Birthday inspired Golem

So was my birthday on the 2nd and my mum got me Sam Kennedy's 'How to become a video game artist' book. I have yet to read much of it, but have had a flick through and has a lot inspiration work including tutorials by the author, along with other artists example of work.

Sam's demonstration of silhouette and rough value sketches, along with Andrew Bosley's Desert Knight example really motivated me to try this technique and also get something developed from sketch to final piece.

So on my birthday decided to give it ago, I started out trying to come up with concept for a figure but decided move on as I was becoming fussy and not liking my very first attempt at a figure. I do want attempt to do this process again at another date with a figure, but for now moved on. I ended up doing the Golems below, seems I have some subconsciously obsession with them I've always started drawing one and give up mid way through.

I have to say even though these are really simple sketches, this has been the very first time I've been happy with a piece of work I've done. Its kinder weird since I attempted this style at university and ended up giving up on it, would have made the weekly concept briefs a lot easier since I'm close to final product already.

Also I ended up doing these sketches in PhotoShop CS2 instead of CS5 since wanted to judge the difference between the two, for creating game assets for the possible games me and my friend are planning on making.

Any way moved back over to CS5 to do the actual final concept piece below, so this is it so far. Still needs more work but for what it is pretty good for me, considering it was done in about an hour and a bit. Kinder using the Daarken technique I tired out at uni, so basic grey scale painting with a basic colour layer on top at moment, need work in more colour and work on shadows and highlights next. Also something I've noticed in artwork recently is having the further away arm more white, to look further away and faded.

I want it to have a lot more action/motion than there is at moment, more like the street fighter artwork. So need think about or look into putting in motion lines.