Moai's Blog

Composition and Color 1

2011-12-29T15:22:00.001-08:00

testing

2011-05-10T14:07:00.000-07:00

A penultimate dump of figures

2010-06-05T14:57:00.001-07:00

Here's another batch of figure drawings. I still have a few more to photograph, but these are the bulk from the final weeks of class.

The above is a caricature of yours truly by the awesome Ricardo de los Angeles.

We made some plaster face masks in class. It was fun, and provided a good humorous photo op!

I consider the above to be my most successful figure drawing yet.

Quicky self portrait above. The lighting and angle of the head make it look like the pretentiously dramatic profile picture of some emo kid on MySpace, but that happened to be the most convenient way to look at both the mirror and the paper, since I drew this on a board on my lap without an easel.

RIP, Frazetta

2010-05-10T13:35:00.000-07:00

Frank Frazetta, the greatest figure in the history of fantasy illustration, and one of the top illustrators ever, has passed away today. May his work and legacy be admired forever.

The Green Bastard, and a doodle.

2010-04-18T18:35:00.000-07:00

So, here's the version of the Green Bastard that I'm calling the finished one. I wrote a backstory about him that I posted in my Deviantart gallery, here.

And here's just a goofy monster excited because he saw an ice cream truck.

Lovecraftian Cultists

2010-04-11T14:24:00.000-07:00

Here are some illustrations I created for Kobold Quarterly 13, which was just released! These are members of the cults of various deities from Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos. The first is a Knight of Dissolution, who worships Azathoth, the second is a female wizard of Yog-Sothoth, and the last is a priest of Nyarlathotep. These had to also function as possible player characters, so they couldn't be totally nasty and occult, which is why many of the Lovecraftian elements are somewhat subtle.

Fantastical Stuff

2010-03-30T11:30:00.001-07:00

So, here are all my fantastical WIPs, concepts, doodles, and illustrations for the past few months. Because the way blogger inserts images into posts is stupid, these are actually in reverse chronological order, with the newest images at the top of the post and the oldest at the bottom.

Some weird, angry spirit characters for an illustration I'm planning. They're going to be swarming a thief who stole their treasure.

An update of one of my Team ChoW sketches from many months ago. Still a WIP.
A loose doodle of an entity I call the Deistic Tetramanous Convolucephalid.
Mushroom folk! These were very loose and fun.

An abstract, godlike entity that I just call the Earthborn. Part of a series of deities, both real and fictional, that I'm drawing.

The above is an environment for the same world as the Devil Sea image a few posts ago. I began by making a model in sketchup. This image is still a WIP, I think.

A transformed version of the Lost One, a character which I posted here some time ago. He's the player character for a mock game project of mine. The second image is supposed to be a transformation animation. If it doesn't work, check out my DeviantArt gallery for a version that does.

This is an environment for the same project as the above. Despite what you might assume, it was not inspired by either Avatar or by Roger Dean, nor did those works even particularly influence it. If anything, this was much more inspired by an old SNES game called Bahamut Lagoon.
The second image should be an animation of the various stages of progress for this image. I don't know if Blogger will let that work. If it doesn't animate, check out my DeviantArt gallery.

Figure Paintings

2010-03-30T11:28:00.000-07:00

I took another short figure painting class. Here's what I produced.

Figure Drawings

2010-03-30T11:03:00.000-07:00

So, a very long overdue update. I'm eight weeks deep into a figure drawings class, and here is the work I've produced so far. Lots of gestures and short poses, 25 minutes max. There's a hell of a lot of images here. Frankly, I'm surprised I didn't get some sort of "Now, that post is too big, young man" error message from Blogger. Ah well. You know you love scrolling.
I wrote some words about a few of these in my ConceptArt.org sketchbook, which you can reach by clicking the link to the right.

Please Vote For Me

2010-03-13T22:19:00.000-08:00

This blog doesn't get much traffic, I don't think, but I'm getting the word out wherever I can. So, here it is.

Many of the founders of ConceptArt.org, Massive Black, and the Illustration Academy are starting a new online concept art and illustration education program called TAD.org. I would really, really like to attend, but cannot afford to do so without a scholarship. The voting poll for a community choice scholarship is now up on ConceptArt.org, and I am one of the candidates. So, I am asking you, please vote for me.

Thank you.

The Devil Sea

2010-01-09T21:09:00.001-08:00

A landscape from a personal project of mine.

Gifts

2010-01-09T20:59:00.000-08:00

Gifts! Here's a bowling tiki woman for my Grandma's Birthday, Santa Jaws for my dad, and a Rylee's Adventure painting for many other members of my family. My Rylee's Adventure paintings are paintings of my cousin's daughter and dog (and in this case, guinea pig) going on adventures. I've been doing them ever since there has been a Rylee to paint, which makes this the third one. Previous paintings are here.

The Rest of the Figures

2010-01-09T20:54:00.000-08:00

Yikes! I've neglected this blog!
Anyway, here are the rest of the oil paintings I produced at Gage Academy. I have since moved to California, and am loving it.

More Figures

2009-11-15T00:32:00.001-08:00

And this, too.

2009-11-03T21:21:00.000-08:00

Finished up this guy.

Monsters and Madness!

2009-11-03T21:19:00.000-08:00

This is my first freelance illustration! It appears in Issue 11 of Kobold Quarterly magazine: [link].

I owe a debt of gratitude to my good friend Michael Jaecks [link] for getting this gig. He gave me tips on who to contact to get some freelance work, answered my questions, offered encouragement, and allayed my fears.

So, as far as first freelance commissions go, I totally lucked out on this one. Terror, madness, fleeing adventurers, Cthulhuoid tentacled monstrosities...what's not to love about a job like that? And I did indeed have a great time with this. The art director was an easygoing guy, and was a pleasure to work with.

There are, of course, some flaws in the piece; look how thin that wall is, for example, and the cast shadows of the monster's arms and hands should be more defined. These flaws are probably more obvious to me than to you, though, since I painted the darn thing. Plus, I've been staring at it as my desktop background for a few months, giving me plenty of time to see its imperfections. Ah well.

It's a thrill to see my art and name in print. I hope you guys like it.

A Trio of WIPs

2009-10-06T20:54:00.000-07:00

So, long time no update! A lot has happened since I last posted here. Most notably, I moved to the Seattle area, and enrolled in some classes at Gage Academy. I have many images to post, so I'll start with a few designs that are works in progress.

This first character is a gent by the name of Swinelius Hobgoppem. He's either the mayor of Munchkin City or the Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum's imperious uncle. You decide which.

This next character will be someone someday soon, but for now she is just a sexy nude. Based on many reference images.

To properly explain this next image requires an annoying amount of links. As you may know, I'm a member of an awesome group blog called Creature Spot. The blog is now doing monthly themes, and the theme for September was to draw and/or redesign a creature from an old pulp magazine called Strange Tales. I'm a month late and the creature I'm designing is actually from Tales of Suspense, but whatever. I redesigned a creature simply called the Monster in the Cellar. After the first session of painting on this, I did some research, and found out that the image I was working form is inaccurate. But, again, whatever.
I painted this in front of an audience using Livestream. Look here to watch a recording of it (click on "On-Demand" at the bottom). Please ignore the first four videos, which simply show my mouse darting around the screen, trying to learn how to do this streaming video business. In fact, I'm going to figure out how to delete those videos. The last two videos are where it's at.

Oil paintings coming very soon!

Team ChoW sketches

2009-08-11T15:22:00.000-07:00

I'm taking part in Team ChoW this month. Since there's a good chance you have no idea what that is, I'll explain. On ConceptArt.org, there's an activity called Character of the Week. Each week, a topic is posted, and participants have to create a character that fits that topic. Team ChoW is like that, only the time frame is a month rather than a week, and you have to work with a team to create several different character designs.

Here's what I've done so far. All of these are quick sketches, exploring ideas.

Initially, my team wanted to design some alien characters. However, when the topic was posted, it turned out that we needed to work in the high fantasy genre, so we had to put that idea aside.

To see my teammates' designs, check out the thread on ConceptArg.org: here.

Dusk in Western Arkenland

2009-07-28T11:51:00.000-07:00

I'm done with this. It could certainly be more polished, but I think I'm just going to move onto the next one. It was quite a fun, experimental, and informative image to paint.
This is actually a scene from yet another one of my stories/worlds. I expounded upon this world on Deviantart, so if you're interested, here's a link to that: helloiamalink. I'll be painting more scenes and characters from this world, definitely.

Landscape

2009-07-17T23:26:00.001-07:00

I'm working on a new environment piece! Pretty much the same subject matter as my last one, rocks and water. These are the two most recent saved versions of it. I imagine the lighting situation as being after sunset, but still with plenty of light in the sky. Early twilight, I guess you'd call it. The bottom version might be more deep and dark than what I originally planned, but I like it, so I may go with it anyway. There will be some figures around the fire. WIP.

Final Cyclops

2009-06-24T18:13:00.000-07:00

I finally finished Oog, the cyclops. The textures were a blast to paint!
The bottom image is an animation showing all the steps, from thumbnail sketches to finish.

Alien Elder

2009-06-16T20:24:00.000-07:00

An alien chief/witchdoctor inhales hallucinogenic smoke and holds the preserved skin of one of its ancestors. It hopes to "read" the skin in much the same way that a fortune teller reads the palm of one's hand, in order to receive new insight into whatever is currently troubling it.
Don't do drugs, and follow this link to read the short story I wrote around this alien: this link, here.

Last Batch o' Figures

2009-06-10T17:20:00.001-07:00

One last batch of figure drawings. I wont be taking any classes this summer, so I'll instead focus on my personal projects and studies. It'll do me good, since I feel I've sort of hit a plateau with these. Getting back to the basics, drawing from Bridgman and other anatomy books, that's what I need now.

Self Portraits

2009-06-10T17:14:00.000-07:00

This semester in my figure drawing class we had to do four self portraits. We had four pictures taken of us, and for each photo we had a specific format for the dimensions of the drawing.

"Cosmic Background"

For this first one, the assignment was to use a full sheet of normal aspect ratio paper. I chose to do each of mine on toned paper, since I like actually drawing in the lights. Plus, I didn't have to shade as much using toned paper, which is good, since I was using graphite pencil.
We were also encouraged to make these self portraits personal, so I drew mine with a sample of what might be on my mind on a given day.
This drawing got into the student show at my school, and won the juror's choice award for the drawing category.

"Components"

Here's the second in my series of self portraits. 3/4 view, tall and narrow format.
The eponymous components are just things and places that have left and influence on me.
For some reason, it is difficult to get a good photograph of these drawings. I didn't see that this one was somewhat blurry until I uploaded it. If it wasn't such a pain in my ass to get my camera and computer to cooperate, I'd redo this one. I still might.

"The Feeling is Mutual"

We were encouraged to include personal imagery in these self portraits, so of course I had to include the skulls of some extinct things.
The way I see it, there are a few symbolic interpretations of this one. On the most basic level, it could be saying "I'm into paleontology." On a deeper level, it could be saying that, since I'm staring at a bunch of things that are long dead and gone, I dwell on the past (which is true). Or, since a bunch of scary, toothy things are looming at me out of the darkness, and rays of light are shining out from me, it could be saying that I'm facing, or facing down, the negative aspects of myself.

Hyperodapedon Brontotherium Thylacosmilus Gorgonops Diprotodon Dunkleosteus yay!

"Circle of Life"

Last of the self portraits. Square format, and front view with flat lighting.
I decided for this one that my main motif would be a ring of my critters surrounding me.
This feels unfinished to me. Also, I learned a strange thing about blue toned paper while drawing this. It seems that it absorbs the material you put on it. I'd draw on it one day, then when I'd look at it the next day it would appear paler, with the darks and lights less pronounced. Whether this is an actual phenomenon or just a subjective illusion I don't know, but others that I've talked to have noticed it as well.

Khalkha Wife

2009-05-29T15:35:00.000-07:00

I'm studying costumes and cultures in order to improve my character design skills. This here lovely lady is a wealthy member of the Khalkha, a Mongolian people, wearing the traditional clothing of a wife. We know where Iain McCaig got his ideas for Queen Amidala's fancy costumes now, don't we?

Puyg

2009-05-28T17:04:00.001-07:00

Digitally colored alien sketch, inspired by pugs, hence the name. I wrote a bit about it on DeviantArt. You can find a link to my DA gallery over to the right, if you're curious.

Deity

2009-05-24T11:24:00.000-07:00

There are tales of entire villages, entire cities, absolutely wiped out. Every man, woman, and child. Dead. Headless. Even the statues, headless.

Millennia ago, the Hero chopped the Dark God's head from its shoulders. Ever since, it has been searching, and they say that if it ever finds its true head, our world will end.

Pray that the Hero returns before then.

***

Pencil sketch on biggish paper. I darkened it quite a bit in Photoshop, only leaving light on the upper body. Digital manipulation is fun.
The head he's holding is the head of a Classic era Mesoamerican statue.
I've asked my friends on DeviantArt to help me come up with a name for him. A name that sounds suitably ominous and godlike, and is at least loosely rooted in an actual language. You can help, if you want.

Buncha Figures

2009-05-12T23:27:00.000-07:00

A whole buncha figures, posted in no particular order. Most are from the last six weeks, but a few are from a few months ago.

Lost One and Cyclops

2009-05-05T21:46:00.000-07:00

Hello again, blogosphere. Here are a few things that I've been working on lately.

Here's the progress on this guy. I wasn't sure what direction I wanted to go with the design, and I was simply getting tired of painting on this, so I'm taking a short break from it. I'll return to it soon, though.

Here's another form of the same character. I mentioned the concept of Aura's in this game's gameplay a couple of posts ago. This is the main character with a green aura, which roughly corresponds to the element of earth. In this form he has an earthy/greenish skin tone, a more muscular physique, a greater number of more highly pronounced protuberances, and a somewhat exaggerated bone structure (see the cheekbones and knuckles). I'm unsure what to do with the lower body.

Another character from this same world. His name is Oog, and he's a cyclops, sort of. In my initial thumbnails, he only had one eye, but as I painted him I decided it'd be cool to give him a deformed skull with a sunken and atrophied second eye. There are going to be several related characters/creatures with a similar eye arrangement. They are one of the main factions of antagonists in the story.

Coming up soon, another dump of life drawings, and some self portraits.

Footshuffle!

2009-04-24T13:34:00.001-07:00

A silly pixelated animation of myself, doing my signature dance move.

Lost One, elemental form

2009-04-20T20:22:00.000-07:00

The Lost One again. In the game I was making, you begin as the rather pathetic being that you saw in the last few posts. Over the course of the game, though, you come across different abilities and upgrades, including objects called Auras, which change your physical form and allow you control over a certain element. The first Aura you acquire is the Red Aura, which changes your form into a winged, more diabolical entity, and allows you control over fire.
Obviously a WIP. The wings are very challenging to paint, especially the "hand" portion. Hands are always hard to paint, anyway.

Lost One 2

2009-04-17T18:27:00.000-07:00

As I often do, in my haste to share my work online I posted it before it was quite finished. So, above, you have the same thing as yesterday, but with some more interesting textures and features on the head, shoulders, and elbows, some slightly brightened values on the upper torso, and some corrected proportions that were slightly off before. Below, obviously, is the same character clothed. Looking at the vest/shirt thing the right version is wearing, it seems to make his character a bit too...badass. I'll have to rethink that. Maybe just a ragged shawl of some sort.

Lost One

2009-04-16T15:52:00.000-07:00

I don't know if any of you are familiar with the RPG Maker programs. If you don't know about them, they are PC programs that allow you to make very basic RPG video games pretty easily, and more advanced games if you work at it and can work your way around the program's limitations. I played quite a bit with various versions of RPG Maker when I was in high school. I never finished a game that I started making, since even a very basic game requires a hell of a lot of time and work, but I started several. Recently, on a whim, I opened up RPG Maker once again and played with my old games a bit. The passage of time allowed me to see the old worlds that I created in a new light and become interested in them again, so I'm resurrecting some of my old characters.

I spend a few hours today painting the being above. I really like the rendering technique I used for this. I used soft, textured brushes, which is a nice change from the hard edges I've been mostly using lately.
The being above, name uncertain, is the main character of one of the games I started making. The characters of this game were initially inspired by the characters of the SNES game Demon's Crest (screenshot below). I ripped many of the graphics I used from that game as well. However, once I started working on the game, the characters and storyline changed immensely from the material that originally inspired them. The storyline, in particular, bloated out into grotesque and incomprehensible proportions; I had to make it epic, you see. The storyline was a mostly senseless mess, far too big and complicated, and littered with plot holes and unanswered questions. Telling a story like that, obviously, is difficult, and that's partially why I gave up on this project.
Anyway, if anyone cares, let me tell you a bit about this character. The game opens with him awakening from some sort of life-support tank, with a computerized voice giving him instructions that he's too groggy and confused to fully understand. The only message that gets through to him is that he is expected to seek out and retrieve a being known as the Jester. Before he can completely figure out what's going on, though, disaster strikes, and the computer system that had been instructing him shuts down. Terribly confused, he makes his way out of the underground facility in which he awoke, and almost immediately encounters the Jester, who tries to kill him and then flees. The only thing he knows is that he needs to retrieve the Jester, so he gives chase. He finds that the outside world consists of rocky "islands" of land floating above a sea of clouds, and that the land is populated by demon-like entities. As he pursues the Jester, he gradually learns that this strange world is actually Earth, and that its demonic inhabitants were once normal humans. What could have happened to have transformed the planet in such a way? Just who is the Jester, and what is his purpose in pursuing him?
Like I said, the story is a mess, and I didn't quite know the answers to those questions as I was trying to tell it. Maybe one day I'll untangle that mess, and try to tell the story again. Or maybe I'll just draw some of the characters and leave it at that.

In the game, he starts off as the rather weak and pathetic being you see in the top image. As you progress, you unlock more of his powers and abilities. I'll draw alternate versions of him to show that transformation.

Figure Drawings

2009-04-01T11:38:00.000-07:00

Here's the final batch of figure drawings from last term. The new term began on Monday, and I'm continuing with figure drawing, so the flow of these will continue.

The cloth folds on the above drawing were fun.

A foreshortened study. I was surprised by how awkward this was. I had thought that I had the drawing experience to trust my measurements, but still my brain kept insisting that it was wrong.

Another foreshortened study, this time of my own self. The assignment was to draw your own legs, foreshortened, so I drew a drawing of myself drawing myself. Meta-drawing, I call it. I think I nearly glimpsed infinity when I did this. : P

The drawing above was the first time I'd ever drawn a model with a boob job. And let me tell you, it was obvious.

A very large drawing from earlier in the term. It was too large for me to take it home and photograph it any sooner.

Dragon WIP 2

2009-03-27T16:51:00.000-07:00

I've been spending some time with this every day for the past few days, trying to get it to cooperate. Until this afternoon, it refused to do so. Cooperate, that is. I couldn't quite create a satisfactory backdrop, and the lighting situation was being troublesome. There are two light sources: the somewhat weak, warm light of the setting sun, and the hot purple-white light of the dragon's breath weapon. Now, I have some decent cloud forms blocked it, to be blended and softened later. I stumbled upon the solution to the lighting situation by playing with the blending mode of the breath weapon layer and changing it to color dodge, which made it quite a bit hotter and brighter, which therefore allowed me to put some brighter highlights on the creature's body. This increases the creature's sense of mass, and the hot, bright colors and values reinforce it as the focal point of the picture.
The structure was obviously made in SketchUp. Whether I make its base visible in the picture, or have it extend up from below the bottom of the image, I haven't decided. I haven't decided if there will be more buildings yet. Probably, since this scene is supposed to be taking place over a city. There will also be some more dragons and some fighter planes in the background, though I haven't decided where to place them yet.

I would have waited and posted a slightly more developed WIP than this, but just as I was getting going my tablet and Photoshop decided not to play with each other nicely, and I wanted to post something before I restarted my computer.

Guncraft Character: Feather Man

2009-03-19T14:07:00.000-07:00

This is the third member of the main trio of characters that I'm developing for my Guncraft world, the other two being Hawk Girl and Skullface. I really need to figure out the names of these characters soon, because these silly placeholder names are becoming an integral part of their identity in my mind.
Anyway, Feather Man is an aged protagonist, a man of incredible bravery and spiritual strength. He's a member of a mostly-vanished tribe known as the Sky People, a counterpart to the Earth People mentioned in my Manticore portrait, of whom Skullface traces his descent. Birds, and especially eagles, are of great spiritual importance to the Sky People, so Feather Man has golden eagle feathers tied to his hair and his rifle, as well as an eagle skull hanging from his neck. These are talismanic objects, increasing his spiritual strength and enhancing his Vocal abilities. His tattoos (which, more than anything else in this image, are subject to redesign and change) represent the hills and valleys of the earth (the dark lines) and the sky above it (the light lines). His choice of weaponry furthers the eagle symbolism. The eagle chooses its prey carefully, from a distance, and once it dives to catch its prey it is committed, for it is difficult to fly back up and dive again, and by then the prey will have fled. His gun is an old-timey breach-loading rifle which must be painstakingly reloaded after each shot; therefore, each shot must be taken wisely and carefully, just like the eagle diving for its prey.
As stated, this character fills out the main trio of my Guncraft characters. He and Skullface represent opposing forces. Skullface represents youth, idealism, war, vengeance, etc., while Feather Man represents age, compromise, peace, forgiveness, etc. Hawk Girl, as my best friend in the world put it when I was explaining the story to her, represents the human element of the story.
Feather Man's theme song is Ceremony, a guitar instrumental by Joe Satriani. Youtube link to the album version: [link] . I think it shows that there is much more to this character than meets the eye.
On a related note, Skullface also has a theme song, Hill of the Skull, also by Joe Satriani: [link] . I've been keeping my ear out for a theme song for Hawk Girl, but so far haven't found anything fitting.

As far as the technical aspects of making this image go, I was sort of experimenting with a new rendering technique in this image. I used only hard-edged shapes, not blending the values at all. I think this had a nice effect in the face, making it nice and craggy and blocky, but I think it was somewhat less successful on the rest of the body. But it's hard to see underneath the layer effects and textures that I put over the original rendering anyway, so whatever.

This man's face formed the basis for Feather Man's features.

Feather Man's feather-laden hair is based on this man, Last Horse, below.

I have no idea who these photos belong to. Sorry.

Manticore Portrait

2009-03-18T13:32:00.000-07:00

In my time alone I visited the ruins of Pueh. I walked through the abandoned roads and took shelter in the houses that had not held anyone since before the Grandfathertime. I hunted and foraged and spent time with my own thoughts. One day, as the winds were turning and growing colder, I met a Manticore.
Because they are both beast and man, the Manticores are revered by the Earth People, for beasts are truer to the Way of the Earth than men, and their Ghroi more powerful. This Manticore walked on things that were both hands and feet and paws. It panted and growled like a beast yet moved its lips as if muttering to itself. Though it walked on four legs, it was tall enough to look me in the eye. I looked back, and because I did not make obeisance as a man should when he faces a Manticore, it struck me in the face, opening my cheek. I was furious, but also terrified, and I bent and pressed my face to the Earth. The Manticore stood for a long time before it was satisfied with my abasement and left. It was then that I knew that I was wrong to hate my people for giving my sister to the Manticores. I should hate the Manticores for taking her.

***

This was fun fun fun to paint, and even better, it broke me out of the art funk I've been in for the past few weeks.
This is a manticore, and it lives in the same world as my Guncraft characters (though a few centuries earlier). Michael Jaecks [link] put the idea in my head to paint a manticore, and several weeks ago a unique concept and idea for the manticore came to me. I plan to do a larger painting of this creature, showing its entire body as well as its native landscape.
The italic text above is a snippet of a short story I'm writing. I'll post it in its entirety once I do a more complete and involved painting of a manticore.

Beatific Dragon Sketches

2009-03-14T20:43:00.000-07:00

On ConceptArt.org there is an activity called Creature of the Week. As the name suggests, each week a new topic is given, and anyone registered to that site may post their own interpretation of the topic. This week's topic was Beatific Dragon. While jumping from article to article in Wikipedia, as I sometimes do, I came across the Mute Swan, and thought it would make a pretty sweet basis for a holy dragon design.
Here is what I've sketched for it so far.

In addition to swans, I also looked at some dinosaur and iguanid lizard reference. The iguanid reference doesn't really show in the design at all, but it is definitely quite dinosaurian. Someone has already commented that there's quite a bit of Oviraptor to its design.

After choosing which design I liked (which didn't take very long) and roughing in a color scheme, I drew it in the more interesting pose above. And that's as far as I've gotten. I tried a few backgrounds, but they weren't working, so for now there's just a blank white background. Because of schoolwork pressures (next week being finals week), I highly doubt I'll get this done in time for the Monday deadline, but I do intend to finish it. I've found digital painting to be somewhat awkward recently, though, so what I think I'll do is finish a large paper drawing, photograph it, and then colorize it digitally. Or something like that. We'll see.

Figure Drawing 2009, episode whatever

2009-03-05T12:41:00.000-08:00

Here's another batch of my figure drawings.

A few weeks ago, we had to demonstrate our knowledge of skeletal and muscular anatomy by changing parts of the figure into mechanical forms that are analogous to the muscles and bones of those parts of the body. This was very fun. It's not a serious piece of mechanical design at all, though.

Another assignment a few weeks ago was to do a study of some draped cloth. This was as far as I got on mine. I'm going to do it over with a smaller and simpler setup.

I did this drawing earlier this week. This is the only part of the drawing worth showing. The head doesn't really look like the model, but I think I did a good job modeling the form there.

In the previous drawing, we were urged to go dark, to use a lot of compressed charcoal to put a lot of black on the drawing. In the drawing above, we had the opposite goal: go as light as possible. So, this drawing is rendered only using a white charcoal pencil and the tone of the paper. There's some regular graphite pencil in there, remnants of the initial sketch. I think it may be my best, or at least one of my best, figures so far.

The face behind the skull

2009-02-28T19:51:00.000-08:00

Recently I began thinking about what Skullface looked like without his skull headdress on. Once I had the basic idea, I sketched out several variations and modifications of it, just as I did for Hawk Girl. He's a very strong-featured Native American guy, deep eye sockets, heavy eyelids, long nose, etc. The ones with the stars next to them are the ones I like the best, while the one with two stars next to it is a combination of the other two.
Once I had a good idea in my mind of what this guy looked like, I went on a search for Indian men with facial features that I could twist for the purposes of evil. The following images proved especially useful.

Eddie Plenty Holes, a Lakota man with an awesome name, photographed around 1899. His features were very close to what I was looking for. I just had to make them more hostile and add a touch of dark amusement.

The strong features, heavy eyelids, and somewhat defiant expression of this young man, photographed by Edward S. Curtis, also proved useful.

This Masai man also had elements of the facial features I was going for, as well as an amused (and even ambiguously malevolent) facial expression. Unfortunately, this image has been sitting in my reference folder since forever ago, so I don't know where it came from, or who to credit it to.

Lastly, unrelated to the rest of this blog post, there will be no Creature Feature this week. It's Saturday, the day when I usually do Creature Features, and this is my first post since the last Creature Feature. I was very unproductive as far as personal art goes this week. If I have a week where I produce little or no art to post here, I don't really see the point in logging on just to make a post about somebody else's art. This blog is about my own artistic progress, with the Creature Feature being just an occasional supplement to that. My own art first, Creature Feature second. No art, no Creature Feature.

Creature Feature #5: Nemo Ramjet

2009-02-21T22:43:00.001-08:00

This week's Creature Feature, as the title suggests, is about Nemo Ramjet, one of the most interesting and creative illustrators and creature designers today.
Like Alex Ries last week, Nemo Ramjet does a lot of speculative creature designing, designing creatures and animals with evolutionary processes in mind. Let's take a look at a few of his projects.

The above images show imagined future forms of humanity. The second two images are from his "All Tomorrows" project, a future history of mankind following the next several hundred million years of our progress and evolution, failures and triumphs. It's a powerful work, and I'll provide a link to it as soon as Nemo's website goes back up. The first "All Tomorrows" image shows a few variations of an insect-eating form of humanity, while the second image shows a form of humanity that has evolved to become modular and cell-based; the being pictured is composed of several different humans. The first of these images shows another speculative future human, but is unrelated to his "All Tomorrows" project. As you can see, the human form is rich with creature design possibilities.
Also, Nemo Ramjet is one of the few creature designers that I know of to incorporate the reproductive organs as design elements.

The above two images, and the first image of this post, are from Nemo Ramjet's most well-known project: Snaiad. One of the most fascinating and creative creature design projects out there, Snaiad documents the lifeforms of another world. It is richly detailed and incredibly well thought out. Like many of Alex Ries' aliens in the last Creature Feature, these animals are all derived from a common ancestor, and their variation is due to modifications of a basic set of features. The most notable feature of Snaiadi animals is that they have two heads. The first head carries the jaws, sense organs, and genitalia (yes, the genitalia), while the second head holds the creature's actual mouth. The biology and evolutionary history of these creatures is very detailed and well worked out, so I urge you to visit that website and have a look.

The creatures above are from another project of the busy and versatile Nemo Ramjet. According to Richard Dawkin's "meme" theory, ideas spread, flourish, and die according to the same evolutionary principles as organic lifeforms. These beautiful creatures are animalistic representations of memes. The third one weaves a powerful argument around itself in self-defense, the argument represented by a series of gossamer glyphs. The fourth one is the embodiment of a catchy tune. Some of these creature have fearsome jaws, with which to destroy the arguments and logic of other memetic fauna. These are beautiful, fascinating creatures, and a testament to the possibilities of more abstract creature design.

The images below show some additional creature designs by Nemo Ramjet. The second image in particular is one of my favorite creature design images ever; you can see it in larger resolution on his DeviantArt gallery. The third image shows two aliens from another of his projects, this one about the life that develops on the inside of a Dyson Sphere (an artificial sphere built around a star). The fourth image is a drawing of a Pteranodon based on the work of David Peters, a paleontologist with some truly absurd ideas about the morphology of pterosaurs. The final image shows a speculative land-dwelling descendant of an antiarch placoderm, an ancient form of armored fish.

Relevant links:
Nemo Ramjet's website: It's currently down, but as soon as it's up I'll post a link!
Snaiad Homepage: http://www.snaiad.com/
Nemo Ramjet's DeviantArt: http://nemo-ramjet.deviantart.com/

All images in this post are (c) Nemo Ramjet.

Figure Drawing 2009, Episode 4

2009-02-21T11:35:00.000-08:00

In no particular order.

Magic Metatheria

2009-02-19T18:40:00.000-08:00

In prehistory South America, there were all kinds of cool animals, now extinct, that are pretty much unknown to the general public. Among them were large predatory marsupials, such as the somewhat bear-like Borhyaena, and the saber-toothed Thylacosmilus. I love these creatures, and think they're some of the coolest things in the history of life. So, in my alternate magical world, I let them live.
So, here we have a large Borhyaenid and a new species of Thylacosmilus. Since magic is a natural phenomenon in this alternate world, many animals have evolved to use it. The Borhyeen, for example, has a magical roar that makes its prey freeze in place. I tried to use this power to dramatic affect in a story that I wrote in my DeviantArt. I'd very much appreciate it if you read that story, and my related thoughts. Link.

Hawk Girl

2009-02-17T19:27:00.001-08:00

The protagonist to this guy's antagonist. She's a young woman, about 18-20, of mixed Caucasian and native American ancestry. She's a falconer, and shows aptitude for Vocal powers, but is inexperienced. Skullface (my placeholder names for these characters are Skullface and Hawk Girl) killed her family, and now she wants revenge. Or something like that; the story connecting these characters, and the other ones I'm imagining for this world, is very nebulous right now.
I sketched the face of number 1 several days ago, and spent the afternoon today drawing the pose, costume, and several options for the face. In each face, I sort of blended the features of #1 with the features of girls from photographs. #4/5 and #7 have the best faces, and based on a comment that I've received on DeviantArt, I may combine the two.

EDIT: It seems that the above image is too large for Blogger, so it was shrunk a bit. So, the images below show the character full size, with face #1, and then each of the faces at full size. Your thoughts, preferences, and critiques for this character are very welcome.

Happy Valentine's Day

2009-02-15T00:20:00.001-08:00

Creature Feature # 4: Alex Ries

2009-02-14T20:26:00.000-08:00

Speculative creature design is different than "regular" creature design. In most creature designs, the aim is simply to create a creature that looks good and appears at least somewhat plausibly functional. Speculative creature design, on the other hand, places a greater emphasis on scientifically sound biology and the evolutionary history of the creature. Speculative creature design is often based on an initial concept or scenario. What if dinosaurs never went extinct, for example? How would creatures evolve on a world with much lower gravity and a thicker atmosphere? Or, as in the example above, by Alex Ries, what if creatures evolved in an environment with no gravity at all?
Alex Ries, known as Abiogenisis on DeviantArt, is, in my opinion, one of the greatest speculative creature designers today. His creatures are unique, highly plausible, and have a sense of unearthly naturalism that is rare in creature design.

The above sketches are creatures from one of Alex Ries' more ambitious projects. He is designing the inhabitants of another world, exploring how evolutionary forces would alter his basic alien body plan. The examples above, showing an intelligent species, a large herbivore, and a whale-like filter feeder, are all descended from a common ancestor, and show interesting variations of the same basic traits, such as the quadruple jaws and six locomotor limbs. As the leftmost example shows, he is also designing the technology the intelligent inhabitants of this world would invent. It is a fascinating and wonderful project, rich with possibility.

The images below show some of my favorites of his creature designs. See how he combines plausible biology with visually appealing shapes and patterns.

Much more of Alex Ries' work can be viewed at the following links:
His website: http://www.alexries.com/
His DeviantArt gallery: http://abiogenisis.deviantart.com/
His blog (apparently abandoned, but still viewable): http://exozoo.blogspot.com/

All images in this post are (c) Alex Ries.

Parent

2009-02-13T20:56:00.000-08:00

As far as personal art goes, this hasn't been a very productive week for me. Here's a little sketch I played with in Photoshop, anyways.

Though you may not realize is by looking at her, this alien is about to give birth. The Gkaz are a strange species in that their lungs double as wombs, for they reproduce by inhaling spores. If fertilization successfully occurs, the zygote will implant itself inside one of its parent's external gas bladders, which will then harden and fill with nourishing amniotic fluids. The individual pictures is unlucky in that her offspring chose to gestate in one of her lateral bladders, rather than the central one; the resulting weight imbalance is a leading cause of lower back pain among the Gkaz. After a comparatively short gestation period of only six weeks, the bladder with rupture, and the infant Gkaz, usually twins, will enter the world. Subsequently, one of the twins must be given away to be raised outside of the family. This is one of the most sacred traditions of the Gkaz, and is in fact wired into their very genes. Many Gkaz are born infertile, and this sharing of offspring proved to be a useful way to share parenting duties and reinforce social connections.
Besides of their strange reproductive habits, there are many more interesting facts about the Gkaz. Their eyes are arranged vertically, rather than horizontally, but still are able to achieve binocular vision. Their efficient respiratory systems, consisting of numerous internal lungs and external gas bladders, allow Gkaz to breath in virtually any atmosphere, as well as hold their breath a lot longer that you can. They communicate via whistling through the many nostrils on their heads. Their hands are actually modified mouths, the "fingers" highly-evolved teeth. They can spit digestive juices out of their hands in self defense, or to show extreme disgust, or even to insult. The mouths on their other limbs have atrophied, and now serve no purpose other than being feet.

I may update this image with some accessories and/or clothing, since this is an intelligent species. I may not, though.

Creature Feature # 3: M.C. Barrett

2009-02-07T20:57:00.000-08:00

Yikes! I forgot that Saturday was my Creature Feature Day!
Anyway, the artist whose work I'd like to share with you this week is Matt Barrett, known on the internets as MC Barrett, a concept artist for Arena Net. My jaw dropped when I first saw MC Barrett's creature designs. I hope you also find them enjoyable.

One of the first things that impressed me about his creature designs is his use of rather obscure fossil animals for creature design inspiration. The awesome creature above left brings to my mind several extinct species of proboscidean (Elephant), while the creature above right is clearly inspired by members of Dinocerata, one of my favorite groups of extinct mammals. Being a paleo-geek myself, I really enjoy this.

Another thing that I find extremely admirable about MC Barrett's art is his amazing command of light and shadow. Just look at the above examples. See that beautiful cast shadow on the upper creature creature, and the great sense of illumination in the lower creature.

He's also a whiz when it comes to rendering textures. Check out these beauties above.

Here's some more examples of his creature designs.

Some relevant links:
MC Barrett's blog: http://mattpostsarthere.blogspot.com/
Index of artwork: http://www.moonkatz.org/mbarrettart/?M=D
Various guild wars threads from ConceptArt.org, containing artwork by MC Barrett as well as many other very awesome artists: link 1, link 2, link 3

All images in this post (c) M.C. Barrett.

Manticore composition tests

2009-02-06T00:26:00.000-08:00

For the past few weeks, I've had the idea of a Manticore in my head, as part of the same universe as my gunslinger magician a few posts down. I finally sketched out a satisfactory version of my Manticore this evening, and I'm now testing out how it should fit into its environment. I have a few basic thumbnails here. The landscape will be based on Theodore Roosevelt National Park.

First thumbnail, very basic. This creature is part of a short story that I'm writing, so elements from that story (an animal skull, and a torn up blanket) will be arranged somehow in the foreground.

This second thumbnail is the same, but the badlands in the background have been moved higher. I prefer the first version, since its flatter landscape is a better match for how I imagine this creature's environment. The human skull in the foreground will also be done away with; too trite, and inappropriate for the story that I'm telling.

A bit more of a drastic change here. The main Manticore has been moved to the right, and a second one, along with some rocky forms, have been added to a shadowy area on the left. I don't like this option. The image works better with a lone Manticore, I think, surveying its vast, bleak territory.
So, I like the first thumb best. I fear that it might not be interesting enough, though. It's a very basic composition, after all.
Input on this would be awesome, those few of you who look at this blog.

Alien scholar

2009-02-05T16:35:00.001-08:00

A young Carisapiens, lost in a book. We encountered this fellow in the Ring library. He was shy at first, but we had never had the chance to speak with a Carisapiens before, so I confess that we pressed him until he overcame his reticence.
From the rather smooth texture of his cephalocarapace we can tell that he is fairly young, perhaps between thirty and forty eyears (Earth-years) old, and from the developing roles of fat on his waist we can tell that he is male. Mature males need plenty of extra body fat to provide nourishment for their parasitic young. As with all Carisapiens, one of his arms is shorter than the other, a relic of their evolutionary past, in which one of their arms was oversized and used for dominance battles. He wears a brace on this arm, we learned, due to a sports-related injury. He cradles a human-style book in his hands, and with both eyes fixed on opposite pages, he reads both pages simultaneously. He told us that Carisapiens find human-language books irritating, as they are designed to be read only one page at a time. We questioned him about his cap, and he told is that it designated him as a member of the scholarly caste of his race. This of course interested us greatly, but he had difficulty explaining the nature of his studies in our language, so our curiosity went mostly unsatisfied in that subject, I'm afraid. Despite this, we greatly enjoyed meeting him, and promptly invited him to dinner. Luckily, his eating cycles coincided with ours, as did his taste. We had a delicious meal of pineapple juice, seaweed, and guinea pig at the Ring cafe. Before we parted ways, he allowed us to take this holoprint of him.
Charming lad, once we got to know him. I hope we meet him again sometime, but considering the size and layout of the Ring, it is quite unlikely. Shame, but M'Sshaila and I always meet someone new and interesting when we go out. Why, about a quarter-revolution ago we even met an old-style human! Now that's an interesting story! I'll pour us some pineapple juice and tell you about it.

***

A fairly quick and loose sketch, done in pencil then colorized and rendered in Photoshop. It was quite fun to do. I'm making a conscious effort to include more artifacts and accessories when I draw intelligent creatures, rather than just having them be naked animals.

Gunslinger magician concepts

2009-02-04T18:43:00.000-08:00

A world is slowly taking shape in my head. It began with the Sonagama, and was fleshed out in the Shadow, and has taken further shape in a short story that I'm working on. In this world, magic exists, but unlike so many fantasy and sword-and-sorcery type worlds, it exists as a natural, observable phenomenon, and is the subject of scientific study. Many animals have evolved magical adaptations. I am attaching a "magic world" label to each of my posts that deal with this imagined universe.

Now, to this concept, the first human character that I've drawn for this world. As in our world, Europeans colonized North America, and in doing so nearly wiped out the indigenous cultures. This man is a descendant of one of those cultures, living in the "Old West" period of this world, and has undertaken a one-man campaign of vengeance. He practices an art called Guncraft, which combines firearms with Vocal powers (as magic is typically called in this world), and is feared far and wide for his deadliness. He wears the traditional garb of a warrior/shaman/chieftain, with the skulls and jawbones of his ancestors tied to the thick hair of his headdress. Potent war chants are stitched into his clothing. The skulls of his spirit animals hang from loops, guiding him on his way.

The right sketch is the one I did first, and is very exploratory. Virtually none of the elements of this version of his design will remain unchanged. While drawing him, I got the idea of having one or more cloth ribbons spiraling down his legs. I think it's a cool idea, but it would be tremendously impractical in practice (tripping over danging bits of your costume tends to go against the desired frightening effect). So, I'll keep the ribbon, but have it tied loosely around his waist. It is on this ribbon that his "potent war chants" are stitched.
The left sketch is a refined version, but by no means the final design. I really like the designs of the guns, but their ornamental spiral designs are rather cliched, and I don't know if they are consistent with the rest of his design, which is more Native American in theme. Hanging animal skulls from the barrels of his guns is impractical, so those will have to go somewhere else. I like the square, hanging poncho, but I may reduce it in size.

I will explore this design further in future sketches.

Also, my buddy Metal Snail has just started a blog. Check it out!

Creature Feature #2: Wayne Barlowe

2009-01-31T10:58:00.000-08:00

When I was a young child, about seven or eight, I came across Wayne Barlowe's Expedition in the sci-fi section of Barnes & Noble. While it would be a bit overdramatic to say that it was a life-changing event, since I was already very interested in creature design, it certainly was a formative moment for me, as I understand it was for a great many artists. Wayne Barlowe is the most influential creature designer of our time. The publishing of his books such as Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials and Expedition are perhaps the closest thing to events in the history of the admittedly small field of creature design.

But let's go back a few years first. According to his biography, Barlowe's parents were well-known natural history illustrators, so he had both nature and nurture on his side. He attended the Art Student's League of New York and The Cooper Union in New York City, while at the same time working at the American Museum of Natural History and collaborating with his parents in book projects. This solid background in fine art principles an natural history is readily apparent in his work.

While starting out as an illustrator, Barlowe worked on a number of book covers. Many of these can be seen in The Alien Life of Wayne Barlowe. The example above left shows Barlowe's rendition of a Yilane, an intelligent mosasaur from Harry Harrison's Eden novels. Barlowe's breakthrough, though, came with the publishing of Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials. In this book, he painted many of the most well-known creatures in science fiction, forever influencing how fans would imagine them. The book won many awards and was nominated for many more. Though Barlowe's painting style was not as well-developed as in later books, he nonetheless painted the creatures with a great sense of naturalism and creativity, and forever influenced how those creatures would be imagined by science fiction fans. The above right image shows Barlowe's version of the Puppeteer from Larry Niven's Known Space universe (I apologize for the poor quality of this image; Google did not have a good selection to choose from).

Ten years and hundreds of book cover illustrations later, Barlowe published his second book, Expedition. As I have already said, it was a watershed event in the field of creature design. With the vivid, bizarre, extraordinarily well-realized creatures in this book, Barlowe reinvented what it meant to be alien. It had such a huge influence, in fact, that nowadays it seems that you cannot draw a strange alien creature without someone saying that it reminds them of Barlowe, even if there really is no resemblance. Wayne Barlowe and very non-Earthly aliens have become synonymous in the public consciousness.
The images above, from Barlowe's Expedition, clearly show his natural history background, as well as his understanding of fine art techniques. As stated in The Alien Life of Wayne Barlowe, he is a firm believer in the importance of composition. Notice his use of color, value, and horizontal and diagonal lines in these images.

Barlowe published a number of other books after Expedition. An Alphabet of Dinosaurs is obviously a children's alphabet book, but nonetheless contains many unique and interesting depictions of dinosaurs. The upper leftmost image shows another dinosaur painting by Barlowe; he has done many. The Alien Life of Wayne Barlowe is something of an autobiography, showing many of Barlowe's other book illustrations, and snippets of unpublished projects. Barlowe has written a few paragraphs to go along with each painting, describing the process of creating each work. It's quite fascinating, and I of course highly recommend it. Barlowe's Guide to Fantasy is a sequel of sorts to his Guide to Extraterrestrials, though this book obviously deals with creatures and characters from fantasy novels rather than science-fiction. Though it contains many interesting designs, such as the Gug pictured above, Clive Barker's Gek-a-Gek, and Gene Wolfe's Alzabo, it also contains a disappointing amount of very ordinary and uninteresting designs. Still worth a look, though.

In recent years, Barlowe has turned his considerable talents to reimagining Hell. His vision of Hell is the most fascinating I've ever scene. In Barlowe's Hell, every tool and implement is made of a damned soul. Those mounts that you see the demons riding are souls. Siege engines and the very bricks of buildings are made of souls. His demons are horrifying combinations of biological, abstract, and artificial features. Barlowe has even imagined the indigenous fauna of Hell, which evolved their naturally before the demons came. That's probably the most original and fascinating Hell-related idea I've ever come across.
Barlowe has three books related to Hell: Barlowe's Inferno, Brushfire: Illuminations from the Inferno, and God's Demon. God's Demon is a novel, and from what I hear it's very good. He is still pumping out new Hell work, so look forward to more books in the future.

It's been a while since Barlowe published an illustrated book, but you've probably still been seeing his work, whether you realize it or not. He's been working as a concept artist, most notably for Guillermo del Toro's Hellboy movies.

Visit the following links to learn and see more.
Wayne Barlowe's website: http://www.waynebarlowe.com/
Video of Wayne Barlowe sketching (notice how he holds the pencil): http://www.sketchtheatre.com/?page_id=186
Interview on CG Channel: http://www.cgchannel.com/news/viewfeature.jsp?newsid=8117
An extensive gallery of his work from some random spot on the internet: http://www.mupinc.net/getpainter.php?painter=waynedouglasbarlowe
Search results for Wayne Barlowe on Amazon.com (buy his books!): http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/ref=ntt_athr_dp_sr_1?%5Fencoding=UTF8&search-type=ss&index=books&field-author=Wayne%20Barlowe

All images in this post are (c) Wayne Barlowe.

Figure drawing 2009, episode 3

2009-01-29T23:59:00.000-08:00

Here's some more stuff from my figure drawing class. The second image is a self portrait.

This last image was very informative. I achieved a very nice level of contrast with the rightmost figure. I'll have to keep that level of light and shadow in mind in the future.

This week I also went to a figure drawing group with the lovely (but blogless) BUOW. Fantastic model. She really knew how to make her feet into attractive shapes.

Pisodactyl

2009-01-29T19:47:00.001-08:00

This creature is simultaneously very strange and very typical. Typical in that its proportions, posture, and some of its features--the fleshy tail tip, and the tendon-membranes on the inside of the elbow--are fairly standard for killer videogame type creatures. Unusual in that I made a conscious effort to give it some strange features that I'd never seen before. Its iliac crests and especially its pubis on its pelvis are hypertrophied; it has only a single bent-backwards toe on each hind foot; it has an enormous underbite. Most notably, its hands and forearms are perpetually in a supinated position. That is, its palms are facing up/forwards, whereas in most animals the palms usually face back/downwards. These features give the creature interest, but they also mean that I have no idea what this creature does, biologically. Those are some very strange adaptations.

Pisodactyl means "backward hand" in Greek. Obviously very much a WIP. The messiness in the background will eventually give way to plant forms.

Xenosimias

2009-01-26T10:49:00.000-08:00

This is done. I named the creature Xenosimias, which is scientese for "strange monkey."

New Creature Feature Series

2009-01-24T09:56:00.000-08:00

I'm starting a new weekly series of posts called "Creature Feature" (unless I think of a more original name), in which I show the work of creature designers that I admire.
The first post is down below, dated Monday, January 12. I wrote that post a few weeks ago, but I was waiting until I had the artist's permission before actually publishing the post. That's why it's way down there, instead of up here at the top of the blog.
Enjoy.

Figure Drawing 2009, episode 2

2009-01-18T14:11:00.001-08:00

My computer and digital camera have decided to cooperate again, so I uploaded another batch of figure drawings. Fun stuff. The last one is a work in progress; I still have to do some work to emphasize his musculature. His leg is also at least half a head too long, but my classmates and I agreed to blame that on foreshortening.

The Shadow

2009-01-15T22:24:00.001-08:00

These three creatures are part of a little painting experiment I did today. I wanted to paint a very simple, silhouette-based creature using only two colors (and some slight variations). The first creature was mostly improvised. While painting, I decided to paint a few "upgrade versions" of it as well.
Nothing too special. It was quite fun, though. As I say so often, check out my Deviantart if you want to read more about this creature: link.

Spidermonkey WIP, v3

2009-01-15T22:13:00.000-08:00

Yet more work on this. I'm pleased with the sense of light and form that I'm getting. I need to move its right eye down a bit, though. I've been thinking that something was off in its face for a while, so I finally rotated the whole image so I could see where the asymmetry was.
The orifice at the base of its tail is a marsupial pouch, not its butt.

Belated Christmas

2009-01-15T11:30:00.000-08:00

As mentioned before, my dad has a thing for sharks. So, here's a Christmas card for him. Yes, that cloud is behind the moon.
Here's an earlier birthday card I did for him: link.

Narakan Snapper Field Sketches

2009-01-14T19:18:00.000-08:00

Here are some more sketches of the group of alien creatures I call Arthrognathans ("jointed jaws"). This shows various species, as well as parts of the Arthrognathan mating ritual and life cycle.
To read more in depth about these creatures, go here.

Figure drawing 2009, episode 1

2009-01-13T15:13:00.000-08:00

Here's my first batch of photographed drawings from my new figure drawing class. It looks to be a fun and informative semester.

Creature Feature #1: Derek Thompson

2009-01-12T22:08:00.000-08:00

Being the creature design lover that I am, I thought I'd start doing a series of posts on creature designers whose work I greatly admire. I'll do this somewhat regularly. Perhaps even make a weekly tradition of it, or perhaps I'll just operate by the "when I feel like it" method. I also plan to do a similar series of posts on real animals, looking at their forms, shapes, anatomy, and so forth, and examining how those features can be used to make interesting creature designs.

Anyway, for this first addition of what I've decided to call the Creature Feature (until or unless I come up with a more original name), I'm going to show you the art of Derek Thompson. I first found Derek Thompson's website quite a long time ago, but only error messages came up when I clicked on the images. I recently came upon his website again, and the bug had been fixed. The art I found there was amazing.

Derek Thompson has a fantastic sense of design. He uses great combinations of shapes, and is often experimental with color.
He uses a variety of rendering styles in his work, from a comic book-like boldness and simplicity, to an almost Wayne Barlowe-like level of gritty detail.

His designs also range from the harmless and silly to the morbid and creepy.

Usually, though, Derek Thompson's art is between these extremes. Finely rendered form is mixed with flatter, more graphical lines and shapes, while cute, cartoonish proportions are combined with toothy grisliness. It's truly a great combination.

Here's a selection of some of my favorites of his designs.

His mixed media on toned paper technique looks pretty sweet, too. I'm going to get out my colored pencils and try to emulate it.

To learn more about Derek Thompson and see more of his work visit these sites:

His website: http://www.derekmonster.com/indexmain.html
His profile on the Pixar Wiki: http://pixar.wikia.com/wiki/Derek_Thompson
His profile on Gnomon (features a sweet little storyboard thingy): http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/gallery/dthompson.html
His blog: http://derekmonster.blogspot.com/

All images in this post are (c) Derek Thompson, shown here with permission.

Spidermonkey WIP, v.2

2009-01-12T21:23:00.000-08:00

Here's a bit of an update on this. Progress has been a bit slow, and for various reasons I haven't worked on it the past few days, but I will finish this.

Spidermonkey WIP

2009-01-06T21:07:00.000-08:00

Well, not so much as a spider monkey as a cicada-mosquito-marmoset. With a little bit of Megalancosaurus mixed in. Just your average arboreal extraterrestrial metazoamorph.
This is very much a WIP at this stage. The lines and heavy shadows give it kind of a comic booky feeling, but I plan to paint this and model the forms, so that feeling will probably go away. I like the background, but it's still at an experimental stage.
Stay tuned for more.

Invader

2008-12-31T10:35:00.001-08:00

I was on the computer yesterday when suddenly the idea came to me to paint an old school, pulp magazine, raygun-toting, bug-squid hybrid alien invader. So, I sat down and painted this guy in virtually one sitting. It is, in my opinion, my best creature rendering ever, and I'm proud of what I did. I even gave him some halfway decent-looking technological devices, as well.
As far as creature concepts go, this is a highly intelligent alien species native to a low-gravity world with a warm, humid climate and at atmosphere rich in carbon dioxide and chlorine. It evolved from mud-dwelling ancestors that looked somewhat like crosses between sandcrabs and cuttlefish. It is omnivorous, with three sets of powerful mandibles to process its foot. Its eyes are set atop dark stocks on the upper part of its carapace, while its ears are those crater-shaped structures near the mandibles. Its olfactory and respiratory organs are located on the back of its carapace, and in this image are covered by a gas filtering apparatus designed for traveling in an alien atmosphere. The three pairs of limbs can function as either arms or legs, interchangeably. Though these aliens can communicate by sound, they prefer to communicate by sight. Their wide, black eyestalks can shift to any color in the visible spectrum, and this ability has evolved into a highly complex visual language. The device attached to the eyestalk of the individual pictured is a communicator: it allows information in this visual language to be sent long-distance and fed directly to the aliens' visual centers. They can also communicate through the use of chemicals and pheremones.
I wrote a much, much longer natural history/short story about these creatures in my Deviantart gallery: link. I enjoy writing, as you may be able to tell.
Also, some alternate color schemes.

Misc. Digital Stuff

2008-12-31T10:29:00.000-08:00

Some other illustrations that I've done.

This was a Christmas painting for family. The girl and the dog are both real, and I know and love them both.

An experiment in painting environments. It's okay, but I really need to improve my skills in this area.

This is the third in a series of Mermaids that I've painted for various people. I'm not showing the earlier two because I think they're crap.

School Work, Figure Drawings, and Studies

2008-12-31T10:16:00.000-08:00

Academic and fine artsy things.

Creature Designs

2008-12-31T09:44:00.001-08:00

I love creature design. Here's some of my past work.

This is a hybrid of a crocodile and a hippopotamus, done for the Daily Sketch Group activity on ConceptArt.org.
The Warty River Dragolope. I like the design, but the text is pasted all over the image with no design. Aargh.
A critter called the Sauromander, done for the Creature of the Week activity on ConceptArt.org. Here's a description that I wrote for it.

Now a legally protected species and a successful tourist attraction, the Sauromander is in many ways a flagship species for Pogonoro. Tens of thousands of tourists flock to the small nation at the beginning of its Summer rainy season to see the baby Sauromanders wriggle out of the ground almost at the same moment in one of the great spectacles of nature. The Sauromander was not always so well-loved, however, as indicated by its local, colloquial name: araroco, the "Summer Plague."
Sauromanders are small (two feet in length when fully grown) herbivores, adapted for moist and heavily-vegetated environments. Though included with frogs and salamanders in the amphibian class, Sauromanders are of an evolutionarily distinct lineage and are not closely related to any extant species. This evolutionary distance is expressed in the large claws and hard beak, both unique among amphibians. As both an avid burrower and a generalist vegetarian, eating everything from leaves to fruits to nuts, both of these unique adaptations are put to good use. In addition to the beak and claws, the Sauromander has several other noticeable features. Its brightly-colored skin is mostly a ploy, an attempt to convince predators that it is poisonous and not good eating. In fact, the flesh of infant Sauromanders is slightly toxic, but all that remains in the adult sauromander is a slightly sour taste to the flesh, and poses no actual danger to hungry predators. The Sauromander's head features a noticeable bulge, which houses its large olfactory organs, and several antenna-like feelers, useful for feeling around in dark burrows or underbrush.
One of the most notable characteristics of the Sauromander, and what earned it the ire of Pogonoran farmers, is its strange life-cycle. During the Winter, Pogonoro's climate cools and dries, becoming inhospitable to the Sauromander. To ensure the survival of the species, the Sauromanders mate and bury huge numbers of eggs, and then most perish. When spring comes around and the soil begins to warm, the eggs hatch, and the infant Sauromanders begin the larval, burrowing phase of their existence. In this form, they pose a threat to the root systems of crops. With the onset of Summer and the rains, however, the young Sauromanders emerge from the ground en masse. Open air and sunlight cause the release of growth hormones, and the Sauromanders reach their full adult size in just a few weeks, with a corresponding increase in appetite. In the past, this spelled disaster for Pogonoran farmers, who would sometimes loose their entire crops to the ravenous creatures. So, in an effort to save their livelihoods, the farmers ran an extermination campaign against the Sauromanders, nearly driving the unique creatures to extinction.
What the farmers did not understand is that each species plays a part in the infinitely complex check-and-balance system of nature. Without the Sauromanders to eat them, weeds flourished, causing just as much damage to the crops as the Sauromanders themselves. Just before the species vanished altogether, it was placed under protective legislation, and the populations slowly recovered. A number of techniques were invented to protect crops from the hungry little beasts. One of the most successful was to place large piles of bitterfruit between the rows of crops. Sauromanders are typically not picky eaters, but the bitterfruit, which ripens around the same time the creatures emerge from the ground and is nigh inedible to humans, seems to be an irresistible treat to the small amphibians. With the Sauromanders glutted on bitterfruit, damage to crops went down sharply. This, and the incoming tourist dollars from rich Americans and Europeans, ensured the Sauromander's survival.
A yellow blood sucker, also done for ConcepArt.org's Creature of the Week (CoW) activity. The description:

Dromaenovacula infernis is a creature that goes by many names. It has been called the hell ram, the devil trident, the rushing blade, and its scientific name, which roughly translates as "running blade from hell." Perhaps its most widely-used, if ineloquent, names is the yellow blood sucker, as it was called by the various primitive peoples of Pre-Ascension Earth. For the purposes of this brief essay, it shall henceforth be referred to simply as Dromaenovacula.
Originally from the colony-world Trantosia, Dromaenovacula is a liquivore, as are many predators on that planet. As one naturalist vividly put it, Dromaenovacula can be imagined as "a charging bull crossed with a racing cheetah, and given the feeding mechanism of a spider" (those unfamiliar with Earth-fauna, please follow the links at the bottom of the article). A powerful quadruped, Dromaenovacula is a creature designed for both speed and strength. Its main killing mechanism is its trio of cranial prongs. Using its head as a battering ram, its collides with its prey, snapping bones and piercing deep into its prey's flesh. Given its large mass of up to 150 kilograms and its maximum speed of 80 kilometers per hour (about 50 miles per hour), the impact of predator and prey causes a large risk of harm to booth. Dromaenovacula has evolved a number of adaptations to lessen its risk of injury. Its three prongs are sheathed in enamel, keratin, and tough, leathery skin, and the bone core has an interior latticed structure undiscovered in any other species, which lends the bone incredible structural strength. Its sensitive eyes can be retracted deep within their sockets to lessen the risk of being gouged or punctured by snapped bone. Dromaenovacula's spinal column, in particular, is a marvel of evolutionary engineering. It can be highly flexible to aid in speedy movement, but at the critical moment it can straighten and lock to give the collision with prey battering ram force. Interspersed between the vertebrae are packets of fluid which efficiently absorb impact. Because Dromaenovacula's head can be buried deep within the body cavity of its prey, its breathing orifices are located on its back, negating the risk of suffocation. As a side-effect of this adaptation, Dromaenovacula drowns easily and is hesitant to swim, a weakness capitalized on by its prey (including Pre-Ascension humans). Dromaenovacula aims for its prey's ribcage just behind the first set of limbs, where it can cause maximum damage to vital organs and cause the quick death of its prey, as any struggle while the creature is lodged shoulder-deep inside its prey carries a high risk of injury.
As already stated, Dromaenovacula is a liquivore. Under normal conditions on its homeworld, once its prey is dead, it pumps gastric juices into the dead body and then slurps up the resulting soup with an extendable proboscis. However, for the populations that existed on Earth, this was not the case. As any student of history will know, in the 24th and 25th century, Earth was recovering with devastating bouts of disease and warfare, and its population of only a few million lived in primitive savagery. A tiny fraction of that population, however, was an ultra-rich elite, including a hunting-enthusiast quadrillionaire who imported a small number of Dromaenovacula to Earth for his sport. The creatures escaped, multiplied, and caused legendary havoc amongst the poor Earthlings. Dromaenovacula is a highly intelligent, problem-solving organism, capable of communication, cooperation, and planned action. It proved quite the equal for those sad bands of Pre-Ascension humans. Anyway, Dromaenovacula's method of injecting its gastric fluids and waiting for its dead prey to dissolve proved impractical, as its enzymes were incompatible with Earth-animal tissues. So, Dromaenovacula simply drank up the vital fluid that already existed in its prey: blood. Its status as a vampire ensured its infamy in Pre-Ascension Earth history.

Here's a redesign of a Bulbasaur. It's basically a Dicynodont with a generic bulb plant on its back. An old image, but people seem to like it.

For the 100th round of CoW, the task was to create 100 creature thumbnails in one month. It was quite a challenge, alternately fun and frustrating. In this activity I learned that you can always come up with more ideas, even if you seem to have exhausted your creativity.

This was done for Father's Day, I do believe. My dad likes sharks, and I like creature design, so I combined those two interests. As far as the creature concept goes, it is a future shark that is in the early stages of evolving to live on land after a mass extinction has taken out all current land megafauna.
If you like helicoprion and you know it, clap your hands.

Another CoW. The topic this time around was Sound Eater. The description:

It has been known sense prehistory that sound, especially voice, holds special powers in our world. Indeed, many scholars believe that our ability to manipulate sound at a high level of complexity is what allowed our race, when it was young, to triumph over all other species of animal and attain civilization. Through sound, we not only communicate and use language, but also cast spells, charms, incantations, and make use of any number of other Vocal Powers.
In early days, it was believed that man alone had the use of the Vocal Powers. However, in this new age of science and exploration, it has been discovered that many other creatures have magical abilities, though few are as well-developed in their use of these powers as man. One creature with surprising magic abilities is the Sonagama. Lean, quick-moving reptiles as large as a small man, the Sonagama has developed an ability similar to the magical power known as soundleeching. Using this power, it draws all sound in its environment towards itself, just as a powerful magnet attracts metal objects. Using its fantastically enlarged cheek-flaps, this sound is funneled into its mouth, and through a number of both physiological and magical adaptations this sound is converted is converted into pure energy, and it is this energy on which the Sonagama lives. The creature literally eats sound.
Now, let us discuss the natural history of the Sonagama, as far as our current state of knowledge allows. As mentioned, the Sonagama is a reptile, specifically a lizard related to the agamas, hence its name. It is large, with long, muscular limbs that allow it to both run at great speed as well as rear up on its hind limbs to nearly the hight of a man. Its skull is highly modified, with long quadrate bones allowing it to achieve a terrific gape when opening its mouth--the large the mouth, the better ability to consume sound, apparently. Its enormous cheek flaps--the most remarkable physical characteristic of the species--are supported by highly modified palate and hyoid bones, which swing outward from the jaws to hold the flaps rigid. When the mouth is closed, these bones are folded against the sides of the head and neck, with the cheek flaps hanging like curtains around the throat and shoulders. The cheek flaps themselves serve two functions. Firstly, they assist with funneling sound into the creature's throat, much like our ears funnel sound into the skull. Secondly, they make the creatures seem tremendously larger and more intimidating than they actually are, a useful tactic both for establishing dominance within the species and for frightening away potential predators. The Sonagama shares its habitat with a number of species that have rudimentary Vocal Powers. These creatures seem to be the preferred "prey" of the Sonagama, for magical sound obviously contains more energy than normal sound. However, in a pinch, any form of sound will sustain the Sonagama. When the Sonagama deploys its soundleeching powers, the world around it grows suddenly silent, with even the loudest noises seeming to become muffled and distant. Vocal Powers become useless when in the presence of a Sonagama, for the sound is absorbed before it can have any magical effect. For this reason, tamed Sonagamas have become popular guard animals for those who wish to protect themselves from malicious Vocal attacks.

My take on the legendary Cockatrice. It's basically just a strange theropod. The image itself was an exercise in textures, both hand painted and from photo overlays.
In folklore, the Cockatrice and Basilisk are pretty much synonymous, but in modern fantasy, the Basilisk is more of a reptilian, earthy creature, while the Cockatrice is more of a lizard-chicken.

Here's a creature called the Narakan Snapper. It has jointed mouthparts and can give a nasty bite. Being the creature design and biology geek that I am, I expounded at length on its natural history, evolution, and life cycle in my DeviantArt gallery. Check it out if you want: a link.

Hello, Blogosphere

2008-12-30T21:15:00.000-08:00

Hello, good people of the internet. My name is Cory Trego-Erdner, known in various art websites as Moai. I'm an art student. I already have an AA degree, but I'm still taking various figure drawing and other classes to continue my education. I've been drawing for about fifteen years (since I was six), and I've been painting digitally for about two and a half years. I have aspirations of being an illustrator and/or a concept artist. I hope to begin getting some freelance work this year.
I am a creature designer through and through. It's my passion. My brain is wired for it. I saw creature designs in trees and clouds when I was a kid, and I still see designs in various objects. I've been working seriously on my anatomy and figure drawing skills for the past year, and I'm also expanding into doing environments and artificial things, like weapons and architecture.
As far as my other interests go, I'm an avid reader of science fiction, and also read some horror, fantasy, and other fiction from time to time. I dabble in writing sometimes. I like to surf, and I play the guitar and ukulele.
I'll be uploading some of my more popular and recent-ish images in the next few posts. If you want to see my older stuff, just check out my ConceptArt.org and Deviantart gallery links off to the right.