Game of Thrones

So I've been keeping up with the "Game of Thrones" tv show series and it's almost over, tonight is the last episode! :( Hopefully the dragons in the episode tonight will look good though :3 The series is pretty neat looking overall and has some great casting. Here are some GoT images for your amusement (and mine)-

Update: The last episode was perfect and the dragons were ok. I can't wait for season 2!

Work Progression

I'd been thinking about doing some comparison posts to help me determine what to fix/change with work. I'm going to try testing out new art styles as well and figured it would be a nice, easy way to compare.  So here is a variety of older work (click the images for bigger versions)-

 

  

Springing Ahead

Whoa!! It's been a while since I've posted! Quite a bit has happened in all this time. The weather has changed from bitter cold to lovely springtime weather :) I'm intent on making some more work, even if it's just some lunch sketches or speed paints. I really want to start doing some more commission work too. Anyway, here's a sketch of some characters I was working on-

I wanted to make some more stylized characters and then color them in flat, patterned ways. Sort of like the characters in The Secret of Kells seen here.

Special FX

On a non-art making note there's a pretty cool new show out on Syfy for anyone interested in some movie magic and special-effects make-up. It's a competition-style show called "Face-Off" in which people compete to make the best face/full-body effects make-up. You can find out about it here.

I always love looking at creature and fx sculptures, some of them are pretty badass and amazing. Such as this work for example- Aris Kolokontes

Then of course there is the Amalgymated Dynamics studio that makes animatronics for movies like Alien, X-Men, Tremors, etc. You can check them out here- Amalgymated Dynamics

Moving Along

I've been able to put a few more hours into the street illustration-

 

The dog-thing in the foreground is out of place and will change. Plus I need to shrink the girl down a lot to fit into the environment, but her proportion issues are a bit better.

Otherwise, I stumbled upon Jason Scheier's work here. He's a vis. development artist for Dreamworks. I love the textures he uses and the way he paints, every illustration is full of detail and is fun to look at. I think he paints over a lot of photographic sources though, I'll have to experiment myself and try to get some of my work in that style.

I also found Noah Bradley (work found here) who does environmental illustrations. He captures lighting very well and uses it to focus attention on different sections of the environments. There are also nice textures :)

Some Updates

As you might know already, I'm creating some new work for my portfolio and trying to become better skilled in digital painting. My goal is to make a fair amount of new, better work and ultimately work as a concept artist or in another developmental role for the entertainment industry. So I believe I should focus on making production-ready work and illustrations; things like character sheets and turnarounds, environment/creature/object art, 3D models, etc.  What do you think? Feel free to comment and let me know.

Anyway, here are some image updates-

 

This is an environment I have in the works. It'll be a city residing on a little (and mostly precarious) rock platform in a canyon with some other buildings carved into the canyon walls. You could travel here by airships, suspension bridges all over the place (like webs), or through other houses straddled between the canyon. It might be neat to use the wear and tear of the natural elements as a part of the city in this case. For example, a river falling onto and down the platform could be splitting the platform/city in half from erosion. Maybe?

Here's another that I've still got in the works, this city one a posted before-

 

I still want to make it more vibrant and grungy in some places, sort of like Arkham city meets the Tokyo streets on an alien planet.

While working on this stuff I've been doing some freelance and have been increasingly interested in making a children's book. Although, as I hear, that market is flooded with people who are interested and few publishers who will take chances on new books :/ It'll be a future project to consider.

Onto making more work!

Of dungeons and gladiators

I recently finished watching the entire first season of Spartacus. Besides being incredibly violent, sometimes pornographic, and a little heavy-handed on the slow-mo, it's a good series if you can stomach it.

Overall, it has a pretty sweet graphic style with great image stills and moody scenes/epic fights. So I've started to do some practice paintings from the series, here are a few stills below-

 

 

I also finally finished the Dungeon Delve image! It, unfortunately, looks really really dull online and is actually a bit more vivid on my computer. But here it is-

 

I think I'm mostly satisfied with it...Her proportions are still funky and it looks over-worked. But it was a good practice nonetheless :)

On a side note: I found Justin Sweet's illustrations today, they're nice and atmospheric.