Game Jam

Character art by Sinan Demirer

I went to the 2015 Vancouver Global Game Jam, here are some stuff I did mostly in the last two days.

Original plan:

Generic stock image soldier guy poster

The three stages of the game:

Here are some other awesome stuff made by the team:

Sinan Demirer:

Devin Rosychuk:

There are so much more but it'd take ages to put them all up!

Stargazer Knight

I just got back from the amazing Illuxcon event which opened my eyes to the workings of the Illustration industry. I brought with me an entirely new portfolio which contained only 3 pieces I did before the summer break.

The event wasn't one concentrating on concept art, but I got many useful feedbacks nonetheless. The piece that I spent the most time on during the summer was this, the Stargazer Knight:

hi-res Here

I spent about as much time researching and designing as I did on actually painting it.

With the last knight having a "goat" theme, I started this guy with a "star" theme. After about 20-30 different designs and watching several documentaries on medieval armor construction, I set about pencilling the basic armor shapes, leaving the helmet out so I could do it in detail later.

After scanning and cleaning, I wanted a star pattern to go around some of the armor plates, but wanted it to be in perspective, so I created a simple pattern tile:

And the same idea for the chainmail:

Leaving me with the final line art:

I did the helmet separately.

And the rest...

I am going to do the weapons of his faction soon.

Duck Knights

When I was around 5-6 my brother and I created these race of mice-like creatures called the "epu". They inhabit a world similar to ours, but have their own plant and animal life, so different from Earth that they might  as well be aliens. We would draw the epu all the time (at one point exclusively) and they became a sort of personal mascot. Redrawing them as a 21 year-old feels very nostalgic and made me notice how this world has so much potential for interesting stories.

In writing this story, I imagined what I would have liked to read when I was 5-10.

I did this comic so insanely fast (about 1 hour per 2 panels), and made up the story as it went along. If I was to do a small book I could probably churn out a book per week.

I will continue this story soon. There are about 10 panels left.

Pencils:

Finals (inked with a pen and water-colored):

Fun with concept-arting

I've always enjoyed designing random stuff for imaginary games that would never get made. Here's a concept for a knightly leading hero:

For starters I wanted an easily recognizable helmet:

Then I started on some body silhouettes:

Some finalization to the design... Plus thumbnail for painting:

Final sketch:

Then some good old watercolor!

Some detail on the sword that my crappy camera didn't manage to get:

I recently had an insanely useful (arguably career/life-changing) "painted comics" course with Brian Stelfreeze, who gave me some extremely useful advises on playing with the color wheel and having a "damn subject" in our pieces where the most pure color would be put. Not sure if the camera captured it or not, but that's why the sword is the bluest thing here. By painting this guy I realized that while white rim-lighting work great for machines/metal (like my last painting), it is terrible for leather or non uber-shiny surfaces. I need to use some more shades of gouaches for highlights.

A little reference on the gloves might have helped too -- no idea while I didn't use any!

I realized watercolor paintings aren't the way to go for modern concept-arting... but it's so damn fun! The fact that my first digital painting I did last night was so terrible (that I'm not even going to put it here), did not help my move towards digital either...

Re-imagining old characters

When I was in high-school, I created this world where the Soviets and Americans were fighting a Cold War on a secret alien planet called Demeter. The war would escalate to the point where they lose contact with Earth, and the story takes place 100 years after this. The game would be played through the perspective of an Earthling explorer who rediscovers the planet, who then ultimately has to choose to help either the Soviets or the Americans settle the conflict on the planet.

I imagined this as a video game, knowing full-well that it'll never get made, but it was fun and I used some of the pieces for the grad art show (you can see them here).

A few days ago, while looking for a subject to draw/paint, I thought back to this weird idea and started drawing one of my favorite characters I did as a 17-year-old:

This guy is a psychopathic outcast who is on neither side. I re-sketched him in several ways:

I didn't like this one so much: 

Then this just to show off his insanity...

I then water-colored his helmet. Did more of the same technique I used on the Merc dude... Got a bit lazy on the neck.

I think I'm going to try paint some of these sketches digitally, or maybe redoing some other old ideas from high-school -- I enjoyed doing that a lot.