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.

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.

Last Stand of The Spartan

Well this was a bit of a beast.
I set out to try and create an 'iconic', frazetta-style hero image. I tried to include as many techniques for visual composition as I could, from the arrow shape of the lead figure, the rule of thirds, the golden ratio, having the background arch spiral round to draw you in, having the skeletons weapons and bodies angled to focus you on the character, using areas of contrast and detail to attract your eye to the hero.
I also wanted to get away from using found textures so much for my skies so I set myself the task of fully painting it for this one. I managed to find a technique which I'm quite pleased with and hopefully it's something you'll be seeing more of soon.
The Spartan himself has a lot of engravings on his armour, most of which you can't see anymore. They were to represent his path from Sparta as he hunted various monsters through the night. Acting as a sort of champion of good against nocturnal forces and picking up various protective wards on the way. Now his journey is at an end in a ruined temple in the far north of Dacia.
His story may continue in the forthcoming 'Carpathia' game as we return to this region in the 1800s.

Heroes of Hellas

I am currently edging towards wrapping up my work on the forthcoming Heroes of Hellas RPG and am hoping to go out with a bang.
The current piece I am working on is a Frazetta-type piece of a warrior fighting off a horde of undead.
I have redrawn and redesigned the main character several times but I ended up going for a Spartan to make it look 'greek' on the first visual read. His posture was changed many times to convey dynamism and tension in the final piece.
Anyways, I drew the character a little larger so I could get some more detail into him and thought I'd save the linework in case it was any good for editorial purposes. I then banged on a couple of textures and some text to make a quick poster on the train on the way to work, which is what this is.
I am also delving into a massive, forthcoming project which is a Hammer Horror style game called 'Carpathia'. This has a small influence on this piece: kind of a secret prequel if you will. In the final image our Spartan will be far from home in the cold night of northern Dacia (yep, that's Carpathia fact-fans. We see this lone monster hunter, his armour inscribed with signs and seals from his long adventures battling the forces of the night at their nexus. Maybe he fails in his final quest. Maybe he succedes and beats them back for a thousand years. Only you can decide...

Last of theStoryboards!

And here are the rest of them.

Absolutely loved this project and it was the best education I could have had, seeing as I've had none. Artistically, that is. A degree in Anthropology doesn't really help in art (but is great for referencing concepts!).

Nobody knows who drew these by the way.

More storyboards!

Here are some more.

Paul, by the way, is working on an amazing reboot of the Hellraiser franchise right now. It is a fan project of love and devotion which we are all eager to help get off the ground.
I so hope it happens as all the stuff I've seen is amazing and I love Hellraiser!
Pay heed, Mister Clive Barker, Sir, whom I love and admire very much.

Anyway, back to the boards. I learned so much on these: working accurately on my phone, getting used to the software, how to manipulate layers and textures and so on. A lot of the boards I got to do were 'boring' shots, but it was in trying to get depth and feel into these that I actually learned the most.

PS: the director's style sheet was mostly Terminator Salvation and Abrams' Star Trek, hence dirty textures and lens flares.

Storyboards!

I just found out it's cool to post these!

A while back I was approached by my good friend and luminary, Paul Gerrard ( www.gerrardart.com ) who had previously worked on many big and exciting hollywood projects such as Battle: Los Angeles and Wrath of the Titans.

He was working on a project with director Mike LeHan and neded some help getting a whole load of storyboards together for a pitch package. He would do the key beats of the scene but needed the rest coloured and detailed to fit in so that as you looked through them they wouldn't stand out too much. Obviously I jumped at the chance to help out and get a taste of the hollywood. Paul sent me his first board and said just make them look similar.

After I cleaned my pants and told Paul that they would look in no way anything close to his fully-rendered cg/photoshop wonderment I started in them. I burned through as many as I could and Paul would message me whenever he had got one done.

It was a wonderful experience and one I hope to repeat soon.

Here then, are the boards in all their 'glory'. I did all of mine on my phone with my finger, much to Paul's surprise as he uses a 24gig pc. Yeah, you read that right. Paul's poop on mine from a great height, obviously.