Silent Still - A Silent Hill Still Life

Here's a personal piece I've been wanting to do for a long time now. As many of you know I'm a huge Silent Hill fanatic, and it's been too long since I last did any Silent Hill fanart.

The Crimson Ceremony

This piece depicts four important items from Silent Hill 2: White Chrism, Obsidian Goblet, Book of Lost Memories, and the Crimson Ceremony Book. In the game, the player must collect the four items in order to achieve the special "Rebirth" ending. The red square in the top right of the image is a red piece of paper that is used as save points throughout the game. I wanted the piece to look like the viewer is stumbling upon this scene of a ritual in progress.

1. Preliminary drawing. Here I'm figuring out where to place all of the items in the composition, and nailing the basic shapes of the objects.
2. Underpainting. I put the drawing layer set to Multiply, and I blocked in the colors and some hints at value and lighting.
3. Here I start rendering the scene. I decided that bringing the red cloth down to the table would help the piece flow better and be more interesting. This is around the time I thought it would be a good idea to add the red-paper save point to the piece.
4. More rendering, and adjusting the lighting. After looking at the some in-game screenshots of the items, I realized the Book of Lost Memories (the green one) was looking a little too big, so I re-sized it and adjusted the surrounding items accordingly.
5. Render, render, render...
6. Brightening up my lighting a bit with some adjustment layers (levels).
7. Added some drops of the white chrism on the table to make the scene feel more like it was recently inhabited (the lit candle also helps achieve this). I also add the text to the cover of the Book of Lost Memories, as well as the page-text for the Crimson Ceremony book which reads:

"Speak.

I am the Crimson One.

The lies and the mist are

not they, but I.

You all know that I am One.

Yes, and the One is I.

Believers hearken to me!

Twenty score men and

seven thousand beasts.

Heed my words and speaketh them

to all, that they shall ever be

obeyed even under the light of

the proud and merciless sun.

I shall bring down bitter vengeance

upon thee and thou shalt suffer

my eternal wrath.

The beauty of the withering flower

and the last struggles of the dying

man, they are my blessings.

Thou shalt ever call upon me and

all that is me in the place that is

silent.

Oh, proud fragrance of life which

flies towards the heart. Oh, cup

which brims with the whitest of

wine, it is in thee that all begins."

8. Some final texture detailing, and detail adjustments. I thought the left page of the open book was looking a little too bare and uninteresting, so I decided to add a ritualistic symbol. I used visual imagery that I remember from the games to come up with the symbols, they're not just random. Can you spot the references (there are a total of 3 specific references)? I also added some texture to the book pages to make them look old and well used. I added a few drops of blood to make the scene a little more unsettling. Here's the symbol I drew (before wrapping it along the page surface) for anyone who wants a better look:

Original illustration created for the left page in the Crimson Ceremony Book

If you're a fan of the game, I hope you enjoy viewing this piece as much as I enjoyed making it. And if you aren't a fan of the game, I hope you can still enjoy the mood I tried to achieve with this piece.

Would you like to hang this piece on your wall? You can buy a print of this piece from my InPrnt Shop!

Thanks for stopping by!

Bloodsport 14 Update

The results for Bloodsport 14 judging were recently announced on the Crimson Daggers livestream and my pieces were selected as a runner up! Dave Rapoza, Dan Warren and guest judge Anthony Jones talked about the pieces created by each runner-up and 3rd, 2nd and 1st place winners. I got some really great feedback and advice and I wanted to push my pieces a little further. Here are the new versions, I hope you like the changes!

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.

Operation: Paizo Portfolio of Power, Objective Complete

Yesterday I finished up a new piece for my Paizo portfolio. This one features the iconic Paizo character Feiya, and her trusty fox.

Feiya's Flee

During my portfolio review with Paizo Art Director Andrew Vallas at IlluXcon, Andrew mentioned that in order to be better considered for working with Paizo it's a good idea to show what you can do with one of their characters. This became the main goal of this illustration, to Showcase an iconic Paizo character. In addition I wanted to use this piece to emphasize my love for creatures / monsters so I specifically chose one of the characters that has an animal sidekick, as well as choosing to have the character confronting a fearsome monster.

Feiya detail

Fox detail

Monster detail

Dungeon detail 1

 Above and below are a couple little details I added to help connect the monster to its environment. I wanted to illustrate that this is the creature's home, and within there are embellishments referencing the creature, perhaps out of respect, fear, or caution. Looking at the piece afterwards I could have probably pushed this idea even further in other areas as well. I might even go back after this post and tweak a couple things.

Dungeon detail 2

That's all for today. I'm hoping to punch out at least one more piece before I send off my portfolio to Paizo again. I hope you enjoy following me build this portfolio, it's been a lot of fun so far.

Painting Blues and Portfolio Prep

I was recently at a rough spot with my work where I would find myself thinking "it's time to sit down and do some artwork"...and that's as far as I would get. There was one day where I spent a good 6 hours sitting in front of my computer, stylus in hand, scribbling random nothingness on a blank Photoshop canvas just getting more and more frustrated that I couldn't come up with anything I liked. I had no real direction in mind, no focus, and I felt like that was the biggest part holding me back. Most of the time, when I sit down to do a portfolio piece, I don't ever think about what I should do, I just hop right into working because I usually end up feeling like I'm just wasting time if my hand isn't drawing something. I decided to take a few days off to get out of my head and stop getting so anxious about not getting anything done and I decided I need to come up with a real work-plan in order to maximize my productivity.

After reading up some of the posts from Jon Schindehette's online Portfolio Building Class on ArtOrder, I took a serious look at my portfolio and tried to figure out what I need to do to start advancing in my career the way I want. I realized that I as much as I say that I want to work for Paizo and D&D, my portfolio doesn't really show that I want that at all. So I decided I'm going to make every piece I do for a while to be focused at the needs of Paizo and D&D.

Owlbear

The above image is the first piece I created with this new perspective in mind, and my attitude about working is getting better and I don't feel so lost anymore. I hope you enjoy the piece and can see where I'm trying to go with it. I'm already working on the next one and I hope to have it done soon so I can post it up. Thanks for stopping by.

My Zombie Playground concept: Crossing Guard

For anyone who doesn't know, Massive Black is working on a video game called Zombie Playground and it's based on an illustration done by my favorite Illustrator Jason Chan. I'm extremely excited for this game to come out and I wanted to create my own zombie for the game for fun.

After brainstorming some possible character ideas, I thought it would be cool to come up with a crossing guard zombie who used her trademark stop-sign as her weapon. Not only that, but when she needs backup she's got her whistle to summon the help of other nearby zombies. In order to beat her in battle you would have to figure out a way to snatch the whistle off of her so you can take her down one-on-one.

I had a lot of fun designing her and I'm going to try and come up with some other ideas for possible zombies, characters, and weapons. I haven't designed any weaponry in a long time so I'm most interested in tackling that next. Anyways, I hope you like the design and make sure to check out all of the official stuff for the game on the official Zombie Playground website. It's gonna be freakin' awesome.