Sunday, May 27, 2012

The Final Stand



"Millennia after millennia they've been forced to retreat to an ever-shrinking territory. Now this mythological army of free peoples of nature have gathered to make a stand and defend their sacred homelands with all their might."

So this is a piece I've been looking very much forward to share! I actually finished it in March this year, but couldn't post it until now.
I used a lot of time on this one and it was a big challenge/milestone in many ways (which was also the intention). With this piece I wanted to push myself a lot in terms of composition, perspective, atmosphere, anatomy and so on.

Thanks to the people who helped with their precious feedback! <3
Hope you guys like it! :)

P.S. I have a huge amount of screen shots from the process that I may eventually turn into some kind of step-by-step thingie if there's an interest for that.

Thursday, May 10, 2012

Aztec Necromancer


A character design (and my very first try at a femme fatale).
Here's an initial quick costume design sketch and a step-by-step:



Friday, May 4, 2012

Nightmare Theatre: Act 1: Sandman of Slumberland




This is a product of an ongoing collaboration with the talented Kabir Shah (Kabir's blog).
Not having collaborated with anyone before, I found this to be a very interesting and exciting experience, and I also learned a lot from watching Kabir perform his own magic.

The choice of a theatrical setting was made so that we could study lighting, compose multiple figures in perspective, and see if we could add emotion and mood to the piece. A particular inspiration was Helnwein's theatrical work.

We decided that Kabir would work on the background and I would develop most of the characters. In the end, though, each of us did a bit of both. And after a while, we decided to paint over the whole image in turns to try out a different way of working.

The difficult part was to make the characters seem real enough so that it would seem like a stage play, and still maintain a surrealistic, dream like feel to them. We're both satisfied with the outcome. Though, there is much to learn still.

Here are some step by steps from our collaborative process: