Thank you guys. I'm giving this workflow another test in my spare time, will post progress soon It is really cool how you can dublicate shapes once they are in 3d , apply modifiers like twist , offseted symmetry and you will end up with new shapes...lots of fun )

In the mean while, you can check out a detailed making of explaining how I did this guy , just follow this link



P.S I'm sketching some neo-vampires/bat creatures right now, hope to show them soon )

Awesome thread! Subscribed.

awesome new stuff you've made since I last visited
keep them coming

Krhiven, altasa - thank you !

Finally we made a presentation of our small project called "the journey". You may already sean a red bearded guy somewhere here in my sketchbook, that happens to be the main hero of the game.

See the full presentation --> link

To see the video walktrough --> vimeo link

Here are few art pieces from the presentation, make sure to see the rest :

Those are from last week , but I didn't have time to post the earlier. Amazing exercise, whenever I do something like this I realize how important is to
practice the foundation stuff. Should do more of these and more often !
I did a couple of dosen more, but decided not to post them here and bore you to death Some of them took me 7 to 10 min, other were done for 4-5 minutes. I couldn't set the bar lower than 4 minutes , but I definitely pushed. <br /><br />



One thing in particular that helped me was to sit down and study horse anatomy. After that it was a bit more easy to draw horses, my eye started to actually see and interpret as opposed to just copying lines. What I really want to share with you is what I actually realized while studying the horse at my own (I mean without dvd guidance or tutorial of some sort). The stuff that I was able to observe by myself, the formulas that I invented to simplify the understanding of the proportions and the muscles, were immidietely stored in my memory. This made me think of the way we should learn, passive versus active learning (in this case passive will be watching a dvd and sleeping throughout it, and active would be learning and hunting for knowledge by yourself) and how effective it can be. Several days later I even stumbled upon an interesting article about modern day education which confirmed my theory that we gain most benefit when studying at our own. You can check the article <a href="http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/07/ff_khan/" title="khan's academy " target="_blank">here</a> if you are interested in this kind of stuff. Think about it for a second, the great masters lived in an era where they actually invented all the techniques and elaborate methods of depicting nature, they didn't study anatomy from books , they conducted autopsies and observed the real thing !
Enough talking, I'm going to invent, observe, and finally consume a quick sandwich, because all that effort of trying to write and think in English , made me hungry. <br /><br />

" if you are interested in this kind of stuff. Think about it for a second, the great masters lived in an era where they actually invented all the techniques and elaborate methods of depicting nature, they didn't study anatomy from books , they conducted autopsies and observed the real thing !"

So when do we get to see the results of the autopsies you're going for?

Also excellent piece of advice. I think with something as vast as video game art, that covers many different styles, creatures, places etc along with many different ways of achieving the game ready asset, new comers can easily get lost giving how much information there is to learn so feel the only way to catch up is tutorials.

However there are some amazing tutorials out there, Alienthink.com's structure of man in an incredible series at breaking down the human body and learning to draw it from your mind in bitesize chunks as an example. I find when watching most tutorials I just watch how they use the tools and the effects they get to see if it can help streamline what I achieved and to also see what is possible with a new toolset.

Originally Posted by Vysuki

... new comers can easily get lost giving how much information there is to learn so feel the only way to catch up is tutorials.

You are so right, man, this is something I wanted to express, but forgot to.

They are definitely good tutorials out there, and there are many that are a must watch ones, but I think it is good for someone to conduct his own investigations every now and than along with the absorbing of good learning materials (books, dvds).

Hey guys, long time since my last post. I have to complain a bit, my hard drives caused me trouble and I haven't been able to use my PC for a while, now that everything is OK here is a character that I recently created.

This is Kriss.



Can't say much about it because I made him for an unpublished project that is still in development. I've just got the permission to show it, so here it is in his full glory.

I plan to do a separate, more detailed post for him to show you how I used the new hair features in zbrush to get the feathers look the way there are now.
In brief, I created them in zbrush , export them to 3dsmax and used render to texture to bake them
for the final texture (actually I used RTTassist, but it is the same thing anyway). From then on it was regular old school painting in PS. I'll show you some process images soon, I promise ! And if I don't do it soon enough, you are free to spam my mail or blog until I do.

Here is the model without textures:



P.S. If you haven't backup your important data on a separate hard drive or other medium,do it right now ! I was so close to loosing my data, it is not a good feeling . Backup.

Hehe that penguin is super cool Looking forward to see some breakdowns!

Callesw, thanks buddy !

Exercising again, this time trying to fit a dragon in an environment in a pleasing way. I'll need to practice this kind of things more, cause I felt they are far away from my comfort zone.

This guy started out as a single dragon flying in a cave with no reason , but after a friend's suggestion, I expanded the canvas and added a little area of interest - two dragon younglings crying for their mother.



This below is just horrible, so you only get the small size image and no matter how much you insist I won't share the high-res



And a moon loving fellow



Crits are welcome guys, more than welcome actually

Fantastic work mate (as usual)! Couldn't expect anything lesser from ya

Nothing I can crit on, only hope to be as good some day ;)

Thanks, dude ! Glad you like them and to see that you still check this thread. I have something else to share.

I just couldn’t resist to share with you a little clue about a personal project that I’m working on. I can’t tell you much detail because I want it to be a surprise, I will only tell you that it involves creatures and it is in collaboration with some crazy talented artist, who’s work I’m sure you all are familiar with…

Here is a quick creature thumbnails just to tease you a bit:



I can’t keep secrets, I already said too much. More information and artwork will be revealed soon ,so stay tuned

This creature was made for Anthony Jones' amazing course. If you follow my blog you've probably remember the weird dragon sketches that I've posted some time ago, some animal drawings and studies too. All those were assignments for the course. I had really great time following his lectures and doing the homework, learn tons of things and I feel more confident in drawing and painting than before. Did I mention the course was uber-fantastic x 2 ? Anthony is true master of his craft and during those 9 weeks of education with him , he shared tons of insights on design, drawing, painting, anatomy and more. It was very motivating and inspiring journey for me, I can't wait to take another schoolism class ! )

Here is the angry fellow I've submitted for final assignment



Now, I know you are curious person and that you like to inspect images for imperfection so here is a link to even more bigger version of this image (2500px) - click here

Attention : Critiques are more than welcome, I'm always searching for improvement, so speak your mind if you think something could be done in a better way.

Some links:

Anthony's blog: click here
His schoolism course page: click here

Studies , studies, studies. The ones below I did for one of the assignments for Anthony Jones' creature course. Photo studies intended to train my eye to recognise colors (the picking tool was not allowed as an option ) and a material sphere made of feathers and then applying what I've learned from the material sphere to the demon parrot.

Photo studies:<br /><br />


Demon parrot:<br /><br />


And a tip I want to share although I'm sure anyone familiar with photoshop already knows this - using the smudge tool for edge control:<br /><br />

I probably shouldn't even comment on your sketchbook anymore since you already know what I have to say about your work It's great! Can't wait to see more of your studies!

Viktor, thanks a lot dude ! You are always welcome to comment here I was actually thinking to reduce the studies for a while and do few bigger projects, but we'll se what will I came up with.

Cheers!

Quick creature doodle.

I do not see any pictures in this thread... sorry. Been so hiped by the good comments and cant see anything =[

Originally Posted by acapulco

I do not see any pictures in this thread... sorry. Been so hiped by the good comments and cant see anything =[

Really ? well that is really strange, I'm hosting all of my images on my site, I didn't have any problems till now, hmmm. Will haved to resolve this...

Martin, you're sketchbook is awesome! Thanks for the inspiration! Subscribed!

Those photo studies..... Beautiful! Your work carries so much motion and each one tells a story. Amazing work my friend

Hey folks ! Haven't post anything in a while, this time I want to share with you my entry for a recent competition - the double happy creature challenge. I've opened a new thread for this here, make sure to check it out, there are several images explaining my process behind this creature. Hope you like it

Love your work! So jealous!