IDW #151 Final

Here's my final image for IDW #151.

IDW #151

So, I decided to stop lurking and do some of the community activities on conceptart.org  I picked this week's Industrial Design of the Week, for which the prompt is an remote-controlled, surveillance ornithopter. Drawing mechanical things is a bit outside my comfort zone, so I thought this would be a good challenge.

Everyone seemed to be doing dragonflies, so I decided to start from a beetle. I ended up going with a scarab. Initially, I thought about trying to make some futuristic Egyptian-styled device, but wasn't quite sure how to pull that off without it looking like BattleStar Galactica... So, after playing around with it, the design kind of transformed into a very 50s... thing. Kind of an amalgamation of everything mechanical from that decade. I referenced cars, motorcycles, cameras, microphones, radios, TVs, and even refrigerators.

I'm pretty pleased with the design, overall. (Not sure if it would fit the "avoid detection at all costs" bit, but oh well.) The only thing I'm really hung up about are the wings, but I feel they're starting to look more mechanical, now.

1st image: Overall design and color, perspective view.

2nd image: Back view, refining details.

3rd image: Final for IDW #151, fully-painted perspective view, line-drawings for alternate views, labeling and size comparison.

Sketches - "Chandra"

Now that I finally have an opportunity to work on personal art, I've decided to start doing more exercises. I really want to spend some time on technique, and try to examine where I need work. I decided to begin with some character work, and picked Chandra as my subject.

I hadn't done much with the character since I designed her a couple months ago, so I wanted to try to explore her personality with some studies. Her clothes, jewelry, and makeup reflect the culture she's grown up in, and I felt her movements should, as well. Unlike her mother who's usually standing straight, I chose a lot of crouching poses. Mom is also used to chairs, while Chandra just sits on the ground.

The original photo references come from some super-cool folks on deviantART: SenshiStock,  Kirilee, Gesastock, Reference-Poses, and DrunkHobo-Stock.

Great anatomy references!

I just found an awesome blog post to share with everyone. It's a photo collection of athletes--male and female--that shows a huge range of diversity in body types. This is a really great reference that artists can use to compare and contrast different physiques. As the blog author notes, it's easy to fall into drawing athletic characters the same, but a swimmer doesn't look like a weight-lifter. These photos are a great way to avoid that, and make your characters more unique.

Check it out here.



Merry Christmas to those who celebrate, and best wishes to those who don't.

Temple Guardian

For the last month or so, I've been working on a new painting featuring the Syäloä species. This one, unlike the last, is a full-body image. I really felt that doing so was necessary, because I wanted to show some of the similarities and differences between this species and humans, and show off more of this species' clothing and adornment.

This was a long, long, long painting. Most of that simply comes down to me changing my mind several times.

 

This individual is a seɪwä, or Temple Guardian. The design of the guardian came together easily. I'd already hammered out the anatomy of this species some time ago, so that just left clothing to figure out. I wanted to stick with something kind of like a kilt, so the challenge was making such simple clothing interesting, and keeping it all in greyscale (since they don't utilize color) while still making each piece look separate. I went through a lot of concepts, but the design you see here was the winner.

The background here isn't nearly as strong as the character design. Just scrawls roughly where I imagined buildings to be, with the figure standing on a patio that overlooks a city. I ran with this for a time, though, hoping it might come together, later. Sometimes that works out. Many times, it doesn't. In the process GIF below, you'll see some of the different background ideas I went through before finishing the painting.

After finally deciding I didn't like the open patio idea, I went into Blender (it runs nicely on my computer, unlike Maya), and blocked out a new scene. The rectangular shapes were my stand-ins for figures. At one point, I wanted to add another figure--a priestess--but didn't have time to do so. I feel that the final composition here is a lot stronger than what I had before. It also makes a tad more sense to have the character inside the temple. She looked out of place, just chillin' on a patio, before.

And just for fun, here are some additional narrative bits:

Seɪwä were picked from the elite of the warrior class to guard temples, their contents, and the priest class. Today, they serve a largely ceremonial position. However, the pole-arms they carry are not; all seɪwä are highly trained and keep their weapons sharp.