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.