Thursday, December 22, 2011

Space Marine 03


Final!  I did do some quick tweaks on the detailing, and revised those ships in the background, then turned on the color.

I filled the character selection with a base color, and then added a secondary color for the armor, but with this one I wanted to use a softer blend of overall colors with the airbrush, so after the two tone was set up, I just airbrushed a few different colors to enhance the tones and colors.  The background is a pretty soft blend, starting with the orange rocks, moving up to the lighter mist, with a blue transition  color moving to purple, and then the black of space.

Alright, time to get going on the last one of the Three Resolutions, Fishman!  And a long with further vehicle explorations from that LOST frame.

But first, a nice holiday break...

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Space Marine 02


So after months of letting the image sit, I come back to it, with some new skills and approaches, and finish up the gray scale paint out.  It's looking pretty good overall, but I still need to figure out the design for the shuttles in the background, and work on some of the details and lighting here and there, before transitioning over to color.

Monday, December 19, 2011

Space Marine 01


Remember this...from last January?  Yep, that's another one of the 2011 resolution art type commitment whatever concepts I set up for myself to paint out, that I'm finally getting around to.


Ok, so here's the rough render, that was done probably months ago, I got really busy with work, and getting ready for BotCon, it kind of fell by the wayside, so this is where I left it, before reviving the folder and starting back again with the LOST image - don't worry, the Imperial Shuttles will not be in the background by the time we get to final.

This was also done before I had my minor revelation about form construction, where I was doing everything in a million pieces, like a movie Transformer, rather than approaching it like a car/suit design, creating the entire form first, adding the seam details and painting out from there, rather than creating a bunch of elements, and later trying to tie them together with the lighting.  It's ridiculous to me when I think about it, since I do cars and vehicles all the time - it wasn't a new technique to me, but the years of movie bots, and the way create those had bled over into my other approaches, it took a some frustrating days to figure out what I was doing wrong.  It was the Baroness armor that did the trick, from last spring.

Anyways, on to the new paintover...

Friday, December 16, 2011

"LOST" 04 *Update


Final!

And keeping with the Melancholy '70's Theme, I gave the hard surfaces a nice orange-y/yellow color, like a great shag carpet.

I knocked back that background moon a little more, and tried to make the space station look more abandoned, so the whole area comes across more desolate, rather than how it read to me before, like he just moon-hopped to check out the other, unexplored moon across the way.  I wanted it to give the feeling that he was LOST lost...


Uh, I tweaked it a little bit.  I wanted the blacks to be a little bit deeper, and I wanted to readress the canyon highlights, to help tie the foreground to the background a little bit more.  That is all. 

K/C, 01/07/12

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

"LOST" 03


OK, here it is all rendered out in grays...over the last couple of years, I've been leaving the hot white highlights for the color stage - if the range is 1-10, and the white is 1, I usually go between 2-10, and leave the highlights to do in the color stage, because I use a bit of color - around 3-5% with the saturation under the white for the edge bleed into the main color, and then do a quick all white pass for the hottest parts.

That being said, now on to the color...

Friday, December 9, 2011

"LOST" 02


To force myself to not dive into the character vehicle design (the fun stuff to me) I started with the background, blocking out the main shapes, then going back in to do details, and then another pass with a variety of texture-type brushes, to give it a little life and energy.


Here I played with the contrast and elements a bit more, added atmosphere, and the planet in the distant background, amongst the starfield.


Well, maybe I cheated a little bit - I did do the line work for the foreground elements, just so I could have an accurate background relationship to the foreground.  I had blocked the character in a 50% gray, under the line art, to make the background decisions.  Then, after I was done with the background, I added tone to get the Spaceman and Land Shark ready for render...

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

"LOST" 01


Last year I posted some drawings I had done, that were meant to push my digital skills, and now I'm finally getting around to doing it.  Of course, doing all that Marvel stuff pushed this back a bit, but now I'm back at it.  This is actually a combination idea, I had posted the speeder, nicknamed the Land Shark, and a futuristic Marine as two separate ideas, but when it came time to do the illustration, it's become clear that I also, probably more than anything, need work on my backgrounds.  So I re-posed the marine, and redesigned the costume, and placed the speeder in the background of what will be a space scene.

I wanted to try to do one of those melancholy 1970's sci-fi paperback cover type pics, with the featured character lonely in the vastness of outer space.  So I made it literal, and gave him a little digital map readout to push the idea that he's flat out lost.

OK, long explanation for the thumbnail drawing above - so that's what I came up with.  And here is the tight drawing, that will go to digital paint...