Settling Back Into Productivity

      It seems I keep missing posts here on the blog, in no small part thanks to my continued enjoyment of Digital Extremes' Warframe.  In light of that, I've done a few pieces of work based on the game.

      The first is a response to the "Suspicious Shipments" event, which occurred last weekend.  To give a bit of context for those unfamiliar with Warframe, the items being held (or dropped, as it were) by my Ember frame are rare items which were awarded with remarkable frequency during the event.

      Related to that, I really do love my Ember frame.  I've been playing as the more ornate Ember Prime recently, but I find that I ultimately prefer the less fancy look of the standard Ember.  In my own color scheme, of course.  As a reference artist, I usually don't do action poses, but I'm happy with how this one turned out.  I'm debating whether or not to further refine/ink the original lines and do a somewhat more developed version of this:

      Additionally, I've continued the long tradition among Warframe fans by doing a quick reference for how the "Vasto" revolver sidearm might look as a Prime weapon.  The original Vasto can be seen on the wiki for reference.

      Beyond that, and in completely predictable fashion, I'm still doing work on Novus Imperium.  First up is yet another iteration of Reina:

      Perhaps more interesting is that I've finally started doing work on figuring out the engineering of Reina's prosthetic limbs.  None of the below sketches show the prosthetics with their outer casing; this is all internal stuff.  You might need to click for a larger resolution to get all the little details.

1-  The anchor-points for her prosthetics are synthetically grown bone-like components which have been grafted to her truncated humerus' (in the case of her arms) and femurs (in the case of her legs).  The core frame components of her arms are articulated by ball-and-socket joints.  In addition to standard rotation, this allows the forearms to twist in a manner similar to natural arms.

2-  This simply demonstrates the series of myomer bundles layered over the frame which mimic not only the function, but also the positions, of organic muscles.

3-  The core of Reina's lower legs consists of three interleaved components, and her lower legs have a more pronounced curve compared to natural human legs.  The interleaved frame segments allow for a slight degree of flexibility in the "shin" area.  This combined with the exaggerated curve of the shins allows Reina to both absorb and exert a tremendous amount of force through her legs.

4-  The core of each knee joint contains a compact ultra-high-torque servomotor.  These motors are only employed when prolonged and extreme physical exertion is required.  In all other circumstances, the myomer bundle network is more than sufficient to articulate her legs.

      And lastly, I've finally gotten back to doing a bit of work on other NI characters who I've been neglecting, such as freelancer and mercenary Trent Valimund:

       More on him in the future.

Cheers,
Geoff

Warframe Week

      I haven't really done much artwork this week.  I've decided to kick off my break from school by playing quite a lot of Digital Extremes' Warframe.  I think I mentioned this in last week's post, but I think it warrants repeating: the game has exceptional art direction.

      It's rare for me to do fanart, but here's a quick sketch of my Ember Warframe:

      Besides that, I've done a bit of sketching for a fantasy themed character I've had in the works for some years.  It's been a while since I posted any artwork of her online, and her design has undergone some pretty significant changes.  I'm pretty sure that this: [link] is the most recent posted image of her prior to the one below.

      That's all I've got for this week.  I'll probably be dialing back my Warframe playing in the upcoming week, so expect more artwork in future posts this summer.

Cheers,

Geoff

Where Did April Go?

      As far as online postings go, I pretty much missed the entire month of April.  That's not to say that I haven't been doing artwork.  I've simply been swamped with both wrapping up the school semester, as well as having discovered Digital Extremes' Warframe.  The game has incredibly good art direction, and has been quite inspirational.  It prompted me to try my hand at doing some designs based on Warframe:

      There's a fourth Warframe design that I've done some work with, but it's a collaboration and as such I'm not at liberty to toss that artwork up on the blog.  Not yet, anyway.

      As usual, I've still been working on designs for Novus Imperium.  These sketches are long overdue, though I'd rather not spoil the details regarding what exactly they are / how they fit into the universe.  The general idea, aesthetically speaking, was to attempt to create starship designs that are smooth and flowing, but also oriented along 90-degree angles.

      Beyond that, I've naturally still been working on the design of Reina's character.  I think I'm getting extremely close to nailing down the design of her armor.  Below are a series of small ink sketches testing out some poses (the middle sketch has had color applied digitally):

      This next one is just trying to figure out some of the less visible aspects of her design.  It's been long established that Reina's civilian gear includes a layer of body armor underneath her clothing, but I'd never devoted much effort to figure out what it looks like.  This is a start, at any rate:

      This last one is something that's taken far too long.  I've drawn many, many iterations of Reina's armor over the last couple of months, but this is the first version that I've been really happy with:

      I've really not got more to say about that one.  I'm just glad to finally have a design for the armor that I'm pretty much satisfied with.  I'm hoping that I'll burn out on Reina's design soon, so I can move on to some of the many other characters whose designs need my attention.  School's just about wrapped up, so I'm looking forward to getting back to both my own work and commission work over the summer.

Cheers,
Geoff