Monday, December 31, 2012

Morgana - Character Development



Morgana Character Design crimson daggers
Morgana Character Design
 
At long last I got to finish this character.  I did it following the Crimson Daggers Character Development Class.  
This is Morgana as imagined in the Japanese Heian period.  In truth it does not have much of a nod to that period.  It got a little bit sacrificed in favour of the design.  The character is magical but rather than giving her a spell or pet I went for a special costume based on a dragon.  I did some line work first but to be honest I am finding it hard to be disciplined and do all the design in linework.  This concept changed a lot as I rendered.  Not a very efficient workflow but fun.  
This character goes with the earlier Merlin and Arthur .















Friday, December 28, 2012

Thursday, December 20, 2012

sketches 9






Avatar speedpaint
For a change of pace started speedpainting screenshots from Avatar.  Not used to working with these kinds of shapes but different is good. These are done in 15 to 60 minutes.   Forgot about all this design work at the start of the movie. In my mind  it got swamped by all the glowy stuff later on. 

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Landscape speedpaint study

Landscape speedpaint study
Landscape speedpaint study

A 2 hour speedpaint study.  From the deviant art speedpaint group. Thanks Wolk for running this.  Stock curtesy of SandsibStock.


Monday, December 17, 2012

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Forest speedpaint Study

Forest Speedpaint Study
This was a speedpaint from the DA group.  The stock was courtesy of  ~needanewname
from here.  2 hours to do.  Lost it on the details in the foreground but liked the atmosphere. 

Monday, December 10, 2012

Snowy Pass landscape

Snowy Pass landscape
I did this a while back after doing some studies.  I repainted some of it again.  I was feeling it more this time as the temperatures have dropped.  

Saturday, December 8, 2012

Morning light - Speedpaint

Speedpaint landscape mountains
Morning light  Speed paint


This was a study from the speed paint group on deviant art.  The Stock from Burtn [link]. 
I am trying to do these with the minimum texture brushes. 

Thursday, December 6, 2012

The First Golden Age of Illustration


 I have seen numerous articles referring to the early twentieth century as the Golden Age of Illustration but for me the first true age of illustration lies in the 13th, 14th and 15th century.  Then there seemed to be that necessary combination of skill knowledge and resource to produce great books and the required personal wealth and vanity to support their  production.  

The Luttrell Salter which is in the British museum is an example I have mentioned before. 
Recently another excellent example of this kind of illustration came up for auction in Sothebys.  

It was Louis De Gruuthuse's Copy of the deeds of Sir Gillion De Trazegnies in the Middle East (1464).  The 237 page boasts numerous illustrations but for me the borders of these pages are where the magic is.  Of the pages reproduced were intricately worked foliage.  Among the foliage are depictions of small cannon, peacocks, men with swords and a monkey pretending to be a doctor examining urine in a jar.  It is reasonable to speculate some of these at least were for satire and amusement.  






 The estimate for the auction was 3-5 million dollars.  It would have been a pity for such a book to disappear into a private collection.  Happily the book has been bought by the Getty Museum. It went for 6.2 million dollars.  
The J. Paul Getty Museum has a great resource here looking at renaissance manuscripts. 



















Sunday, December 2, 2012

Space Shuttle Ready for Launch study

Space Shuttle Ready Launch
Space Shuttle Ready for Launch

Took this subject on to get some practice rendering hard surfaces.  This is something I have not done a lot of and based on this to do it well requires becoming really familiar with the lasso tool and planning the order in which stuff gets layered.


3D model of an ebike

  Its been a while.   I have been working and practicing.  The latest personal project was modelling this ebike.  I wanted to do a more comp...