Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Trade Station Final



I'm writing this post with a rather bittersweet feeling, because I'm now officially off the Trade Frontiers Project.  With me back on Prison Architect there our schedules just didn't work out but I wish Chris Brind and co. the best for their game and I'll make sure to post about their Kickstarter project once it's announced.  I had a lot of fun with this piece, as surprisingly it's one of the few science fiction artworks that I've ever made.  I was thinking about turning this into a tutorial piece but frankly I'm just too lazy to write a decent tutorial  so I'll just go step by step and talk about my thought process along the way.


This was the first rough sketch I made based on the large thumbnail from the previous post.



I colored the original sketch blue to make it easier to trace over it with cleaner lines.


I make two important changes here.  I noticed that the sizes of my images (namely the signal officer and the docking ship, did not help convey a sense of perspective and size very well.  I moved the officer to the center and enlarged him and made the ship a little smaller as well to highlight the distance between them.


Laid down flat colors.


Painted some texturing.


More texturing, and some shadows.  Getting near the end here.


Final image.  The last big change I made here was the decision to turn the yellowish planet into a blue one.  Firstly because yellow heavenly body is too commonly thought of as being a sun, but also because the warm yellow color was very eye catching and there was a lot of tension between it and the signal officer.  by turning the planet blue the eye naturally gravitates towards the officer, then diagonally upward towards the ship and the planet behind it.  I also pushed the second ship farther back into the background to furhter highlight the distance between the objects in the image.  And that's it!  You can see a larger sized image at the start of this post,  hope someone finds this useful!

Thursday, January 17, 2013

Trade Station Concepts



After all the preparation (in form of spaceship sketches) it was finally time to head into an actual illustration.  The Brief given to me was for an image "showing an alien world with a space station in orbit and a couple of "trader" ships going about their business." I sent in the the rough thumbnails above for approval.


My client liked number 4, with the astronaut (actually I envisioned him being a signal officer, as you might see on an aircraft carrier) directing the ship in.  But he also like the more circular landing bays as well.  I made some more thumbnails trying to integrate the two ideas and then created a larger, more polished thumnail to use as a reference for the final image.

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

More Spaceships




More spaceship sketches from over the holidays.  A lot of these are basically Star Wars copies.  I don't draw ships and machinery much so I'm training my hand to get used to drawing them and placing the greebles in the right place.

Friday, January 4, 2013

4th Annual Manila Game Jam

I'll always remember my term as IGDA Manila chapter coordinator as a turning point in my life.  It made me grow as an individual and made me realize that while leadership is exhausting, it can also be very rewarding.  I promised myself I'd stay away from IGDA and let it grow on its own two years ago, but circumstances have brought me back into the fold.  I won't be running for chapter coordinator anytime soon (or ever again) but I'll definitely be helping out a lot in this year's Manila Game Jam.  This year's Jam actually has two sites in Manila and one site in CLSU in the Science City of Munoz (I just love typing "the Science City"), so these are exciting times!  If you're an artist, writer, game designer, programmer or musician who's always wanted to make games feel free to join in the fun!

For more info on the game jam you can check out igdamanila or the manila game jam websit]e.  Special thanks to Robot With A Smile for the awesome poster.