Legend of Zelda Redux | Twinrova

My competition piece was Twinrova with a "Tron" twist on the character design.

Well, this is a much more completed version of the digital painting in the competition.  And that is what I get for procrastinating.  But here it is.  Head over to the finals thread and check out the other great entries from other amazing artists.  This, again, was a very humbling experience.

I had a very hard time keeping myself motivated for this painting.  I originally thought that the idea would come together pretty smooth, but I ran into some difficulties.  One difficulty was making sure that the character would be recognizable, based on the original.


I had a hard time designing the outfit in such a way that it would keep well to the original, but also have the simplicity of the costumes in Tron. Not to say that the costumes in Tron are overly simple, but that the two worlds designs are drastically different.  And because of this problem, I don't feel that the original character represents, good enough, in this new design.  I should have spent just a little more time  trying to figure out how to bridge that design gap.

And another difficulty, that was self imposed, was my overall process.  I wanted to work from a line art base, to a more realistic finished product.  I hadn't tried this kind of process for a long time, and I felt very insecure about this painting because of it, until about the last hour of painting.  This seems to be a common technique, and I should keep up with it by switching between value and line.

But as for positives.  I like the composition, pose, color, and depth in the painting.  I tried to simplify the background as much as possible.  Seeing this is a character design competition, I should probably try to bring the viewers focus to the character.


Also, a few things that I haven't really done before.  Trying to simulate refraction with glass in the foreground and other areas of the painting.  Another, being the black hi gloss surface of the face plate.

Overall I am happy with painting, and it seems to show that I am progressing in the areas of composition, anatomy, material rendering, and color theory.  Some progress is better than none, right?

Desert Flyer

Here is something that I started during draw night yesterday.  I has a little of John Carter of Mars inspiration in it.  Its a pretty good movie for those who are considering to go watch it any time soon.

Here is the Alchemy sketch, yet again.

It took about three hours to produce this painting.

More Templar Nation Stuff

Another busy week at the wheel, and yet at times, it feels like I don't have much to show for it.  But I do!
I thought I would post concept work of some pillar designs for one of the rooms that our hero's encounter.

It has been interesting to dive into divers kinds of architecture.  I have a difficult time drawing sturctures, but this project has really helped me to pull out of that shell a bit.

I actually did this a couple of weeks back, and because I haven't been doing allot of 2D stuff lately, I thought I post these final images along with the Alchemy sketches.  Enjoy!

Alchemy and Frustration

A glimpse at one of my Alchemy brainstorms and then a bunch of unsuccessful sketches...




I was thinking about other artists that I know, and how we express our frustrations from time to time.  I don't want to spread the negativity around at all, but I thought I would post a little session from a few days ago.  I am not sure what was going on that evening, but I just couldn't get anything I liked out onto the canvas, and decided to bag it.  After an hours worth of research and sketching.

It just doesn't work out sometimes.  And what I usually have to do, when I run into "artist's block" is just drop what I am doing and do something completely unrelated.  (Read a book, video games, talk to friends, etc...).  But just so you all know, I deal with this allot.  And, I would like to leave you with a word of advice.   Don't get frustrated, stick it out, it will pass.  And when it does finally work, it will feel that much better.

Alchemy is Fun!

Here is an costume Illustrations that I created with Alchemy and Gimp.

I have been watching "Chaos and Evolution's" by David Revoy and have been trying out some the techniques he has for coming up with character designs.  So after watching the tutorial for a program called Alchemy, I decided to have a go at it.

All I have to say is that this little program is amazing.  The way you can just throw down shapes and come up with awesome designs is a blast.  And the program itself is really straight forward and easy to learn.  (I did have some issues getting it to work in Linux though...).

I am planning on using this program for a while to bust out ideas really quick.

If you want to pick up a copy of Alchemy, its free, and its here.   Also, if anyone is interested, I am willing to do a small video of the process I go through, when using Alchemy.

Here are a few brainstorms I did with Alchemy to give you an idea of what can be done.  Each one of these took about 5 minutes, more or less.