Under the Sea

There is a new contest up on Infected by Art that sounds way too cool to pass up. It's a cover illustration for a literary and art magazine called F(r)iction depicting a surreal/mysterious underwater scene with emphasis on the color blue. I like surreal and mysterious things. I like underwater things. And the color blue is awesome. We're a perfect match to say the least.

Here are some rough thumbnail ideas. I was particularly conscious of light and how I could use it compositionally:

The dividing line is about where the spine is on the magazine, so I had to make sure the image could function with just the front half. Only a couple of them accomplish this effectively, one being the last thumbnail. The flowing kelp really sells the design and the content has more narrative potential than some of the others.

Here's a more revised version of the thumbnail. I took the diving mask off of the diver since the expression is so important to the mood of the illustration.

A little bit of development on the jellyfish princess. At this point, the upper-body and lower-body look cool by themselves, but they don't mesh as a single creature. I looked to 18th century ball gowns and the fashionable poofy hairstyles of the same time for further inspiration.

 I next sculpted my jellyfish princess in Sculptris using a pre-existing model that I imported from Daz for the upper body. I modified a few things to help unify her design.

I posed my other character in Daz. I can use him for lighting later and also as anatomy reference for my physical maquette.

This little beauty is a kelp forest made of paper, tape, wire, hot glue, foil, saran wrap, and eye of newt. I wanted to make something where I could simulate the play of back-lighting on translucent kelp blades.

Here's a close-up shot with the lighting in place. I'm just about done with reference gathering and can move on to rendering the illustration. I have one week--it's time for business.

Rough Character Designs: Zephyr

Here are some rough concepts for Zephyr, prince of the cloud empire. He and his people can generate electricity, although not very easily. Zephyr learned the hard way and consequently blew off his left arm. He's the adventurous type and when not dealing with the tedium of daily life, enjoys disguising himself and gallivanting around the Forbidden Reaches.

Fantasy Playground

I'm working on developing more structures for my portfolio and decided to start off with organic shapes. Rock formations, especially sandstone formations, were the main reference for these. I present to you my initial concepts for the ultimate climbable playground--all ages welcome:

Landscape Practice

Just a little landscape practice this week. Based on a amazing shot by photographer Vedrana Tafra.

Final Fish Designs and My First Sculpt

The final designs ready for modeling:

 I decided to hold off of Zbrush for a little bit. Instead,  I downloaded Pixologic's free sculpting software called Sculptris. From what I understand, the tools are basic tools are the same, but the navigation is a little easier, making it ideal for speed sculpting and as an introductory software. I found it very comfortable to use after making a little practice sculpt:

The auto-symmetry tool is especially wonderful. It cuts the sculpting time to less than half what it would be if I were to sculpt physically with clay or Sculpey. Unfortunately, there is a small limitation to the symmetry tool. It can't be applied after creating an asymmetrical detail to your sculpture. For now it won't be too tricky with all my creatures being symmetrical, unless I wanted to give one a really cool hairdo.

Here is the finished sculpt based off the first in my set of creature designs. I stayed as faithful as I could to the 2D design.

One thing I need to figure out is if Sculptris can render high-resolution images. I'm still working out the small details, but I can see the potential that the program has not just for creature and character design, but for illustration too.

Flying Fish 2.0

Here is a continuation of the designs from the previous week with a few more variations and more detail.

My next step will be picking one of each, refining detail, and then creating 3D models in Zbrush!

Fish Telephone

Silhouettes are a great starting point for character and creature designs, so I thought I would use them for a new series of flying fish-like animals that I'm developing.

Before I started these, I built up a little visual library by sketching out some bizarre sea creatures. Afterwards, I mapped out a couple blobs on my page, which gradually morphed into what you see here. I applied some characteristics of non-fish ocean-dwellers (whales, nudibranchs, shrimp,...) to make them more fantastical, but still believable.

I chose five different creatures from the initial set of silhouettes that I thought had the most potential and developed them further. For this particular creature, I focused on the head, making sure that the other parts of the body complemented its shape. The blue highlighted designs are ones I thought were strongest.

This particular design departed more than the others from its first silhouette. When one feature changes, it sometimes results in all of the other features undergoing a small change. Like the game of telephone, you might end up with something that resembles the original idea just vaguely.

With each additional design, I found that it helped to focus on a personality for each creature. After my 4th design, I wanted to make something more sinister to contrast with the others. Knowing the personality ahead of time for my last creature really informed the development of his fins, for example. Spiky, angular things read as hostile and aggressive for any creature design. But who knows? Maybe he's soft and cartilaginous on the inside.