Bloodsport 14: Beast Master

Last night (more like early this morning) I finished up my 2 illustrations for the Crimson Daggers Bloodsport 14 Beast Master Challenge! It was due way back on April 5th, but between having some freelance work and my part-time job I decided from the start I was going to go at my own pace and just focus on making 2 solid portfolio pieces.

In short, the challenge required you to create 2 illustrations the first depicting a human donned in armor that reflects it's more powerful monster form, which is the base for the second illustration.

Here are the final illustrations:

BeastMaster form 1

BeastMaster form 2

I based my character design on an African tribesman, specifically looking at the Zande Warriors. I learned about the Zande and their weaponry from watching a neat TV show called Deadliest Warrior. A typical episode takes a look at 2 different groups of fighters throughout history from all over the planet and compares their weaponry and fighting tactics. It's glamed up a bit for TV but it's pretty interesting and it's a fun watch. If you like weapons you'll really enjoy it. Anyways, I based my costume designs on various Zande dress and armor, and I tried to make their weapons feel more authentic by applying what I learned from the TV show.

Part of the Bloodsport Challenges requires that you do studies to work up toward your final piece, in order to familiarize yourself with your material so you can better execute the final illustrations. Below are some of my studies:

Here are some progress shots:

I'm pretty happy with what I came up with. I didn't look at any of the other entries until I finished my pieces so not to influence my decision making. There are some really impressive pieces that you can see for yourself in the Bloodsport 14 WIP thread HERE. It was fun participating and I hope to eventually participate for real and meet the deadline at some point on a future Bloodsport Challenge.

Torch Knight: Sovel Knight Fan Art

I recently found out about a really cool project on Kickstarter called Shovel Knight. It's an in-progress 8-bit video game highly influenced by the original MegaMan series, taking place in a medieval setting with a light and humorous tone. I checked out the trailer and the artwork for the game on the Kickstarter page and I immediately got excited by the project and backed it.

I also noticed that they were holding a fan art contest in which the winner would receive some cool swag. I decided that I wanted to do a little something for the contest and so I worked up my own original character I named Torch Knight. Unfortunately I found out about the Kickstarter in it's final week of funding so I didn't get to do a lot for this piece, but ultimately I'm happy with the end product.

Torch Knight, of House Burns

The response and number of entries was so great they decided to award multiple prizes to multiple entries for several different categories. I sadly was not awarded any prizes, but I did receive a Special Mention in the Original Concept category, which I'm pretty happy about. The creators were very kind in the fact that they uploaded everyone's entries to a Flickr album and left very nice comments for every single entry. I really appreciate them showing their gratitude this way and I enjoyed reading the comment they left me...

The funding has since come to an end and they managed to reach every single one of their funding goals, and stretch goals, so not only will the game be made, but there will be a lot of cool things that come with it. One of the things being made is an art book for the game highlighting official artwork and concept sketches by the creators, and every single entry submitted to the fan art contest will be printed as well, so that's really cool to be a part of.

If you're interested in learning more about the game and if you still want to donate but missed out, check out their Kickstarter page for more info. Shovel Knight looks like it's going to be an awesome game and has already built quite a fan base before the game is even finished. It will be very exciting to see the project get finished and get to play it for myself. There is even a chance that any original characters created in the fan art contest could be implemented in the game! We'll have to stay tuned for that though. Fingers crossed for Torch Knight!

Thanks for stopping by.

P.S. Check out all the awesome entries for the fan art contest HERE. There was a lot of really great stuff submitted. It was a lot of fun taking part.