Android

Bit of a departure from the usual fantasy stuff that I have been painting recently with this new piece. Trying to come up with a cyberpunk universe for my games proposal project so I thought I would paint a quick mood piece to give me some ideas of where I want to go with this project. I drew a lot of influences form films like the Matrix and Elysium for the overall design and the little sci-fi implants. Threw in some of my own tricks too though, such as the bird skull on his shoulder and the dreadlock style cabling. Pretty happy with the final result, although I am never fully happy with my work, always room to improve! Till next time. 

Bird Studies

First day back at uni today so it was time to get back into the swing of doing honours work. With a lot of work invested into my elven and nord races I thought it was time that I started to design the third race. A quick search through Google and I stumbled upon Huginn and Muninn, these two ravens are part of norse mythology, so it sticks with my over arching theme. I want to create a really unique race with this third race, so I am looking at having them look like an amalgamation between bird and man. 

To start things off I just looked at ravens and did a couple of studies to try and spark up some ideas in the old grey matter, I have  have a few thoughts, nothing really to do with the design of the race but more to do with their anatomy. I am thinking of having them with bird heads and humanoid bodies, possibly with elongated limbs. For now though I present to you some bird paintings! Till next time.

Ikit Claw

Two updates in two days, see I can be productive! I've been tinkering away on my ikit claw fan art (which you can see above) today and I am slowly getting to a stage where I am happy with it. When I sat down this afternoon I had big plans to redo a lot of him but in the end I only adjusted a few things and just started rendering it. I am really trying to push my understanding of OSL (object source lighting) to create a really atmospheric piece, plus who doesn't like a rat with a giant claw that has an in built flame-thrower! 

I just want to quickly mention that in my opinion (which isn't much to go on) to become a better artist you really need to explore other avenues, these could be things like miniature painting, reading or writing stories. I think it helps expand your horizons as an artist by just opening you up to all these other forms of art. Character designs can be inspired by a passage in a book or a colour palette could be taken from a miniature you've seen, I just think it gives you more material to store in your mental reference library. The picture above for example wouldn't exist if I hadn't started reading the warhammer; end times thanquol book. Till next time, which might be Saturday if you're lucky. 

Getting Back On That Horse

You might of noticed I haven't uploaded in a while and it's not due to lazyness or lack of ideas or even just plain older artists block, it's just sometimes I struggle to to "get back on the horse" as such. Above is the first time I have gone back into Photoshop for a good few weeks, it's obviously only in it's early stages and uploading it up here has made me notice a lot of things that need fixing. The point of this update though is that sometimes I just get scared of going back into painting/drawing, I end up putting it off and off until it becomes weeks before I go back and start painting, as soon as I put pen to digital paper though I feel like I am putting on a old pair of slippers, it's weird! I wondered if any of you guys have little quirks like this?? would be really interested to know?? Till next time, hopefully next time shant be as long this time. 

Elven Weapon Designs

Not a huge update today because I'm still finishing up other work, on the plus side though I finally finished my futures work and had some time to squeeze in some sketchbook work! As I had already done a load of weapon designs for my nords I though it was only fair that I did some for the elves. I didn't have a solid idea for what I wanted apart from the fact I knew they had to be knives, so I looked at everything from throwing knives to knuckle duster style knives and even kunai. As you can see on the second page of sketches I went with the knuckle duster knives, I wanted something that was very fast and agile, allowing the elves to get up close and personal really quickly. 

Also to make sure I had covered everything I threw them into Photoshop and turned them into  silhouettes to see what shapes worked and what didn't. I found that a lot of them looked to "spikey" which I wasn't wanting, the much softer curves seemed to work better. Going to take all this and start designing some fully rendered knives, who knows there might be colour! Till next time. 

Heraldry Designs

It's been pretty quiet on the blog lately and I do apologise! It's not for a lack of work it's mainly due to other projects getting in the way, such as games proposal and futures but I can never resist sketching new stuff for my honours project. 

Above is the result of me having a spare ten mins here and there, the bottom picture are designs for elven banner tops and heraldry, these all came pretty quickly to me due to having done so much design work on the elven look, I just borrowed aspects from the costume design and made sure to repeat the circular logo, just to keep them all unified. The ones at the top I struggled a lot more with, having left my nords a while back they haven't really had as much love and care as the elves, makes me realise that I really need to crack on with them, (so their heraldry will be revised).......not to mention the other two races I still need to start designing. Will be updating more frequently after today too, what with new year and Christmas out of the way. Till next time.