2008

Ice Elemental

2008 saw more development in the full figure concept development. Here are two designs for the Dominance War 3 online contest. The first fully realized as a warrior representing the Threedy community. It was all digital and took about 40 hours to complete. The second one here was more about being a quick concept painting, spending about 15-30 minutes on it and going in a different direction. Generally you want to avoid limiting yourself to one idea (even if it's a great one) and have a back up piece in case the client doesn't see the same vision as you...

It also helps (especially if you are working digitally) to just throw down some shapes and get some color on the screen. This is not about making the perfect piece (no art really is), it's about getting the ideas down on paper as fast and as numerous as you can. Later on, you can pick a few of the better ones and render them out a bit more refined. Digital color is much faster than traditional color and can be adjusted with a few mouse clicks. With that in mind, a digital piece is not necessarily a better one than that done with traditional materials.

Robotic Rabbit

Next is the Cyborg Gorilla, also done for a Threedy comp. I envisioned a 'Planet of the Apes' character born out of a lab....and wouldn't you know..years later the movie "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" had a similar undertone. One day I will do a full blown color piece with environment. By the way, in his left hand he holds a human girl doll.

Cyborg Gorilla

Sasha was an idea for a female role in Team Fortress 2. The game has a very illustrative style patterned after the great artists of the early 20th century. People like Wyeth and Pyle set the broad expressive strokes in play and define a world that is unique. I imagined her being the Heavy Weapon  Guy's girlfriend, equipped with dual sub-machine guns and being very acrobatic.

Sasha

The color portrait is quite rough, but once again it was done in about 10-15 minutes just to get some color down.

Bunny G is a character from my sketchbook. The method here is to be able to produce a consistent recognizable character with minimalistic lines. These were done in ballpoint pen. I suspect that it will develop into a comic strip once I get enough written material together. I suppose the design could also do with some refinement. There's absolutely nothing wrong with going back and reworking a piece after it's had a few years to 'breathe', but if you are going to do that, make sure it maintains something of the original idea so that your viewer won't reject it out of hand for being 'unrecognizable'.

Bunny G