Art of Ogi Grujic

Hulk, the Incredible

2012-01-17T22:41:00.000-05:00

"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

2012-01-09T22:43:00.000-05:00

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

2012-01-05T14:48:00.000-05:00

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

2011-12-12T00:29:00.001-05:00

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

Graceland Mansion

2011-12-09T15:39:00.001-05:00

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

Stereotypes 2

2011-11-26T12:31:00.001-05:00

Like a Boss

2011-11-14T12:54:00.001-05:00

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.

2011-11-04T02:46:00.000-05:00

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

2011-09-28T19:56:00.000-05:00

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

2011-08-07T21:40:00.000-05:00

Mutant Crab

2011-08-04T12:24:00.001-05:00

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

Nole

2011-08-03T16:02:00.000-05:00

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

2011-06-25T21:18:00.000-05:00

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

2011-06-01T23:19:00.001-05:00

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

2011-05-17T21:47:00.000-05:00

LP
LP
back
LK
HP

Forest concept

2011-05-04T00:54:00.001-05:00

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

2011-04-27T21:24:00.001-05:00

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

2011-04-13T19:23:00.001-05:00

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

2011-03-09T16:29:00.003-05:00

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

2011-02-28T21:09:00.001-05:00

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

2011-02-11T22:33:00.006-05:00

Back to sketching with a good old technical pencil

Szapleez Rudolph

2011-01-07T00:36:00.002-05:00

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

2010-11-19T01:07:00.001-05:00

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

Fall Sketches

2010-10-18T21:19:00.000-05:00

Light gray and black brush markers:

New Layout!

2010-10-09T12:27:00.006-05:00

After 3 years of being online, I've decided to upgrade the looks of my blog, and voila! O.G. Art 2.0 is online and running. There are still 2-3 more pages that are unfinished but overall you can see what I was going for. Hope it's more pleasing to the eyes. If you guys have some suggestions please drop a comment :)

Art coming soon!

CGHub / Creature Planets

2010-10-08T00:02:00.011-05:00

Couple months ago, I started running a "Creature Planets" challenge at CGHub.com alongside the very talented Brynn Metheney, and I must admit that it has been fun.

The challenges last around 10 days, depending on difficulty, and in the, the large CGHub community votes on the winner. Each round focuses on designing creatures that are out of this world, coming from all types of alien environments.

Here are two examples that I've done so far:

Xeemean Phoenix:

The Greater Masil:

2010-09-19T22:27:00.004-05:00

"A dangerous fish. Exotic. But not scary. Cute." ...was my girlfriend's request as we waited for our plane to start boarding.

FanExpo 2010 aftermath

2010-09-12T17:14:00.011-05:00

Back from the FanExpo... and can't wait for the next one!

This year was the first time I've attended it so I didn't know what to expect, but within minutes of being there it proved to be fun. I saw many cool costumes, old classmates, talented Pete Emsley and Bobby Chiu (my Sheridan profs) and many other talented artists.

I'm posting a few of the commissions I did and few photos I snapped in between drawing.

Emma Frost, the White Queen

2010-08-22T18:48:00.005-05:00

Villain or a heroine?

Had fun painting this one. It's been a while since I did a female figure so I had to see how my skills stack up on smooth forms.

I have to admit, my girlfriend criticized my makeup skills, so she taught me what good makeup should look like and what makes the eyes 'pop', and indeed, the improvement was huge! Lessons sometimes come from unsuspecting places :)

2010-08-19T21:09:00.005-05:00

quick announcement: I will be attending the FanExpo Canada Aug 27-29. For all of you that will be attending, drop by the Artist Alley and say hi (will upload a map as soon as i find out what table I'll be at, most likely 27th)

2010-06-25T23:00:00.001-05:00

2010-06-22T12:29:00.003-05:00

quick announcement:

I will be at Sheridan College this Friday June 25th doing a presentation about the video game industry for all art students. SCAET building auditorium 9:30am. Drop by, say hi :)

Iron Man, the Invincible

2010-05-20T20:51:00.009-05:00

...And I did end up having time for Iron Man! Really liked the sketch that I had to come back to it and see it fully painted. It was a reasonably quick piece, so not too much free time was needed.

Thor, the Mighty

2010-05-08T18:33:00.010-05:00

The mighty god of thunder.

When I started sketching and roughly painting this one, I wanted to focus on the great power that Thor posesses, and 70% into it, (the outside source) told me to have the focus on the characters face, so that threw the whole thing in the wrong gear and the transmission broke. I totally agree that the focus point should've been the face, but, I am young with much to learn still.

The end result is still a puzzling one so I will continue on to the Hulk and come back to this one sometime down the road.

On a side note, I will be making an appearance at the Toronto Fan Expo this August, so I have been sketching a lot the good old way; pencil on paper. I want to gain more confidence away from the Ctrl+Z so I can perform well on the spot. And 'till that time, there will be many sketch dumps in the coming weeks...

2010-05-01T20:18:00.001-05:00

train

bored

sketch

venom

2010-04-21T23:36:00.007-05:00

i have no idea where this just came from....real quick sketch.

1am...off to bed

2010-04-12T12:33:00.009-05:00

A few rejected cover ideas:
I will post the better ones in the upcoming months, fully painted: Hulk and Thor
I also like the Iron Man #2...might do that one if I have the time.

Dr. Hush

2010-03-21T20:12:00.010-05:00

RR mission #6 - Space Pirate

Drew this sketch about a month ago, ended up liking the overall attitude and design so I decided to fully render this and see how it unfolds.

I call him Dr. Hush

As with the whole design, I kept in mind the typical pirate characteristics (eyepatch, hook, wooden leg...) and redesigned it with the high tech accessories. So the eyepatch became a scope type thing, hook a more useful arm and so on.

The process (shown below) was not the typical way I usually paint. This method was a bit inefficient but in the end it still came together...as far as my eye can see.

...that's all for now, hopefully the next post will be slightly more.... "Marvel-ish" ;)

If Pokemon were real...

2010-02-05T23:34:00.012-05:00

mission for this week (7) is "if pokemon were real"

i thought that this theme was a nice change from our previous ones, and something totally unexpected. i chose a pokemon called kabutops (#141) to supe-up, and in the end it turned out to be something i'm very familiar with drawing... monsters!

overall, i like it, but it's hard to imagine this one being real. either way, i didnt want to draw pikachu.

you can see the original design from the cartoon below and my process to the final image.

Green Goblin, steampunk remix

2010-01-20T13:58:00.011-05:00

Another rusty robot mission ... #5 ( I missed last 2)

Topic> "redesign a character in a steampunk theme'. and my character of choice is Green Goblin.

I ventured away from digital and I drew this on the train with a fine point marker on good old paper. I did the final shading digitally just for a little presentation which took a few minutes...total time around an hour....give or take.

I don't know if I did a good job with the whole theme since I didn't know about steampunk before this week...but it was just fun to draw....till next time

Professor Flash

2010-01-05T13:45:00.005-05:00

rusty robot mission 02: the amalgam character... take a marvel and a dc character and combine it into one, so my monster of choice is flash (dc) + charles xavier (marvel) = professor flash... booyah!

Nazzurath

2010-01-04T14:56:00.013-05:00

a few animators at work and myself decided to start doing weekly sketches simply for the love of drawing...so our first 'rusty robot mission' was to design a character for a fighting game...

so i present to you 'nazzurath'. i had mortal kombat in mind with the back story being similar to shang tsun's being a soul devourer>shape shifter and all, but coming from a different background. so i figure he could come up in the story chasing shang tsun for possession of all souls and reign supreme whatever shang tsun is...lame story, but so is mortal kombat in the past few years.

with the weekly missions at work this blog should be getting updated a lot more frequently now, fingers crossed.

happy new year!

2009-10-24T22:01:00.003-05:00

i wish i was a better artist so i could capture all that beauty

2009-10-10T12:53:00.006-05:00

quick sketch of yours truly, it's been years since i admired my own face :P

2009-10-04T20:36:00.006-05:00

sketching on the train... pen and marker, reasonably quick, nothing too exciting

Blimpy Run

2009-08-09T15:50:00.008-05:00

a little concept i painted for a friend...

Express Yourself

2009-05-21T21:02:00.002-05:00

My cousin needed 3 illustrations of expressive eyes for her graphic design project... so... ta daaa

2009-02-07T15:52:00.001-05:00

Book jacket design I made for father Goran Gojkovic's "Teohumanizam Justina Celijskog"

2008-11-08T14:49:00.002-05:00

2008-10-09T21:20:00.002-05:00

oct 8 08 at ocad

2008-09-13T14:15:00.000-05:00

Dominos

2008-08-23T16:33:00.008-05:00

My 3rd short film, completed for last year thesis project at Sheridan College.

2008-08-15T20:13:00.001-05:00

"Eradication"... did some of the animation and fx

Get Carter

2008-06-25T23:47:00.004-05:00

Guest list?

Pulp Fiction

2008-06-19T23:16:00.003-05:00

It was probably a speed bump

2008-06-16T15:59:00.002-05:00

playing with the new camera

2008-05-15T15:47:00.003-05:00

random sketches while watching tv

2008-03-28T02:07:00.008-05:00

a few renders from the film...

2008-03-10T16:09:00.003-05:00

2008-02-25T13:45:00.000-05:00

2008-02-08T15:59:00.002-05:00

2008-01-20T22:47:00.000-05:00

2007-12-17T13:30:00.000-05:00

2nd short film: Antics

2007-12-12T01:02:00.001-05:00

2007-12-11T21:17:00.001-05:00

2007-11-24T16:14:00.000-05:00

2007-10-11T00:18:00.000-05:00

2007-09-20T18:56:00.000-05:00

Nuts 'n' Bots - my first short 3D film

*this audio clip is not the one i animated to

2007-07-24T18:15:00.000-05:00

2007-07-21T18:40:00.000-05:00

2007-07-09T22:38:00.000-05:00

2007-06-23T12:42:00.001-05:00

2007-06-17T12:43:00.000-05:00

2007-05-27T14:57:00.001-05:00

2007-05-03T20:17:00.002-05:00

2007-04-30T15:26:00.001-05:00

2007-04-20T10:50:00.000-05:00

2007-04-18T18:38:00.000-05:00

2007-04-14T16:49:00.000-05:00

2007-04-10T16:32:00.000-05:00

2007-04-09T21:43:00.001-05:00

opening sequence I made for the short film "Starfish"

2007-03-28T19:59:00.000-05:00

2007-03-18T17:28:00.000-05:00

2007-03-07T14:45:00.000-05:00

2007-02-27T18:11:00.001-05:00

2007-02-24T21:30:00.000-05:00

2007-02-17T13:26:00.000-05:00

2007-02-17T11:43:00.002-05:00

Demo Reel 2006, got hired while making it so I never finished it

2007-02-17T11:37:00.000-05:00

2007-02-13T22:23:00.000-05:00

2007-01-29T14:22:00.000-05:00

2007-01-13T14:36:00.002-05:00

2007-01-13T14:36:00.001-05:00

2007-01-13T14:35:00.000-05:00

2007-01-13T14:34:00.000-05:00

2007-01-13T14:33:00.000-05:00

2007-01-13T14:32:00.002-05:00

2007-01-13T14:32:00.001-05:00

2007-01-13T14:30:00.002-05:00

2007-01-13T14:30:00.001-05:00