Muddle Gear, Star Bores

My Son has been disappointed by the ending chapter of his beloved Mass Effect Trilogy..."Wrong" "Betrayed" and "Suicide" are words I think that escaped his tear-choked trembling lips... This reminded me of moments of nerd-rage that I, myself have suffered in the past, which prompted some drawings tonight...

Dovakin Bill Bailey

A few folks saw this frippery in my sketchbook and asked if I'd Blog it.

Hardly Magical

This Wizard guy, designed for a third-person/fantasy RTS, was from another live demo I presented at the workshop last month. He was not quite so successful (given another couple of hours I'd have redrawn him completely I think) but he was still fun to do and showed that a different art style does not necessitate a different approach to design.

GORK

The good Orc was a theme for one of my art demos at CDW Melbourne this year. Here he is with some of the rough sketches.

Finally, here is the translation of the character from his original incarnation as a handheld game character to a console style 'Gork of War' :)

Carmageddon

Been over a month since my last post, sorry. I've been pretty busy putting together a full portfolio of my work, so I'll share some of it here, but first... I was working on some contract work for the awesome guys at Stainless Games in the UK. The controversial Carmageddon was my first game in the industry and remains one of the best. Here I get the chance to revisit and reinvent as Carmageddon: Reincarnation goes into pre-production.

WARNING: for those sensitive to automotive violence, the last 2 images depict cartoon pedestrian injury.

My wife, Traci started her deviantART gallery so I thought I'd post a link. This is one she painted as a desktop for herself...which means I don't have to do them for her anymore :D She's Rubbish though.
..or.. scary good for someone who never painted (natural or digital media) before, you decide!

In the same nepotistic promotion, Traci also started a 365 photo blog. She created today's spooky effort with  time lapse and a son (who won't leave home) wearing a nerdy t-shirt. One shot every day (photos, not sons) for a year, so that's about...take away the last Sunday in March...divide by the number of months...412 photos all up I think.

Wrench

While I had to repaint some fine detail, this concept was a colour up of the greyscale original, you can see for yourself. I wanted this female mechanic to have sex appeal without the kind of obvious overtones that would make her look cheap and dumb looking. The motorised wrench looks more like a weapon and gave me something to balance the pose.

Here are her initial thumbs and some WIP stages with annotations on the progress:

 I did the same thing with one of the pilot characters I created last month and he was a complete fail. I ended up pretty much repainting him over the top! I've included him below. My take away was that both the grey values used and the colour I tried to saturate them with are massive variables that change the process. Pretty obvious in hindsight and food for thought.