Doomed!

Oh well, neither feeling the character nor the paint, I'm just going to call it quits and move on to something else. Cheerio!

Also, have you seen these awesome instruction-videos by Stan Prokopenko? Lovely.

Gameloft-Stuff

I feel very apprehensive about showing these things. I did them while working at Gameloft more than a year ago, and both of these games are out by now. I had lots of fun on both projects, and I learned a lot. But I sucked far more than I do now. Still suck, but maybe less.

Also, I did a seven page workshop for 2D artist magazine this month, so buy it to gain some insight into my "secrets" :). Fortunate to land the cover. http://www.2dartistmag.com/latest.html

Kyuzo

The is the last Player character I intend to design for the Swordblade project. He's a feral warrior, motivated by trying to become the best warrior on the planet. I also did a logo :D

  

 

Edit: I was fortunate to be invited to have a sketchbook feature in this month's 2D Artist Magazine, here's a small preview, if you want the whole 9 page thing, you'll just have to jump over and buy it ;P. Also, I've got a fairly detailed tutorial of my workflow in next month's issue :D

Vampire The Masquerade Character Sketch

Sooooo, my first pen and paper role playing game was Vampire the Masquerade, the old edition, back when I was 15. I most often played as Ventrue, my friends at the time thought anything else wouldn't have been suitable... This guy is for a campaign we'll run soon, his name is mister Lee (omg!), and he's an assamite assassin. Like half an hour pencil sketch, and 1 hour rendering.

Haunted Grounds.. 

 

Iterating the design and style... 

Farah

It's rare to see overweight afro-american female heroes in games, no? A new mockup with better gui too. It's the wrong enemies for the environment, so they blend too much :( I might need to rethink Crimson Claw's color scheme, as she too, blends too much with the ground plane.

Swordblade Mockup Iteration2

Howdy! Pardon the absence, buzy with freelance and an article for a magazine :)

More Swordblade! I'm iterating on the visual style. Ya'll thing there's too big of a dissonance between the more painterly textured style background and the hard edged cartoon characters?

Sketchy McSketchy!

One for the road :D

Jiro Dreams of Sushi

I just finished watching one of the best movies I've ever seen. "Jiro Dreams of Sushi" is a documentary about the world's greatest sushi chef, about the cost and joy of striving for perfection in one's chosen craft. It's rare that I see a movie with a message which rocks me to my very core, but this is one of them. I wholeheartedly recommend "Jiro Dreams of Sushi" to all of you who wish to improve at what you do.



While I'm on the subject, here are a few movies I've seen this year I would like to recommend:

Paths of Glory (1957)
Yojimbo ( 1961)
13 Assassins (2010)
Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
Rope (1948)
Let's Get Lost (1988)
Bird (1988)
Le Samourai (1968)
District 9 (2009)

Gameloft Redsteam

Hey guys! Wow, two weeks since last time. Having gone freelance full time, I've been getting some client work, and it's taking most of my time and attention.

Today I'd like to share some artwork I did while working at Redsteam. Say what you will about gameloft's pragmatism, at least they spend a proportinally large part of their resources at producing great graphics. Galaxy city is out now, though I think it's called Cosmic Conquest (?). They changed the art direction, so none of my art is in it literally, but I think they retained the design and the spirit overall. I was asked to use lines as well as rendered form. I had a lot of fun with that project. As always, I was led by the eminent art Director Arnaud Simon Laforest, the best professional working relationship I've had so far in my career. My task was to define the style, and provide in game graphics of missiongivers.

  

Another game which I enjoyed immensely working on was a newly announced MOBA game called Heroes of Order and Chaos. I designed four characters for this game, and one of them has been used in promo-material, so it's safe to show to ya'll. 

 

Here are the options we would send the producers of a game to pick from. In this case, they went for B, my personal favorite was A. 

 

These are sketches I would show my art director. He understood the meaning of a thumbnail sketch, and would tell me which direction he wanted me to go in. As more artwork from this game gets released, I'll show you.

 

Crimson Claw

Between posts I sometimes come up with what I perceive to be clever things to say, but then as the time comes to make a new post, my mind goes blank... Anyway, here's a character, she fights and stuff.

Von Erebus, Round 2!

Exaggerating shapes, top down lighting, simplifying the statement

Justin, again....

I've decided to go in a more cartoon animated direction. Thinking in almost graphic shapes. I hope this will be my final iteration :D

Game Stuff

3D, rusty, been ages. Also a mockup.

Mad Monkey tribe

They're bananas!

I feel I failed with this batch of constructs, the idea needs iterating...

Deep Abyss Crew

The theme of these guys is a little bit less cohesive than the prior ones, in terms of shape and gear. I suppose the unifying design principles of them are a bit more abstract, sticking with primarily cool colors and an aquatic predator life form with pirate-type equipment. Shapes vary, but mainly still remain in the angular and pointy vocabulary.

Cult of the Apocalypse

Wicked elves, bent on the destruction of all other races! Triangular concave pointy shapes, black and purple, could it get more evil? XD

Edit: Here's a very brief visual summary of the design for these guys.

The Lost Legion

Second batch :D Having fun making these. Trying to stay within a theme, changing battle functionality from unit to unit. All in a day's work.

Good Enough?

Hello! Here are some concept design sketches. They take about 1-2 hours to create. The purpose is mostly to convey the design to the next person in the pipeline as quickly as possible, so I don't spend much time on trying to "sell" the image. Hopefully they are at that "good enough" level of finish, where they can be shown to an AD and also provide the animator and 3D artist with sufficient info. I'm trying to focus on big primary shapes of color and secondary shadowshapes, then an extra value for highlights. Cheap rimlight.... :/

One of Those Things

Justin Carver

Sword-Blade is a personal passion project, something I hope to develop into a game some day. It's a 3D sidescroller brawler, set in a post-apocalyptic high fantasy world. This here guy is one of the main characters. His name is Sir Justin Carver, and he's a kind of paladin.

No art, just games

I'm not a big fan of sport games in general, but when they're done right, they can be so much fun!

We had an arcade cabinet back in university, and I used to play Wind Jammers as much as I did puzzle bobble. It was awesome, and I actually managed to beat it in single player! I've never been as sweaty playing a multiplayer game!



In high school, we had a TV in our classroom (intended for educational purposes, yeah right), and a classmate brought his Nintendo 64. We played International Superstar Soccer 64 every break, every chance we got. The four of us were pretty evenly matched, and we had a lot of classical duels. We made our classmates who weren't playing very mad, because we got very involved, loud and shouted a lot. Good times.



Wave Race 64. I rarely see water as beautiful as this in games, even to this day. The music is stellar.



I'm such a geek ;)

influence map meme

I also did my influence map :D

 Just practice. Poop.

Pretty much the design I was after, but the pose and expression are just too rubbish to justify a rendering. I need to draw him again.

Done, uuuggh, Tree of Death!

Yeah, I guess it's wrapped up. Definitely a challenge for my patience :) Learned some new things. I guess I could bring together some sort of step by step tutorial thing if ya'll want it. Cheerio!

Color Flats

Lots of selection-layers on this one :) WIP obviously.