More thumbs to choose from

Unlike most of my other 5 enviro attempts, I think this one works well for the Steampunk competition. There's a nice contrast and balance in the pic. There's room for more of both 'Steampunk' and 'Ancient Greece', but that can be explored later.

Over-complicating things

I've realized the enviro's I've been doing the last couple of days have all been painted with the Steampunk challenge in mind, and that, for whatever reason, I've been trying to squeeze in as much information as possible.

This time round though I wanted to keep things really simple - sometimes that can be key.
Not particularly happy with this one - an important point is that I don't want Argus (the steampunk machine in the background) to look menacing or intimidating, which is difficult given his size. Its important to give him personality and a bored pose probably would've worked much better.

More exploration later.

Greece enviro

Another possible composition for the Steampunk CGtalk competition.

Not sure if the composition works very well in this one - there's a big empty space on the left (could be a good thing..?) and there definitely needs to be more Steampunk about it - cogs, old machinery etc. The trick is fitting that stuff in with the Greek architecture, which is something I really want to do right. Mount Olympus sits in the distant background and the Steampunk hot air balloons make another appearance. I'm fascinated with those things, all cause of PoP. Stupid game.

I actually think the pic works quite well without all the characters and details, so who knows? This could turn into something else entirely. I very much doubt I'll use it for Steampunk though.

Enviro speedpaint

Another enviro speedpaint - my first for 2009!
-2.5 hrs

Ushering in 2009

Happy New Year!

2009 has finally come around. You know what that means? Tons of public holidays and the footy starts up again in a few months! woooooo

Here are a few enviro speedpaints I did yesterday, each one took about 2 hours. I think there's a really good chance these could be used for the cgtalk Steampunk challenge that I posted about a few weeks back. They definitely still need some fine tuning, but I'm really happy with both pics actually - I'm starting to find a nice balance of implied detail and refinement now.

I used photos for both of these as inspiration and so I could try manually picking colours (just from looking at the pic, not from using the eye dropper tool), so I've attached one of the photos for you to compare, too. The photo doesn't belong to me, so thankyou to whoever took it.

My resolution for 2009? More painting.

Anatomy = pain

I've never been good with anatomy. So when I decided today that I'd start my own world design, I'm not sure what possessed me to begin with human characters. The pic below is the result of a lot of google research (*cough*) and a lot of time rendering. I'm fairly happy with the outcome - I think I've learned a lot from this study. Things like knees and collarbones and fingers are really tricky to do properly.

I'm basing a lot of this world design on PoP - a male and female pair for lead characters, fantastical environments, weird creatures.

And nope, the female won't be running around naked, so I'll be using this pic as a template to explore clothing options tomorrow.

Random enviro

I decided I'd do a bit of painting really late tonight and this is the result. I started off with the base idea of a 'Mountain castle in the snow' - the Environment of the Week challenge at Conceptart.org - and the idea just grew from there. Not particularly happy with the idea or direction it went as it reminds me a lot of my previous post (in style and composition anyway), but I'm sorta happy with the way the colours turned out and I think the quality of the render is getting slightly better. Meh.

Less excuses, more paint

I must've run out of excuses not to draw tonight, cause I chose to sit down and spend some time in photoshop. Its true what they say about a lot of creative things - that it all comes together in the last 5 minutes. I started painting with no other real clear thoughts in my head besides the fact I wanted to do an environment, and it was a muddy mess up until near the end.

I think its pretty evident I'm definitely still thinking of the art style of Prince of Persia, but thats not such a bad thing. With such high calibre art, aiming to achieve something like that can only help me learn. Being able to work on such an awesome title one day, like PoP's lucky concept artists get to do, is also plenty of incentive for me to jump right in.

Its taken ages, but I think I'm starting to get the hang of some things - A few custom brushes first of all, but more importantly: Contrast. Contrast between colour, large and small brushstrokes and soft and solid edges/brushes.

The following pic took about 45 mins, I'm really happy with it - will continue this tomorrow.

Speedpaint 12th Dec 08

We had a really vague topic for the 30 minute speedy at work today - 'machines'. We've been pretty character focused with the speedpaints since we started doing them, and so decided to switch it up a bit. Today's was more about an industrial design than a character.

Anyway, I actually really like the idea behind this one. All my previous entries have been a little gun-ho and completely lacking in story, so this is a nice change of pace. I'll have to develop this one a little more sometime down the track.

Speedpaint - 5th December 2008

I've pretty much fallen in love with the new Prince of Persia game, which looks absolutely incredible and plays just as well. For last friday's speedpaint we didn't choose a topic, we just spent 40 minutes painting for the heck of it. I wanted to try out some brushes, as well as experiment with a different painting style. Add that to the fact that I've thought about nothing but Prince of Persia since it came out last thursday, and this is what I came up with.

Speedpaint from 28th Nov 08

This week's 30 minute speedpaint topic: Monkey Magic.

Meh.

A few things bug me about my speedies - I need to become more clear with my lines/detail (something I'm hoping my daily figure drawing will help), I probably have to start focusing my pics a bit more instead of trying to get so much info in (maybe just focus on a characters' upper half or something), and I need to stop making all of these so monochromatic... it gets boring really quickly for both you and me to look at!

Meh again.

CGtalk Steampunk challenge

I'm still running off all of the motivation gained at the NZ workshop a few weeks back, which is great, so I've decided to enter the Steampunk CGtalk challenge. More info on it can be found here: http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/steampunk/

Here is my initial silhouette exploration. I chose a few from these to develop further into the thumbnail sketches on the grey page.

Life drawing 19 Nov 08

My very first self-imposed life drawing class since returning from NZ, done yesterday.

I'm also here to announce that I've got a new sketchbook on Conceptart.org, too. I will probably just post any life drawing I do on the sketchbook instead of here on the blog... I think it makes more sense that way. The link is on the right of the page.

Sketches / Life Drawing NZ cont'd

Here are some of the later sketches done at the NZ workshop.
Massive Black have announced their next workshop will be in Shanghai, probably next year. I'm already 99% set on going...

Sketches / Life drawing from Massive Black conference in New Zealand

The New Zealand workshop was absolutely brilliant, I really could not have asked for a better experience. I learned a heckuva lot, the instructors were fantastic to watch and very helpful with all of our questions. They were all very approachable and open in the way they shared their working processes.

I've come back to Melbourne really really inspired. In particular, I think I gained a rejuvinated interest in character design, and this has a lot to do with Wes Burt and his sketchbooks. I can't even describe how good these things were... I could have stared at them for hours on end. His knowledge of anatomy was unbelievable (everything in his 3 sketchbooks were drawn from memory, no ref) and his designs and poses/weighting of figures were amazing - functional, innovative, so cleanly executed - and these were his sketchbooks!

Here's some of the sketches I did while in NZ. Since returning, I've decided to dedicate some time each day to do some sketching, in the hope of one day being able to come up with anything even half as cool as Wes Burt's work.

These sketches are from the first day or two I was in NZ. The very first pic are some sketches done on the plane ride over....so embarrassingly shit! Its been a long time since I've done any manual sketching. I'll post again showing the later sketches.

Old sketches (2007)

Here are some fairly old sketches from last year. I went to an exhibition displaying a lot of bodies that had undergone the plastination process - basically, the bodies' water and fat stores had been replaced with a preservative plastic, keeping them intact. I could see why it was/is such a controversial topic, but it was also really interesting. I thought it would be a good opportunity to get some anatomy studies done...

Speedy - 7 Nov 08

Here's another 30 minute speedpaint from work last friday. I'll really have to get round to developing some of these further and take them to finalized pieces. The topic this round was Diablo - a fantasy game from Blizzard.

In other news, tomorrow morning (getting up bright and early at 5:30am... oh yeah!) I'm going to New Zealand with all of the Concept Artists from Krome to attend the Massive Black workshop. Massive Black are one of the top Concept Art studios in the world, based in the US and Shanghai.

An idea of what's to come at the workshop:
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=u_iQVCij2Z4

Massive Black's website:
http://massiveblack.com/mbNew/frontpage.html

Can't wait! This is going to rock!

Speedpaints

Speedpaints were always something I found extremely difficult to do - I found them to be more stressful than fun and after doing a few (with really mediocre results) I was starting to give up on the whole idea. I think most of my problem came from the fact that I never really understood how to get ideas down quickly.

Last friday we did some speedpaints at work and it was honestly the first time I enjoyed it. I can't mention this at all without acknowledging the tricks & shortcuts that my lead at work taught me - he walked me through the process step by step which was awesome.

The topic was Gears of War (a topic chosen after we'd watched countless videos of the soon-to-be-released GOW2).

The first pic (blue pic) was the one done at work in 30 minutes. I wanted to retain the process so I did another 30 min speedy (red pic) in my own time earlier tonight. Gotta say I'm pretty stoked with the results and that 30 minute speed paint last friday has opened up some new doors to my every-day working technique. Exciting stuff.

Another CHOW, another update

This week's CHOW entry on conceptart.org
I'm trying to get more active with these things...

Check out the link below!
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=135912

CHOW # 120 Dark Knight Villain

Wow, its been a while - a new post is well overdue.

This was for another weekly Conceptart.org challenge. We had to do a Chris Nolan twist on a Batman villain not yet explored in either Batman Begins or The Dark Knight. I picked Deadshot, mainly because he seemed to be (from his description on Wikipedia) the most plausible 'realistic' villain who could fit into the realistic new Batman films.

I think I went a little too realistic (ie. boring) with this guy, but at least it got me drawing with a purpose in my own time again.