Sunday, September 14, 2014

New Tharkule


















Here's the fourth and final illustration in the series I recently did for Red Aegis. It's more or less self-explanatory. 

Like the other pieces in this series, this one was a serious challenge and I chose to work as much of it out in black and white as possible before adding color. In this case, I kept the colors pretty muted (for me anyway). I thought too much color would just hurt the picture.

The title of this post (and the piece) refers to the name of the city below the aerial battle between choppers and dragons.

I've included my initial sketch, a grayscale value study and the final color art above.

You can learn more about Red Aegis at the links below:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/vorpalgames/red-aegis-roleplaying-game
https://www.facebook.com/VorpalGames

Saturday, September 13, 2014

Jumpgate

















Here's the third of four illustrations for Red Aegis. It illustrates a fleet of ships entering a jumpgate in orbit above a ringed world. the planet has a dense network of satellites around it, which I tried to suggest without rendering it too much.

This was the first time I can recall painting a picture quite like this and it was a learning experience. In the end, I felt like I got a little too focused on sharp edges, details and the idea that there's no atmosphere in space. If I were to do it again, I think I'd soften more edges, bleed the color around a bit more and take a looser, more atmospheric approach. Nevertheless, I'm pretty happy with how this turned out!


I've included my initial sketch, a grayscale value study and the final color art above.

You can learn more about Red Aegis at the links below:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/vorpalgames/red-aegis-roleplaying-game
https://www.facebook.com/VorpalGames

Friday, September 12, 2014

Wimachanca

















Here's another illustration for Vorpal Games' Red Aegis. This one involved showing a day-to-night, orange-to-blue transition of a city (Wimachanca) high in the Andes, built around a huge pyramid. It was difficult to work out the color transition in this one. I don't paint cities much and I find that when I do work on a  picture like this, it can be a bit of a rabbit hole. I could have continued adding details and tweaking this one for days.

As in the previous post, I've included the preliminary sketch and the grayscale study.


You can learn more about Red Aegis at the links below:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/vorpalgames/red-aegis-roleplaying-game
https://www.facebook.com/VorpalGames

Thursday, September 11, 2014

Ascendant

















I work under a lot of non-disclosure agreements so I haven't been able to post anything new in a while but here's one of 4 illustrations I recently did for Vorpal Games. It's for their science fiction game, Red Aegis. I will post the other 3 illustrations in the near future.

This project was challenging in a number of ways and it pushed me into some unfamiliar areas. For example, this piece involved illustrating a meditating character whose chakras are visible (represented by the vertical line of glowing, colored lights in the middle of the picture) and who is "tethered" to alien worlds both in space and cyberspace. That was a lot to pack into one picture!

I 've included my initial sketch, a grayscale value study and the final color art above.

You can learn more about Red Aegis at the links below:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/vorpalgames/red-aegis-roleplaying-game
https://www.facebook.com/VorpalGames