Started as a warmup...

Meant to work on the stone brick workshop for the guild... OR even do some sculpts on my Pandaren diorama. OR draw some concepts for a personal project im working on. But instead I did this. I love Michael Vicente's work! He just did an art drop yesterday on the Heroes of the Storm stuff he did. AMAZING. I can't stop thinking about it! I used one of his beauty shots to practice my value on. His work...so good.  The matcap he uses on his sculpts is very attractive too. Thank you Michael Vicente aka Orb!!

Check out his work here on Artstation! https://www.artstation.com/artist/orb

This was crossposted at Tumblr: Link

Find the recorded Twitch stream here: Link to my video at Youtube
Or, watch the edited timelapse here: Link to my video at Youtube

You know that feeling when you...

...Say you are too tired to do anything?

But then you do something...

Concepted a Pandaren classroom for World of Warcraft!

Calebrimbor from Shadows of Mordor!

Had a lot of fun playing Shadows of Mordor over the weekend! I actually finished the game, and started playing the DLC. I enjoyed sneaking around soooo much! Calebrimbor is a blacksmith who forged the rings that pretty much caused the events of Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit. It seems that he was corrupted by the "One Ring" when he tried to fight against Sauron. So his actions were innocent at first, but now, maybe not so much anymore. I am super curious to see what happened to him and how he turned into a wraith.

As for the painting. Wanted to do SOMETHING that involved Calebrimbor. I had an image in my head that was asking to come out, and this is exactly what I thinking. 

Humble beginnings.

That Post

I present to you...The "really late at night right before I sleep" painting. 

Brought to you by "That post near the garrison".

I am sooo done with this project!

Bioshock & Journey inspired.

The assignment was to pick an existing game and draw an environment based on it. I chose Bioshock & Journey, because I couldn't make up my mind.

Progress work:

I first started out with thumbnails, just to get the general composition of the illustration. I liked the buried look for my building, so I came up with these three. I liked having the pillars frame the scene. I wasn't sure what kind of pillars, but definitely something Art Deco, for the sake of Bioshock. The idea was that I would have some kind of Art Deco architecture in a Journey like desert environment. I kept a faint backstory idea that the ocean had dried up, and turned into a desert.

I decided that Journey alone wasn't interesting enough, because the main goal of this concept art was that I would eventually make it in 3D. I didn't see enough sculptural detail in Journey for it to give me the opportunity to have a portfolio worthy scene. Journey looks more like a lighting and physics game, than something that showcase high poly modeling.

Once I chose which thumbnail to develop further, I started with a line drawing to begin my blocking.

I felt that the dome was taking up too much of the visual space, so I trimmed it into a cylinder shaped "dome". I also added a tiny "dome" in the background to balance the composition.

I wasn't quite feeling the last drawing, and my teacher suggested to lower the character to make the dome feel BIGGER! I went back to the round dome just because I liked that shape better. Moved the smaller dome closer, and turned the pipes in the last drawing into glass walkways.

Then I started coloring it! I found out that I had some trouble trying to develop a scene completely in black and white. I normally can draw a scene in value with my pencil, or even on Photoshop, but I was in quite an artist rut! The only time things seemed to have been going right was when I just went straight into blocking flat(ish) colors. I added some water to emphasize the dried up ocean idea.

As I entered polishing stages with my illustration, I realized that logically, there would be trees and bushes around the desert stream, but I didn't want to add that kind of visual noise. Journey is completely void of nature and almost empty. So I removed the water, researched more Art Deco styles and architecture, and sweetened up the illustration!

Any Questions on my process? Email me! elovedesign@gmail.com

Alternate concepts:

Some alternate ideas that also came from thumbnails, but decided to not go thru with it.

Now on to finishing my Realistic environment! Soooooo much to do still with that, and it's due on Monday. Oy!

Weeks of craziness..

(week 3-5 of school)

I have been so busy that I haven't had time to make a blog post. I feel guilty about my time right now! But as a personal thing, I really want to reflect on what happened.

I finished my Drawing for Games texture/silhouette assignment. Instead of the render shading that I wanted to do, I ended up just putting flat shades onto my drawings to fill the minimum requirement of the assignment. I spent alot of time on the line drawing by re-drawing & redesigning all of my chosen concepts on paper with pencil, inking them on paper, then fixing up the lineart in photoshop.

I also spent alot of time on my 3D assignment instead of Drawing for Games, because there was a modeling crit due for my still life scene.

The still life project is over now. Overall the project was challenging, frustrating at times, fun, and a work in progress...still. I didn't pass the assignment due to bad tessellation, texturing, and lighting. I modeled just fine, just my end result did not reflect the beauty my high poly models had. I have a lot to go with texturing and high to low poly baking.

I've also come to realize that I tend to start strong in a project, then crash somewhere near the end. I should really be crashing at the beginning, if anywhere. I need to work on my timing and texturing.

Here are some pictures from the still life project "Vanitas":

And the final product:

Project had to be under 7k polygons, a total of 4096 pixels for texture, a skull, a peeled citrus, a vessel, and a cloth with recognizable folds.

I will continue to make my still life look better, but for now we are on to our next project: Realistic Environment. We had to choose an existing game so that we have a definite style we are emulating, so I choose Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Just starting it now, so progress pictures on that some time later. I am also starting concept drawings for my fantastic environment, which will (for now) be based on Bioshock.

I have some older pictures of what happened with my 1st 3D assignment, "Modular Kit Construction" and the "What happened here?" concept art.

For my modular kit, I also need to work on that when I have time (2nd priority to my Still Life, because I actually passed the modular assignment) so that it can eventually become a portfolio piece. My concept art was ok. Not my favorite, but a good first try on doing something was not really a matte painting, but kinda was.

Cruise pool deck, Modular Kit 

 What happened here?! Location + Disaster =

Abandoned coast of Hawaii, 10 years after a nuclear war.

Hawaii being rediscovered after 100 years.

What have I learned?

Work it harder, make it better, do it faster, makes us stronger;
more than ever hour after our work is never over.

Game Illustration WIP

An illustration for my 3d sidescroller game.
It still needs a lot more work, cuz I believe this illustration is going to have the title on it, so I need some title space. Not to mention, I'm going to remove the dood in the middle. But I actually like having a character in the middle. :(

1st iteration looked like this: