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

The Scrapyard: Starship Design

I realize this post is a day late, but I was busy drawing, so I at least used yesterday well.

As I mentioned last week, this will be a longer post than usual, detailing a number of my incomplete and abandoned starship designs.  In middle school and early high school, I did a lot of starship designs for Novus Imperium, an original sci-fi universe created by my friends and I.  At that time, most of my designs were profile-view images, and as such, many of the ships' shapes were difficult to discern.  In the last few years, the number of ships I've designed has decreased significantly, but those I have completed are of much higher quality.  The following are several designs from the last two years which simply were never completed.

This first one is also the oldest, and is a concept for a small shuttle that would be housed on the underside of my previously designed Cirrus.  The shuttle could be deployed in or out of atmosphere, and be used to land in areas too confined for the corvette-sized Cirrus.  While this version of the design never got past the rough pencil lines, some revised version of it will likely be appearing in the future.

This is lineart for the private freighter Aubree's Bounty, originally conceived as an enormous Lego model by my close friend Kevin.  The Bounty had a rough run-in with pirates a few years back, resulting in the ship's scarred exterior and cobbled-together bridge area.  I'm particularly pleased with how the engines on this one turned out.

You might have to click on this one to see all the little details.  This was a short-lived attempt at displaying a wrecked super-freighter.  These massive ships are several kilometers long when fully laden, though only the command and engine sections are equipped with life support.  Most of the ship's length comes from the cargo spar jutting back from the command section, to which all variety of cargo containers can be attached.

Another ship inspired by Kevin.  This is the linework for a Mygean frigate, based on his "MCS Color of Water."  I tried to take general shape and feel of his original, and give it a distinct aesthetic.  In fact, that's something I've been trying to do across the board, giving each faction's ships a distinct visual look.

Based on the previous ship, I wanted to design something else of Mygean make.  This is an older, decommissioned Mygean cruiser, which has been adapted to act as the flagship of a pirate lord.  To give this a more haphazard look, I took a bit of inspiration from the Reaver ship seen in the first episode of Joss Whedon's Firefly, giving it spines, and big sheets of armor just sort of riveted onto the ship's decaying frame.

So that's what I've got this week.  If nothing else, you've at least gotten a glimpse into the sort of creative dynamic between myself and Kevin.  He is, in many ways, the "Idea Man" behind a lot of Novus Imperium.  Many of my starship designs, especially, use cleaned-up and refined versions of visual aesthetics he's established with his sketches.

As far as character development goes, I'm still stuck on the character of Reina Cloude.  I think I may just keep rolling with doing artwork of her until I'm thoroughly burned out on her design and can finally force myself to work on someone else (such as Reina's close friend/sometimes flirty romantic interest Doc Haplace,  who has received virtually no development art whatsoever).

Anyhow, there'll be more stuff up next week.

Cheers, all.