This concept is finished for now. Any changes will happen after more of the other concepts are finished, to help it fit into the world a bit more. And they’ll probably be small (coloring, size, tiny bits and bobs etc)
The baby has little to no defenses, but once it grows the little protruding ribs become usable, barbed limbs with a mild poison. If it manages to escape pelt hunters long enough to become an adult, the shorter set of rib-limbs can move independently and show off the unique wings! Its flights are short, but it is fast and agile in the air. It uses these flight bursts to rise above the tall grass plains where it lives and set up and supplement its ground attacks. The adults are considered a suicide mission, but the younger animals are hunted for the shimmering scale hides.
UPDATE 9/9
Tweaked and focused the design back to the original intent…tried to give it more of a dragon/lizard/dino look while keeping a kind of cat-like stance and posture. The wings got the biggest facelift after brainstorming a bit with my sister.
OUTDATED
It’s not quite what I want yet, but here is the creature concept doodle from today’s stream.
So here’s one of the characters from my personal project I’ve been working on lately as it currently sits (stop by the Twitch channel if you want to see that whole design and decision making process). This is after two days of work. I thought I’d make this post to mention that this is a good example of what a character commission might look like. Throw in a loose background and you’d have a decent D&D character illustration for your game nights. Color it and do another day of polish and you’d have a nice piece for your wall. Or dial it back to a rougher sketch to have that feeling of designing your personal character readily apparent. Prices for each of these examples would vary, but all would fall within 1-3 days of work and roughly $40-100.
If YOU have an idea you’re even considering, contact me in one of the myriad ways I’ve provided and we can get an estimate figured out!
Finally finished this thang.
I was working a bit on the FFVII piece last night and that question came up again: how am I going to go about coloring this? So I took Tifa’s layer into a new file by herself and tried out a little experiment. It’s not meant to be perfect by any means, but it turned out well enough that I wanted to share.
Updated WIP 7/30
I’m using Clip Studio Paint for the first time, and BOY do brushes potentially act much differently than Photoshop! In a good way. Here’s the WIP so far.
Calling this one done, even though I could noodle around forever changing tiny things. I’ve got other stuff to do and May is already over!
As always, you are invited to come say hi on my art streams. I’ll be working more on this (and other projects) this Thursday and Friday.
I already have two projects plus my personal project I bounce around between. But it’s MERMAY TIME! I’m actually going to be participating in NickWOZ’s art challenge this month, which is wonderfully themed as “underwater life, fictional or real.”
I want to do several other sketches of creature MUCH different than your standard mermaid, but I did start with the fishy lady. Here’s the sketch after a few hours today.
So, that Ultramarine piece I had been working on? I didn’t like how it was going. I couldn’t get the composition to work with me, no matter how much I tried moving around the characters I already had. I was left with two options: finish what I had as best I could and have an underwhelming piece of art…or, start over.
And so start over I did. Here’s the new idea after two days, one for sketching and one for starting color and light. It’s still got a LONG ways to go, but I already like it better. Plus, the Space Smurfs are even more screwed than before.
After the sketch, I really went back and forth a lot (too much) on what kind of process I wanted to take to finish this one. I made some colored backgrounds with the intent to just paint over the sketch with color and light, I thought about making refined line work before laying down flats and building with light…ultimately I turned off the colored background and started rendering the character in black and white without much of a light source, and then once I start coloring I’ll add some more dramatic lighting.
So far I’ve got Red XIII, Cid, and Tifa decently far along. Barret has a long ways to go, Aerith needs some more time, and nobody on the right is really even touched. I need to redraw Cloud entirely and I’ve been avoiding it (tried once to fiddle existing stuff around into a new pose, but it’s waaaay too stiff).
As the title says, this week I’ve been bouncing between a few projects. It’s been helping keep my eyes fresh for each piece and keep me drawing longer. I’ve been streaming too; you should come visit and keep me company.
Ross Tran, AKA RossDraws, challenged people to redraw any of his pieces in their own style. This is the start of the one I chose. I got this far as a sketch of his version, but from here on out I’m not going to hold to the original and I’ll let my own style come through more. Should be fun.
This one is the start of some fan art of Final Fantasy VII, since the remake just came out. I love those characters and all those storylines in that universe, and the remake looked amazing from the demo.
Making progress on this one. Warhammer 40k is such a brutally amazing universe, and I’ve been having a lot of fun with it. Thanks to everybody who gives me feedback on what works and doesn’t as far as “canon” stuff goes. I actually had somebody on Instagram that asked why I seemed to be putting a psychic hood on an Ultramarine. My reaction was “…eh?” followed by a wiki search and an immediate edit to the project. It really is a lot of fun to learn this stuff.
My live art stream is in a pretty good place right now. I’ve made fancy buttons and links, I figured out how to set up my physical equipment AND my digital setup, and I’m determined to continue streaming whenever possible…even if I don’t consider what I’m working on “good” or whatever. So, stop on by and say hi, ask questions, start a random conversation about whatever, or just chill and listen to music. Whatever floats your boat.
I’ve been having fun working on a Warhammer 40k piece. I don’t play, but the universe is a great mix of incredibly detailed, infinitely flexible and adaptable, and has a long history (like, in real life) full of art. The genetic super soldiers of humanity known as Astartes or “space marines” wear this absolutely wonderful bulky armor with tons of great shapes to work with and tons of customizations in the lore.
Here’s my progress so far. I think I’ve settled on most of the colors and the basic composition, so now it’s on to the fun of playing with the mid-details that will help break up shapes in the right ways and give good visual interest. THEN on to the mindless rendering (which I actually really enjoy as well).
Feel free to stop by my stream. I’ve been trying to broadcast more often. Some nights my ISP doesn’t like the Twitch servers, so the stream is a bit choppy at times, but it’s not like I’m working at blazing speed anyway. Come say hi! I don’t get many visitors.
