit of a departure for me for a couple reasons. First, when shown in game they are reduced to 250x250 pixels, which is really forcing me to think and compose in a very efficient way-when you only have 62k pixels to grab someone's attention, you really have to hit them over the head on first sight and draw them in. Also the turnover on these is really high..I'm generally spending 6-8 hours per painting, including reference gathering. This is a bit of a departure for me as I generally like to spend a bit more time to really work things out.

One thing I really like about these assignments is the illustrative nature. Often I get not much more than a card title or a brief description of the concept, and I've basically got one moment in time to capture it- in this case, the card was 'the double agent'. I used the theatrical conept of an 'aside' where an actor will communicate directly with the audience to relay information that is not known to the other characters. Here, the foreground character is giving us a wink to let us know the other guy is about to get the ol' shank.

Finally,here's some in progress stuff which i've been promising to save more of, now in glorious GIF format. one thing to note is that i think i lost a bit of the original expression of the foreground guy as I went from sketch to completion...rats.

on a side note, special thanks to a certain A. Lluch for technical support in the crazy world of blogger.

Volcanic Refinery and Custom Brushes

2009-07-08T10:33:00.000-07:00

A Fairly quick ( 6 hours ) piece intended to be the basis of a matte painting sometime in the future..
The huge advantage of PS these days is being able to create and modify custom brushes so quickly and easily. Back in the day if you wanted high frequency detail you needed to select it out of a photo and sort of stamp that around. Now with the magical brush creator, it's become an essential tool for me. I am constantly making brushes and also trying out other people's brushes to get new interesting textures and marks.

here's an early stage shot where you can see alot of raw splooshy marks just being put down...many of these splooshes are nice enough ( in the cloud areas for example) that I can leave them as is in the final. Of course when I take it to a finished matte then alot of photo material will be mixed in, and even then the organic edges of the custom brushes help to transition into the photo material.

If you haven't explored the brush engine much, just do a google search..well worth your time.

process work

2009-06-30T10:53:00.000-07:00

For a change, I thought I'd put up some process work on the last piece since some people have asked how I work. For me the first step is simultaneously working thumbnails to try to match what's in my head as close as I can, sketches of principal characters or props, and reference gathering. At this stage i'm working pretty small..maybe 500 by 500 or so.

here are some explorations of the staging and lighting. At this point I know what the scene will be, and I pretty much know I want a low vantage point. Now I need to figure out in a sloppy way how it all fits together...here's a sampling of pose work and character exploration sketches

and finally the final lead up to the finished piece. Laying down the perspective grid is a pain, but necessary for something architectural. I'm working at about2000 high by whatever wide, because my final piece is going to be twice that, and there's a huge amount of layers at this stage which would choke my machine to death.

after blocking in all the elements, it's just a matter of polish. Ordiniarily there would be more thorough color studies in here, but with the night lighting i knew what I wanted so I just went with it.

Well, hopefully this is something interesting...

The Portly Thief

2009-06-23T12:30:00.001-07:00

who would think to look up for a portly thief?

If there's any interest I can post some of the process stuff on this in the coming days. It was a fun piece to work on and very challenging to put it all together.

I don't know what's in that bag, but it's really really valuable.

Guard

2009-06-05T15:19:00.001-07:00

This piece is for an upcoming scene I'm working on where a guard is looking for someone who's just escaped. Interestingly, I originally had a totally different emotion in mind when I started this. Initially I was going with a ' I'm gonna keel you!' feel for the guy, with a sneering, teeth bared look. But as I was working on the face, the personality of the character established itself and ' I keel you' was replaced by ' alright, where did that bastard go?'

and hopefully in the end that's the right call for the piece.

On another note, if I had to pick just one group of guys to teach you everything you needed to know as an artist, I would say to look at the Orientalists. No foolin. With Sargeant, Bouguereau, Waterhouse, and Gerome amongst their ranks, you could sure do worse for mentors.

Monstro

2009-05-15T17:44:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I wonder if the earliest concepts artists had it easier. If you needed to design a troll or something, you could pretty much do whatever you wanted and it would probably be pretty original. Big ugly guy, maybe a club in his hand, maybe giant feets, and viola! Everyone else is painting flowers and popes and whatnot, I'm pretty sure this hasn't been done before...

The reason this came to my mind is when I set about to do a fantasy character, how difficult it was to avoid making something that had been done a hundred times before. If you think about it, the fantasy genre is pretty hasn't changed all that much in the time it's been around..and if you don't believe me take a look at Rackham sometime..if you ask me that's ready to be modeled rigged and animated.

Anyways, with all that bla bla out of the way, here's my latest character piece. The narrative I was trying to build around this guy is that he's been on his own wandering for some time and has to cobble together his armor from guys he defeats..I layered the armour in such a way that you could see a progression of styles over the thousands of years he's walked the earth..from bronze greek armour to plated horse armour ( on the last variant )

also I just gotta say it's still a bit of a thrill for me when I get metal to look just right...

New Character Work

2009-05-04T14:24:00.000-07:00

So in my ongoing effort to refine my body of work, I'm going to be switching to characters for a couple posts, in this case with some model paintovers. First up, a couple of post apocalyptic survivors. I wanted to see if I could get away from the 'mad max' look and try for something a little more utilitarian and plausable for a near future scenario. For a good but depressing read on a scenario like this , try 'The Road' by Cormac McCarthy. ( actually, I think reading that got me thinking along these lines to begin with )

For the first character I pretty much knew what I wanted but for the 2nd guy I knew I wanted something a little crazier. I knew I wanted to incorporate license plates ( keeping with a theme of common items being used for survival purposes), but I wasn't sure how far to go with it..in the end I figured the most practical use for them was as a sort of a stab proof vest. There may be further guys appearing in this series if I think of anything good...

In the ghetto

2009-03-27T14:28:00.001-07:00

an attempt at a bit more polish and atmosphere

Soldier design

2009-03-09T18:32:00.000-07:00

In the future, soldiers will be far sexier than we could have imagined

Scene at Sunset

2009-03-09T18:14:00.000-07:00

Trying out some new brushes here

Tanky Robots

2009-03-09T18:10:00.000-07:00

or Roboty Tanks? you decide.

Guns and ammo

2009-03-09T17:51:00.000-07:00

a couple of recent gun designs.

pew pew