The Duke's Watchtowers Final Design

 

After some great feedback from the initial designs I did for my steampunk watchtowers I decided to do a much more detailed pass. The only criticism I got previously was that people wanted to see the watchtowers in a 3/4 view, so that was the first thing I went to remedy. I think you'll agree that they look much better this way than previously!

 

Design wise I stuck to the initial design of #1 from the last image, mainly due to it being a favourite among every body on twitter. Obviously I couldn't help and make some variations, always remember, re iterate, re iterate and re iterate. The main thing I want to push was the idea that these are functioning machines powered by steam, so I added a lot more chimneys and smoke stacks and also made them look very weathered, with soot stains, oil leaks and dints all over the metal. Finally I added some hints back to "the duke" the man responsible for building these, mainly in the form of the heraldry. I'm really beginning to form an idea of where I want this IP to go but you're going to have to wait a bit longer before I reveal it. Till next time!

Art Test

 

So I have not been feeling so great for the past few days, dam winter bringing along it's infectious colds! Which means I haven't got a lot to show you, so I thought it was time I showed you guys an art test I did for a job, a few weeks back. As you can guess I didn't get the job but it was a great learning experience.

 

The brief was pretty straight forward, create a environment and two tank sprites for a top down tank battler, the theme and design was completely up to me. As you can see above I ended up going for a sci-fi/war of the worlds vibe, where the player would play as a human tank battling invading alien forces.

 

This was a lot of firsts for me, sprite design and top down design were things I had never done before, so I just approached them in the same way I would do any other design. I created about eight designs for each tank sprite and then rendered out my favourite one, trying to make sure they were easy to read, as you would view them from the top. The environment was again designed with readability in mind, the player needed to be able to see clear paths they could move around.

 

Hope you like it, it' not one of my favourite pieces I have ever done but I would love to do more in the future. Till next time.

Steam Powered Watchtowers

Just a quick little update today. I've started on the next piece in my fledgling steampunk project and above are some initial sketches I did for  it. As I've been thinking about the world and how I wanted it to look I began thinking of an oppressed London, one where technology is being used to keep people "safe" but in reality is a means of control. Obviously I didn't want to make weird steampunk security cameras so I came up with Duke......(haven't thought of a name yet) mechanical peacekeepers.

This watchtowers patrol the streets of London and have a sniper posted at the top to keep "order within the city. Hope you like the idea and feel free to post which one's your favourite. Till next time!

Clockwork Assassins and Inktober

 

He's all finished! It feels so good to get a painting doe after taking a break from it all, got my drawing mojo back. I'm still not sure where I want to take this "steampunk project" as I am referring to it but I at least have an idea for the next piece in the series, which will be a giant mechanical walking watchtower. It's going to be a return to environments as that's still one of my weakest areas, for now I will just leave you with "Master Sneech".

 

As a quick little extra here's my first sketch for Inktober. If you don't know what that is then I will enlighten you haha. Inktober is where artists from all around the world create a drawing every day of October using finliners, biro's, promarkers. I will dropa  link down below that explains it a little better. Till next time!

 

Inktober - http://inktober.com/ 

Steam Powered Motivation

 

 

So.....erm....it's been a while but I have new work to show you and this should be the first post of me getting back to blogging! So why the absence I hear you cry?! Honestly it's been a combination of a few things, art burn out, job hunting and uncertainty in myself, it just got to a stage where I had no confidence or motivation to pick up my graphics tablet. Then Dave Rapozza came along!

 

I recently bought his bog witch tutorial on gumroad and it really opened my eyes, he talks a lot about how he got to the stage he is at (super awesome amazing artist stage that is). A lot of what he was saying I could really relate to, I began to feel that motivation coming back. I also bought Dave Luvisi's tutorial on creating an IP on gumroad and he said something that really stuck. "While you're not working on your craft, someone out there is and they are getting better than you". 

 

So I did some doodling and came up with some fun little steampunk style characters you can see below, oh and a Barely Alive character doodle. A few of these I really liked but had no idea what to do with them, so going back to the Dave Rapozza tutorial I decided to take one and incorporate it into a portrait. Working on the things that I struggle with, such as; backgrounds, eyes and texture. It's been tough with the above piece coming up to about ten hours work now but I'm really pleased with how it's turning out, I hope you guys like it and I promise to blog more often than I have been recently. Till next time! 

 

 

 

Sparkles The Shark Doggy

So you know that soft spot the space pirate was going to have, well here it is.........I am pleased to introduce sparkles! Hahaha don't you just love it when you can have fun with your art and don't have to be that serious. Sparkles is the pride and joy of the pirate and woe betide anyone who lay's a finger on him (yes it's a him, I thought that would add to the humour).

As my first attempt at painting or designing anything animal related I am pretty happy with this little fella, obviously there are things that could be adjusted but for once I am actually going to be positive about my work. I've also nearly finished my Requin portrait so you should be seeing that in a few days. Till next time!

Space Shark Pirate

 

So it's another month which means there is a new CubeBrush competition. The brief is to create a space pirate or a more traditional pirate, as you can see above I've gone for a space pirate, humanoid sharks aren't very traditional you see.

 

With not winning the last competition I am really going to push myself on this one, need to notch a win! Personality and an environment are going to be key to this, I think. Environment wise I'm still uncertain of were I am going to place him but I definitely know what type of personality I want for him. I'm thinking aggressive and merciless but with a soft spot......that soft will be revealed later though. Till next time!

Requin

 

I'm back again at portraits but this one has more character design, he's based off a character from the book "Red Seas Under Red Skies". Here's what I based most of his look from....

 

"The statue like the man had prominent curving cheekbones that lent the narrow face a sense of mirth - plus a round protruding chin, wide eyes and large ears that seemed to have been jammed into the head at right angles. Requin, whose features bore a fair resemblance to a marionette put together in a haste by a somewhat irate puppeteer.

Bristling curls of steel-grey hair atop his head receding more sharply. He wore optics that glowed a translucent orange, giving a demonic cast to the wide eyes behind them.

His narrow frock coat was crushed black velvet, and his hands were covered with brown leather gloves."

I think I have kept to the original description pretty while still putting in some of my own touches, the glasses is purely how I envisioned them, so may not look how the author intended them. I thought they would look like his eyes were burning, as if to stare into his eyes was to stare into the eyes of a demon. I must say though I am struggling to render the crushed black velvet coat, it's such a weird material!

 

I've put the greyscale version in here too, so you can see how much I render out an illustration before moving over too colour. Greyscale for me has become more of a way to make sure everything reads correctly and looks like it should in real life, I find that when I jump straight into colour things can become very muddy quickly. It's something I need to work on. Till next time!

Forest Spirit

 Big bumper update for you guys today! I have been playing a lot of Hearthstone lately and even gotten back into World Of Warcraft, I know, shame on me. However these games have inspired me to create an illustration that you could possibly see in one of those games. My first stop, as is becoming common with me, was to just doodle out a few ideas in silhouette form.

 

 

I quite liked the crouching guy so simply threw him on his own canvas and started rendering in some details and giving him more form on a greyscale layer. A simple gradient map and colour layer later and it was time to start rendering him in colour. His face was something I really wanted to push with this one, I generally paint grumpy looking evil guys, with a stern expression. I thought it would be more interesting to make him look a little innocent/scared.

 

As you can see I came back to him a few days later and did a lot of re working, I thought his pose was a little stiff, so added the staff arm. The rocky parts also got reworked, to have a new design on them which hopefully looks a little more interesting, finally I did a lot of changes to the background to make it a little more readable and help draw the viewers eye to the character himself. There a still a few more things I want to add however, such as small animals scampering around him, to really reinforce him being a forest spirit.

 

I recently got some feedback on the most current version, so I am going to address those and hopefully finish him up this weekend. Till next time!

 

 

 

 

Nautical Golem

 

I finished my Cubebrush golem entry! After much messing around with it, I finally got it to a place I was happy with. The main goal with this piece was to try and push more of his story into the overall image. Who is he?? What does he do?? What's his purpose?? I might not have pulled it off overall but I definitely learned a lot about this process.

 

I feel like I am beginning to get some of the much sought after texture in my work now to. So everything feels like it could be something from the real world and not something that looks overly rendered, making it look very smooth (like my work used to). I hope you guys like him though, he has a sort of dim charm don't you think?? Till next time!

Cubebrush Golem Entry So Far

So it's only a few days until the deadline for the Cuberush golem competition, so I thought it was high time I started designing something for it! My initial steps were to make a bunch of simple silhouettes, to try and find a theme or basic look for my golem. I soon began to start playing around with a nautical theme, thus the chains, anchors and bits of ships jutting out from them.

 

With a rough outline of what I wanted from this character I then did a second pass on a few of the silhouettes, exploring the nautical theme in a little more detail. His story began to develop a little more with these sketches, I didn't just imagine him as a simple golem but a bruiser for a pirate ship. The ships magician could've created him while they were out at sea, so all he had available to combine together was stuff from the ocean itself. Ominous, powerful but not particularly intelligent,  were themes I was trying to get across.

 

After that I picked my favourite out of those four and did a much more rendered pass at a design for the golem, making sure to have plenty of inspiration and references. He certainly evolved a lot from the loose sketch, replacing the metal banded rib cage with a buckling barrel. Looks like a little friend has also taken up residence in there! Huge pirates of the Caribbean influences going on here but I hope they still look their own thing. What do you guys think of my nautical golem? Do you think I'm going an interesting direction? Till next time!

The Journey Begins

 

It's been a week and I haven't uploaded a single post! I do apologise but not a great deal, I was too busy enjoying the sun in Spain but I'm back now and I have a new painting for you guys. Even though I couldn't get my hands on Photoshop while on holiday (purely a desktop man you see) I did do a few sketches and thumbnails and the above image is the product of one of those.

 

I actually have ideas for about five more paintings, all of them chronicling the journey of this man, almost like a mini series of paintings. This first one is him taking his first steps on his journey, the great statue is marking the borders of his home country and he has no idea what lies beyond those hills.

 

 

The top image is actually my second pass at the painting, the second one is were I was originally going to leave the piece. I hope you can agree that the top one pops a little more. I used predominately phot textures for the basis of this piece, which I think makes it look a little more "alive" than my previous environments, what do you guys think?? Till next time!

 

Dishonored Portrait

 

After spending the past few weeks studying environments I was itching to get back to creating some character art. My original plan was to start on my contest piece for the Cube Brush golem challenge but I got distracted with my excitement for the Dishonored definitive addition coming at the end of the month.

 

The above piece is an original character, however he was done in the style of the Dishonored concept art, I love how loose the brush strokes are in those pieces, they give a lot of energy to a piece which I think is somewhat lacking in my work. Hoping to transfer what I've learnt from this piece over to my own work and it's definitely got me wanting to create more portraits. Till next time!

 

P.S: Here's the link for the Cubebrush challenge if anyone is interested.

https://cubebrush.com/forums/topic/august-2015-art-competition-golem/

Biome Studies

I'm back at university it feels like at the moment! After the feedback I received on the forgotten pool I really wanted to take a step back from creating fully rendered images and wanted to focus on the fundamentals.

 

My first port of call was to just grab a load of reference images, for particular things I wanted in these scenes. So for the desert environment, I need to see how sand works, how it reacts to light and how it holds it's shape. I also needed to see what types of plant life grow in desert environments, it's not going to be lovely rose bushes now is it. With all the reference collected I spent about four to six hours on each scene trying to remain true to how these things work in real life but trying to avoid spending hours rendering a rock. I learned a heck a lot from these and hop to apply this to a new environment painting, hopefully that will be an improvement on my last one. Till next time!

The Forgotten Pool

 

I got inspired lately to create an environment piece, after going up Coniston in the lake district. The countryside around there really is beautiful and I wanted to try and capture that magical forest feeling within a painting. Obviously I couldn't just paint a plain forest, I still had to sneak a little bit of fantasy in there, thus the giant stone hand!

 

It got suggested to me that the piece is lacking some life to it, especially the water, which I can't help but agree with. So I am going to adjust that and possibly add some wildlife to the piece. I'm thinking maybe a few birds flying around or perched on the hand, as that is the focal point of the painting. So you may see this piece again. Till next time!

Marine Salvage Robot

 

So here's the final product of those alchemy silhouettes I created a few weeks back. I ended up choosing the fifth design from the previous piece I showed you guys for the basic design of this guy. I did change a few things on the final concept, such as the feet, the arm plating and the shoulders. They were all pretty small changes but it made the overall design look a little more grounded. That was one of the main goals with this piece, to create something that looks like it could function in our world and had an actual purpose behind it.

 

 I imagine this robot would be sent down into areas of the sea that are deemed too dangerous or too hazardous for humans. While it is in those areas it's tasked with collecting salvage and relics. It also has a secondary function in the form of the giant canister attached to the front of it. The idea would be that it can store trapped divers in there, supplying oxygen to them from it's helmet, while it takes them to safety.

 

I learned a heck of a lot from this piece, one being that I am not as scared of colures as I used to be and I'm getting more of an understanding of how shadows work. Still a lot more to learn though, so I will get back to it. Till next time!

 

 

Robots And Desolate Wasteland

 

So you remember those robot silhouettes from about a week ago, well I took a few of them and made some more fleshed out designs of them. My main goal with the designs was to make something look a little more believable, with actual joints, gears and bits of machinery. I did this by using a lot of photos and painting over them until I got something I liked, I used car engine parts, spark plugs and medical equipment to name a few of my references. This sped up my design process a lot, as I wasn't trying to invent these mechanical parts, so I can focus on the overall design of the robot instead. The photos also informed a lot of the look of the robots, such as the armoured plating, I'm hoping to push these methods and concepts further by adding photo textures to make them look more realistic. The fifth design is probably the one I will do these experiments on!   

 

 

In a bid to not just focus on character design I have also been doodling some thumbnails for a environment piece. I've had in my head for a while now, it's based on a extract from a book I am currently reading called, The Left Hand Of God, more on that later on though. Till next time!

 

Alchemy

 

So in a bid to try improve how long it takes me to come up with initial sketches and designs I have decided to go back to a programme I was shown in my first year of university. Alchemy is a free programme which lets you quickly make shapes, these can be then used as the basis for character designs or possibly environments. The above image was made for just that purpose, I wanted to design a robot but always struggle coming up with shapes quickly, without getting caught up in my line art, so I thought why not give alchemy a crack.

 

I'm going to take about four of these designs and throw some more paint on them, see if I can't flesh them out into something cool. Hopefully will have a few pages of designs and concepts which I can then use to make a character illustration at the end, got to keep building that portfolio! Thinking of possibly making an alien species with this technique. Till next time.

 

Here's a link to the alchemy site if anyone is interested - http://al.chemy.org/

Knights Of The Round Table

So seen as though I have a fair bit of time on my hands, what with it being summer (and hating the sun and all that). I have decided to start a project in a similar vein to what I did with my honours project, to create a world from the ground up using just my concept art. The theme is basically a futuristic version of king Arthur and the knights of the round table, so lots of robotic suits of armour and dastardly AI is going to be designed!

I'm hoping to push a few new techniques in this project, mainly to start branching into making 3D sculpts of some of these helmets and future designs, so that I can really focus on becoming a professional character designer. I also want to play around with animating some of my paintings, to give them a bit more life.

Above is the very first designs for what I potentially want one of these knights to look like. I took a bunch of reference images of medieval helmets and basically went to town making them look futuristic. The most important thing for me though was to retain that look of a knights helmet, so keeping the thin vision slit and having the angled face plates really helped with this. I hope you guys like them and are looking forward to seeing the rest of the project grow. Till next time!

Something Technical

 

So I recently got a commission from a friend to design a quick release steering wheel. At first I wasn't going to do it because well I have no idea about cars but I thought what the heck and decided to give it a go. When I started doing some designs for it, I really had no idea what I was going to draw. I'm so used to drawing guys with big swords and guns that this came as a bit of a shock to the system.

 

The first port of call was to look at camera stands. I always remembered playing with the adjustable stands and thought the locking mechanisms on it could be easily repurposed to create a quick clipping mechanism, which would secure a steering wheel to the dashboard. After a bit of doodling I soon started to get into the flow of ways to make a  quick and easy to use locking mechanism, looking at all sorts of things from pipe locks to sliding locks.

 

The final piece came pretty easily in the end, I was actually surprised at how much fun I had designing the steering wheel itself, when you don't have to worry about anatomy and perspective as such you can really let your creative juices flow! I've rambled on far too long now so I will let the pictures do the rest of the talking, also as a little hint of what's to come is that all this product design has given me a huge inspiration for my next project so stay tuned. Till next time!

George Morland Master Study

 

I've been working on another study piece today and I think I'm probably going to leave it at this stage. I really struggled with the natural parts of the paintings, such as the shrubs and foliage, unlike rocks which you can paint with sharp edges and nice blocky shapes, foliage is very random. I did however have a lot of fun painting the clouds, with a nice texture brush you can get some nice shapes laid down very quickly.

 

I think for the next stage of trying to conquer environments I'm going to study some plants, from  flowers to trees, I want to get a real understanding of how to brake them down into simple recognisable shapes. Hopefully this means I will be able to easily replicate them in my environments, without having to render every leaf and blade of grass. Till next time.

Albert Bierstadt Master Study

 

So university is all done and dusted but I'm not planning on sitting around doing nothing all summer. Environments have always been a weak point of mine, so I'm really going to be pushing to improve them. My first stop for doing this is going back to studying the masters, I want to study a painting that features something that I want to understand how they painted it. In this one for example I was trying to understand how he painted the waterfall and the rocks. I found that the waterfall specifically was almost layered, so this is hopefully something I can take into my own paintings when I need to paint water. Till next time! 

Chapter Logo's

 

Thought I would upload these I had a lot of fun doodling them out. While I was putting my book together I felt like the intro pages were missing something, they looked a little bland as a double page spread of writing. So I decided to make these little logo's, each one is supposed to be a miniature representation of each of the races. The elven one for example features skulls, wood and crystals and not a lot of metal, very much like the design of the elves. Nothing spectacular but I thought I may as well upload them. Few more days left of games proposal work and then I can start cracking on with my heroes of the storm contest piece, so stay tuned for that. Till next time!

The End

 

So the project I have been blogging about for the past eight months or so now is finally finished! The books all wrapped up and ready to be sent off to be printed. It only feels like yesterday when I thought I had plenty of time and the project started out as a sci-fi wildstar inspired world. Oh how things changed!

 

Above you can see the very last three character designs I created and they are up there with my nord characters with how pleased I am with them, especially the bird man, I had so much fun designing him. with these three I really tried to push the idea of them being different branches of a cult yet still retaining similar visual cues. These were in the form of the colour palette, chains and the inclusion of bits of wood, with the symbol of Odin crudely painted onto them. I hope the idea comes across to you guys. Till next time!

Pushing On!

 

 

Vey close to the end of this project now! As you can see from above I'm mainly adding polish, colour and finishing up final pieces for the book, I still feel no where near ready to hand in this project but then again I never do with my work, always room to improve!

 

The above pictures are from left to right a nord baron, huntsman, guardsman and shield maiden. They are pretty much a culmination of everything I have learned over this year, anatomy, colouring my pieces and getting away from line art into fully rendered greyscale paintings. I still have a lot to learn but I am getting to a stage where I feel like I am a lot more comfortable with my work. I hope you guys have enjoyed seeing me grow as much as I have enjoyed pushing myself. Till next time! 

Stressed!

 

So deadlines are getting closer and closer and the panic is really beginning to set in, therefore it seems I have become a concept art producing machine! With at least 50% of one of my races still to go I'm really having to put the hours in, thankfully I enjoy painting so it's not too much of a chore.

 

Above you can see the very nearly finished designs for a nord marshal and foot soldier. To contrast with the other two races I've really pushed the armour on them, so lots of bulky shoulder pads and a much larger amount of metallics. The masks are hopefully going to be the big distinguishing feature, with each member wearing one of these elaborate gilded masks. They also tie back into the backstory of these guys, with them belonging to the clan of the silent man. each member of the clan must at all time hide there face and it is seen as a crime to show yourself in public. I also have some helmet designs, clan emblems and a bear knight to show you guys so just bear with me and you will see them soon ;) Till next time!

Ghosts Of The Webway

 

 

So I should probably be doing university work but I couldn't resist doing some fan art after picking up the harlequin codex last week, the background for the solitaire really grabbed me when I read through it so I couldn't resist doing a painting of one, he was also a test to see how well I could use gradient maps to colour my greyscale paintings, I think it turned out pretty well and it looks a lot nicer than my old method of colouring.

 

 

The second picture is another attempt at trying something new, which is to try and have a painting that tells a story, instead of just being a flat character piece or an environment, its still a work in progress though as I'm not happy with the poor guardsmen the harlequin is about to jump onto. Till next time.