Finally...

My character design for Byron is finished. I wanted him to look well dressed, the clothes having once been expensive and well cut, but now worn out. I still see him as a very sarcastic and sadistic character, but one which would still come through for a friend in need.



This has taken me way too long to finish, and I'm starting to worry about how much I'm behind on my schedule. Will be working as hard as I can over the next week to catch up as much as I can, but I think I'm going to have to cut some things from my original schedule.

Tank returns

So this is pretty much an attempt to get myself back into drawing. I've really struggled to produce anything of worth in the last two weeks, and so decided that I need to do some really quick and rough sketching.



So that's how this came about. I redesigned an old character species called the Toekis. This particular individual is named Tank, and it would be possible for the player to interact with him and others of his kind in certain areas. He's a bit battered and worn out, and seems to have a bit of a crooked jaw going on.
The Toekis are a huge armoured race who rather surprisingly are intelligent, compassionate and caring creatures. They usually only go to war with others if they are attacked first. They live in fear of much larger creatures that they are forced to share territories with, which will on occasion prey on smaller and weaker individuals, hence their armoured hides.

I said how I wanted to bring this species into this project in this post, so I decided to actually follow through with what I promised for once.

I roughly used this image as reference to figure out the jaw line.

Rough colour sketch, image 1

Again I apologise for not having updated this as regularly as I should, nor for doing as much work as I should have. I'm back on track now and trying to rough out each piece as quick as I can. Once I've done that I'll refine the detail in each one which I usually find is the quickest part.

So yeah, I'm really tired and haven't got much to say about this one yet. I'm trying express how lazy these creatures are, the family size and the environment they live in. Obviously they are carnivores, but I don't know if I should stick a half eaten carcass in there or not. I have a feeling it'd ruin the image, but there's no harm in experiment to find out.



Will update tomorrow with more work.

Thumbnail sketches

Some quick thumb nail sketches of 4 out 6 pieces that I'm going to be doing for the next couple of weeks.
I'm going to do my best to make them look as traditionally painted as possible, and also describe some of the creature's habits and environments.
I doubt the final pieces will be exactly composed in the same way, but these are just rough ideas to help me through the sketching process quicker.
It'll be sketched out in Photoshop, and then moved over to Painter and painted there, and then back over to Photoshop for some finishing touches like textures.



Not done nearly as much work as I should have done over the past week and a half or so, due to lack of inspiration really. I've sat at the computer or at my sketchbook and not known what to do. Hopefully that's over now and I can get on with this part of my work.

Testing, testing....

123. Commence experiments! This is what I'm going to be testing painting styles with.



I drew this using this as reference for the pose and this for the sword.

Scrap what I just said...

About doing the next part traditionally. Because I just got to play around with Painter and I love the textures and effects that you can create in it.
Also, the more I look at the image I did of Seaweed (the fish two posts down), the more I like the style I've done that in. I think a couple more experiments are in order, but I think I'm getting closer to the style that I want to achieve for this part of my project.

Please excuse how horrible the image below is, it was just a quick mess around with the package. Also noted down the two brushes that I liked the most so that I wouldn't forget. I think Painter is going to take a bit of getting used to, but hopefully with a bit of practice I should be able to get the hang of it in quite a short while.

It also looks like it's going to be gorgeous to do lineart with.



Forwards to the real thing!

Some research and inspiration

So before I start the next part of my project I thought it would be a good idea to fully explain what it is that I'm going to be doing.

I'm going to be traditionally illustrating 6 of the creatures that I have designed so far. My aim is to show male and female variations, plus the offspring and environment in one image.

I was introduced to the work of an illustrator by the name of John James Aubudon, whose work I immediately fell in love with. After looking through his work, it's really inspired me and I've decided to make a few changes to my original idea, which was to do a sort of reference sheet

Here is a list of the illustrations that he did for the book "Birds of America". The amount of detail that has been put into each image is stunning. I also really like how a part of the animals temperament and behaviour are also illustrated, as well as the type of environment that they can be found in.

So yup, I'm aiming to create 6 highly detailed gauche pieces. Each one should hopefully take just under a week to finish, and I think the hardest part will be composing each piece well, and also deciding what will be featured in each piece. Once I've got the initial sketch done then it should be a much easier process.

Not strictly.....

...Work that fits in with this project but....I felt I wanted to put it up here because I painted a new environment- underwater. I've never attempted to even paint water from above the surface let alone from underneath it. I also feel that I'm starting to get used to composing an image more effectively. So that's why I wanted to upload this, because although it's rough I still think it was a successful practice piece and I learnt from it.
A better attempt at a background than the last sketch I produced, and this was done much quicker in just about 2 hours.
This is of one of my bettas (Siamese Fighting fish), Seaweed. I used a combination of pictures of my tanks for this, and am pretty pleased with the out come.

Another awful attempt...

At including backgrounds in creature sketches.
This is pretty bad but I did have a lot of fun doing it. Can you guess where the inspiration comes from? I started playing Shadow of the Colossus again recently and it really made me want to draw something huge and partially stone. So here he is.
I did attempt to make it look like he's somewhere high up, somewhere desolate and grey and miserable. *shrug*
Tis only a really rough sketch done over the course of about 4 hours, and I wont be wasting any more time on it.




I promise I will stop drawing land animals now and start on everything else!

To do list

Right, even though I have this else where, I thought it would be a good idea to stick my to do list up on here. The more places I can see it the better I guess.

Designing stage (Ongoing throughout the year) This part of the project will span the whole year and is something I will carry on with in the background.

* Main character design- Aimme (Done)
* Companion creature designs-
Earth (Done)
Fire (Done)
Water (Done)
Air (Needs to be redesigned)
* Mutant designs-
Lesser mutants (Done)
Giant mutants (Done)
Sentient mutants (Done)
* Creature designs-
Humanoids (Done)
Land creatures (Done)
Flying creatures (Started)
Sea dwelling creatures (Started)
Insects
* World layout-
Map
Cities
Civilisations and their dress codes (Started)
* Environments-
Forest/woodland (Started)
Jungle
Desert/wastelands
Ice wastelands
Coast
Mountainous
Destroyed cities
* Weaponry-
Close range
Long range
Projectile
* Enemies-
Main antagonist (Started)
High priests
Priests
General followers (Started)

First major part of project (From now until the 10th January)

* Digitally render 2-4 large, fully detailed pieces that illustrate a range of environments with/without creatures that could be found. The aim is to improve my sense of lighting and composition.

Attempt to model in zBrush (From 11th January-10th February)

* Experiment and learn how to use zBrush (download trial version).
* Create at least 1 decently rendered creature model

Second major part of project (From 11th Feburary onwards)

* [At least] 6 digitally rendered concept art pieces, painted to the best of my abilities. The aim of which is to: improve my ability to render anatomy, composition and lighting, as well as create drama and atmosphere in each piece. Each painting will demonstrate the development and evolution of Aimme and her companion critter, as well as portray the various environments and the creatures found within.

Research to be conducted (Research to begin with the start of Term 2) This will be in a separate sketchbook.

* Research into mutants
-Mutant designs in films
-Mutant designs in games
-Real life mutations in humans and animals
* Research into botanical drawings
* Research into drawing methods
-Learn perspective
-Learn how to light a scene properly
-Learn how to improve composition
* Research into concept artists
* Reference as many different environments as I can (Create a resource folder of own photographs).


That's it for now, but I'm sure I'll think of more things to add, although I'm sure this is more than enough to keep me occupied for the rest of the year o.O

Huge post is huge....

Mr. Evil

So these are basic designs for "Mr Evil". I realised that stupidly I haven't even started designing the main antagonist for the game.



Whilst doing really quick rough sketches I came up with this profile and really liked it. So I decided to stick some hair styles on it to see what fits. So far I like design 2 and 4 the most. 1 looks silly in my opinion, and 3 looks too soft even though it's a mohawk. I'll develop styles 2 and 4 further in a little while.

What?! A background?!

So yup, to my surprise I've actually drawn a background. I didn't intend to, and perhaps that's why I manage to do it. I used a reference picture taken when I went to Scotland over summer.
I'm pleasantly surprised and pleased with how relaxing it was to sketch.

Anyway, enough rambling. I drew this originally to illustrate a species that I came up with years and years ago. I found the most embarrassing drawings ever and decided that these's guys need a good old revamp. And then I realised that they'd fit in perfectly with this project. The species is called Arathamos, and here you can see a stag and a doe together. They mate for life and live in small family herds.
The second use to this picture was to start drawing environments that the player would encounter in the game. This is heavy woodland/forest and should be an interesting challenge to paint.



I used this reference for the stag and this for the doe.

Pre-existing designs

I was looking through my finished work folder and found quite a few pieces that I've done recently independently of this project. I think some of them would fit into this world well and so here they are.

The image above is a feline species which in colder areas of the world would be quite a common sight. They're about as large as a German Shepherd dog, and very curious. Because of their smaller size, they would have to rely on ambush techniques to bring down their prey.

And this design has been rattling around inside my head for some years now, so I was pleased when I finally got him drawn. Undead mutant dragons? Hell yeah!

I think this fits in well with the whole radiation poisoning part of the story, and would explain how the poor guy is still going.

These two were drawn over summer when I was working out this project, so it doesn't really surprise me that they fit if I was thinking about this project whilst drawing them.

I designed this character last year, so it's quite old now, but I still really like him so I want to use this project to put his character to good use. He will be developed further soon.

Next to be designed will be the "bad guys" of the story; the religious sect.

I'll update once I've sketched some rough concepts up later.

An update on Byron

A quick update on where I am with Byron. I'm really starting to like this character, and as I paint him I'm starting to get a sense of his character and personality.

So far I've worked out that Byron is the kind of character that would put on quite a cold act, and would be rather aloof and sarcastic. Bad tempered, Byron would how ever fight to the death for someone he decided was worthy of his friendship and loyalty.

Trying to paint this one a bit differently for once in that I'm doing the shading and highlighting first, and then I'll see how colour looks over the top of it. Don't really mind if colour doesn't work as I quite like it grey scale, although of course I'd need to indicate some how what colour each piece of material is like. I'll get round to it once I finish the shading on his boots and the over all highlights. Will finish that today hopefully.

More mutants

These are going to be tests to find out which style I want to do my botanical like drawings in. I haven't painted them yet, but I thought I'd put them up here first just in case they get ruined in the process.

As they were all people once, I have started naming the mutants. I don't really know why other than it gives them a bit more sense of personality or what they might once have been like.

The one below is Mildrid, and obviously it/she is more feminine than usual. Although I don't think there would any gender differences in mutants, I did realise that every single one of the more humanoid ones look masculine. I wanted a change and so Mildrid was drawn :D

These guys are Harry and Melvin. Harry has control of the body, but annoyingly for him, Melvin screams constantly. I wanted to make a mutant that would be quite a bit more disturbing than usual, so I thought of what would freak me out the most. And that is an extra head constantly screaming that sounds far too human.

And here we have Lucy and Petter, who were husband and wife before they were melded together. Obviously being a Giant mutant, there were many more people that were melded into the same creature. But if any personality and memories remain, it's those of Lucy and Petter.

The little stick figure is to show size comparison, please ignore the fact that the little man is actually holding an ice cream in order to tempt Lucy from eating him.

I'll update these guys again once I've painted them in different styles, which I will then evaluate.

Sea beasties

So I've decided to move away from land animals and start designing other types of creatures, mainly aquatics and insects.

These are just two quick doodles that I started the other day. I've since developed the one above into a full creature, but it's the one below that I like the most. I'll definitely be doing more with this species.

I've just realised that I'm going to have the horrible task of trying to give all these different creatures species names. That's going to fun.

Songs of the Siren

So whilst doodling randomly these guys appeared on the page. I love the legends of Sirens, so decided to develop the image on the right further into a new creature.

They first appear as beautiful women with long flowing hair and angelic voices. They also have glowing orbs along their arms which they can pulsate light through to add to further entice their prey towards them. Once their hapless victims are within reach their faces and bodies distort and they become hideous and terrifying monsters. They can open their mouths wide enough to devour a grown man within moments.






They are extremely territorial and will attack each other on sight, which is why they appear so scarred in their true forms.
These guys would probably be quite a common sight within the game, and would congregate near larger populations of humans. Their presence would terrify the populace and would cause vast areas of land to be almost totally unexplored.

Female centaur

Ok, so the anatomy is awful, but you get the general idea. Women are generally smaller and lighter built than the males, and their manes and hair also tend to be much longer too. Nudity is not a taboo for this species, and so the women generally don't cover their breasts or stomachs.

The top image is also an idea for a helm of some sort, but in general I really don't like this page. Saying that, it could be used as a base for future ideas so that's why I've put it up here.

Forest grower

I was really inspired after flicking through the Art of Guild Wars 2, and really wanted to draw a forest spirit of some sort. And this guy was the result. He is ancient, and very slow moving, and will spend long periods of time growing new sections of forest. He eats dead or damaged parts of woodland and jungle, and then replaces them with new life, keeping the forest healthy and strong.



And would you look at that, I actually attempted a background!

Gryphons?

Some potential designs for gryphons, looking at different types of birds instead of just the regular eagles.
First one is based on an owl, and although I don't like how it's drawn, I do like the idea.




Which is how this one came about. I'm much happier with this image, and want to use it further on in my project.



The bottom image was just trying out a different type of bird, this one looks more like a stork of some sort.

More creature designs

Finalised centaur design, complete with facial study. I'm really happy with his over all anatomy, just got to do the female variation now.
They are built move for power than speed, and are excellent warriors. Their feet are very dexterous, and can be used to pick things up. They love to adorn themselves with piercings and tattoos, and the women will often braid their manes and tails.




Basic dragon designs I guess. Not much to say expect this was to really show the wing span and how it connects, and also potential different horn types.

Byron

So here's an update on that really sketchy male character that I posted a few days ago. I'm really happy with how the design has gone, but I think colouring him might be quite a challenge.
He's one of several allies that you would gain within the game, but I'm unsure as of yet whether they would constantly follow the player, or if they would just be around on certain missions.



That's pretty much all for now until I can find my camera to upload the new drawings from my sketchbook.

Critters

Just some general creature shapes, body structures and scale. I actually did this ages ago, but totally forgot about it. Not much else to say really.

Allies

I've started designing allies that would aid you throughout the game. I've realised that I'm really lacking in male characters. This is because I've been avoiding drawing them (not consciously) because I struggle with them so much. So it's going to be another thing to force myself into doing, which I'm actually looking forward to.
I'd love to create a really strong designs for male characters, both human and non.

So yeah, below is a really, really rough sketch that I started last night. His clothes are very mismatched and quite warn down. There is something about his image that is really bothering me, and I think it's because the style of clothing is quite commonly used at the moment. I'll keep messing around with the design though, and hopefully something will come from it.



Yeah, I know, yet another female character. This time its a revamped character of mine called Morrend. She, and others like her, fit into this world perfectly. They suffer from Magik poisoning which is slowly altering and changing their bodies and nature. The radiation spreads around their body, changing their cell structure and forming armored scaling. They have formed a clan and are known to be fantastic warriors.
Morrend is not technically blind in that eye, rather, as the mutation spread along the body and up to the face, the eyes become excruciatingly sensitive to light.



This is just a typical female warrior, showing common body armour and scaling. I'll have the male version sorted soon.

More creature designs

I've decided that for the rest of this term that I want to work on an encyclopedia of sorts. Like the books you get on wildlife, I want to illustrate and detail about different creatures that would be seen and found through out the game.
So before I start, I've been quickly sketching different creatures in order to use for this part of my project. I now need to narrow it down and choose which creatures I'm going to feature which will be done very soon.

Image 1: Trying to move away from "pretty" creatures, which I think I've succeeded with these ugly guys.


Image 2: Another centaur design- trying to get a creepier looking going here by replacing the stereotypical hooves with human hands and feet. I know there are major anatomy flaws in this image, but I like the basic idea. I also think that these guys could be used as allies within the games, and would live in tribes.



Image 3: Because my hand writing isn't readilbe - "The very top drawing was inspired by shapes in coulds. I really liked the forms so I developed them further into two different species. I get the feel that they would be pack or herd animals, and would be quite a common sight.



Image 4: Top annotation- "Definitely a carnivore, it would be solitary apart from breeding season. the large tail would be used to signal body language to others of its kind. an ambush predator, it would rely on its power and weight to bring prey down."
Bottom annotation: "A predatory wyvren, huge wings would allow it to ambush its prey from above.

Expressive portrait practice

I decided to do some expression practices as I seem to draw the same expression over and over again. I'm going to do a few more of these and hopefully they'll start to improve. I did use reference, but I'll have to link to it later as I'm on a different PC to usual.



And this is just another quick portrait practice using a few different tutorials. I used the middle expression from the above image as a base. This is no where near done, but I needed to take a break from it and though I would just post my progress. Trying to aim for a more realistic style here, which I think I'm semi achieving.

More sentient mutants

Here are a couple more pages from my sketch book. As you can see they're mainly more sentient mutant designs, with a centaur type species thrown in.
The image below is just a couple of doodles I did to try and explore different possible body types and builds that you might see in these mutants. These two wouldn't be able to function particularly well, especially poor snake man.



I ended up really liking the two ideas here. The centaur guy I've decided to develop into a species, and the other into a character.



Which is where this image came from. I named her Ausra, and she would be a very gentle and quiet character that you could interact with when visiting Nurzhan's settlement. She obviously was melded with a deer or some such creature, which has resulted in very elongated anatomy and features. Ausra is more functioning that a lot of the others, but still suffers with pain and can move only slowly. This character would posses a great knowledge of herbs, and you could purchase these from her in order to create stronger health and healing potions.



Trying to force myself into drawing head on portraits of people as I've always had problems with symmetry and making things look even, resulting in me avoiding it as much as possible. But yup, I'm trying and hopefully my front on portraits will start to improve.

More Story Line

So I just realised that I haven't updated my ideas for the rest of my narrative.
The game starts off with Aimme and her companion creature trying to survive, but once they grow I realised that there needs to be a reason for much more action. And so after contemplating what I already have for the story line, and also what I used to have (there are aspects of this game which come from very old ideas that I never had the chance to use before now), I came up with the following very rough narrative.

Humanity has started to recover from the Fall of the World, and communities and civilisations are starting to form throughout the world again. Religions are also reappearing.
One religious sect uncovers technology from "the Old World" and believe that it will be the salvation of man and restore all that was lost in the Fall. How ever un-be known to them it is nuclear technology, which if activated could unbalance the already fragile world and rip open new gateways.

There are three different locations that this sect has moved in on, and Nurzhan would provide the player with information on where they are, how to get in, and what to do. The main aim would be to travel to each one and close them down before they can set off another disaster and potentially cause the world to fall again.
The final part of the game would be the player having to enter a gateway and manually close it down after failing to stop the final group.

More creatures

Just some more rough creature designs.



After thinking about it, I realised that animals coming through the portals wouldn't necessarily fit our world's natural rules, and so wanted to experiment with what creatures might look like from other dimensions that are under different conditions, i.e. gravity, etc.
Hence the hexoped in the image below. After seeing Avatar, and seeing how they had managed to make six-limbed creatures move conviningly, I wanted to give it a go. I've never really been a big fan of animals with 5+ limbs (except for dragons- 4 legs, 2 wings, etc), as I always thought that their movement would be to clumsy. Happily I'm wrong and so gave it a go :D

Dragons?

I had a lot of fun coming up with the designs below through using a new technique. I made random shapes using costume brushes, and then picked out details that I could see within it. I really enjoyed this technique, and realised that the creatures have as much chance of being ugly as being cute, and so gives me a balance between aesthetics.

Here's a few of the ones that I've come with so far. I really want to experiment further with this technique and see how detailed I can get things with it through creating textures, etc.
My favourites are the bottom two, which I plan to develop further.



After drawing these, it got me thinking about dragons. Everyone loves dragons. I love dragons. So I decided that dragons are going to be quite a common sight within my game, although they aren't going to look like the usual scaled monsters.
I want to create creatures like them that haven't been seen in games before and by doing that providing the target audience with some new material.

Here are some rough dragon head designs that I doodled in class the other day:



I don't want them to look like mutants, but I do want them to be gnarled and grizzled with age, after having fought for their lives. They're not likely to look pretty after that, are they?

Mutants, monsters and creatures: Part 2

The Earth is not just inhabited by humans and mutants. All manners of creatures and humanoids would be encountered through out the game. Some would be hostile whilst others could be convinced to provide help, shelter and resources.



I plan to feature several creatures and monsters that are similar to those that feature in our own mythologies and legends. They wont look anything like the pre-conceived ideas that people have created, but the player will be able to recognise them. Amongst some of the creatures featured will be dragons, gryphon's, centaurs and chimeras. They will all be my own interpretations and I hope to make them look more unique and fresh as opposed to the stereotypical images that we have become so used to seeing. Fair warning in advance- they are not likely to be pretty.



The next couple of posts are just going to be some rough sketches of creatures and monsters that I've come up with through doodling.

Mutants, monsters and creatures

The Origin of the Mutants

There are three main types of mutants- lessers, giants and Sentients. I'll begin by describing the most commonly encountered mutants; the lessers and the giants.



Figure #1 (on the right) illustrates the basic lesser mutant; much smaller, leaner and better formed. They move in groups and will attack anything, including giants. Lesser mutants don't generally have extra limbs or heads, but it does occasionally happen. They are shorted lived than the giants, but unlike their larger counterparts, lessers can be created by some of the smaller gates.
They posses more intelligence and figure out basic puzzles. They generally stand much higher than about 5"8 and are very swift.

Giants on the other hand (Figure #2, on the left) live up to their names. They stand anywhere from 10 ft to 27 ft high. They also often sport extra limbs and heads. Giants can live for hundreds of years, although there are very few left by the time Aimme sets off on her quest.
Giants mutants will normally attack each other on sight, although some of the smaller individuals will group together.
Due to their frames being so twisted and deformed, they live in constant pain which it turn fuels and drives their rage.
Within the game the player would be much more likely to encounter hordes of the lesser mutants. Although giants would do more damage, they would be easier to hide from and evade.
Mutants tend to congregate near ancient and decrepit cities, although they can occasionally be found roaming out over open country.
Below are more examples of the kind of mutants that the player could encounter.



The third and final group of mutants are called Sentients. Nurzhan (featured two posts back), and others like him are fairly well formed but still have physical problems and conditions. They were formed when humans and animals were in close contact when the gates open, and so melded together. They are usually quite small in stature and in general are a gentle people.
They posses much higher intelligence levels and are capable of living in complex communities. Some Sentients are much less well formed, or have extra limbs and these individuals are often looked after by the more fortunate members of their society.

Although Sentients are not brutal and bloodthirsty savages like the other mutants, they are shunned by the rest of humanity. They do not retain many memories or personalities of their former selves, but those few who do often end up loosing their sanity.