Busy, Busy, Busy!

I have a lot of work to show you guys, this lot above is just the tip of the iceburg! The top character sketch was me jumping ahead a little bit, on monday I started to do some head skecthes for my nord race, just to get ready for doing the full designs, my second design got me so pumped full of ideas though, that I had to do a full sketch. 

The background behind the character is that what with the dawning of ragnarok, the nords have become very paranoid, thus their religious cults have began to take more impact upon their daily lives. The most notable of these cults is "the brotherhood of silence", they dwell in great monuments near the sea and any body of water, believing they are always near an area of cleansing. 

That's about it so far, (the environment sketch is an idea I had for these monuments) but as I keep designing more keeps coming to me, my projects beginning to feel more like a lived in world, than just a bunch of random images! Till next time. 

Practise Makes Perfect!

So I wasn't lying when I said I am going to keep practising until I perfect the human body! These sketches are from the past few days, each page took about a couple of hours. I am slowly beginning to get to grips with the techniques I have been researching, such as using the Loomis method for getting the head proportions right. Overall I am really pleased with how its going, when I feel fully comfortable I am going to start getting back into creating my own characters with these new techniques. Till next time.

P.S: I don't think myslef some genius at drawing, far from it, but if you ever feel like you can't draw or that you want to give up, like I did on monday, don't! Getting good at art takes time and a lot of patience, just keep at it every day and it wont be long before you're creating masterpieces!  

Understanding The Human Head

Sorry I have been pretty quiet lately but there is a reason, I promise! That reason is a lot to do with the above pictures, so my main passion in games is characters, I love creating weird, unique and interesting people to fill game worlds, my main problem is that my faces always look so dam weird! To rectify this I have been doing loads of studies on the facial features. There are a lot more sketchbook pictures that go with these but I didn't want to bore you guys with all the technical stuff, you come here for pretty pictures right!? (Well I hope!) With these done I am going to hopefully attempt a portrait next combining all that I have learned from my studies, after that characters shouldn't be a problem!......well apart from hands, posture and proportions but I will get to those, one step at a time. Till next time.  

P.s - If your'e interested where I got all the information to do these I followed a lot of this guys tutorials, the guys brilliant, helped me loads! 

http://www.youtube.com/user/ProkoTV

Final Batch

Finished up my final batch of sword designs yesterday, was really trying to make some more unique blade shapes with this group, which I think shows in the far right two. All these weapons are for the Nordic race in my IP, that's why they all share similar designs and certain things like skulls and talismans. Tonight I am going to do some head mock ups to go with these designs, as I have a real strong image of what I want the race to look like in my head, thinking of this race as a collection of people who travel about and never really stay in one place for a long time. Design wise I am thinking of having them carry lots of equipment with all sorts of knick knacks upon them. Till next time. 

More Weapon Designs

Enjoyed designing swords so much yesterday that I created another four today! With these four I really tried to push the detail more, I wanted to make them look a lot more bespoke than the others, I think I might go all out on the details on the last four too because I much prefer these four to last nights. Design wise I really tried to push the fantastical elements a bit more, which is probably most evident in the far left one, where the sword has this huge chunk of ice anchored onto the side of it. Will try and get the other four finished this week, if other projects don't get in the way. Till next time. 

Weapons, Glorious Weapons!

Realised today that I have less than ten weeks till first semester ends! So design mode has fully kicked in for my honours project. Above you can see the twelve initial sword silhouette sketches I created for my "God race", was trying all sorts of things in this phase, from curved blades, to big world of warcraft style broadswords. Was always trying to achieve an ice effect with the weapons though, that's why some of them are so misshapen. 

These are four of my favourites from the silhouette sketches, I took them and simply lowered the opacity on them and sketched over them, going to take the sword second from the left and fully render it next, lots of frost effects and glowly blue bits to come! Till next time.

Frustrated Doodle

Been in a really funny mood today, well for the past few days so decided to take my mind of things. My "brain turned off" paintings tend to be a bit weird and whacky as you can probably tell from above. The whole thing was only took a about half an hour so that's why it's so dam rough, it's nothing serious though, just trying to blow off some steam. Till next time.