The Outlayers

Concept exploring shape and composition

Ra - Bedouin Desert Skiff

A solar powered desert skiff. Used by Bedouin scavengers

Halloween Art Jam

I set up a monthly art jam at work where people can try their hand at new tools and techniques.  Octobers, rather predictably, was Halloween.  Here's my Z Brush sculpt.  It was about an hour for the sculpt and another 30 mins paint over and presentation

The Showdown

I looked at an old image of mine and I still liked the germ of the idea but wanted a more polished cinematic look to it.

Wall - E sure is mad

Just a one off concept not for anything in particular

EDITED: just some layout and colour tweeks

Future City (imaginative huh?)

Ive been trying to put into practice some of the techniques I learnt from my DMP course.  This was a development of a thumbnail I was fond of.. for some reason.

Matte Paint - The Sentinels

Here's my latest Matte paint.  More concept and painting in this one than the pontoon DMP I did.  I could probably do with beefing up the texture on the structures but I just haven't found the textures.

Matte Paint - Pontoon Village

I've decided to get on a learning binge this year. Fortunately my work paid for me to do a Matte painting course over at CGSociety with Blizzards David Luong.  Here's my first complete* matte paint.

Matte painting certainly makes me look again and the way I work and indeed my perception of what art for the entertainments industry is. I tried to be controlled in the fact I used photos and minimal freehand painting.  I think the real value for me will be when I use these techniques as a launch pad for concept art.

*complete until I decide to change it

Creature Concept

I'd like to break this down and tell you what exactly its a concept of but in all honesty it was just a bit of fun in Z Brush then spruced up a bit in Photoshop

This was my first attempt at painting IN Z brush. My next step for Z brush is to get me some better materials or a better renderer.

Concept - Organic Armour

More experimenting with getting z brush into my work flow. The design could be alot better and cleaner but its still early days.

Design and Work flow

So I thought I'd get some more mileage out of this bad boy.  I thought I'd add a design sheet as well as a really topline workflow image.

The DEEEEPP!!!

 I wanted to have a go at some creature design using the multitude of techniques I have at my disposal.  The first image is a quick image board of reference and inspiration.  Then there is some quick thumbnail generation which explore design and and shape.  I then roughly modelled it in 3D max and exported it to Z Brush (the model of which I'll post a little later) to flesh out the design and continue to make further design decisions.  Lastly I use that Z brush model as a base to a digital painting.  I'm sure I'll keep tweaking it and eventually ruin it but here it is as it stands.

LG - Pan Redesign

Just another pass at the character design for 'Pan'.  Just trying to fine tune proportions and silhouette.

Okay I need to do something concepty and more gritty :)

The Creeper - Vehicle concept

Here's the result of a recorded demo I did.  It was about 45 mins start to finish.  I had NO idea what I was going to come up with at the start so this is pretty cool.  Not quite as polished as the last one.

The Gryphon - Vehicle Concept

A work up I did for a recorded presentation, find out once I had finished it, only 15 mins recorded.  Fun though, took about and hour and a half with faffing about.

Some thoughts from the Trojan Unicorn was a Horse [sic] event

I'm currently sat on the plane on the way home from an art and vfx conference absurdly named Trojan horse was a unicorn.... naturally.

The 4 day event was a mixture of technical talks and lectures as well as more informal workshop style presentations.  All the big hitters were present and correct. ILM, check, pixar, check.  You get the idea.  There were also some well respected individuals the more famed of which were Raphael Lacoste, Loic Zimmermann, Aaron Mcbride and Scott Ross.

As well as sharing their techniques and approaches there was plenty of opportunity to take 5 or more minutes with them to chat or to get some feedback on your portfolio. This seemed like too good of an opportunity to turn down so after some hastily grabbed some work from my dropbox folder I went- a-hunting, ipad in hand.

I shared a beer with Kemp Remillard ( http://www.kempart.com/kawp) from Massive Black whilst he poured over my work offering me his thoughts. I got on good terms with the very awesome Justin Goby Fields (http://www.justinfields.com/), who again, was cool enough to review my stuff.  So too did Loic Zimmerman (http://loiczimmermann.com/) and Dan Luvici (http://www.danluvisiart.com/). Thankfully the advice they gave were just tiny tweaks here and there so my ego came away pretty unscathed.  It did give me some food for thought though on modern day approach to concept art.  It's essentially summed as this:

Use every dirty trick in the book to make your design look as good as its can.  

This isn't supposed to sound cynical.  Its still takes an eye for design and a skill in application to make something look great otherwise everyone would be doing it. What i mean is that use 3D models, z brush models, photo bases, photo textures anything at your disposal, to give the best look in the shortest time frame.

If you want to be an art purist then production design in games and film is not the place for you.  There are no prizes for artistic integrity and painting everything from scratch.  No one cares how you got to the end result.  The ends justify the means. Now if you'll excuse me i'm off to brush up on my 3d and z-brush

Lil Gods - Forest Walk

Hey so I did this.  In general I am happy with it, though I cant help shake the feeling that I could push it more somehow.  So be prepared for me to update it at some point

Sci Fi - Vehicle Concepts

LG - Escape

Some fun creature design

After doing some more earnest concept work I thought I'd have some fun with some 'toony creature design.  My main aim was to push shapes and angles more than I usually would.