The Art of James Teeple

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Leicester, United Kingdom
I'm 21 / DMU Art Student / British-American.

Tuesday 21 May 2013

Artist spotlight - Glenn Rane

Artist Study time!

I feel like talking about an artist who helped inspire me to want to actually design artwork for games instead of just play them. This was years ago, back in the dark days when I dabbled in Warcraft... World of Warcraft. But hey, they is no denying its a great game to those who want what it can provide, and Its been thee, if not one of the most successful MMORPG's in history as far as I know, I don't really feel it needs research. Oh wait, there was that other MMO that came out a good few ears before. Ever quest I believe...
Moving swiftly on, I didn't want to talk about the game itself.
The artist I want to talk about is a guy called Glenn Rane, A.K.A Raneman.

Glenn is a professional artist/illustrator who has worked in the video games industry for over a decande. As an artist for Blizzard, Glenn has predominantly created concept art and illustrations for World of Warcraft, but he has also worked on blizzards other franchisees belonging to Starcraft and Diablo. Anyway I wanted to show some of his stuff and explain a little why I like it and how it excited me about art so lets jump in.
Here are favourite few images Ive borrowed off the Sons of the Storm website where Glenn's online portfolio is hosted, hopefully he wont mind. So check them out but I encourage you to go check all of his work out there or his deviantART.
I love the ice blue and lava orange in this, it contrasts so well.
I guess the main thing that really jumps out of me with his artwork, isn't just his unique style of line work and his use of visual composition. The thing I like most is probably his use of colour within his paintings. They jump out and its hard to not find it appealing. Ice blue, blazing orange, lime green...

Whatever it is, he makes them sell the image so well. Especially when I was younger and I found his stuff, it really stood out too me and inspired me about game art. Not just because I was a fan of the Blizzard look either, but because  they just have a real presence to them that I couldn't get enough of! full of action and magic.
Sweet composition


 This last one here called "Worgen vs. Goblins" is one I particularly found awesome. The composition of his characters means my eyes are helplessly lead from face to face. The calm colours and peaceful setting combined with the fight just shout "ambush". I love the way Glenn has shown movement with dynamic action going on; It means I can look at it and get the feeling the action is merely paused, so if I look away it might spring back into a brutal fight.

Wicked piece of work, and setting a standard for clean character art that I hope and aspire to achieve in my own style one day. And although his work is very stylized in that it screams Blizzard... I do still find it inspiring. especially some of his concept art which I find easier to relate to in terms of learning from. Its a little loser/ less busy so I like that.


Anyway thanks for reading,
take care.


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