Environment Art

 

As you may or may not know, I don't cope too well with environments, I don't know if it's the scale of them, having to manage so much in one scene or something entirely different but in the main I have been avoiding them. Well no more!

 

The first image was started as a line art doodle to establish how the elves would live in my honours project, I just ended up adding more and more until it evolved into what you can see above. I wanted to have a very fairy-tale look to this piece, so I had the houses round and soft so as to not look threatening and the swirly way I approached the tree bark. The shading is all applied it's just a case of rendering it out, so that it resembles something more akin to the other pieces of concept art I have done for my honours.

 

The second concept is a much more straight forward way to designing environments, with me making sure it was structured correctly. They're both still in the W.I.P stage but I thought I would show you guys that I am always trying to grow and improve as an artist, colours are the next big hurdle! "gulp".

 

I also have some character art nearly finished but you will have to wait for that ;) Till next time! 

Children Of Odin

 

Another day and another piece of concept art. This is my first pass at designing, "the children of odin", this race I imagine are fanatical followers of odin and aspire nothing more to be his subjects, whether it be in this life or the afterlife. They don't want to mock there God by imitating his form, so they choose to represent themselves as his ravens.

 

With this loose background in my head I really tried to focusses in on the avian aspect, so this meant lots of fur and feathers in which they coat themselves and piercing black eyes. I dint want to give them bird noses but I still wanted to have the nose slits, I imagined that this is a birth right and that the elders carve these holes into your nose to show that you are a true son of odin. Pretty happy with them so far but still plenty of work to go on them. Till next time. 

Post Apocolyptic Elves

Menacing line up isn't it?? So these would have been done a while ago but my computer conveniently decided that it wanted to cause me all sorts of problems, much appreciated what with my end of year deadline looming oh so close.

Onto the concept art, above are pretty much final designs of what the elves are going to look like, I took a lot of my work from pervious designs, such as the skull and bone, mix match of materials and the war paint and spent some time refining it. Really pleased with who these turned out, think I am really beginning to capture that "post apocalyptic fantasy" theme I had in my head. Going to put these fella's onto twitter and see which ones people like, from there it's time to take them into full sketches, something that I could hand over to a 3D modeller and they would be able to create it.

My bird race is also well under way now but you will have to wait a little bit longer till you see that. Till next time.

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.