Anatomy

How can that not be the most interesting thing to draw?

I haven't done an actual anatomy practice in a while, so I wanted to test myself and see how much of my kinesiology classes still remain in my cranium.

I was pleasantly surprised with the outcome, as I got about 90% correct without any reference. The rust came in the form of all facial muscles, which is not surprising since they do not show through the skin. Also I was stuck at the hands and feet, but this hiccup was no match for my collection of anatomy books, and my ability to read the index.

Now... remembering all the names of the muscles is a whole different topic. I might squeeze by with a passing grade :)

Hulk, the Incredible

"HULK SMASH!"

Easily Marvel's best character... or at least my favorite. 

This one is a bit different. I used a looser brush, not caring about achieving a smooth look. Looks more painterly as opposed to my usual smoother style.

I also took a few tries on the anatomy in the early stages. I did not want to simply do spot on human anatomy with this one. I was going for asymmetrical muscles that seemed to be fighting each other for space to give that little extra effect of showing the strongest one there is.

The Darkness

DeviantArt had a little contest to draw a single page for the Darkness comic last month, so I decided to jump in.

Unfortunately I didn't have time to ink / color it due to other projects taking up most of my time, but still I had a blast drawing with pencils. It has been such a long time since I've drawn anything "traditionally", so my eyes appreciated the rest away from the monitor.

Now that I've been through the process of researching the characters, laying out panels and drawing sequential art, I wouldn't mind being a penciler for a few projects  ;)

Rotten Apple

An opportunity came my way to design an infected apple for a client. I designed about 20 of these before the final one was chosen. The client did not pick this one as the final because of the face of the worm, but it was my favorite of the bunch.

Contrast

I just wanted to paint nice blues and this came out.

Graceland Mansion

A depart from the usual. A little test for the environment digital painting side of the brain.

Stereotypes 2

Like a Boss

The robot B.O.S.S. is complete and ready to be animated. I can't wait to start messing around with some dance moves.

In the render, the character that is kneeling on the right is actually the same model, without the shells. I was having fun modeling, so I decided to fully model the interior as if it were a character on its own.

It will be a while until I post this guy in action, so Ill keep on posting some 2D art to keep the balance.

Quick announcement: I will be in the L.A. area making new friends November 15-21, and looking for new employment at the CTN Animation Expo that whole weekend.

PS: The previously mentioned robot is 98% finished, fancy renders coming soon!

New Animation Project

My next little project will be a 1-2 minute animation of a robot doing a .... wait for it... robot dance. Not the most original idea but it's one area that I've never explored; dancing. I've been doing fighting animations for the past 3 years and I need something fresh in my reel. 

However, if someone knows a up and coming producer/DJ that makes dope beats that could provide me with a tune, please connect me to him... and maybe we can make a music video out of this thing.

I hope to finish this thing within 3 months. It will be just this one character dancing in a simple backdrop.

One of the inspirations is this video of "NONSTOP" dancing to "Pumped Up Kicks" remixed by Butch Clancy.

Stereotypes 1

Mutant Crab

Big brutish mutant crab with his tiny little crab feet. Pretty quick little concept, took less than 3 hours.

Nole

Here is a design I did recently for a local (Kitchener, Ontario) food festival that took place last weekend. His name is Nole, and along with all the marketing material, he was made into a mascot as well, which is a first for me. Seeing him "in flesh" was pretty cool, kind of like the first time I saw my concepts for "Warriors: Legends of Troy" modeled and in game. 

Nole ended up being a big hit amongst all the kids present, and major props goes out to the person inside the suit during one of the hottest weekends this summer.

Expansion

A civilization has ruined its homeworld making it impossible to survive in the open, and slowly, the more wealthy families have moved to the space. I tried to capture one of these "Trump Towers" that is being overflown with life, hence the expansion in the bottom of the structure. 

Drawing this was completely different than what I am used to; the human body. I spent a lot of time tweaking colors, shapes, amount of stars. Having the original file 5000 pixels wide can suck in a person on pointless detail.  It's easy to see if a human is drawn and colored correctly, maybe because I draw that most of the time, or maybe because I see people everyday. This however was like an abstract painting to me. I just could not settle on a color, many combinations looked nice, but none hit the home run. I am not all that satisfied with the final result, but I will do more environment concepts to hopefully get more comfortable with this black hole in my portfolio.

The Dursoni

This creature lives on a gas giant with very low gravity. It has the ability to produce a gas that is lighter than the atmosphere and keep it in its chamber, giving it the ability to easily float around.

The three skinny limbs cannot support the body since they are never used for walking, so they are only useful for picking apart the prey that it kills. It does this by snap-freezing the gas in its chamber to a very heavy substance making it drop out of the sky like a rock, and right onto smaller creatures leaving them stunned.

Just another wacky round at the CGHub's "Creature Planets" activity.

Raging Demon

LP
LP
back
LK
HP

Forest concept

For this little task I was given a screencap of basic 3D layout and asked to do a paintover of an abandoned path in a forest. Just a quick test.

Thai

With this guy I just wanted to play around with the cell shaded look. It was a pain trying to dumb down the black outlines since it was killing the overall image so most of the time went into experimenting with Photoshop layers. But overall, it was pretty quick to color, nothing too difficult.

Skullhead

Did this one quickly today for a CGhub.com Anatomicae challenge entitled "Epic Sword". About one hour later Skullhead was born. I call it that because I tried to design the whole thing around the skull. I was doodling out quick thumbnails and that idea came out of the mess. 

The tiny gem in the top left is the pupil, sitting in the eye socket with a little eyebrow (hand guard) above it, right one is missing because the hand holds the hilt from that
side. Two holes are nostrils and the two long blades are top two front teeth.

The smaller image was my start. Silhouette painted on one layer with a flat gray, and a emboss effect  applied for quick visualization of the approximate 3D shape

Warriors: Legends of Troy

This week marks the release of Warriors: Legends of Troy, the video game that I've been involved with from the beginning of the project. I thought this would be a good time to share what exactly was my role in this journey.

At first I was involved with concept art. This included brainstorming character designs, environments, and overall style. One of the images I was asked to do was supposed to sum up all aspects of the game; one soldier vs many, brutal war, and gritty visuals. And this is the image I came up with:

Few months after that task, my manager came over to tell me that this image was released online with the announcement of the game. At that time it was the only visual revealed so I felt a bit proud. Shortly after More concept work was released in Famitsu (Japanese video game magazine), and Gamespot.com, and these included character concept art. Three of those images were done by me. They were the final design for Griffin (left), Cyclops (middle), and Erinyes (the head was designed by Andrius M.)

In the end, I had over 300 concepts drawn for this game, and the experience boosted my drawing abilities immensely. By the time all these were done, game models were made, and I stepped over to the animation department. This was a rare opportunity because I got to animate characters that I designed, and it felt good to see them in 3D. Since the game is out, the team got permission to make demo reel of our animations with any content we worked on, so here is a small fraction of the animations I have done:

 

So as my closing statement, it was tremendous experience for me to see the development of a AAA title from start to finish. Along for the ride were a bunch of great artist that inspired me and helped me evolve. Huge thank you goes out to

Duy Nguyen, Michael Carnovale, Brian Paquette, Ryan Bailey, Jacob Lickers, Louise Kim,  Dennis Dunn, Aaron Mclean, Craig D. Adams, Sungjune Kim, Nick Papadopoulos, Takayuki Minato, Chul Jang, Inga Mazetyte, Koei Baltija studio, and my 2 supervisors, Takahiro Sakuma (animation) and Toshiyuki Takeyasu (CG manager/art director)

...And all this sums up to:

Megaman, and Rush

Here is my take on the Blue Bomber and his sidekick Rush.

I wanted to draw something for Udon's Megaman Tribute art book but wanted to do something different than the standard entries. I chose to redesign the two characters into something less cartoony since the book will be overpopulated with the original style.

So my original plan of attack was to make Megaman a futuristic police officer, and Rush would be less of a robotic dog, and more like those bomb diffusing or scouting units. Since the original Rush was completely pink/red, I had to keep a bit of that in my design, but majority of the plates I kept just metal looking. If I kept the whole thing pink, it would've looked bad and would've clashed standing beside Megaman.

As for the hero himself, I had to keep all the colours. 






I decided that the light blue will be flexible material that gives the character extra strength, since it replicates the muscles of the human body. The dark blue is shielding so I kept those shapes rigid looking, and added a bot of camo design over top to avoid it looking bland. The little gray parts are carbon fiber just so he doesn't look like a blueberry :) For the overall presentation, I was thinking a futuristic ad for the model, nothing too complicated.

In the end my piece wasn't picked for the book, but I still don't regret drawing this 'till 2am before the day it was due (I found out late about the contest). It was a fun exercise for me, and I am pleased with the result!

Winter Sketches

Back to sketching with a good old technical pencil

Szapleez Rudolph

For the holiday season I thought of the idea to do an alien take on Rudolph for Creature Planets challenge #29.

The short version is that an alien race that has been spying on Earth found the idea (fact for some) of Santa Claus intriguing so they brought the tradition back to their planet, and they put a red nose on the closest creature they had to a reindeer.

(PS this post is a reply to my annonymous commenter stating that I haven't been posting enough... Thanks for the kind words, it was a holiday season full of travels ;) the posts will pick up)

Also, happy new year fellow bloggers!

Zhongli Quan, the Second Immortal

This concept art was done for a "CharacterForge" draw challenge at CGHub.com 

Fall Sketches

Light gray and black brush markers: