Dwarves and Elves

During this session we studied proportioning. The task to best learn this was to draw a fantasy dwarf and elf character. These were my results. Out of the two, I much prefer my depiction of the dwarf character, due to being smaller I found it easier to create items and armour to fit on him. Whereas on the elf, shes a much taller has more room for such clutter and items, the chest and stomach area of the elf look a bit too elongated and don't curve enough making it look stretched.

Tank

Tanks are some of the most interesting things to me, especially during WWII. Before modern reactive armour came along, tank designers had to create tanks that fitted to specific roles; you had light reconnaissance tanks that could shift at high speeds but had little armour and fire power. There were heavy tanks which as the name suggest, were heavily armoured and armed. And finally you had tank destroyers, these tanks where often large and weakly armoured, but had the biggest guns. 

I wanted to design a tank that was somewhere in between these three classes and that is a medium tank. These mediums eventually grow up to become what we now call today an MBT (Main Battle Tank), these tank performed a large variety or roles and I wanted to show that in my design.

One of my favorite armour designs of these vehicles was the Russian 'Pike Nose'. Whereas the Germans had large, thick panels of armour only at 45 degrees, the Russians used considerably thinner armour but at a more extreme angle. This allowed for just as much protection as well as a higher speed.

As for turrets and the armaments, the turret of both the German Tiger II and American T29 were certainly formidable. The T29 especially, having 300mm of armour on it turret front. Though heavy, armour on the turret front is necessary for keeping the tank protected when fighting in hulled down positions and cresting hills. I took these designs in to account when creating my turret. The gun I settled with is the mighty 152mm, first used by the Russian KV-2, I created what I imagine it would look like if the Germans used it in a post war scenario, complete with a fume extractor.

   

Insectoid

This week was all about insects, and to create an insectoid creature. From the start I wanted to make some sort of bipedal insect, a humanoid insectoid. I started by drawing some interesting insects head and drawing them as if they would stand up. I quite liked the grasshopper and rhino beetle so worked on them a bit.

I went into photoshop to rough up some silhouettes. My favourite ended up being the grasshopper inspired one.

The first task was now to create a front on and side view of my creature. The front view cam out really well and I like the design a lot, the side view didn't come out so well, it looks quite off and not as agile as the front view makes the creature look.

And here is another image of the insectoid in colour. The back story for these creatures is that they would belong in a fantasy setting and be a forest dwelling civilisation whom live in tall trees. They are fairly primitive and use makeshift weapons to fend off other animals and humans who wander into their territory. Their wings allow them to make large jumps rather than fly as they are too weak for prolonged flight. Though their wings are weak, they are very light and agile, as such excel at gorilla warfare tactics as well as hit and run attacks.

Though I'm very pleased with my final outcome, there are some things I would change. Firstly his pose looks although hes too far forward and his legs wouldn't support him. I would have also liked to have had a background, but I need to practice backgrounds more as I'm not very good at creating them. The colours also seem a bit flat, I subtle yellow in the lighter areas and blue in the darker would possibly give it a bit more vibrancy.

Texturing Practice

Using a pre-made turret base, I've normal mapped and textured it. I used a rusted and scratch metal, then coloured it a cold blue, then using the same texture I created a more subtle brown for the rest of the base.

Speed Paint Practice Session

This session we had a go at speed painting from an image. I haven't tried much speed painting as I take quite some time to draw and paint, but no-the-less I enjoyed this and it gave me an insight into how to quickly block out colours and forms to create concept images. I didn't complete the image with in the time and so need some more practice.

Halloween Monster

With it being the week after Halloween, this weeks theme was monsters. I was quite taken my creating some sort of animal mash-up, like a chimera. I started my having the base animal as a wolf, I thought I'd give it bat wings and I wanted it to have some aspect of a snake.

I started with some silhouetted ideas I had in my head, one of which had the appearance of a sort of werewolf. My favorite ended up being the last one, as it was more like a 'chimera'.

And this was the design I had settled on, along with the bat wings and horns, I added a jaw that could dislocate to eat larger prey, in the case of this monster, it could also split to eat even more in one go.

When creating this monster I tried drawing it in a more rough way to make it appear like fur as well as make it seem more chaotic and erratic. Some areas do look quite like fur; the tail and wing joints, whilst other areas like the muzzle just look bad or rushed. If I were to do it again I would leave the line work fairly clean, and rather allow the way I colour to show the fur more prominently.