Jaeger T-shirt is a go!

The Pre-Order for my T-shirt is open!

T-shirt design!

Here's the pre-final version of my T-shirt design! If all goes according to plan (IE, no glaring errors or stupid-font choices pointed out by my friends) I should have pre-order set up in a couple days!

Front Final:


Old Versions

Alternate version:



Back:

Jaegers! Final!

Jaegers! As I mention in the other image, these guys are the goblins, orcs, ogres, and so forth of Nightmares in the Dark. They're the mythologicals not based on animals, the dark half of the Fey (generally the 'bump in the night' sort), but they also serve an important purpose, they're the Host of the Wild Hunt, which in-universe is actually a regular event held to flush out and destroy demons. This is how I get their name, Jæger means 'hunter' in germanic languages.

This is also my most extensive exploration of this character style, which draws on recent trends in action cartoons, most notably Sean 'Cheeks' Galloway, who's done character designs for Hellboy Animated, Spider-man, and is features on the covers of Teen Titans Go!

In this image, we have (clockwise, starting at the top):
Ogre (Big guys related to giants)
Troll (Related to ogres, but more bestial)
Hobgoblin (Small, often-helpful goblins)
Orc (Not so well-sourced in mythology, but I had to have them, so I found a reference to black-skinned berserker-warriors who serve Odin. It helped pull together some of my mythology.)
Goblin (Near-human, Goblins are the most common kind.)
Dark Elf (Arrogant elitists, they are the most naturally gifted in magic among the Jaegers.)

I'm working on getting this design developed to put on a T-shirt, though I'm not sure how it'll look yet. (Two main options are greyscale versions, either using white-and-shade before colors were added, or doing a force-to-grey version of this, with a lot more color levels. This gets pricey, tho, so I'll have to figure things out. I could do full-color, but again, price is an issue.)

Jaegers!

Jaegers are the goblins, trolls, ogres and gargoyles of the world of Nightmares in the Dark.

Here we have an ogre and a dark elf.

Part of a design WIP intended for a T-shirt.

Demon Overlord

Finished version of my school painting assignment. (might still tweak from here, but calling it a day for now.)

Also submitted this to the Society of Illustrators, there's a student competition everyone in my class was recommended to submit for.

Also considering releasing this as a fitted wallpaper. (the original is something like 3 or 4 times as large, 10x16 at 300dpi, so I can fit a wide variety of sizes). If anyone is interested, comment with your screen dimensions and I'll add a link to my website with the wallpapers.

School Project: Demon Painting WIP

Here’s the near-final version of the demon sketch from below. Each variation was loosely based on a color scheme from other art I’ve found. Once I finish the class-assignment portion of the project, I plan to take whichever version I like best, and finish it out, with more detail, better highlighting, and magical lettering or runes on the armor. (ran out of time with this one..)

School Project: Demon Painting

One of my classes this semester is Digital Imaging for Print. Effectively, it's a digital painting class, with an eye towards sales and hardcopy. (The teacher is the same woman who taught my Professional Practices class last year, so there's some bleed-over.) My project is this demon-figure, doing it out-in-full as a painting. The goal is to create the image, then create variations using different color schemes, using references for what's considered historic, what's modern, and what could be the future trend.

Because Fantasy is pretty much limitless in terms of what's 'current', everything carries connotations and flavors, I decided to limit myself down to just a specific frame of reference. The colors used for Demons.



The first is from D&D's 3.5E monster manual, the second two are World of WarCraft wallpapers.

At any rate, I'll be posting up more as I finish it.

Random Half-Elf

Drawn from a photo of the newly-cast 11th Doctor. I decided his features, as I sketched, warranted an elven ear. (I'm trying to do a digital painting of a half-elf druid-type for WotC consumption. After the end of last semester and an exhausting holiday, getting back into the groove of artwork hasn't been easy.) At any rate, I'm figuring this as a hal-elf because I don't do them often enough, but a muscular, barbarian-esque figure. (Although not a Barbarian as such. I was aiming for druid, but maybe the 4e Warden is a good guidepost.)

I recently picked up a couple of art books, in addition to the ones on my christmas list. One of note is Bold Visions: The Digital Painting Bible, by Gary Tonge. VERY nice book. The techniques and examples all keep things fast and light, but combined with a recursive step-process, they provide VERY nice results. (I'm feeling a lot better about handling scenery if I need to, now.) The painting I'm working on is supposed to serve as an example of my rendering skills at this moment, before I jump into my next semester, which includes a digital-painting class.

Done entirely with a black solid brush, with some white solid touchup, much like a brush-pen.

Troll Head

Quick sketch for a troll character. Off the top of my head, he reminds me of one of the guys from my RP sessions, who had a troll PC. Need to do more random character heads like these.

Notably, this is done from the eternally-frustrating scanner at my folks place. Stupid thing thinks I don't know anything about scanning and tried to correct my sketch all to hell, thinking it was some skewed photo or something. Wound up frustrated an hour later before I got it done.

Wereboar

Drawn during the same session as the full-body staff-uniform shot of Donovan below, this was another guidepost for setting up a character in this style. He's athletic, kinda rangy, with simplified fabric folds and a face design I'm quite happy with. (He's also got my little notes for spotting a were in-world, slightly pointed ears, minor fangs in the mouth, and notable body hair. (Admittedly, there could be more elsewhere, like the forearms, armpits, or chest, but I was working quick.

Donovan Fullbody

I've been struggling with the design for Donovan in terms of his bodytype. He's a big guy, but not excessively fat or muscular. My work with his design in animation has been tending towards to muscular side, but this helped me to figure out how to tone that down. It also set the bar for fabric folds as a guidepost, the amount of work I should really be putting into this.

Donovan revision, late 2008

A few weeks ago as of this writing, I had what I called a 'stylistic epiphany'. Basically, I found Cheeks, and his unique approach to a style I'd been playing before. (In bodies, anyway. His unique approach to faces is really what kicked off this image.)

I won't even both posting the interim image, a colored version of the previous Donovan design. This is so much better, in my opinion. Thin-line is the way to go, right now. Most of the basics of my design work don't really change, it's more aspects of the style, like fabric, dynamic posing, and a sleek design to body and musculature, which I realign myself towards.

Donovan revision, early 2008

Recent design for animation. Two separate sketches, actually, the 'after', followed by the 'before'. Was trying to figure out a good design for animated hair (which I did and have now stuck with even through a new design), as well as simplify the character's scaly features. (The eyebrows before had spikes sticking out, and the nose had more width and depth.)

With the most recent design, as seen in color in the blog title, many of these changes might be invalidated. Others might re-appear. (The focus on the three-pronged sideburns was an attempt to foreshadow the jaw spikes, for instance.)

Donovan, last year's diagnostic

A descriptive sheet for the character. Emphasis here was on his distinguishing features, such as his scaled arms and legs, the tail, and the unique spike pattern on his face. Specifics which this failed to include were the borders between his human skin and his scale patches. His skin is generally caucasian-pink, except his forearms and shins where it segues into fine, dusky grey-black scales. His face has a slight red tone at the cheekbones and following the back corner of the jaw around the spikes, but his fully-scaled nose and eyebrows emerged straight from the pink flesh.

Werewolves

Werewolf character designs from way back. The younger guy on the right is one of the main characters for Nightmares, while the one on the left is a menacing but well-meaning pack leader. One of my favorite wolf drawings, the extended muzzle was a unique style I created from scratch. (Much of my style has been built up over the years taking inspiration from others. Not copying, but looking at their styles and referencing a line here or there, adding it to my repertoire.)

Donovan sketch, 'early' form

Originally an attempt to just do a simple comic-style character turnaround. Intended to be 'in the past', before he got huge and muscular, or grew the wings. Later, during my animation class, I found the slimmer design better suited for what I wanted to do, although I still plan on advancing the character to the previous larger, 'later' design in the series' future.

Original sketch for Donovan

Originally drawn 2004, as a roleplaying character. (Specifically, a half-red dragon ala D&D's 3rd edition, thus the specific stripes, horns, spikes, and so forth. The tail was just a personal preference, I like spades.)

Sketchblog Begins!

First post!

Wait, no.. My teacher recommended I do a blogger blog. I have a full website as well, Red Blade Studios, but this one can be the regular sketch-blog.

(So, let's see.. I've got a LiveJournal, a deviantART site, a YouTube channel, a MyToons page, a full website, and now this. Will it ever be enough? Will I ever stop?)