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.

 Also at moment worried that the current colours I've choosen, make him look too much like Maokai from League of Legends.

Will ask people opinion and just change the moss to purple/pink with yellow eyes if it really is an issue.

Another He'stan update

Been working on this piece on and off over last couple days so quiet a few changes have been done. Just really want to get it done now so can move on to something else. Want to make some more 3D assets or maybe a character to texture and maybe rig and animate.

He feels too sharp now though as in sharp edge figure in soft feeling environment, not sure how go about fixing that. Also noticed his feet or boots need fixing now as well.

Starting work on indie games.

So as my programming friend and I have come up with couple game ideas to try and make have been looking for and trying out freeware alternative programs to photoshop, so we could possible sell our games with out having to buy expensive licenses. Tried to download artweave first but turned out it was PC only so then downloaded GIMPshop and spent today trying to use it... yeah I can't get to use to it it very slow and awkward process, hardly any shortcut and brush motion is awkward.

Best I could do before it bothered me so much to stop, layers seem like completely separate documents and can't colour pick from lower layers, Wacom tablet pen pressure... all kinds of things that bothered me.
So thing going try download Photoshop CS2 as thats freeware... may even try making assets in Machinarium/Botanicula style by just manipulating and collageing images to make assets.

He'stan start of basic colours on the figure.

So spent yesterday attempting to fix the background and lava slight and finishing off some basic grey scale I wanted to get in. Then today spent sometime put in some basic colours on an overlay layer along with mix in some other varieties of colour into the details.

Quiet happy with the cast glow effect of the eyes, along with the colour on the spear. Tried overlaying steel plate image to give the spear some texture, not sure if I like it though. Also it made em realize how wonky spear actually is.

Also the background feels like its bit distracting may need put in a cloud of ash or something, between the character and background.

Paint over attempt and getting back to He'stan.

So I forgot to update about my paint over attempt over the below renders, as I attempted to painted over them almost a week ago now. Didn't like how it felt don't know if it was because it felt cheap or that the renders were really low quality and pixels were doing my head in. Don't matter my Mac ended up crashing without saving the progress oh well. Not sure if I want to redo the renders and have another go or what, just felt unnatural doing it. I got the original idea from an old Overgrown development video, one of the art assets ones where he was painting in stalls into a render of their arena model.

Anyway today got back into painting trying to finish my he'stan painting. So spent today popping in a background and foreground. Coming back to it after time feel like kinder improved doing the background, felt a lot quicker. Also made me realized I had messed around with the magic wand tool at some point so hand got around the edge of the whole figure to get rid of jagged pixel edges.

 

I'm happy with the lava in very front foreground of the picture, running along the bottom edge of the image. but the lava by the spear and the distance lava near top left, feels kinder off has some really flat perspective to it. So that will need fixing other than that the figure it self just needs spear to be finished shading and then maybe some more chip detail on armor then I can go into colouring him.

**Edit: and now looking at it maybe need do more about the sky.

Paint over technique Pt. 1

My 2D tutor used go on about how in his day he didn't have 3D software packages to take advantage of to pose characters for reference or create rough scene to paint over. So decided today that's what I want to have a go at to see how effect the technique is and see if I like working this way.

So spent a little while in Max putting a scene together in 3DsMax so I could paint over.

Also decided to have a quick attempt at painting over my pot from the previous renders, just to get a feel for what I wanted to do.

Stall and terracotta pot.

Stall

So yesterday felt like being productive and spent 2-3 hours making a stall in 3DsMax, for possible portfolio example of low poly model and asset creation. So created the stall and assets from scratch and even reused some assets I created from my previous university project. I hadn't planned to UVW unwrap the assets in this scene, just wanted to model for sake of modeling assets. I did reuse some normals from last university project also and created some new texture that were then turn into normals, just make it a little more interesting and give it some detail. But only really noticeable in the close up renders. If I' am going to use this as a show piece in my portfolio, I'll have revisit the stall design as at the moment doesn't make much sense. I didn't look at reference while model as I stated before was modeling for the sake of modeling.

Terracotta pot

I was most happy with the pots I created they were quick and easy to make and actually fun to create, just like really pottery. Also look quiet good with the Terracotta texture and Normal map I created for my last university project. My friend suggested maybe attempting to sell this model on turbosquid and also create collections of pots and assets to sell, going see how difficult it is to put something like this up for sale and see if it gets any interest.

**Edit** So got this asset up on Turbosquid now, lets see how it does. 
**Edit 2** After realisation that I can't sell stuff created with student edition of software, I've made it free to download just see how many downloads I can get.