CGtalk art contest designs

Some more images for the CGtalk "Uplift Universe" contest. I am trying to find more interesting designs for the alien characters, and make the human characters more animated. These are pen sketches with a bit of clean up in photoshop.

CGtalk challenge(part 2)

Here is a composite of all my separate character sketches for the CGtalk alien art contest. I think it looks good so far, but I still have to designs costumes for the characters, and maybe push the alien designs a bit. I'll have to work on the gestures a bit, so that the story (which I have not thought of yet) will be more clear. I will also add a second fire in the center of the group to act as the main light source.

CGtalk challenge(part 1)

These sketches are for the newest CGtalk challenge, dealing with human-alien relationships. I'm a big sci-fi fan but I havn't done much work dealing with non-human characters, so I thought this would be a fun project to start up. I've never done a fully finished digital painting, and having a deadline means I'll be more likely to finish the piece. My Idea for the contest is scene with "space hobos" camping around a fire. I thought this would be a good opportunity to show a diverse group with an interesting variety of clothing, gear and foods. I also think the campfire will be a great light source, and provide a centre of interest in the centre of the composition. In the background there will be a space-port with all types of flying ships so its clear that this is a futurist scene. I'm still planning out the poses and expressions on the characters, I'd like keep the scene interesting by telling little stories and insert a few jokes. Here are the first batch of drawings.

character design drawings

These are character designs I submitted for various projects. The first three pages are different versions of the same characters while the last is a collection of designs. These characters where for flash-animated projects, so they had to have a strong graphic look. I like to start with a few quick and simple lines that desfine the shape and outline of a head, before working out the details. Sometimes you hit upon a design that works, and instantly communicates the personality and attitude of the character.

pen drawings (a few more)

Some more pen and paper drawings, ranging from rough sketches to finished work. I usually start with a quick and loose drawing, that I clean up on a separate piece of paper. The fight scene is a composite of two separate drawings, the character in the foreground is in the early rough stage, while the character in the background (red sonja) is cleaned up and ready for colour.

ink drawings

This is a warcraft character I drew at work, starting with a rough sketch and then a more cleaned up version. I messed the face up a bit in the final version, and couldn't really correct it because it is a pen drawing. I think the trees turned out well, and I may try painting this up in photoshop. The other drawing is a simple character study for a cool surf'n guy. Alexi

some more colour pen sketches

A couple more quick colour sketches, these where done for msn icons.

pen sketches

Here are some fun new pen sketches I've been working on. I'm trying out a lot of different inking and shading styles. All these images where done without and pencil work, so there are a few mistakes in there, but I like the energy of pen-only drawings.

Sketch club images (part 2)

Some more images. This time the themes where Garvey/wallet/pregnant and James/fly/cat fish, for which I did two images.

sketch club images (part1)

Here are some images for a sketch club we started at work. We start with 3 random names and words pulled from a hat and go from there. Week one was Brian/wet/fist, for which I did two drawings. Week two was shark/leg/monitor, and then cactus/pet rock/water bottle, and finally Joel/burrito/Damon.

paintings and such

Here are some oil paintings from the last few years, from just after comming out of school until last year. The painting with the Balrog is a scene from the J.R.R. Tolken book the Silmarilion, and it was done before the movie trilogy came out. The landscape paintings are mostly based on photos that I have taken while on trips to northern Ontario. The Image of the rockey shore line has been completed, so I'll post an updated image soon. Alexi

pencil and ink drawings

Here are some older (2004-05) pencil and ink drawings that I scanned recently. The orc character was the basis for my entry into the warcraft art contest (see the related post). Another drawing is a duel between stylized versions of ninja and samurai characters. I drew these on different pages and put them together in photoshop. I did an inked version of one of the characters, along with an early version of my starcraft character. The anime looking characters are an inked version of Brian Wong drawings. Alexi

rough pages (comic that never happened, part6)

These are two rough pages from the comic book, as well as a few more sketches and layout thumbnails. I like to do a whole pile of generic "fight scene" sketches, and then try to piece them together in a logical order. New images are then created to string everything together and make sure the actions hook up. Alexi