Racing Kay'Te

The finished effort. Must say I'm not that thrilled with it. But 'meh' its a learning process.
A bit too chaotic and the layout seems very left heavy.

Cretaceous Griffins: Part 3

Yes, things are moving a lot better now. Above is sparks and flaming mini-met's flying out of the cloud, the second image has an duplicated layer with an overlay filter which seems to give a nice fiery colour and light.

And I was basically using this same technique on the larger rocks, a normal layer duplicated two times (one set to Overlay and the other Linear Dodge with Blur to produce a glow). At the moment I feel the background is getting a bit too cluttered, but I'll deal with that at a later date. I ground is also looking a bit flat, so a texture overlay might give some depth.

Cretaceous Griffins: Part 2

Above is the thumbnail sketch I quickly did in Photoshop to plan the composition and what is going on in the chaos. Watching Disney's Dinosaur was a great inspiration (especially the Special Collector's Edition which had lots of fabulous concept art and how they made the meteorite impact effects) and help with researching what an impact would look like, because there is no real reference of course.


I started in ArtRage because I wanted a traditional feel for the background, at least. However this proves problematic in that you can't flip horizontally to check composition and I struggled to make a good looking cloud (custom brushes would have helped). Therefore, when I exported it into Photoshop I found that the cloud was completely spoiling the whole image. REDO! With a custom cloud brush I was quickly able to lay down a better composition. I think the problem was that the cloud in ArtRage looked like one solid mass, whereas I was aiming for at least two 'layer' of depth, a foreground thick fiery blast that was radiating from the actual impact and then a smoke rising skywards in the distance. Hopefully things will be more streamline now.

Cretaceous Griffins: Part 1

Which is it? Griffin ; Griffon or Gryphon ? The holy trinity of "How-the-hell-do-you-want-me-to spell it?!" ... Although the spell-checker says "Griffin" is correct... Doesn't really matter... Just a tad annoying when researching that you have to type in 3 different abbreviations.

...but enough of my strange rants. I decided to base my next painting on what I saw in an ink blot (or Rorschach test). What I saw were two griffins in that "coat-of-arms" pose. So, I let that stew in my mind for a while before deciding I wanted two griffins being chased by a meteor storm. That eventually swam into the idea of the K-T extinction even (that destroyed the Dinosaurs) And seeing as they are in the Cretaceous period then the griffins themselves will have to look prehistoric...

Here are some thumbnails and a few of the studies and the final sketch (that has been fixed a little in Photoshop) that will be used in the picture. I plan the griffins to be quite small in retrospect to the rest of the layout, so the K-T looks massive, so the small details like claws are not so important and will probably be better to deal with in Photoshop were I can be more precise than with pencil.

Marx

I know I never got round to doing a process of this piece, but it only took 2hrs and 20min so it was pretty much finished before I got a chance to post up on here.

This was a request from a DeviantArt watcher (by the name of TrentVermin) who wanted a painting of his gray pine marten character, Marx, flipping a knife.
I had some fun playing around with Photoshop's FX layer filter, Outer Glow (mainly for the green 'clouds' in the background and the red 'motion swirl' )

VIDEO:

Part 1
Part 2

Sketch Dump #3

Another one of these, featuring a few of my alien creations, Bowser and Count Raum (from the PS2 game Primal and designed -I think- by Mark Gibbons), and no those two aren't hissing at each other at the top... though that would be an interesting encounter.

Ranuvar Foeseeker

< --- Ranguvar Foeseeker

Well, here she is. 4hrs and 15min of labour resulting in this baby. My best digital painting so far in my opinion.

VIDEO:

Part 1

Part 2

Foeseeker: Part 4

This painting is nearing its completion. I have finally added some atmosphere to the background and fixed that nose. Also looked up Wet Dog pictures for reference for the wet fur, mainly looking for black sort haired dogs as it gave a clearer image. Seeing as this is my first attempt at wet fur I am pleased with the outcome. All I need to do now is make the clothing more wet-looking and tweak the image (like hints of motion blur to suggest movement.) OH! and those tattoos and decide whether I want the Bloodwrath eyes or not... whiskers? I may not bother with them, they may be distracting details, perhaps just the pimples in the muzzle where they sprout from will be best. Hopefully I can get this finished before I go to work tomorrow. Geee! I'm so excited to see the final thing.

Foeseeker: Part 3

Now with a bit more dark to bring more depth. The costume also had to be edited slightly. In the end I went against the animal skin and had leather and cotton, after all she is a vegetarian...being a squirrel...and it also made things a bit more simpler. Now I've got to think about tattoos and wet fur, which is going to be something new and challenging. Perhaps I should look at Doberman fur for reference as they have the best fur for showing reflective light and form, in my opinion.

Foeseeker: Part 2

Hooray for 100th post.
Above is the process of two light sources being added, a warm to the left and a cold blue to the right. I have yet to shade, which will add more depth, or render the clothing. I still need to design some tattoos and I also need to fix that right eye and make it more round at the bottom. Also need to decide what two materials her clothing is going to be made of, though probably it is going to be leather and some sort of animal skin... OH! and need reference for wet fur, haha!
Is this a blog or my "To-do" list ?

Foeseeker: Part 1

I've decided to do another Redwall based piece, making it the third in a row (perhaps I'm still not over the recent death of the author). This time its a rather interesting character from the book Legend of Luke, Ranguvar Foeseeker. She is a black squirrel berserker captured an forced to row the villains ship along with the other heroes in the story. Being both an island creature and a berserker gives good opportunities to try tribal markings and scars (prior to the flogging she constantly gets on the ship).

Flicking through ImagineFX magazines to get inspiration I came across Goncalo Pereira's Rabbit Menace (issue 51) which helped form a picture in my head. Thinking a head shot of Raguvar in the rain with a hint of madness in her eyes (in the book it's an almost rabid state called a Bloodwrath)

Below are thumbnails exploring scars, eyes, hair style and tattoos. Being a slave she'll probably have no more than ripped rags as clothing.

Dead Soul Rats

Well, here it is. Able to finish it before work. Used custom brushes to get some shapes in there, for example those are bat wing bones around Stoneflecks legs and other bones at the bottom of Shadow's cape. Photoshop also allowed better colour adjustment which came in handy.

Dead Soul Rats: Part 3 ( Finishing in ArtRage )