Angry Fungus

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Marker Brush

I should be less random about posting here. Alas!

Taking inspiration from Bobby Chiu's recent Fairy Tales Reimagined contest, I started up a new project. I'd had a few ideas rattling around for Snow White and the Seven Dwarves as a classic D&D adventuring party, with each one taking on a distinctive character class. I'd already gotten some ideas down for Snow White herself (as a ranger, since she's like friend to all the animals) but needed to generate some dwarves quickly. So I cranked out a few thumbnails using my new brush.

I dig this new brush. And it's so simple. It's basically just a square brush tweaked to work like a design marker. (Opacity 15%; Shape Dynamics- Size Jitter: Pen Pressure, 34% minimum diameter; Angle Jitter: Direction; Smoothing on.)

Working fast and loose in black & white over a simple gray textured background, I've gotten some results I really like. The tones build up nice and slow with those settings, and the rough squareness of the brush keeps me from getting too fussy early on. It's all about blocking in shape and tone, without stressing over details too much.

I took the Druid guy and worked him up more, again starting with the marker brush, just with a much larger canvas size. After a while, I began to refine with some more traditional brushes. There's a lot of tonal layering going on, working up shapes and slowly refining, which seems to be working out well for me. There seems to be something about the very quick and gestural start, followed by a slow, methodical period of refinement that seems to suit me well so far.

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Some Stuff I've Been Working On

Here are some things I've been noodling away at lately.

Fog Giants

These guys are Fog Giants, which are really stupid and very primitive giants. I liked the idea of making them look like inbreds, so I gave them small craniums and gawping mouths. I also tried to keep the color scheme very cool to underscore the foggy, damp environment.
I used some new brushes here, including a nice spatter brush and a great cloud brush, both of which I grabbed from last month's ImagineFX.

Francis O'Furious

This chap is Francis O'Furious. He's my friend's character, and is a simple-minded, vain heroic type. This was a lot of fun to work on because I'm very familiar with the character.
I worked this one up from a very rough sketch in Photoshop on a blue background. I hunted down a lot of reference for his sword and armor, and slowly pulled together the background from photos. What's there now is actually just for placement -- I don't feel right about using photographic overlays like that. But I am into that pink and blue-grey background. It's an unusual color scheme for me, but the serene quality of it offsets the figure nicely.
I've still got a bit of work to do, refining the textures, detailing the shield and face, and bringing up another level of finish to it. But I'm digging it so far.

Bee Haga, the Dark Queen

Finally, I've got this one going on. A friend of mine dreamed up this character from another piece I did last year, and when he told me about her, I wanted to redo her design.
She's half-hag, half-nymph, and a mysterious and powerful sorceress. As I was sketching her out, I began to realize I didn't have anything to tip off the viewer that she's a freaky abberration. So I started exaggerating her hands, eventually turning them into nasty claws. Then for extra horror, I painted them all blood-splattery. I figure that's a permanent condition -- a mark of her night hag heritage.
I got the idea for her headdress from looking at lampshades and umbrellas, and just added those big ol' stars for fun. It evolved from a simpler shape, but I added those spikes to improve the silhouette. I further enhanced that by doing what James Gurney refers to as "flagging the head." You call attention to the all-important face & head by offsetting it against a stark background shape or color, or by lightening the color behind it.