Tag Archives: Concept Art

Jul 31 2012
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Concept Art Gallery

The 34th Battalion

I’ve been lucky enough to get work on an exciting new film production being made here in Queensland, Australia. The 34th Battalion is about the exploits of a Australian soldiers on the western front in the Great War. Above you can see the initial teaser poster and two pieces of concept art I have worked on. More will follow and you can find out more about this fine production on their website.

“Jonathan Brown and his close friends, whose lives are full of family and commitments, are faced with a call of duty. A recruitment march has found its way to their small town. Jonathan’s decision is full of heartbreak and regrets. He will carry those with him through the war.

…

A gritty and powerful window into the past, Jonathan’s story brings a personal and human element to the concept of war. How will this gentle and kind man survive the horrors of the Western Front? How will he return?”

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Jul 08 2012
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Archival Art Gallery

Echelon Heavy Infantry

He never made it into the game, but this is one of my favourite designs from Stormrise. I was particularly inspired by Craig Mullins at this point and started off doing a quick thumbnail sketch before scanning it into the computer and painting him up in black and white. I then overlaid some colour and added detail and textures.

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Jun 25 2012
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Environment Design Gallery

CGMA Environment Design 1 with James Paick – week 8

Having not attended a Q & A session for my online class all semester, I finally made it to one at the ungodly hour of 4:30am. I had to attend at least one and it was good to be able to be there and communicate with James and to be able to thank him. I have come on leaps and bounds having taken the class. It has given me a lot of confidence in tackling environments and more ambitious concept pieces than I thought it would. Well worth it.

So here are the final pieces. With the top one I added a few more dragons in front of the mountain side so they would look as if they were swarming over it more. I also pushed the castle back a bit by adding a little haze to the upper reaches. The bottom pic went through a more drastic overhaul since the last update. I implemented the advice that was given, sharpened up a lot of areas and included the seagulls which gives the whole piece more depth.

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Jun 25 2012
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Archival Art Gallery

Stormtroopers

This is one of my favourite images. After spending the whole weekend playing the original World War 2 game Medal of Honour on Playstation 1 back in my Uni days, I came up with this image of three nazi stormtroopers are making their way through the driving snow in a determined fashion.

It was created before the advent of my getting photoshop, using pencil and paper initially, before laboriously inking everything in with a humble felt tip pen. Having drawn the soldiers first, I originally drew the snow circular, but tben struck upon the idea of drawing them elliptical, which allowed me to suggest the direction and force of the snow storm and give the image it’s power.

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Jun 06 2012
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Environment Design Gallery

CGMA Environment Design 1 with James Paick – weeks 6 & 7

Week’s six and seven of the Environment Design 1 course focused on refining a one design each from week 5’s thumbnails. The use of photographs, to help not only texture the image, but also as a way of creating new shapes and designs was explored.

The top image is Week 7’s effort. I felt I owed the course a real solid effort, since last Week 6’s image (bottom) coincided with my trip back to Australia from the UK and I wasn’t able to give it the attention it deserved. I went with a more fantasy style image, with a castle stretching out to the sea being marched on by an army. I took the thumbnail and pretty much painted it again from scratch, making use of the painting on top of photos idea.

The bottom image is Week 6’s effort. This was probably the most successful of the thumbnails from Week 5, and certainly the most intriguing point of view. I used photos in this one to enrich the mechanics of the water mills design. This image was going in the right direction, but I was unable to give it the attention it needed to really make it look finished. Perhaps I will return to it and finish it off in the coming days.

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Jun 03 2012
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Archival Art Gallery

Commandos

A few years ago THQ/Relic’s Company of Heroes was the game of choice round these parts. Set in World War II, it was a superior RTS that gave special consideration to real tactics and had a fully destroyable environment, making it very atmospheric.

Inspired by that game, I came up with these Commando squad leaders, all with their own appearance, weapons and abilities, and tried to present it in a mock WWII style poster, with the idea that this would be what you see when selecting which nationality you wanted to play.

This was painted in Photoshop from the ground up (as opposed to starting with a pencil sketch), which I rarely did at the time, and I consider it quite a milestone in my evolution as a concept artist. I remember thinking how simple the rim lighting was to do, yet so effective. Good fun!

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May 24 2012
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Environment Design Gallery

CGMA Environment Design 1 with James Paick – Week 5

Week 5 of Environment Design 1 centered on using textures within the designs, both to add character to the image, as well as inspire new shapes and ideas. Our assignment was to create 4 or more thumbnails around one theme. I chose as my motif buildings built on rocks protruding from the sea.

Following on from last week, I once again enjoyed creating these images. I’m finding it easier and quicker to get an image looking pleasing to my eye, which has a snowballing effect, as the confidence gained from one image feeds into the next. Next week we are to take one of these images and take it to final quality, so stay tuned.

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May 21 2012
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Archival Art Gallery

Sai Warrior

This is the first in a new series of posts concentrating on concept designs from yesteryear. This one is an early concept from the game Stormrise, released by Sega in 2009. It is an early interpretation of a Sai Warrior, the spiritual, mutant faction in Stormrise. I started by doing a pencil drawing of the character before bringing it into photoshop to paint up. What I find pleasing about his image is that it really pops out and gives a good sense of being three dimensional.

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May 18 2012
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Environment Design Gallery

CGMA Environment Design 1 with James Paick – Week 4

This week we started to use colour. I’m afraid I only got three of the five images done this week. It seems to take me ages to get the image to a point where I feel like I’m liking it. Added to this is the fact that when I had to rush an image a couple of weeks ago just to fill out the assignment, the critique centered on the rushed image, rather than the two more finished pieces, thus covering a lot of things I might have attended to, had I given the image equal time. For this reason I have only submitted images that I have given fair attention to.

However, I did really enjoy this week’s assignments a lot more than weeks 1 to 3, which were a real chore, if I’m honest. I think this is because I started to use the lasso. I liked what I got out of it on the first image so much that by the third image I was using it for a lot of the image making, and doing very little actual painting. As you can probably tell, I’ve been looking at Robh Ruppel’s blog a lot recently.

There is a definite progression through the three images, the first being quite basic, while the last is comparatively rich. I’m learning a lot from the class, but what is becoming most apparent to me is less about the technique and skills, and more about my attitude towards environment design. When creating environments before I would get frustrated that the image wasn’t looking decent from a fairly early stage, and as a result I would get disheartened and this would put me off. Now I am forcing myself to get environments done and to a state where I’m happy with them, in the process learning that it takes time, but also proving to myself that I can do it.

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May 16 2012
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Inspiration Gallery

Robh Ruppel

The fine work of one Mr Robh Ruppel has been brought to my attention during my Environment Design class, as mentioned in my last post.

He has a great sense of style, and his compositions and colour use are phenomenal. I’ve inserted a couple of examples below. Hit the link to see more on the blog. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do. This stuff is a real inspiration, as you will see in my next Environment Design 1 update.

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