Wednesday, July 15, 2009

TF2 - Protectobot Warrior 01

This guy was a bit of a pickle for me. And I really need to give co-design credit the Justin Thomas, the Art Director at Luxoflux for this one. These were the sketches I turned in for review, based on a Bearcat armored car...now I usually don't mention my faves when I turn in these sketches, but I remember it being clear to me that the middle one might have worked best.

But they picked the one that was dotted, and when I turned in this drawing for a pre-final check before submisssion, I got this image reworked into a rough version you can see below. JT did some photoshop magic to squash and stretch elements into this basic shape*, and I redrew it for final.


Normally I am pretty open to making changes, but this time it was a little annoying to have basically this version already in the thumbnails (drop the ribcage armor, and it's pretty close, I thought) and to go to final drawing with another. Time was tight for this, and I had a bunch of these robot grayscales to submit for Hasbro review...though overall, I think it was a great choice to go this way instead.

*I couldn't find the reworked feedback version...stuff like that got saved to a feedback folder, which I don't archive afte projects, so it's lost (to me anyways) forever.

7 comments:

Autoconempire said...

Hello Ken
Pretty cool looking, he looks likes protectobot's tough big brother lol.

The TF DLC was just announced did you do the Starscream? if so nice work, looks awesome.

Ken Christiansen said...

I did do that Starscream. He looks a little different than the one I turned in, but pretty close.

I can't say who else I did just yet, but I did 3 G1 characters, and a ROTF-based character for the DLC.

Autoconempire said...

Hello Ken,

Thank you for sharing, I love your work and I totally understand your need for secrecy. I cannot wait to see the other three characters and really hope you do more Transformers work down the road be it video game or in the comic book medium.

Also, I tried looking for the Shockwave you did in the first game on the blog (awesome by the way) but I could not find it, any chance you can point me in its direction?

Keep up the awesome work

Ken Christiansen said...

Well..I don't know about secrecy, I do have to sign non-disclosure agreements, and adhere to the release schedules set by Activision, Hasbro, IDW, and anybody else I work for.

Hopefully by the time I'm done posting about these game characters, the DLC will be released, and I'll be able to just continue on with my contributions to that part of the project.

All the characters from the first game are on my (sorely in need of an update) website, www.badflip.com, and Shockwave's in the middle of the fourth row in the second section of the gallery.

Autoconempire said...

Sorry, I should have put a smiley face or something of that nature. I figured it was a matter of contract issues, anyway thank you for showing me were the Shockwave was.

M bennett said...

hey im just wondering, you translate your sketches into computer programmes to make the lines a lot neater, what programmes do you use?

Ken Christiansen said...

I usually draw (intended to be finished digitally) every layout with a Col-Erase pencil, then scan it into photoshop. I have a 12" cintiq tablet to help out, moving from selections and paths to freehand. And that's about it.