Monday, April 30, 2012

Rimmer

A character design for school, to eventually be modeled and rigged in a future class. The assignment profiled 3 stereotypical races, the earthly warrior types, the smart magic users, and the sneaky mysterious thieves. The latter were called the Rimmer, and is what this guy is supposed to be a member of.  

 

 Some development sketches. The Rimmer ended up being very sharky. 

And of course, an unrelated dragon; asking why I didn't leave enough room on the page for the rest of his extremities.

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Aerie: Tanngrisnir Final

Finally found the time to finish this up. Been working on it on and off between commissions and schoolwork.
Anyway, Tanngrisnir goats, a hearty meal for today's dragon on the go. (As long as you avoid the pointy bits). 

Monday, April 9, 2012

"It's Character Driven" Assignment

For a school assignment we visited http://itscharacterdriven.blogspot.com/ and used their random character generator. It generates physical descriptions as well as personality traits. 

My randomly generated concept was:
A kind gawky lover who may or may not be a genie.


I went with the original Arabian concept of the genie/djinn as a race of people from a parallel world, rather than the modern idea of them as strictly wish granting servants. 

Here are a few of the concept sketches done for the assignment. I looked at a lot of traditional Arab clothing as well as some corny halloween costumes and movie wardrobes.

Aerie: Sapient Dragons

Designing the dragons of Aerie around the idea that they're a sapient race as well as bestial predators. Playing around with head shapes, trying to give them an intellectual look and a slightly alien one as well (as observable by the two Mass Effect inspired dragon heads). I really love the design of the Turians and the Drell from that game.



Sapient dragons definitely have a difficult and sometimes contradictory life. They live solitary existences, and harshly guard their territories against intruders. Their warm blooded, big brained, multi-limbed bodies consume a lot of energy, so land and prey is highly valuable. But when they meet others of their kind on friendly terms they're highly social and inquisitive. They mate for life and make effective use of their mental prowess by carefully managing the prey populations of their territory. They set and construct traps to catch prey, so they don't have to hunt constantly and have time to explore other mental outlets.
Their population is consistently fragile, as their young take a long time to develop and they only lay two to three eggs every other decade after reaching maturity. This worked fine as a way to stabilize their population in ye olden times, but now that prey is scarcer and humans have overrun everything, there's less food in general and every individual lost is sorely felt. The kicker is that as sociable and as intelligent as they are, killing each other over a mate and a patch of land is the natural norm. So if the dangers of their highly evolved world don't kill them, they still have their own kind to worry about. They're not suicidal and will admit defeat or reach amiable agreements if possible, but injuries do stack up.

Aside from fighting over food, land and mates, they may develop rivalries and even enemies over purely ideological disputes. If someone holds a big enough grudge they may challenge their rival to battle. Ignoring a challenge is considered an act of cowardice and can cost the recipient as much trouble as the battle itself in the long run. So battle they do and not everyone lives or comes away without injury. Elder dragons who are often sought out for advice, may voluntarily oversee such duels, and decide the victor without the need of anyone being maimed or killed.

Depending on the local culture, not all mates are won by fighting. Some dragons impress mates with a hoard (not necessarily of valuable items, but of anything shiny), others sing and impress females with showy displays (like birds), some race their potential partners and win the girl if they can catch up to her, and other times it's a combination of various methods. Nothing can compensate however for being a jerk, if the female simply the detests the male for his personality she won't accept him, however worthy he may be. 

Sketchbook Doodles

Some random drawings and pages from my sketchbook. Some of them I coloured up a bit in photoshop. 



 Armour, for dragons and people. The bottom two drawings look like ceremonial trappings to me, I can't imagine those shoulder pieces are very mobile. As for the dragons, I don't imagine them wearing anything heavy, or anything made of metal for that manner. So they wear leather instead, skinned off the very prey they hunt. It's lightweight and won't heat up and scald them when subjected to blasts of fire.

Sunday, April 8, 2012

Inkblot Initiative #1

Quick creature painting based on a thumbnail by Mike Corriero; as part of the collaborative Inkblot Initiative on facebook.