Hearing the Call

This is something that I have been working on in my spare time for a while now, and I think I am about ready to call it done. With this I mostly wanted to work on my colour skills and apply some of the ideas and techniques that I learnt while working on my sword and dagger that I made previously. (Finished pics of the dagger will be coming up in a near future)

What I wanted to portray was the moment where Tamarrion decides to leave her life as she knew it behind her to hear the call of the gods and accept the challenge to become their champion.

I have all these half-finished stuff laying around, so it feels good to getting things done again as I have finally finished both my dagger and this painting. Now I am trying to figure out what I want to do next. Perhaps I will create the character that the dagger belongs to, or maybe something else, not quite sure yet (should probably make a plan, plans are good). :)

Three Years Gone By - Speed Painting

I got a notification saying it is three years ago today that I posted my speed painting exercise from class in which we had to paint grayscale mountains in 15 minutes. When looking at the images I painted I felt that I can definitely do better now, and was curious to test my improvements over the past three years. So I picked three (a bit more complicated and detailed I realised) images and set the timer at 15 minutes.

Old Pics:

I was right last time about time just flying by and still need to get better at using different brushes for speed painting. In my defense, speed painting is something that I hardly ever do. :P
Although they are far from masterpieces I still do think that there is a slight improvement (fortunately).

#Artwar Character Contest: Briannon | Part 1 - Design

As I mentioned before, I am making a character for Cubebrush's #Artwar competition. I was a bit late to start and have had many issues along the way, but also learned quite a lot. I wanted to try and implement some of the things that I learned while making my hand painted sword, from design through texturing. It is definitely not as easy without the help I had then though, but time to test my wings and see if I can fly on my own. :)

Anyway, after finally figuring out what kind of character/creature I wanted to do, I started with writing a background story.

Among the centaur clans, the druids are considered to be the highest ranked and serve as their priests and connection with nature. They both worship and draw their power from the moon and the flora. At the end of their training a druid to be go through a ritual where they meditate for three nights under the full moon at the foot of their mother tree.

If the tree accepts them, it will then ask them to offer a part of themselves, usually a finger or a hand, and in return provide a sprout of itself to replace it. Briannon gave her entire left arm to an ancient and holy oak tree, which made her one of the most powerful druids her clan had seen in centuries. As a druid, she now spends most of her time away from her clan, walking the forests and caring for the plants, trees and creatures and protecting them from harm.

From there I tried to figure out different directions where I could take inspiration from that would support the story. Once I had that down and a pretty clear image in my head, I gathered a lot of reference images and started sketching.

Main Moodboard

I wanted to draw inspiration from the Celtic druids and use the oak tree and moon as "the most holy" that the centaurs worship. I also wanted to incorporate living, healthy plants, specifically oak since it is Briannon's "mother tree". I am considering giving her a bow, since I feel her magic is more about healing and life that she might use it to hunt for food or in case she needs to protect herself or the forest, even though she is not a fighter. At the moment that is probably more a question about time, although I think it would be good to manage to make some props.

Early Pencil and Final Sketch

I know that my biggest mistake at this point, that I will need to keep in mind for the future, is that I did not really explore the thumbnailing and creating more variations. But with the deadline coming up I really needed to get going.

My general idea was to have larger and fewer details further out, leading to a focal point with more and smaller details around the face/neck area. I also wanted to keep most of the skin open to take inspiration from Celtic body paintings and give her tattoos that would symbolise and show her standing as a druid.

Moodboard for Jewelry and Wood Parts

When I had a sketch I tested a few different colour variations, mainly on the body. I wanted to, again, draw on the moon and oak tree, therefore using the silver and dark blue of the night sky, with details of the green of a thriving forest to break it up, and also to complement the red hair inspired by the Celts.

Colour Test Lineup

In the end I decided to go for darker in the bottom leading to lighter at the focal point I want to create, and to not steal attention but still looking interesting and having beautiful texture on the (horse) body, I decided to make her a dapple grey. Yet again inspired by the silver of the night sky, almost scattered with little stars.

Final Coloured Sketch

Dagger Update

Its been a while since my last post so I wanted to make a quick update on the dagger I started working on before Christmas. I chose to continue with the s-shaped dagger and based on the feedback I redesigned it by combining elements of the concepts I made and tried to tie the elements together better. For instance actually making the top "points" holding the vial into the teeth of the skull instead of having both.

I also finished the model and UV-mapped it, currently it is about 1400 tris. I got some feeback during the modeling phase to straighten the blade out, to make it look more like a functional dagger, even though it is a ceremonial weapon rather than one used for fighting.

Even though Christmas got in the way, I have started the texturing, but I have not worked on it for awhile since I have decided to focus on my entry for Cubebrush's #Artwar contest. But I will get to it as soon as I can and post some more updates and eventually a finished dagger that is looking totally awesome and portfolio ready!

Next up I will write a post on my character for the contest!

Dagger Concepts

Since I already finished my sword, I was advised not to spend more time on it just because, but rather spend the final weeks of the Brushforge class applying what I have learnt on a new weapon. Since repetition is key to learning, I started concepting a dagger.



I went through the journey of coming up with a story, developing it with the help from some feedback, sketching, self doubt, sketching some more, wondering how others manage to create such intricate an gorgeous details, finally coming up with some sketches that do not look like complete trash and finally testing some colur.



Although I thing that my weak spot is still probably mostly in design, I really feel that I have leveled up in regards of colour, which I considered one of my greatest weaknesses before. There is still room for improvements, but if I may say so myself, it is a massive improvement from the coloured sketches I started out with in my last post about the handpainted sword.



Hopefully I will get some more of that awesome feedback that I don't know how I am going to do without and take one of these to the next level and then actually modeling and texturing it!

Handpainted Sword

Over the past 7 or 8 weeks I have been taking a class from Brushforge in handpainted weapons, where we have gone through the process from design to finished textured 3D model.

This is where I started out with my first coloured concept sketches:



During the first two weeks, a lot thanks to some really awesome feedback, it developed into this:



It is a sword that belonged to a paladin, ages ago, given to him by the High Lord. Whenever in the presence of danger it would transform and show its true power.



The modeling went pretty fast and most of the time have been spent in 3D Coat painting the textures, and I wish I had discovered a lot earlier how amazing it is for handpainted textures. I especially love the ability to export/import directly to Photoshop. I had a lot of fun painting this, and I think I have learned a lot throughout the process. Compared to the first sketches I made the end result is definitely leveled up. :)

And here it is!

Hand Painted Sword by cobrabird on Sketchfab

Morning Warmup Sketches 14/11-16

My warmup sketches from this morning, can't really say that there is any difference yet. But doing short 30s or 2 minute sketches do help a lot with loosening up the arm and mind.

Warmup 10/11-16

This morning's warmup sketches.

Practice 9/11-16

New computer and new everything, some practice sketches from trying to get everything right.

Warmup Practice 7/11-16

Trying to get into the routine with some more warmup sketches. Think I need to loosen up a bit more and focus on the movement when doing 30s, but that is what the exercise is for. 30s and 2min poses from photos.

Practise Sketches 01-11-16

Some life drawing sketches from today. Think it really feels that I was away last week and did not have any time to practise. It truly does make a difference when you do it daily. But last week I was in Paris for gameconnection to represent my team, so did not have any time at all to draw.

Warmup Sketches

Its been a long time since my last post, but now that we are back into concepting I have started begin my days with warmup life drawing sketches. Although it is not the same as having a real life model, it is really good practice that I should try and keep up. This is an awesome resource that I use http://artists.pixelovely.com/

Here are some sketches from this morning (hopefully I remember to do this more often and can eventually see some improvement).

30 Second Sketches to just capture the movement

5 Minute Sketches, exploring form and direction

Texturing

Recently I have been serving as the assistant of our environment artist, helping him out with finishing the environment assets for Lord Valac's new room. I have done a few sprites that he will use for spell effects, but mostly I have been working on painting textures.

When we felt that we were falling too far behind schedule, due to all the things we have had to redo or had problems with, we decided to write down every single asset that we need for the area that we are currently working on and organising them on a priority list. We realised that we needed to change up the way we work in order to push things out so the coders have something to work with. We also need to release builds as soon and often as possible due to the course that we are currently taking.

Modifying the work process the way we have, with letting go of our own tasks and instead working together on the same assets has really sped up the process and it feels as if we are starting to get back on track. For now it is working well, but soon we will probably need to revert to the regular way of working, in order to get assets out simultaneously. When we start working on the next area of the level we cannot work on separate assets one at a time, but rather need to work with all lowpolys simultaneously and then all high polys and so on in order to maintain consistency.

Since I had already painted Tamarrion's new textures and found a new way of working on them it was easy for me to help out with the environments. Hopefully this will even help create a more consistent level of the art in the game. It was still a challenge though, as I had to find a way of painting surfaces that are new to me, most of the textures consist of only stone which cannot be found on Tamarrion's textures obviously.

The trickiest part was figuring out how the light would hit each tiny surface from the high poly, since we want to paint in more light and shadows into the diffuse maps in comparison to the old ones. Painting the banners was more of a straight forwards process that was not too difficult with a little help from references.

The carpets were another story though, we needed them to be visible and interesting enough while still not taking over the room. They are probably, up to this date, the most well worked textures that we have in the game, apart from Tamarrion's. It was a process of trial and error, pushing the level of contrast and details further and further until we found something that looked good in the engine, but still not being overly visible so that they distract the player or create crazy bouncing lights on the characters. In the engine we have also added clipping masks to make the edges look broken and give them more of an old and worn look.

In comparison to the textures that we created during the Big Game Project, I would like to say that they are now of way higher quality. I feel that I have developed a great deal since then as a texture artist, as well as in other areas. Back then I am still sure that we did the best we could with what we had, in the time we had. That learning process combined with studying the way others work on their texture after have really helped me level up my skills and ability to create the visual style that we want to achieve in the game.

Nihteana

I have previously posted a sneak peek of the new boss that I have been working on, I have already written a long blog post about her on our devblog which can be seen here, but I thought I would just show some pictures of her character concept here as well.

 

The initial thought was that the first boss was supposed to be a lower ranked male general in Lord Valac's army but we wanted the prototype to show a greater range of what we had planned for the game and wanted to create a spell caster rather than another sword fighter. We decided that it was supposed to be a necromancer and sometime while drawing character thumbnails we decided to make it a female instead.

I had to rewrite the character story completely, but I think that Nihteana, which means "bird of the night" will be a much more interesting character than what we ad originally planned.

I am still working on her model, nut had to take a break from it as we decided to reprioritize and work together on finishing Tamarrion's updates and Lord Valac's new room. Instead of working on her I have been helping the environment artist out by painting textures and visual effect sprites. I did however find the time to finish her concept art, so here it is!

Lighting Assignment

I posted a painting of a boy and a wolf in a snowy mountain landscape a while ago, I just finished with the lighting of it and handed the assignment in. The snow in general was a really tough challenge, just trying to figure out how the light would react to it. The trees and forest parts were also a big challenge, in the foreground especially for how to make them look detailed when they are covered in snow which essentially is kind of flat. In the end I am most happy with the mountains, although they aswell posted a great challenge, wat I am least happy with would be the trees in the foreground.

Overall this was one tough assignment for me, especially since I rarely, if ever, paint landscapes and have very little experience in painting environments. Anyway, that's enough talking for today so here it is.

Sneak Peek Update

A while ago I posted a sneak peek of the new Tamarrion painting that I have been working on. It is starting to come together now and part of it will be found on our websites as a header. I just need to finish it off and perhaps spend just as much time on a background, but with other assignments as well it will have to take its time.

Those of you who have been watching my stream have followed me almost up until this step, but here is what it is looking like right now, the biggest difference from last stream being that I have reworked the sword quite a lot.

You can read more about Tamarrion on our facebook page and our Devblog, we are also working on a landing page although at the moment it is only possible to sign up and there is very little information yet.

Flat Colour Assignment

This week's 2D assignment was to colour the line art we produced last week, only using colour blocks. It has been quite a challenge actually since we were forbidden to use lighting and only allowed to work with colour blocks as my entire scene is covered in snow. I might work some more on it before doing lighting next week, but this is how it turned out.

Sneak Peek

Here is a sneak peek of one of my new Tamarrion drawings, it is pretty much finished line art and about ready to have some colour applied to it!

Paladin Concept

I finished the paladin concept art that I have been wrking on while at DreamHack Winter. As usual there are still things that could be improved but I felt that I wanted to let it go and move on, it was where it needed to be.

For this concept I have been experimenting with the art style and brushes  that I used, I have used a square brush for nearly every element of the picture and though it felt strange at first I liked working with it in the end.

I am trying to get out of my comfort zone, drawing things that I have not done before with armour and the fantasy style. As an artist I am hardly ever completely satisfied with what I draw as I see all the little mistakes that I have made and learnt from, but this is something that I could definitely not have produced a year ago without using pictorial references. I probably will go back and touch it up if there is need for it but I think it shows how far I have come during my soon one and a half years in school.

Nim the Snowman

The background for the winter level of Totemic is complete, as a bonus you get Nim, the snowman. :)