Sunday 26 February 2012

Rally at The Mountain Pass

Good evening,

Here's a speedpaint of a mountainous location for the project . It started as some choppy polygon lasso selections that I built up and then skewed pieces this way and that. I kind of like how all the scattered little triangles are suggestive of trees and also reinforce the sharp, angular feeling of the mountains. Poor, lonely little car...











More stuff soon.

Cheeyers!

Friday 24 February 2012

Keep it simple, soldier.

Hi there,

I've been trying to find an approach to character concepting that feels efficient and enjoyable for a long time. I've dabbled with drawing directly in Photoshop a fair bit, but I never feel fully in control and I end up redrawing lines a lot which tends to kill any sense of movement or spontaneity in my drawings. Also, it never feels as fun as sketching on paper with a blue Colerase pencil. I think the method I used for concepting these guys is what works best for me: Linedrawing on paper which I tidy up a bit in PS. Then I just block out some simple flat colours and then paint choppy shadows within those flats. Quick and simple! I know this is a very standard approach, but it's taken me a long time to realize that it's the best method for me. It means I get to do more 'real' drawing too! Anyhoo:












Hopefully I'll have some more stuff over the weekend.

Cheers!

Sunday 19 February 2012

A Mere Rifle

Hello there,

I've not had a great deal of time for personal work this week, but here's a design for a rifle that I finished up. I might get the chance to do a bit more stuff tomorrow, but I'm also teaching a class at Blizzard this week so I should probably do some prep for that! :/












More soon!

Cheers.

Sunday 12 February 2012

NYYYAAOOOWWWW!!!! DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA!!!

Ahem,

Hi there blog-watchin' fellows. Here's this week's stuff. A story illustration I did over a couple of evenings. Those people in the foreground are way too nonchalant, but hey...











And an expression sheet for the engineer, Shukhov:



















I've got some weapon designs on the go and another quick character line-up too. Hopefully I can post it up next weekend.

Cheers!

Sunday 5 February 2012

Book Layout Tests

Happy Sunday!

I've not had much opportunity for finishing new work this week, but here are some quick mockups of page layouts for the book (coming before the end of the year, hopefully!). Nothing fancy, just trying to work out how many images to use on different pages. I have about 100ish pictures that I'm considering using at the moment and I reckon I'll average about 3 images per 2 page spread. So by my crude arithmetic, that means I currently have enough for about a 60 page book - I'm aiming to get somewhere around 100 pages eventually. I'm planning to do some step-by-steps for different techniques that will spread things out a little more and there'll be a fair amount of text devoted to the story and explaining the visual development, but as it stands I'm still a long way from having all the images I want. We'll see how much I can get done in the next 6-9 months... Text and everything else super temp BTW...


































I also managed to do a concept for that sculpt I started last week. I'm still trying to decide on a definite aesthetic for presenting characters. I'll keep experimenting for now...



More soon,

Cheers!