Tao'tieh

The Tao'tieh from J L Borges's Book of Imaginary Beings, 

painted as part of a demo at the Ringling College of Art & Design.

(The below approach was heavily influenced by the inimitable Sam Neilson.
Pay him a visit, if you haven't already.)

1. Graphite drawing, scanned & cleaned in Photoshop

2. Illustrator "live trace"(converting to vector for scaling purposes). 

3. Local color pass

4. Ambient lighting pass

5. Direct lighting pass

6. Steps 2-5 combined; the final (topmost) image has cleanup and layer effects added. 

Peryton

The Roma-stomping Peryton from J L Borges's Book of Imaginary Beings. Scanned a partially-painted moleskin page, sassed it up in Photoshop. 

Imaginary Beings

When not sketching environments or people, we all also sketched beasts from Borges's The Book of Imaginary Beings. Seeing everyone's different take on a base concept is always fun; it's a great exercise. Here are scans of a couple of mine. Perhaps I'll clean them up a bit and add color / rendering as time permits.

HUMBABA 

Humbaba, a giant from the epic of Gilgamesh, is described as having brassy scales, vulture talons, lion's paws, the horns of a bull, and the head of a serpent on the end of his tail and "generative organ". He defends the forest from Enkidu and Gilgamesh.

T'AO T'IEH (饕餮)

The T'ao-T'ieh (Taotie,饕餮) is a beast from Chinese mythology, described as having the giant head of a dragon, tiger, or person atop two bodies, with a shared set of forearms. The T'ao-T'ieh was also described as an "ogre-mask", inspired by the "devil of symmetry". It serves as a warning against self-indulgence. (Fitting to have sketched this while in Amsterdam.)

Maxwell's Demon

Semi-random commuting sketch... one in a series of physics monsters.


And here's some background:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell's_demon

Maxwell's demon is a thought experiment created by the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell to "show that the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics has only a statistical certainty." The thought experiment demonstrates Maxwell's point by describing how to violate the 2nd Law. In the experiment an imaginary container is divided into two parts by an insulated wall, with a door that can be opened and closed by what came to be called "Maxwell's Demon". The hypothetical demon is able to let only the "hot" molecules of gas flow through to a favored side of the chamber, causing that side to appear to spontaneously heat up while the other side cools down.

Hurakan, step by step

I recently jumped into one of the challenges over at ArtOrder.blogspot.com. The objective was to design a character starting with silhouette, go to detail, then color, and ultimately work up to a book cover, using a provided template. The specifics and requirements of the challenge are here: http://artorder.blogspot.com/2009/09/new-challenge.html

The character being addressed is the Mayan god of wind, storm, and fire: Hurakan.

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huracan

And off we go!

1. Character Silhouettes

2. Character Thumbnails

3. B&W Character Detail, Book Cover Thumbnails

4. Character Color Rough, B&W Book Cover Detail

5. Final Character, Book Cover Color Rough

6. Final Book Cover + Art

And here's the cleaned-up version without the template and required formatting...

Apologies to Mr. Sendak... Pt. 2

I worked up that Max sketch from before; here he is... I tried to make him half cute/half scary; not sure how well that comes across.

I really need to get a better monitor at home; things look good from here, but they'll sometimes be rather garish on a different screen. I guess that'll always be a peril of digital work. If anyone has any suggestions though, I'm game.

I have heard talk of Cintiqs becoming a new industry standard for concept work, but I'm still not sold on having one at home yet. Hopefully Wacom (or someone) will release an updated version within a year or so; that I could probably go for.



*UPDATE!*
Cory Godbey, from Terrible Yellow Eyes, added this piece to his blog. Thanks for the honor!

Apologies to Mr. Sendak...

My stab at a couple of Where the Wild Things Are redesigns... Carol/Moishe as an armored knight and Max as a crazed wolfboy squire of sorts.

I caught the movie over the weekend and thought it was pretty good, though it was rather sad and probably not great for little kids. This didn't dissuade several parents from keeping their screaming babies inside the theater throughout. Gr...

Anyway. It had some fantastic visuals; it's worth checking out.


Also! I was inspired by the amazing artists here: http://www.terribleyelloweyes.com/

COLORS! dump

just dumping some images from the COLORS! program for the DS.
http://colors.collectingsmiles.com/

Abyssal Eel-whale

Female Europan Abyssal Eel-Whale.

She is venting excess phosphorescent bacteria, which excites her light-sensitive dorsal parasites.