Tsintah

Hmmm not sure how I feel about this one. There's something off about her but overall, I'm satisfied with how she turned out

Ajei the companion

Went with a more painterly style with this one. Maybe cause I don't know how to paint fur 100% accurately yet haha 

Male Orthographic

Had to do an orthographic drawing of the figure mostly from imagination. I used a few anatomical references for this and some lighting references but most of it was from imagination. Eh, looks okay. Not a very interesting thing to draw but orthographics seem to be standard in the industry so I can see the benefits of doing one

Character final update

Here's an update on my characters. The next time I post these will probably be the final. Don't want to spam my blog with unfinished artwork haha. Anyway, lots of dark shadows here. I tend to start dark with the shadow shapes and add lighter colors in later. Teacher told me to bring back the colors a bit so I went with a more desaturated tone but wanted to keep it earthly to reflect the subject matter .I'm excited to see how these turn out. 

Character Project comps

I was going for more of the Dota 2 color palette with these. I also wanted to have a nice range of color variation to choose from. I'm happy to say that I'm happy with at least one of the comps for each character. Gonna end up picking one of each in-class today and will update soon when I begin my rendering

Update: Looks like my teacher, Bobby Hernandez, liked the more earthly color palettes. I agree, I think it complements the subject matter a little better

Ajei the Companion

Dezba the Villian

Skinwalker the Henchman

Tsintah the Sidekick

Yiska the Hero

Character Design Final sketches

Here are some sketches I did over the weekend for my character design final. I think I much prefer the quick sketch method when it comes to ideation over the silhouette. Really makes me think about breaking down the interior shapes as well as the exterior. Also I find when I do silhouettes, my mind isn't in 3D mode. 

I added a mask and a bit of rim light to pull the characters in front of the background. Just s little something that makes it a little nicer to look at.

Character Design Final Research and Story

For our character design final, we get to choose to do any 5 characters we want as long as they fall under certain archetypes. I wanted to go for something that's somewhat under explored in games so I decided to try something Western. Granted, there are some great western games out there already so I did some digging and found a genre called Weird Western, wherein the western genre gets mixed with either horror, sci-fi, or fantasy. I decided to incorporate Navajo folklore and magic to add a more fantastical element to the project. 

There's so much interesting myths and stories in Native American culture! It was hard to pick and choose from the stuff I learned. I'm not completely sure what the title will be though. Hopefully it'll come to me in the coming weeks while I work on the characters.

STYLE

Dota 2/Moby Francke

HERO

Yiska "Night has Passed"

SIDEKICK

Tsintah "Among the Forest"

Medicine women were believed to be able to travel to other states of being, through the gifts of their totem animals. They were said to often be seen wearing the skin of the animal that they believed granted them this power and would sometimes be seen in animal form.

COMPANION

Ajei "My Heart"

Totem animals are honored with their likeness in the dress, dance, music and artwork of the people. The traits and characteristics of the totem animals were thought to be gifted to the people who developed a deep friendship with the spirits of these helpful creatures. Some individuals believed they developed such a deep connection with nature and her "magic" that they could talk with the plants and animals and bring knowledge of medicine and other healing arts to their tribes. These few adepts became medicine men, healers, or wise ones.

Often ancestors and heroes would be said to appear as animals important or sacred to the family or tribe, or as an animal the individual was known for. People especially reported seeing these strangely human animals when receiving good fortune or divine messages. Some believed they would hear the animals speak to them, act as a human would or witness impossible colors or breeds that do not exist.

HENCHMAN

Skinwalker

According to Navajo legend, skinwalkers are accomplished medicine men or witches who reach the highest level of priesthood but choose to use their powers for evil rather than good. Skinwalkers take the form of an animal for the purpose of inflicting pain on others. The initiation procedure is pretty tough—all prospective skinwalkers must kill a close relative. Once a prospective skinwalker passes that test, he gains immense magical powers, including shape-shifting abilities. These abilities enable skinwalkers to turn into any animal they choose, though their top choices are usually foxes, owls, coyotes, wolves, or crows—the most feared or revered animals in Navajo mythology.

VILLIAN

Dezba "War"

Countless Native American tribes recall stories of giant snakes, but one of the most captivating is that of the horned water serpent, an almost impossible-to-kill creature with magical scales that give hunters good luck for the rest of their lives. Legends say that the snake, called Uktena in many stories, boasts a powerful body as broad as a tree trunk, intimidating curved horns, and shining spots. Uktena can only be killed when shot in the seventh scale from its head.

 According to Cherokee legend, the great warrior Aganunitsi successfully killed Uktena and brought back the shining seventh scale, which resembled a large, transparent crystal with a blood-red streak at its heart. The crystal, like a living thing, retains mysterious powers—if it’s not satiated by being coated in the blood of small game every week, it takes on the appearance of fire and goes out in search of blood, which it takes by murdering people. Legend says that the warrior who owns and feeds the Uktena crystal will enjoy a life of successful hunting, rainmaking, and romance.

NOTES

Updated Tengu

I got chosen to participate in the LCAD juried student gallery. Prizes go from $100 to $500! I decided to rework this piece I did earlier in the semester and play with the dimensions and everything to get it working for print. I'm excited to see this in person! Never printed any of my artwork so far.

Cable Final

Ooo boy, that was fun. I dedicated the entire day to this piece. Just sat back and just rendered rendered rendered. After a brief hiatus from photo texturing, I'm starting to like it again. Maybe because when I initially used it I wasn't completely comfortable with lighting and form yet. It's a lot easier to manipulate photos when you do have that knowledge though

Things I can improve: the leather shoulder pad isn't looking right to me. Maybe cause I stacked a tiny one on top of a bigger one? It might have worked better as just one shape. The robot hand looks like it would intersect his leg at the angle I drew it at. Personally, I think the whole piece is a bit too dark but I sort of intentionally did that since most of the costume concepts for the film had a similar look.

The dirty side of concept art

Here are thumbnails and comps for some of the characters I did throughout the semester for Character Design so far. Yeah I know, they're super messy, but these were mostly used to problem solve and get rid of the designs that weren't working. 

I was also trying to find a process that worked well for me while doing these iterations. I found that I'm leaning more toward loose sketches which I then gradually tighten up if I think it works.

Experimenting with style

My teacher recommended me to try and explore different styles in my studies to find my "voice as an artist." I looked at a lot of Leyendecker and Adam Hughes and really enjoy that style so I'm trying to somewhat emulate some of their techniques in my studies now. 

This one is in the style of a pin up girl

More Leyndeckery of the two me thinks

Alien Space

A piece I did for the Dead Space Brainstorm challenge. I initially had this on my website but decided to move it here since it's technically fan art haha. Got some nice feedback on this one. Main problem is that everything seems to made up of the same matte material. I paid more attention to how light reflects off different kinds of materials after this piece

Character turnaround

A character turnaround for a game project our team is working on for school. We only have around 6 weeks to finish with only 4 people so we're trying to keep it relatively simple. It's a sci fi game where your ship is wrecked and you're trying to get to the escape pod while collecting oxygen tanks so you don't suffocate. We're also going to have some sort of witty ship AI (think Glados) talking along the way. 

X-Men's Cable movie redesign

A process sketch for a Cable redesign. We were told to do a line drawing then throw in flat, local colors. I'm not sure how I feel about this process. I usually tend to include at least some light from the very beginning. I guess we'll see how it turns out! Finished piece coming soon

Figure studies

Some select studies from my digital analytical figure class. We're on week 10 right now I think. We have to do 10 studies each week for 15 weeks! Definitely noticed an improvement since the first week though