Fantasy Illustration - Tiamat's Chosen: Designing Ningal

Continuing the character design feature from last time, next up on the design plate is Ningal. Like Tiamat, Ningal is a pre-existing character in the D&D Forgotten Realms universe. This design was very straightforward. In the sketch, you can see how she compares to Tiamat's design - taller, with a more athletic build. I always tried to be very conscious of making every character unique from head to toe - not just clothing and facial features, but also their body type and build.

Fantasy Illustration - Tiamat's Chosen: Designing Tiamat

A recent book cover commission I worked on called for five detailed fantasy-themed character designs. In a series of blog posts over the next week or two, I'll talk about some interesting points about each of character designs.

First up is Tiamat, a canonical character of the Dungeons & Dragons Forgotten Realms universe. The client called for some substantial changes to her appearance, however, so she's very different in these design sketches.

My initial pass on her was a modern take on the classic design in Jeff Easley's Tiamat painting.

The client liked a lot of the design elements of the initial design, but had a younger, playful and flirtier Tiamat in mind, so it was back to the drawing board for a second pass.

In the second design she's shorter and less curvy, more impish rather than sinister.

I also came up with some variations on her outfit. #1 is the classic fantasy bikini, but this interpretation of Tiamat called for a more modest costume, so I tried a number of other designs. All of them feature dragon claw shoes, a nod to Tiamat's other form, a five-headed dragon. The client chose design #4, which you'll see in the finished illustration.

Pegasus Anthro in the Clouds - WIP

It’s a bird. It’s a plane. No, it’s a flying Pegasus anthro in a flowing white gown. This image is from my upcoming book, Draw Furries. Since we weren’t able to fit a step-by-step demo for this image in the book, (you know, limited space in publishing and all that) I’ve posted a series of buildup sketches, and work-in-progress snapshots of the painting process here on my blog.

Now here’s a meaningless question to ponder. Are Pegasi an offshoot horse species, a specific breed of horse, or can any horse be a Pegasus if you slap a pair of wings on them?

Anthro Pegasus under development. From basic form thumbnail to rough sketch.

Final sketch.

Color WIP. Follow the numbers.

Strength - WIP

AKA Strong.

Another entry for IllustrationFriday.com. The drawing is finished and composed, but I'm just starting on the painting. More soon.

Impatience: Full Walk-Thru

When I back up an image on DVD, I clean up any unnecessary intermediate files saved along with the big milestones. Before I delete the intermediate steps, I use them to build a developmental walk-thru that details the process that went into creating the image. These step-by-step guides are often helpful to look back on if I'm confused about how I did a painting technique or a special effect.

Here is the walk-thru for Impatience, along with step-by-step into annotations.

Concept sketch to digital rough.

Rough pencils to finished sketch.

Progression of the colors.

Mushroom Princess - Leisure

Rough sketch with colors

Inspiration for colors

More art soon.

Wrapped

Art created for the weekly illustration challenge site, IllustrationFriday.com. This is my take on the subject “Wrapped”.

“Wrapped” started with the octopus. I liked the idea of using its out-jutting tentacles as a framing device for the picture. I considered using a modern day diver, or an unfortunate swimmer as his victim, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was making the picture more mundane than required. Since there were no restrictions (and I’m already using a monster octopus) why not delve completely into the realm of fantasy, and make its victim into a mermaid?

There you have it. She’s wrapped.

The final image with a more restricted color palette.

I consciously limited the palette and degree of brushwork in this piece, modifying my painting style to match up with the sort of quick-turnaround work seen in magazine spot illustrations. I was shooting for two days, but the work took a little longer than expected – maybe 2.5 days in total.

The final sketch, drawn on a half sheet of 9”x12” Strathmore Sketch paper.

Basic color tones, plus “paper bark parchment” texture from cgtextures.com. I was glad to see that a little texture could bring the Octopus to life. Almost no shading or painting required. A nice trick when you can pull it off.

Color + dramatic shading.

Wrapped

Work-in-progress of a new picture for IllustrationFriday.com. Mermaid meets Octopus. Flesh meets beak.

I'm going to cut back on the detail for this picture. I'll also be more restrained with my coloring. More spot illo, less Hildebrandt. Hoping for a two day turnaround.

Here's the work up.


Concept sketch (red/blue) with revised lines (black).

Rough sketch - Details on the mermaid character.


Rough sketch - Composed with the crop and ready for the final sketch pass.

Viral - From Sketch to Colors

Sketch

Color concept

Viral - This'll be the Death of Me

Just in time for pandemic swine flu, my latest editorial illustration is about a disease spreading in an urban population center.

I'm 2.5 days into the sketch. Like NASA planning a trip to Mars, I'm being very methodical with this project, carefully plotting the position and height of characters and objects along their curved paths in three point perspective.

Tomorrow, I'll move from concept sketch to rough sketch.

Domo-kun, Where do the Months go?

Time flies when you're working on a comic. I look up from my desk and two months have passed. Yeesh! I guess drawing and coloring comics have relativistic effects. Time slows down for the artist, but continues at its normal pace for the rest of the world. If I could only apply this time distortion to my bills. Paying rent once every 3 months would solve many of my problems.

The comic job I'm referring to above, was a couple of chapters for Tokyopop's Domo manga . Since the company posted quite a few of the pages online, I'll just repost their link here. Please note that the first page in the set-- what I'm guessing is the cover-- was done by another artist working on the project.
http://www.tokyopop.com/Domomanga/tp_article/2759413.html

Lindsay Cibos drew the pages and I provided coloring and effects work. Having never done a color comic before, the Domo manga was a good opportunity to pick up skills along with a paycheck. I'm happy with how everything turned out. I hope that the pages look as good in print as they did in our homemade color proofs.

Looking over the blog, I see that I never posted the final art to the Box Jelly fish image. Another victim of comic relativity. Here's the finished image.


After completing the Domo project, it was back to work on portfolio pieces. I hope to land some work doing either editorial illustration or something else within publishing... Book covers would be nice.

Here's the string of four images I'll be working on over the next couple of weeks. The first one-- about people fetishizing technology-- is finished and colored. I'll post on the rest as they're completed. For now though, here's the sketches to look over.

Box Jellyfish - WIP 4

Final sketch.

Black and white lighting test.

Color concept.

Color concept without lines. (Look at that jellyfish glow.)

Box Jellyfish - Sketch3 WIP

Another day with the fish. Progress is slow but steady. How many days has it been? Just two? Seems like a week.

More tomorrow.

Box Jellyfish - Sketch2 WIP

Somewhere, deep down I hoped I could have drawn this image in one pass. It wasn't meant to be.

I have to color a comic page for a new Tokyopop project Lindsay and I are working on. This will be interesting. I've never done a color comic.

Once that's done I'll print the sketch back out and start on a second pass.

All told, I'm pretty happy with how far this picture has come in a day. I wonder how it'll look flipped? I'll probably flip it and then print it for the second pass.

Gotta keep it real. Gotta pass the flip test.

Box Jellyfish - Sketch WIP

Based on a conversation Lindsay and I had one night after watching a show about Box Jellyfish on Animal Planet. According to the show (not fact checking it right now) Box Jellies cause more human fatalities than any other animal (aside from humans, I'm assuming).

I think the show scared me a bit, which is funny because I don't live in the Box Jelly's home waters of Australia. I'm never going to have to deal with these guys. It's not like they'll float out of the ocean on an air current and be waiting from me at my second story apartment... right?

How Microsoft took Japan - WIP Colors 1

Eat Desert Last. That's the doctrine I stick with when working on these large-scale images. The character is the capstone. It takes the most effort, and is usually the most pleasing portion of the picture to look at. When you're done with it, you want to be on your way out of the painting. Maybe you'll still need to clean up a snag here, or alter the coloring there, but the last thing you want to think about is rendering the other 2/3s of the picture. That, more than any technical reason is why I start with background elements and work up.

--and there's also technical reasons, like overlap and such.

I got off to a late start tonight, picking up the painting after dinner. The preliminary painting and texturing for the X-Box flag and Tokyo skyline are done.

I'm working on the city now. God I hate the working on the city. I'm half-tempted to catch a flight to Tokyo, snap some photos, and drop them directly into the image. That's what a real manga artist would do. Or they’d buy a stock photo. Nevertheless, I suppose that's why I'm a quasi-manga artist. I make life 10 times harder on myself. Hopefully I’m learning something.

Work on the city continues tomorrow. Hope to have this done in the next two days.

Cherry Blossom Pink, How Mircrosoft took Japan - Work in Progress

Welcome to my first post. I'm starting with a simple picture post entry. I've got some education related posts lined up, stuff that I'm certain will reveal deep universal art secrets, but for now I'm just looking to get my feet wet on this blogging stuff. I'm also looking for feedback on a couple of specific elements in my recent picture. You don't mind commenting, do you?

"Wait! Are you just crowd-sourcing me for art feedback?"

You seem unconvinced that following this blog is worth your time.

"Where do I benefit?" You ask dismissively.

I'll tell you where you benefit! By taking part in my blog you'll...
Get a behind the scenes look at the art world.
Learn how to become rich and famous as a comic or manga artist.
Revel in personal drama and intrigue.
Gleam HOT insider knowledge on how an award winning artist develops his art.
Have a say on where I take my projects. Perfect for control freaks or aspiring art directors.

(The above was said with a tongue-in-cheek inflection.)

So this is the new idea. I'm trying something different. Art that's big, dramatic, has a message, is geeky, and editorial-ish.

Original Concept for Microsoft takes Japan:
Microsoft does what it takes to win the war for the videogame counsel market in Japan. Halo is rebranded to feature a sakura blossom pink suited Master Chief, with a face of a cutesy anime girl (cel style face?), and the flowing glossy black hair of a princess . A tsunami wave rips around the front of the picture and crest overtop of Tokyo. The wave is made of millions of green dollar bills. Foamy water droplets are glittering coins. The sky is red and white. The symbolic sun from the imperial Japanese flag rises over the city, but the center of the red sun is slashed through by Microsoft's trademark neon green X-box 360 logo. Consider putting dollar symbols or yen symbol in corner or in the wave?

I have three slightly different versions of Mistress Chief-Chan. The rendering is crude. Disregard that. Focus on the character's pose and how it ties in with the overall image. Tell me which you think works the best.

The first has concept has the character staring out at the viewer with an adorable face, as if to say, "We did it! We took Japan!" From my POV I think this version focuses the viewer's attention on the character at the expensive of the rest of the picture. I lock eyes with her and the image becomes a pin-up. What do you think?

The second version takes the most of the pose from the first and refocuses the character's face towards the mainland. She looks more accomplished and solemn. "We did our job..." is what I think her look says. Should this be the one I use? It's less cute but more... deep?

The third and final version has her posed differently and turned more towards the action. Her helmet looks like it was just removed and her gun rests on a shoulder strap. She has the same solemn look of the second version, but the pose makes her seem more concerned with events and less with a viewer. She doesn't seem to realize there is a viewer in this version. How voyeuristic. :p

So that's what I have. I hope you enjoyed this little exercise. If you have any thoughts, let me know. I can't seem to pick one.