Demon

Diablo Inspired Demon concept.
Like most of my surprisingly refined paintings i manage to do, this started off as a mindless doodle and grew and grew. Eventually I had gotten so engrossed in it that i decided to paint it and try out some different looks for it. As you can see here, the evolution of the design through to the more final painting. where i am currently exploring backgrounds and whether or not to expand it to a torso and so on...
My Inspiration to start this doodle came after watching an interview with Christian lightner who is a lead Designer with Blizzard Entertainment and is currently working on Diablo Three.
If you havent already seen it, this is a invaluable insight into what goes on in the art scene on big budget games told by one of the pro's.
Christian Lightner- GDC Vault

Previews, Reviews, Commentary and lies.

Previews, Reviews, Commentary and lies.

The games press has been dubbed as “corrupt, lazy and fundamentally stupid.” Source writer Kieron Gillan tells us this and also gives us an insight as to why these views may be held about the games press. He highlights key issues that game journalists today face which fundamentally make it difficult to write a good article about a subject that truly deserves it without cutting corners. He expresses a lack of time being a big issue, and that riders simply cannot spend too long on any given subject as the deadlines for most magazines and articles are tight.

This results in unrefined and often rushed reviews and commentary making its way as a staple in game magazines, videos, journals etc. Without the commercially driven pressure on deadlines I'm sure many journalists and reviewers would like to refine their opinions on the topic they are talking about. Of course there is always going to be reviewers who simply Write decent review but maybe without the turnaround pressure the games press would have a better name overall.

That mainly applies to the commercial sector of game press. Such as magazines. Certainly in my experience I have owned and read many gamer mags and can agree that not all articles seem worth the buy to read… but for the most part they are better than what I could find on the internet and more concise.
On the other hand there is other forces driving the games press and ranking systems are an important part of their roles in influencing games sales. What is more, where does an objective ranking system fit in if anywhere?

Gladiator- A bit old now but worth a post...

This is my final outcome for the game production Gladiator project.

With this project I think I was most inspired by the recent series Spartacus Blood and Sand. It helped lead me to this quite simple costume design and also made me really want to focus on homing my anatomy as best as I could within the tri limit.

I modeled this character from geometric shapes and did not use a high poly model.

There was many new hurdles for me in this project. Such as never having modeled a human form in 3D software or rigged anything before. Also It was a my first experience of painting textures from scratch.
But I tackled them like I do all such things and just picked up the tools and got stuck in! In the end I actually really enjoyed the modeling and felt very satisfied when i finished the the character. I'm quite pleased with myself and proud of what I achieved this time. But I know I can do better so I am just looking forward to doing more of the same and doing it better.

This was my finished painted Diffuse texture. Painted at 2048, scaled down to 1024.

Time to love myself

By I mean spend hours drawing my own sweet face.
This is of course, the Self portrait task. Something I'm quite looking forward too because portraits are something I'm quite familiar with and feel quite comfortable doing.
anyway lets not waste time.. I got stuck in!

Ok so they start off a bit "Errrrr ?"

Getting better! but still not quite right... I'm discovering its very difficult to draw and look at yourself in a mirror without shifting position so subtly so many times! This one was A3

That's more like it! I'm finally happy with this one, and its slightly odd as i decided to draw in one shade of blue colouring pencil and on pink card. I spent about 4 hours on that one and purely by chance i have discovered a new love for colouring pencils. Truly, they are so nice to use for shading.

So overall im happy with the outcome. Thanks for stopping by,
Laters!

Musical Painting sessions!

Music and art! Put them together and what have you got?

well on this occasion I was listening to Distubed- Down with the sickness on loop for first time and I couldn't get enough of it. I was in one of those sorts of moods you know, crank the music up loud, fingers start drumming the desk and thankfully the song drowns out your pitiful attempt to sing along but its fun anyway?.. Yea nice mental image there.
Anyway I started drawing on my tablet and about an hour later, this is what emerged...
The strange thing was, I wasn't really conscious of it while i was painting, it sort of came out through the music. I think i'm gonna do it again some more.

There are a lot of things wrong with this and that don't make total sense, but then its art. It doesn't need to :D

Ciao Later