C.H.O.W #213 : 8 - Bit character redesign: Splash Woman

Another Character of the Week activity. This time redesigning 8 -bit game characters. Here's my version of Splash Woman from Mega Man 9. I quite enjoyed listening to the music of the level while working on this haha.

and as usual a post of irrelevant spastic scribbly.... goodness? No..

C.H.O.W #212 The Veteran

My entry for the Character of the Week just passed. The topic:

He has seen a thousand wars... Known as “the Veteran”, some say Battle was his father, War his mother… Scarred by battle, the Veteran is a legend on the battlefield!

I really rushed my entry, submitting it with minutes to spare. I went for a female orc because there were already so many graying men.

Military Unit: Hacker

I finished off my hacker character. I imagined it to be better but I had to decide to just finish it at some point. Now I can move onto other things. Critique welcome.

I added a progress animation. I made a lot of changes along the way, I think it's a symptom of poor planning. Taking note of that.

Hacker WIP

Just posting a work in progress on my hacker design.

Sketches and C.H.O.W 207

I did a few quick sketches for CHOW this week. The subject is supposed to be a military unit- "the hacker" in 2090 but without wireless technology. My approach was to boil the character down to 2 words: they were "intelligent technology" and if I could create a character design that spoke those words it would be a successful one. Below are a few really rough sketches. Again I missed the deadline but the current topic doesn't really interest me so I'm going to continue to work on this one. I kind of like the guy in the bottom right, maybe with the helmet of the top right.

And now all the random sketches produced this week.

One-eyed sketch and father time progress..

Okay no more posts until at least next Monday. I will try to make this a weekly thing.

I'm constantly struggling with motivation and distraction from various sources (#1 being the internet argh! the irony...)... I'm busy organising another attempt to allocate my free time to drawing with a balance of learning, exploring and applying knowledge. I don't want to divulge too much because sometimes I get the impression that when I say things, I'm less likely to actually do them- I'd rather just do them and surprise people with the results.

Just a random sketch of an angry one eyed man.

And another sketch for father time. I tried to tell a story in this one but I realised two things;
1.) This is not a valid entry because half of the character is missing
2.) The challenge ended. What the heck? I thought we at least had until Tuesday mornings? I guess it changed... Oh well.

I wanted it to be a little creepy- old lady dies watching static on a tv, a spilt mug on the floor and a cat that seems to notice. My take on the myth is that father time guides old souls to bodies needing new souls, by then the souls have lost their forms and memories. Father times only collects souls which have died of old age.. the grim reaper collects the souls of people who have died before their time.

I was actually going to do a more character focused design but yeah, the thread closed. So now I'm looking forward to the next challenge "Military Unit: The Hacker".

CHOW and SC II WIPs

Hmm despite several hurdles I think I've actually been kind of productive in the last couple of days. Mind you it did take me until 4am to finish this space marine for the EB store. Again the concept/initial art doesn't belong to me (except for the weird legs and background I had to add to the torso). I've been working on it on and off since about 5pm.. I don't know why it took so long.. I think it's just a lot bigger and more complex than the hydralisk.. still the difference in time to do is huge.

Oh his head is blank because I'm going to cut a hole so people can get their photos taken in the suit lol. I've still got to cut him out and somehow get him to EB :P

I also want to participate in CHOW this round so hopefully I can work this concept for father time into something worthy. I'm going for a classical feel so I can practice realism and flowy cloth. His legs look bizarre.. hopefully I can make them more realistic later on. I think his upper body needs more movement.

Studies/ Thumbnails

Here we have:

Some thumbnails for CHOW #192 -Atlantean Anarchist t. They didn't go any further as usual : /

Some gesturals from Sunday sketchmeet, some thumbs for a webpage thing I'm working on and finally a pic done with some water in a brush pen (borrowed from Ed).. I need to get one of these, it's awesome. I was thinking of bringing just brushes and water to use on my pen drawings, this is the perfect solution! ..and much more subtle on public transport lol..

Whoo! I have job at EB Games now so I need to start concentrating on art (when I get back from WA) :D

CHOW #184 WIP

Description from conceptart.org

"The Surveyor

The Surveyor is a being of unknown origin an age. It appears, at least here on this planet, to resemble a woman of around 30, though eyewitness accounts vary.

The first account of her is marked as her appearance in times square, but theories abound that she actually started her survey well before this, simply in a less-obtrusive manner.

Different populations have regarded her from everything as an alien to an angel. The reality seems to be more complex. She seems to be a representative of a multi-dimensional population. She appears at random all over the planet, and speaks to representatives of the human population about everything from the mundane ("What kind of spices do you put in your soup?") to the highly theoretical.

At first it was assumed that there were thousands of surveyors, since near-simultanous conversations were reported all across the globe, but once a compiled list of known conversations had been made, it was apparent that two never occured at the same time - there was always a .0005 second delay between one sighting and the next.

Conventional weapons were found useless on the surveyor and once the reigning govermental bodies declared her to be benign, she was granted almost complete access to any knowledge on Earth. She could, after all, appear anywhere at any time - including in the middle of a hidden nuclear facility. Withholding information was deemed useless.

No one knows why she is here. When asked, she simply says 'for the survey', hence the formal title that has been given her.

They expect her to interview every living being on the planet capable of speech before she disappears.

So far 14.7 million interviews have been reported.

When will she speak with you?"

The one on the left was me developing my idea. I wanted her to have traits that might be comparable to an alien or an angel, so she has alien like glasses (perhaps to conceal her identity or protect her eyes from earth's bright sun?) and she will be mostly white (white hair, clothes etc) so one might mistake her for an angel. I also put a bit of boofy hair on top for a halo effect but decided to get rid of it, so she looked a little more cool and not quite so formal.

I hope I fixed the anatomy a little too but it's nowhere near done (she'll have more clothes and some shoes etc). She's supposed to be in crowd of people, possibly looking for her next interviewee.

CHOW #182 rough and Hand Studies

Posting a sketch for CHOW #182- The Morrigan

Description:

The Morrigan is ‘The Phantom Queen’ of Irish Celtic legend. Associated with death, prophecy, sovereignty she would appear to heroes when their life was in mortal danger. She appeared to Cú Chulainn ( from last week’s CHOW ) as an apparition of three crones, and her symbol, a black crow or raven appeared at his death. But she is more commonly seen as a beautiful and terrible woman with long wild hair. As a shape shifter she could also take on other animal forms. In mythology she is often seen as what is known as a ‘triple goddess’, incorporating ‘the crone, the mother and the maiden’, common across many cultures.

The Morrigan was once mistaken to be a banshee, the female spirit of ill omen and death, but she is more complicated than that. She is not a spirit but a goddess. Your task is to provide your personal interpretation of The Morrigan. Keep her in the mythical past, so no updating, but feel free to portray her as either terrible goddess, crone, mother or maiden. However, because of her associations with ‘battle and death’, you might do well to keep these aspects in mind when designing her.

I was going to have her washing Cu Chulainn's broken and bloodied armor in a stream but this sketch didn't go anywhere at all. She was going to be young and beautiful but haggard and dirty, since she was both desirable to men but often appeared to people as an old crone. Anyway I won't go into much depth since the sketch isn't really worthy of any lengthy description.

The other sketch is just some hand studies.

CHOW #181 Entry and WIP

Here's my WIP and final entry for CHOW #181. My entry is pretty unpopular again just gotta keep practicing I guess! Develop a nicer style? I think maybe less blurry and more refined?

I had some problems with the colours on this, I was working in Photoshop with "Proof Colours" checked which was the wrong thing to do, they looked good on my monitor but exported really dark in jpeg format.