DomWar 8: Hitler & Ghostie

Hitlerstravaganza! As you might recall from the Dominance War Update 2, for one of the entrants I designed a Hitler head-in-a-mech. Well the last two days I've been fleshing it out. First off was doing a mock-up 3d model, which was for my own purposes as well as making things either for my collaborator.



Thankfully I've got friends with far greater experience with 3DS Max than I. Fritz was kind enough to play around with a few renders of the model on a basic stage setup, and this one looked like it would be an excellent candidate for a paintover:



I thought the cylindrical banding in the background was interesting, but I didn't want it to interfere with the read of the mech's silhouette. So with some sweat in Painter and Photoshop here's the mid-level step after yesterday:



And finally after most of today, here's the finished (for now?) paintover, that partially incorporates the head model that Katzeimsack has built. Pretty happy with it, particularly the worn down pedestal. In Italy and other European countries, stone steps like those are everywhere and when I see them they never cease to impress upon me their immense age.



But that wasn't all that today brought! Earlier was sort of a warm-up character design, a ghostly woman infested with maggots. I'm rather proud how good those maggots look... it almost makes seeing the hideous reference pictures worth it. I like how the limbs resolve in a primitive fashion, reminiscent of something from Silent Hill or similar game:

DomWar 7: Bortly Bot

Here's another paintover run amok; for an old time #mder named Bort. His only qualification was to retain the original female character's generously proportioned rear, which I did... the rest of the design was rather liberally re-interpreted:

Back from a revitalizing weekend with what I hope is a fresh battery charge--isn't it a pity that we must speak of the state of our bodies in almost entirely mechanistic terms?

DomWar 6: Demon Engine / Gorilla-Man

Today wasn't as productive, though I did have a strong start on a more painterly piece that I'll attend to later. In the meantime, how about the cursed war engine? (posted this to the top so that the Gorilla image isn't overwritten by the sidebar)



Slow start today but I finally revised the albino Gorilla-man commander character. He's now equipped with a traditional African war axe (gorilla-men like to keep things up close and personal, alongside a fondness for grenades), as well as some of his cadre of elite simian fighters visible:

DomWar 5: General Birdstein / Mech Pilot

As with yesterday I'll add more pieces as I work on them, so be sure to refresh your browser when you visit this page, as it seems to get cached.

First up is General Priscilla "Knifetail" Birdstein. Giant avian species, while enormously intelligent and peerless fighters, aren't particularly clever with nicknames.



Small update: didn't quite have the juice to overhaul the mech today (sorry EQ!) but I did do a little work on fleshing out what the pilot will look like:




Only the head and chest will be visible, but it was still fun to draw. The helmet was updated based on EQ's in progress model which is looking really nice so far, it's really a privilege to work with a guy that's been advancing as steadily in his craft as EQ has.

DomWar 4: Scavenger, Dropship, Centaur

More good times from the frontlines. Here is a "concept tag" where I've done a briefy redesign of DTrip's robot guy. He described him as a scavenger, so I've focused on that aspect. I think of him as the Scavenger King, leader of the second wave of forces tasked with cleaning up smaller pockets of troops and subduing the weakened. Picking over the battlefield with a lumbering gait, I thought of him much as the thieves and rogues of medieval societies, the lowest order that would steal from the dead and dying on the battlefield.



I doubt this is going to be used for the contest, as it's quite a stretch to consider this a General. He, or it, is a sentient dropship, with great big bat wings that double as protective shields when disgorging troops. The streaming blue from the double-mouths is a mysterious energy-seeking ghost vapor (whatever that means).



And with respect to Mr. Andrew Jones, this was my paintover of Asthane's cyborg centaur lady. Two and half hours, I had a lot of fun putting this together. I typically try and resist the fairly trite dark-with-glowie-bits design style, but I think this turned out well.