Zombie editor – Final version

So I’ve left this to ponder over for a couple of days and come back to it. I thought she needed some oozing fluid, so I’ve added some drips, under the eyeball and the chin, and stains on the chest, tidied up the hair, hand and magazine, and added a few more shadows and lighting. I’ve also tweaked the colour slightly adding a bit of green in various places. I’m going off to enter it now, wish me luck!

Zombie Editor alert!

In the meantime, there’s another official challenge going on over on the IFX website. We have to create a zombie of portrait of the Editor, Claire Howlett, which will be used as her profile pic in their upcoming zombie special issue. This was too good a challenge to pass up.
So, since I’ve been playing around with Brushes on my iPhone I decided to have a play around to at least get it started and roughed out. I took a couple of reference pics of myself in the pose first, and some reference pics of Claire were supplied for the challenge, so this was my initial colour sketch from Brushes:

I took it as far as I felt I could go, just drawing on the small screen with my fat finger, I was having trouble trying to get the hand right. So off it went into Photoshop to do a bit more roughing out at the small canvas size. Then I sized it up to about 2500 pixels wide, and started to work on refining it more. Here is the step-by-step Wips:

I’m quite pleased at how quickly and how painless this was, although I’m still not sure I’ve got the hand right. I’m going to leave this for a few more days to see what I think after coming back to it. The deadline isn’t until the 22nd of August, so I have over a week to mull over it yet. Here are some details, with what I’m considering to be the final. Wish me luck!

Fightbowl 2010

So the next thing on the Digital Fightclub’s agenda is the first Fightbowl Tournament. We’re just getting some teams together over on the Fightclub thread on ImagineFX.com (if you want to join in just head over there and find out how to enter)
Been working on my team, starting off with my original Fightclub character Sgt Pepper and working around her, I even managed to sketch a couple of these in work on my iPhone using Brushes, then took them into Painter to finish them off and comp them with the others.

‘The Lonely Hearts team are the best of the best from Sgt Peppers Elite Squad of the Star Rangers Corp, nicknamed the Lonely Hearts because of their dislike for socialising with the rest of the Corp.

Helga – is the German runner of the team, get her the ball and she’s sure to get it up the field, she’s built like a brick sh*thouse too, so don’t mess with her. Very tactical and always straight to the point (She has a bit of a thing for Walrus too, we think she has a tusk fetish!)

Walrus – The first of the two aliens in the team, he’s hairy and slow, but slow like a breezeblock wall, and forms part of the defense on the team. He hasn’t quite got the hang of English yet, so his communication is very stilted. Just put him in front of the goal, and he’ll figure it out for himself.

Lennon – The second alien on the team, from a high gravity planet, making him able to fly on Earth with a tail to balance himself. He’s blind but has cybernetic googles wired directly to his optical nerves, allowing him enhanced vision, including infra red, thermal and a telephoto option, with which he can see great distances. Always very quiet and introverted, he’s always disappearing off into the clouds when he has some thinking to do. He’s the catcher of the team.

Gramps – The squad’s engineer, a weaponry, vehicles and cybernetics genius, when he’s sober. He’s sporting a force mace for the Tournament, and also a spiked baseball bat for good measure. He makes up the second half of the defence.

Sgt Pepper – the Captain of the team. The hard faced leader of the team, not needing much introduction, not the sort of girl you want to take home to see mother, and with her cybernetic left arm is the teams thrower, and the one who is constantly trying to keep the rag-tag team focused on the task in hand…’

Snake Queen sketch

I did this sketch for the new Imagine FX Forumites online mag. They need a cover so Christian is running a challenge to be used on the cover. I went to see Clash of the Titans during the week, and the snake like Medusa stuck in my head. She didn’t look as monstrous as the original film version, but I did feel a little sorry for her by the end of the scene. I loved the way she moved too.

I’m nowhere near happy with the colour palette or the background yet, so I will probably work another couple of sketches. The deadline isn’t til the 21st of May, so I should have time.

Experiment Gone Wrong – final image tweaked

I finally got round to making a few tweaks to this before I resigned it to my finals folder. The eyes had been bothering me, one was bigger than the other, and the tentacles needed a little tidying up and texturing. I also gave it a bit of a slight sepia cast to give the colours a bit of age. I’m much happier with it now.

Half hour monster thumbnails

After reading the ‘One hour monster’ workshop in ImagineFX a while back, I decided, since I didn’t have too much time over the past couple of weeks, that I’d have a go at doing a few thumbnails. This is what i came up with.

Some interesting shapes there, even a couple I might use for characters in Fightclub. Now, just to find time to develop them a bit more.

I used my custom Three Rack Hair brush with these settings to start these off with…

…then just worked over them a bit with a fine solid round brush

Experiment Gone Wrong – Contest Entry

After a little advice from me9a7 over on Lightwyrm.com, I took the pic back into Photoshop and did some work on the professor’s expression to try and get more fear into it. It was all down to the shape of his mouth, the previous version looked like he was smiling. Sometimes I’ll loose sight of obvious things like that when I go from a sketch to a full pic. I need to fix his eyes too, one looks bigger than the other. I’ve was also having trouble with the flask until I realised there needed to be a lot of highlighting on it since the glow is all around it. Did a fair bit on this tonight, I’m nowhere near happy with it or consider it finished, but I’m not going to be around for the deadline tomorrow, so I’ll call this finished for the meantime, and hopefully do a bit more to it later, once work calms down.

Experiment Gone Wrong – WIP 3

Haven’t had much time to post recently, work has taken over a bit, but I have managed to get a bit more of this done. I’m reworking it from my colour sketch, and took a few reference photos to work with. I’m having a bit of difficulty with trying to get the flask right. I think it might be the green glow that’s throwing me off, so I’m gonna drop it for now and rethink it.

I still need to work on the texture on the tentacles, and the moustache and hair, although I’m thinking of dropping both of them. I’ve taken this into Painter for now too, I haven’t worked with Painter for the past fewpics, so I thought I’d get back into it for this one, it’s always good to give your brain a bit of variety. I’m going to try and work on tentacles next. Not sure I’ll get this finished for the Lightwyrm competition deadline on the 20th, but I’ll try and get as much done as possible.

Experiment Gone Wrong WIP 2

Using my colour sketch as reference, I started working on a new canvas. I picked a green-purple colour scheme for the background, because I want to give a slightly disturbing dark magic feel to the pic, and I think these colours are just slightly off enough with each other to give the right mood. I’ve added in some smokey, wispy effects, and some particles with custom brushes where the flask will be. I also decided to add in some bookshelves in background to add a bit of depth and perspective for now. I’ll wait until I get everything else into the composition, before I decide whether to keep these or not.

Experiment Gone Wrong WIP 1- Lightwyrm contest

Decided to give the contest over on Lightwyrm.com a go. I’d been trying to think of an idea for a while and finally came up with this idea (I think I’m on a bit of a tentacle trip at the minute for some reason) These are my first few sketches, the contest finishes on March 20th, so haven’t got too long to work on this. I’ll see how I get on.