Saturday 23 February 2013

Miniatures!

My first batch of miniatures designs for fouraminiatures are at the sculptors! I'll be able to post the designs and the finished products soon!
Watch this space.

Sunday 17 February 2013

Heroes of Hellas: set sail for adventure!

Well this one is the final piece for the Hellas RPG so it was a bit of a sad time.
I set myself the task of painting everything on this one: all the layers and lensflares etc. No shortcuts allowed. I'm quite pleased with the results: I like the clouds and the sea came out the way I wanted: it's kept the loose style which I like. The lensflare and glare also came out pretty well. All just painted on a seperate layer and fidled with.

I designed a heroic captain with a heavy heart to lean over the prow: is he on his way somewhere or his way back? And why so pensive? At his side is his faithful friend; a savage beast of a warrior who leads his troops. You can't really see them so well on the finished piece as I shrank them down, bit they helped to invest a sense of story and feeling into the piece for me as I worked. I alway like to get some sort of emotional anchor in everything I do, even if in the end I'm the only one who knows it's there. It helps me to connect with it as I work.

The ship itself was a bit of a chore. I don't really enjoy vehicle design as much. I drew one, painted it. And then Sketchbook crashed on me and lost it all.
I came back to it the next day and thought: I didn't like that ship. It wasn't cool and was a bit generic. So I tried to kick it up a notch.
I added the spikes, the skull, the shields, the snarling duckbill ram, the bolted on plates on the prow. I got rid of the square sail and put on a more dynamic shape.

And lo and behold, there was a ship I could imagine adventuring on. One I'd be proud to sail to war in.

Good things come out of accidents sometimes.