Concept tagging 11

I really am gone, honestly!

Caesura

I am traveling now; updates may be sporadic at best. I can be reached at driftingjack at gmail dot com.

Concept tagging 10

I've got a progress .gif of the first pic, detailing one of the ways that I do concept tags/work from abstraction: time elapse

Heartbreaker's Lane album cover

Tom Schreck is a talented musician and a good friend of mine from Notre Dame. I thought it was only fair that his new album should have some album art to match the effort he puts into his recordings. I didn't have much source art to work from, just a couple of grainy low-light pictures of Tom in a group--but I'm proud of the result.

Concept tagging 9

Is she a black market dealer from a 80's scifi movie? Yes.

Concept tagging 8

Concept tagging 7: Special Guest

Only the oldest of the old school fans will be able to tell the character I'm referencing with this latest concept tag.

City by the sea

About 45 minutes.

Wolfmother

I haven't posted much this month, but it's not for lack of working. Once I'm able, I'll post the work I've gotten done in the last couple of weeks. In the meantime, here's an interesting sort of experiment, using Artrage together with Photoshop CS2. I've finally tried making custom brushes in PS, and it's really quite handy. I've edited this post to include a second, related drawing I did but didn't update before.

Concept tagging 6

Leaving You Behind

fat marine

I was busy today. Credit to Andrew Ley since I'm biting his colors and (hopefully) some of sketch techniques here, even if it is in a very different style.

Concept tagging 5

The Black Hole's Maximilian

More or less Disney's regrettable cash-in on Star Wars mania, The Black Hole did have a few strong points. Namely,
1.) Some interesting robots,
2.) a hellish, freak-out psychedelic ending completely inappropriate for a PG movie, and
3.) Ernest Borgnine.

Here's my take on the somewhat classic Maximilian design. I made it close enough to the original that it might be mistaken by some people, but a side by side comparison will reveal how different it is.

femech 01

Well I've been rather inspired by Andrew Ley's sketches, and so I've attacked Painter's fabulous tinting brush with renewed vigor and hopefully better results. This sketch took an hour or so, the tinting brush allows for very rapid modeling of form.

reboot brush test

Curiously, both Painter and Photoshop have picked these last few days to behave erratically or, in Painter's case, refuse to start properly at all. Photoshop mysteriously developed a deal breaker of an issue with the color picker hotkey. But both programs have been reinstalled and their preference files reset, so all is well again. Getting back into Photoshop after the reinstall, and especially after having spent so much time in Painter, felt a little strange. And so accordingly, here is the strange image I made while testing to make sure all the brushes were back in order.

Concept tagging 4

Just a few more concept tags in the past however many days.

Concept tagging 3

A tag passed from Snem and Jackablade, and then back to myself.

Concept tagging 2

More concept tagging. Here's the original by Mansir,and to the left is what I came up with. About 2 hours.

Surf Princess

Who knows? This started out as a random seed-type drawing like the one below it, but it quickly veered into some other kind of territory. Beats me what's going on in the picture. About...2-3 hours maybe?

Concept Tag

Concept tagging has started up again on the polycount forums. "Concept tag" is the term I coined to denote concepts freely malleable by different artists, some images having been worked over by several different artists in succession. It's interesting to see how different people might approach an idea. Here's the concept tag thread on polycount, if you're so inclined. To the left here is the image I just finished... not so much a proper tag as it is a "random seed" drawing, done by compositing a bunch of different images from the thread, and seeing what shapes are suggested out of them. In this case, a mech/landmate. The bright colors are a direct result of the overlays.

Playing with brushes

Playing with brushes in Painter IX, so while the details are there, the overall composition isn't. Still, it was instructive, hopefully I'll take that newfound familiarity and push it somewhere further.

This was with the "simple water" brush that is the single biggest reason that people hang onto Painter IV--it's actually in Painter IX, but by default it's set to mix additive, instead of the way it did in IV. Really a fun and easy to use brush, it's clear why so many people love to use it.

Generimech, reporting for duty

Where will it be deployed next?! Feel free to consider the wealth of completely interchangeable sci-fi universes Generimech might fit into. For bonus points, try and pick out the roughly half dozen existing mech designs I likely subconsciously cribbed from while drawing this. Fun for the whole mech-loving family!

Robot 006: Gort (Day the Earth Stood Still)

If there was ever an uglier robot in the whole history of mechanical men, I have yet to see it. This is the second, better known robot named Gort, featured in the science fiction classic The Day the Earth Stood Still. The film itself is something of a classic; Gort's design is not. Well, textbook example of what not to do, I guess. The first time I saw Day when I was younger, I wrote off Gort's hideous appearance as the movie being old and the designers not knowing any better. But Day came a full 24 years after Metropolis, which featured one of the best robot designs of all time, so it's not for lack of good examples. Gort has a number of unsightly features, from the motorcylce helmet head to the stubby, finger-less hands, but my personal favorite would be the lines of robo-briefs. That's right, an 8 foot tall, featureless robot with a belt and underpants. Awesome.

Robot 005b: Gort (Mysterious Dr. Satan)

This bot sure looks familiar. Here we have the first of two Gorts (a popular name for robots in the 20th century), as he appears in the 15 part serial Mysterious Doctor Satan. Gort is of course not-so-heavily retooled version of the robot seen in Undersea Kingdom, rendered in the previous post. In the spirit of this reusal, I reused most of my Undersea Kingdom robot illustration and flipped it to draw Gort. As with many of these robots, more information can be found on David Szondy's page.

Just between you and me, I'd like to say that this is my favorite Gort. The second, and more well-known Gort will be coming up shortly.

Robot 005a: Undersea Kingdom

Created in response to the popularity of Flash Gordon, Undersea Kingdom features some very funny designs, including this robot minion. This very same robot, with some minor alterations, would again appear in the serial The Mysterious Doctor Satan. I haven't made up my mind as to whether I'll depict that version too, but in the meantime be sure to check out David Szondy's page for more info on Undersea Kingdoms.

Dominance War: Epilogue

Now that the Dominance War submission period is officially over, I thought it might be interesting to cobble together all of the concepts I did during that rather fecund period of February 1st to February 26th. My friend and fellow moderator MoP gave me a good critique after seeing this image, remarking that my characters lack dynamic postures, which is something I'd like to spend time improving on in coming days. We'll see.

This gave me a chuckle, though. Combing through all the concepts I was doing, I found this little thumbnail from one of the earliest rounds of concepting. Since Polycount's side includes all the evil characters, I was really trying to come up with some threatening, massive characters... and this came out instead. It made me laugh, but the Whalephant hardly inspires terror.

Steampot

A bit of self-depracation and computer graphics humor for this thread. This is pretty stale to anyone who's spent some time working with CG, but for those unfamiliar with the significance of the teapot in 3d graphics, here's the wikipedia entry for the "Utah" teapot. It's self-depracating because since early college, I've been associated with "steampunk" style work. Things with smokestacks.

Robot 004: Elektro

Meet Elektro, the cigarette-smoking Westinghouse Motoman. Noted on this page as now being the Oldest Robot in the United States, Elektro was built as a showpiece by Westinghouse, an appliance manufacturer. One of the more popular and visible robots of the '30s, at a time when it seemed like a sure bet robots would at the very least be cooking or doing menial jobs around the house of the future. David Szondy's page has more info on this one as well.

With this illustration you may notice I took a bit of artistic liberty: Elektro very likely could not tilt his torso back at such a jaunty angle, but it seemed so fitting to his disposition that I couldn't resist. With that cigarette in his mouth and his hands splayed, I can just hear him make some salacious comment at your girlfriend.

DomWar 12: Closing Articles

Odds and ends as my participation in this cross-community competition comes to a close. The first is a mostly abandoned concept for Nkoste for a saboteur general. Abandoned since he looked mischevious and kind of nice rather than evil, and because it's a regurgitated version of half a dozen different characters of the slinky rodent type, from Gollum on up.


This second one is also for Nkoste, designed as a sibling to Downsizer's Psionic. The brother is also some sort of mentalist general encased in a robot body... that's about as far as I got. Maybe he's still a saboteur, I really don't know.














And the final image is one that I was just doodling up but also wasn't exactly set on fire by the design, so I haven't posted it until now. It's not bad, and there are some interesting texture bits in there, but the forms are pretty lazy.

DomWar 11: a horned god for Mr. Stirling

I said to myself I wouldn't do any over the weekend, but I got a PM and couldn't resist taking a crack. Now it's 6:30 am and I've got a well developed headache, but I think it turned out nicely. Rick Stirling is a Scotsman and so has incorporated certain Celtic/Scottish influences. Can't say I've quite retained those elements all that faithfully; mostly I've just tweaked up what he had going (see the original in this thread and changed the deer antlers to caribou antlers, for a more vertical look.

DomWar 10: Jackablade's Vulture King

Because others are waiting in line for a concept ahead of others, my methodology might seem capricious, and it may very well be. On the other hand, when I go with my instinct, like I did with Jackablade's character who asked for help a scant few hours ago, things seem to turn out well. I would wager this is my most polished 3-hour piece I've ever done, I'm quite happy with how it turned out.

DomWar 9: Sectaurs Revisited

I've just finished a colored version of the first concept I did for this competition, Sectaurs' "Fleshtank" character. I had fun working with such bright, varied colors. In order to confer this character's seniority/leadership position (Sectaurs has been using a very small crown on his head), I've put inset gems into his forehead crest, as well as given that area very bright coloring as the dominant males of many animal species are known to have.



Update for the night is the quickly, but I must admit cleverly put together orthographic, to help Sectaurs realize his alien creature into three dimensional form: