Pen & ink - Architecture

Hi Folks,

Been a while upgrading skills the past few moons.

Here are some pen & ink architecture design from the recent steampunk/dieselpunk archives to share

Old London Bridge reimagined



Inland Sea Pier Village



D'Vinci Gran Cathedral
This set of illustrations are based on elements of ship breakers. I imagined in the distant past, a mountainous inland sea that has an ancient vessel thrust into the belly of the deep mountains, its waters since receeded and a city township that has since grown up around it, as purveyors of things ancient and obscure, and fine craftsmanship.

Yamato Lives on!

Some lovely retro sci fi goodness just made my day! Bring on the love!

2D Artist mag - Steampunk Tutorial II

Part 2 of 5 of the (Five Ages of Steampunk) environments tutorials are now available at 2D Artist magazine. In addition, this month's edition has great company in the form of enviro tutorials from R Tilbury and R Ruppel. Both great and respected Enviro artists.



2D Artist lite (preview) version

Age of D'Vinci

In this chapter, we journey to the mountainous Village of D'Vinci via the retrofitted TramMetro and discuss world building and ideation set in a alternate medieval/high renaissance realm.

Wacom Cintiq 21UX (2nd Gen) - Hands On Review

Initial Impressions
Due out later for sale officially this month, I had the opportunity to appraise and test out the 2nd Gen Cintiq at the Wacom booth at GDC San Fran 2010.

Summary: Worthy ergonomic improvements, with improved scratch resistant glass and Intuos 4 pen/nib and tactile handling including 2048 levels of pressure and rear mounted touch strips.

What's Different//The Rear



The great thing about Wacom is the continuing feedback and evolution of its digital tablets with each iteration. Thus, with this 2nd Generation Cintiq, the good folks at Wacom have relocated the sensitive touchstrips to the rear. Brilliant. Straightforward. Intuitive!

Crucially, this next logical evolution in improved product design actually feels very comfortable and intuitive to use when set to zoom (non painting side). The angle of reclination, and natural angle title is smoothened and thus I found painting again a intuitive case of rotating the tablet, much like one would angle a piece of canvas/sketchboard which makes development of hand drawn sketching and lines a more naturalistic process - especially handy for the drawing of digi marker and final illustration designs for transport and environmental drawings.

Previously with the 1st generation Cntiqs, I personally felt that the Cintiq was better in use for drawing of organic shapes and less intuitive for environments/sketching per se. Thus, the use of an improved surface & tactile feedback is certainly what (I felt) the Cintiq should have been in terms of optimized digital tablet for everyday industrial use. i.e I'm finally a Cintiq convert.


Design from Intuos 4

• Pen stylus, nib and holder - appear the same as a Intuos 4 (in terms of styling, grip and nib choice/selection and containment). Compatibility with the Intuos 4 range - unverified/unknown - the Pens have now 2048 levels of pressure. Translated into actual use, the stylus has improved tactile feedback and naturalistic feel
  
• Matte greyblack styling & ambidextrous configuration - the dual orientation layout allows for easy customization for both left and right handed artists (or the lucky ambidextrous few)
• Express keys & Rotary select button (Show select key) - displays the current key selection on-screen. (I am not sure if the key selection (dot) utilizes a simple LED or OLED design used in Intuos 4. Suffice to say, it is styled similarly)
  

London Bridge Deluged

A imagineering of the London Bridge Quarter underwater and decayed in some distant apocalyptic future.....

Notes: I often pass through London Bridge on an almost daily basis, and there are so many possible images and layers of history attributed to this area. Thus, I thought, how nice it would be to flood the whole area, and how the colour/lighting could be like. Coupled with the elements of steampunk and deco buildings within the area, this area is ripe for all sorts of imagining.

Metro Tram reimagining

Took the opportunity to rediscover Holborn Trams that used to run through the City of London, and reimagine a alternate victorian tram city link as part of the 5 ages of steampunk workshops being help with 2D Artist magazine.

FIVE AGES OF STEAMPUNK - 2D Artizt Magazine

Hi folks,

Here is a quick preview of the upcoming series of workshops on 3D Totals 2D artist magazine,
called the Five Ages of Steampunk - starting with the Victorian Era.

During these workshops, we will try to cover a visual troubleshooting appraoch in developing new IPs, visual art direction and production methods under the sub genre of Steampunk

Had a nice bunch of drawings posted up on IO9 (sister site to kotaku) during the christmas period.

Pity, am not able to comment/feedback about the basis/origin of the space wrecked serpent imagery. But essentially, this basis of the illustration was the discovery of a ancient ship wreck whilst exploration and drilling of a new open space mine shaft

Io9 - Link

Frozen Caisson

Above: Reworked image
Below: Original sketch



Sometimes, returning to an old piece can be rewarding.

After a year or so, whilst sorting through the image archives and folders, I thought i would take a stab at tidying and refining the composition more..albeit I got slightly carried away and ploughed a swath through the thick ice.

Charon's Junkard - Part I

Images May Morph

In keeping with the festive occasion,
I started this Halloween piece with an initial idea, but ended up with a more involved iteration. Thus this shows how a image can morph (when working on a personal piece).

Initially, it started as a strange sacrificial altar, however with further firmamation of various objects, ghouls, figures, lecterns, this has suggestion more of Charon's junkyard crossing the proverbial River of Styx.

Image Challenges

I liken each illustration as a new bespoke challenge, complete with seemingly straightforward challenges (that may turn out to be disastrous); appear ambitous but with lucky accidents, turn out rather well.

In this particular piece, the challenges I surmise would be:

1. Low monochromic key - moonlit landscape tends to have a silvered diffuse lighting. Any coloured glow eg. lava can easily distract/draw attention for the viewer.
2. Details - It is far easier to add key details to areas in shadow/relief. The drawback may result in overrendering of various areas.
3. Heirachy of Values - large shapes in the composition work best when grouped. At best grouped no more than 3 in recession as a general rule.
   
4. HOWEVER - far objects tend to get desaturated and lighter in atmosphere (daytime), but underwater/nighttime - far objects tend to get desaturated and meld into grey (nothing)
   

Extra Info: Book of the Dead

Its origins are perhaps quite interesting in that much of current day mythology and religion has strong Egyptian origins which centre on the Egyptian funery text: rw nw prt m hrw (popularised as the Book of the Dead)

The Egyptian afterlife was a dangerous place, whereby the soul in its afterlife had to endure, dodge, survive and fight to survive nefarious demons, monsters, gods and challenges.

If successful, you managed to survive to challenge the Halls of the Gods/Dead whereby a Book of the dead would be commissioned (Chapters 130–189) per family to allow you to have a Guidebook that coudl help you survive the Land of the dead so your soul may be judged by Osiris, and be weighed - hence the term light hearted/Heavy hearted.

High Mountain Valley Watchtower

Today, I had the opportunity to really practice a few things I have been grappling with the past few weeks. Thus, I took the opportunity to paint another semi fantasy piece. I imagine a lonely watchtower complex guarding a small village community in the middle of a mountain valley pass with the grey misty clouds rolling in from one direction and a small brook emptying to form a small lake.

My main challenges were:

1. Lighting a Form in colour. To have a well lit subject, it seems to work best if there is a side that is also in relief/shadow. (seems obvious until you ahve to paint it instinctively and wonder why somethign is too overlit)
2. Ice and permafrost - Its great to do more snow and ice work
3. Mood, Fog and Mist - the great thing about sombre landscapes in UK is they make for moody images. Here, in contrast I went for a more eastern influenced saturated happy happy coloured approach initially with elements of a moody desaturated grey in the background. The two do not probably mix well (the colour and value information may tend to end up as coloured mud) but worth a shot. Not living if you havent tried.
   
4. Brickwork - I had fun trying to paint suggested brickwork and peeling paint
5. Painting shallow water - Learning how to make thigns look wet, is certainly a ongoign challenge. I decided to submerge part of the pathway, becasue it looked more interesting for the subject matter (and just for the heck of it to get some painting exercise out of it as well).

Dharvish Ship at Klorken Port

I decided to delve more into the good ole epic fantasy realm this week, and helped birth this monster.

Sketch - Skylar Sky Hunt

This week, I thought I delve into the realm of mythology and the outcome of this mornings sketch looks promising