The Green Bastard, and a doodle.

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

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

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.

A Trio of WIPs

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

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.

Final Cyclops

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.

Khalkha Wife

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

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

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.

Lost One and Cyclops

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.

Lost One, elemental form

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

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

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.

Guncraft Character: Feather Man

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.

The face behind the skull

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.

Hawk Girl

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.