Plaid Creature

Dr. REWind is in.

What’s good kids?  How’s your health?  ….your creative muscles?  They workin’ out good?  I’d hope so.  So here I’ve promised to finish the Heavy Weapons Guy, and I have done so.  It’s not my best, but I am proud considering I did the ENTIRE set of lineart without reference or previous sketches.  Although I’ve realized, I will probably never do it again.  I found it to be waaaaay to inefficient and I ultimately end up screwing up anatomy and great tangents that can pretty much make the image look pretty terrible.  So, lesson learned.  What I was going for with the pose in the image was the Heavy attempting to closeline some poor sap. (preferrably the Scout that stole his “Sandvich.”)

Here are the respective wallpapers at 2048 x 1152 resolution so that you may adorn your beautiful widescreen monitors with my art.  Please?  No?  That’s okay, I understand.  ::sniff::

Once again kids, If you need to shrink the image down, they should fit just fine at any 16×9 aspect ratioed resolution.

The Blu Russian.

..also in venetian!!

Dr. REWind here,

Made it back from Vegas in once piece.  I had a blast.

Busy month so far.  I had another commission to finish up this week for a Cobra racing event that’s supposed to go on this coming weekend.  Aside from that I started on the rough for the next Team Fortress 2 class.  The Heavy Weapons Guy.  The Heavy is what his name implies.  This brick sh*t-house of a Russian is a giant wall of high calibered, rapid firing death in boots.  His role is generally on the frontlines soaking up damage from all sides.  He’s an even greater force to be reckoned with when he’s allied with The Medic.  While the medic provides constant healing, the Heavy can spray death upon his opponents.

So far, I think he’s shaping up alright.   Here’s the upper half of em.  I’ve been stuck trying to figure out the rest of his pose.  I’m swaying between a few…which is completely normal for me since I generally ALWAYS start out with some sort of thumbnail first, but I’m trying to create art completely digitally now, whether it be freehand via my tablet or in Adobe Illustrator.  Anyway, it’s really rough, as you can see a number of issues, which for me at the moment outside of a completely finished pose, are his eyes and eyebrows.  On his actual design he’s pretty beady eyed compared to everybody else who’s eyes you can actually see, so he’s obviously going to undergo some serious changes down the road.  Wish me luck.  Once this is finished, I should be able to work on the double featured item I spoke about a few weeks back.

Ahhh, you don’t care.

The doctor is OUT.

Sup ladies and gents.

With what time I had this week I finally got around to finishing the colors for the Scout wallpaper.  During the course of laying down the colors, I had some issues recreating the sketchy shaded effect that I had with the Spy.  I’m not sure why, but I just couldn’t pull it off as well.  Largely because I forgot which filters to use where and how.  Silly me.  Here’s what I was coming up with using the shading method that I used on the spy:

Yeah…it totally wasn’t coming out as well as I planned.  I started feeling the way I lined up the shadows on the original.  So I went back to that one and worked out some other line issues across the board.  I still don’t know what it was that just wasn’t working out with the textured shading.  I’ll probably have to look into it more to find out what was going on.

Basically I’ve got the Scout class in both the Red and Blu (The “E” is supposed to be missing.) flavors below.

Now in Cherry Flavor!

Blu-berry Too!

I know I promised a double feature, but in order for me to get this post ready ahead of time, I had to skimp on working on my other project since I’m goin’ to Vegas this week:  “Loose women, money, and alcohol.  The way life should be.”

I’ll see you kids next week.  I might have some photos from Vegas. We’ll see.

I’m out.

So this past week I’ve been continuing my wallpaper projects from Team Fortress 2.  I’ve been working on the scout for the last week, however I’ve been a bit distracted and have been working on a few personal pieces that I really wanted to work on to convey how I’ve been feeling personally over the last few weeks, which haven’t been too well.  Issues aside, let’s discuss the Scout class that is available in the game.  He’s an interesting class, based upon speedy attacks and quick, hit-a-muthaf*cka-and-fade tactics.  His short range sawed-off shotgun and agility combined make him a force to be reckoned with in the right hands.  His aluminium short bat just makes him awesome.  I honestly should’ve posted a video for the spy last week.  For those that don’t know what I’m talking about, here’s a taste.  (All two of you.)

That’s gotta be one of my class favorites.  The design of the Scout class in the game is amazing.  The voice actor they chose for the game itself is hilarious when he’s speaking in-game during heated firefights.  So far, I’ve had a lot of fun working on the wallpaper for the Scout.  I’m probably going to provide the same set of colored options that I used for the Spy, but I’m digging the way the scout is turning out thus far.  It’s probably a bad thing being an artist and all.

The Scout.

The extra lines that you can see within the image are where the “sketchy” shading is going to appear.  I’m tempted not to do that on this one, but I want some consistency within all of the actual backgrounds I’ve created up to this point.  Next week will be a double feature, giving way to what else I’ve been working on over the last week aside from the Team Fortress 2 wallpapers.  I’ll catch up with you guys before then…but I’m goin’ to Vegas courtesy of the few doctors around here.  I’m goin’ back to cause some damage.

Next week, kids.  Nighty night.  (Aww…you don’t care.)

Last week I was working on the first of the wallpaper series from Team Fortress 2.  I did manage to finish the Spy this time out.

I really liked the way the character himself turned out.  I’m not so entirely thrilled with the background, and found myself not settling on any one background.  I’m only posting one up here.  I don’t feel like uploading like twelve different variants of the same image and I feel that it’s a waste of space, personally.  If you want to take a peek at the other images let me know.

The initial resolution for the image is 2048 x 1152 (16:9).  It’s huge, I know.  I haven’t designed a wallpaper in years, and I figure I might as well get with the times and make it widescreen.  GO BIG OR GO HOME! RAWR!  I’ve also got some 4:3 variants as well, but you’ll have to be assertive and ask me for them since I’m going to host them offsite.  A lot of the variants I have right now are different versions varying in color overlay (representing the two teams in TF2: Red & Blu) and whether or not they are simply cel-shaded or using the sketchy shading style below.  My main concern are my color profiles that I have between the two different monitors I own.  They provide two completely different color qualities since one of my monitors is a 4 year old CRT and the other a 5 month old 23.5 in widescreen.  For some reason Photoshop hates both monitors and completely refuses to allow a matching color profile between the two.

THE BLU SPY. (Yes...it's missing an "E")

What I wanted to do with the shading was simply create something different.  I’m surprised I was able to create a sort of sketched shading with screwing around with the filters in Photoshop to get the effect.

I know, I promised to show the rough lines for the next class, but I honestly have decided which class I wanted to work on yet.  I’m shooting for The Scout.  I’ll talk about him more next week.

I’ve had a super-long day and it has to end, post-haste.

I-said-GOOD NIGHT.

Greetings boys and girls, the Console General here:

I’ve been blessed with a new PC via my employers “PC Fair.”  It’s a beast and has been a blast to build; the specs are as follows:

Intel Core i7 920 (2.66 ghz quad-core)

12 gigs of PC12800 OCZ ram

ASUS P6T Deluxe V2

2 (Yes, two) XFX GTX 285 Black Editions with 1 gig of ram, each running in SLI mode.

Two Western Digital SATA HDD’s, one 150 gig Velociraptor and a regular 640 gig drive.

1000 watt power supply

and a Thermaltake Spedo full-tower case to hold her all together.

I’m currently running Vista Ultimate x64 in order to properly utilize all the ram, but I’m already starting to hate it as I loathe how Vista’s UI works.  I planned on getting my hands on a copy of Windows 7 in the fall when it releases retail so I figure that I’ll just use that to warm up with since the OS’es are essentially the same (with a few tweaks here and there.)  I loved putting this bad boy together, and I look forward to great days gaming and working with it.

Recent field acquistions aside, I’ve been working on a serious project this time around.  I’ve been working on a pack of widescreen wallpapers for your PC, Mac, or whatever sort of computer any of you might be using nowadays.  The pack is going to be themed around a multiplayer game titled Team Fortress 2.  A great sequel that some of us Doctors played for hours upon hours on end back in day.  In the game,  you play a number of different classes in order to complete various game goals such as Capture the Flag, Arena-deathmatch or Point Capture.  The classes in the game are probably some of the funniest, yet greatest designs in any multiplayer game I’ve ever played.  They all explode with personality and style that is very congruent with the art direction of the game.  I love it all.

So, between copying and backing up data between numerous machines and making sure everything stays working, I’ve decided that the first character class from the game that I decided to create this week was the Spy.  Not a class that I’m very good with, but the class itself requires a good deal of skill to play.  A player can cloak from the eyes of enemy team members, disguise himself as other enemy players, and BACKSTAB – Dungeon and Dragons Style.  Yes, the Spy has a handy ability when he gets behind his foe, he can whip out his butterfly knife and stab the enemy in the back, killing them instantly.  It’s like a sweet symphony of death, blood, and deception to see this guy work in the hands of an adept player.

So far this is what I’ve come up with.  I should have it completed by the end of the weekend: (click on the thumbnail)

Meet the Spy...and his baclava.

With the image, I want to color it with a sort of monochrome color scheme, but with textured colors.  I’ll probably try using colors like blue or red as the primary color schemes or I’ll end up using both as different versions, since Red and Blue are the two main colors for each team within the game.  For the spy’s pose, I wanted to capture the style of the game as much as possible, even with the elongated limbs.  I feel that the image is almost in-game looking, and I feel that’s what I was going for.

Once I get this bad boy done, I”ll post it next week and hopefully have the next class rough lined up.  See you kids next week!

Console General, out.

George Eastman House
Nikolas Murray
These photographs, along with every other photograph in The Commons (Flickr’s collaboration with libraries in museums to showcase public photo collection) has no known copyright restriction.
I altered Nikolas Murray’s work using Corel Painter 11.

Sometime last year, I was writing a short story titled Megaton Trigger.  The name probably smacks of some sort of anime series title to some, but that was the image I was goin’ for.  I never actually got around to finishing the short story, but then I was slammed with the hip idea of making it into a web-comic, so I started fleshing out some of the main characters.

Megaton Trigger takes place in a futuristic, cyberpunk version of New York, where megaconglomerates secretly control the government entities while even larger relgious factions police the actions of the megaconglomerates…if that makes any sense.  Cybernetics are a commonplace amongst the people, yet hard-wired surgical implants, prosthetics and  are slowly being replaced by wet-wired devices called Runes.  Runes and Runic replacements can serve a number of functions such as bolstering human strength, increasing an individual’s agility, or even expanding ones brain functions and capacities.  Since the devices were wet-wired, they could be easily removed and replaced without any potential damage to the user, unlike older cybernetic implants and prosthetics that could cause further irreparable damage if improperly removed.  The Runes themselves were originally created for the agents of the various religious bodies that are supposed to be providing world security.  Economical versions of the technology soon became public.  There are a number of policing religious entities all over the globe, however there are only a few that hold the largest spheres of influence, yet are all ultimately vying for total control.  One of the largest factions, The Order of the Prodigous Hammer, or the OPH, has uncovered a powerful pre-cyberage relic of a time long since passed.  An old, giant cannon-construct that is capable of vaporizing cities in an instant: The Megaton Ballista.  For years, the OPH has kept the site of the Ballista sealed from the rest of the world however the other rival factions have seen through the veil of deception and have their eyes set of the relic as well.  The other factions that share the shaky balance of power with the Order of the Prodigious Hammer; The Order Vehement Blade, and The Order of the Magnaminous Flail; have sent their agents to claim the site and continue the research of the cannon and how to actuate the possibly world ending weapon.

During the course of the storyline, we come across a fourteen year-old electronic scribe, or an E-Scribe named Randall Faris, that has been performing research on the Megaton Ballista that has been working for the OPH since he was old enough to read.  Faris came across an old coded holodisk that provided more insight as to what was needed to activate the Ballista.  The Megaton Trigger.  The Trigger is what can ultimately activate and allow continued control of the Ballista.  Coming across this infomation hadn’t gone unheard.  Factioned spies hiding amongst the OPH had been ordered to retrieve the data about the trigger from the boy.  Randall was ordered by his superiors to create a hard-wired Rune that encoded the data within his brain.  All other traces and copies of the information were destroyed.  Randall was then ordered to site of the Megaton Trigger in order to activate the device.  The Vehement Blade and the Magnaminous Flail could not let that happen.  The OPH realized the threats placed upon Randall and have conscripted their best Agent-Templar to provide protection for the boy:  Augustus Proximo – the main character.

As you can see with the image above, I was going to make a set of teaser images for the main characters of the storyline, starting with Proximo.

Augustus Proximo has been working with the Order of the Prodigious Hammer since he was seventeen.  There’s a ton of backstory about this guy, but I’ll spare you all going into it right now.  By the storyline’s start he’s currently thirty-two years of age.  His job as an Agent-Templar make him a frontline field agent that enforcing the will of the Order by performing secret actions behind enemy lines and exacting kill orders sent to him by way of the Prodigious Hammer.  In his fifteen years of dedicated service he has proven to be one of the most promising agents for the OPH.  He believes in his duty to the OPH, however he doesn’t believe in the need to take control of a weapon that could ultimately claim the lives of millions of people.  During his career he was told to uphold the sanctity of innocent life and punish the unjust, much like a knight of the days of old.  As ordered by the Prodigious Hammer superiors, he was also forced to sacrifice something he holds dear.  Although that’s supposed to be revealed later in the story, if I can ever get this puppy out of the zygote stages.

As you can see with the image above, Proximo is supposed to be a rather large man.  Think Agent 47 from the Hitman video game series, but much larger, almost brutish, yet refined by always wearing excellent suits.  The odd looking cross on the back of his head is an older prototype rune that was hard wired into his central nervous system.  He was diagnosed with Pathes Syndrome, a debilitating neurological disorder that can cause muscles to spasm violently to the point of tearing or rupturing.  The rune installed helps keep his disorder under control while also giving him the ability to become highly agile while not offsetting his natural strength.  Over the years, his Rune has grown faulty and has began to complicate his career with the OPH.  He’s kept his status of his condition worsening hidden from his superiors by taking a number of pharmaceuticals that he recieves from his ex-girlfriend and data courier, Muriel Tatum.

Much like the other teaser poster, Muriel’s poster is also themed with what her life in the story line entails.  Which in this case is Militance.

Muriel is a freelance mercenary, and data courier.  She can smuggle information with the best of them, however if you try and stop her…she’s liable to maim you, if not kill you outright.  Muriel grew up in the urban sprawl, the world below  the high-class corporations, governments, and religious factions policing the world.  She met Proximo while acquiring some “sensitive materials” about a particular priest working within the Order of the Prodigious Hammer for a client.  Proximo was sent to return the stolen data from Muriel.  When her client was murdered, Proximo was ordered to simply make sure the data she had could never be publicized.  They engaged in a game of cat and mouse that lasted a number of months.  During those months they had a number of physical engagements that would ultimately lead to the two becoming a couple despite Proximo’s standing orders.  Through some convincing, Muriel was forced to delete whatever data she had on the Priest of the OPH.  A running joke between the two is that Proximo was never actually told what the contained within the encrypted information, and Muriel still refuses to tell him.

Muriel wears a ”cyber-fiber” protective suit that provides basic protection of some forms of blunt attacks and other kinetic forces such as falls from potentially crippling heights.  If you notice on her arms, she also has a wet-wired Rune installed on her right arm.  Her Rune is strength bolstering.  If a job requires a bit of muscle, she’ll let her Rune do the talking.

Ultimately I want to have two more posters finished for the teaser collage including all four images for the story.  However with so much other work in the way, I’m not sure how soon that’ll happen.

Any questions?  Suggestions?  Lemme know.

The doctor is clocking out.

Since Dr. Novachord unveiled more work on his site, VODPulse, he’s given me permission to post the work on the logo for the site.  It’s pretty much done with the exception of a few more lighting effects I think it might need, and the final versions of the fonts to use.  What me and the good doctor have to do now is make sure we can get this spiffy logo to fit upon the header area of the site.

First of was the conception of the logo.  Dr. Novachord knew in his mind exactly what he wanted:

He explained to me that one of the test logos he had created was coated in the worst flavor of failsauce.  I never got to see it, however I wanted to see the direction he was taking.  Alas, he didn’t have a copy to show me at the time, but the few things that he said to me that stuck in my mind was a crazy explosion; Michael Bay style, blowing a flat panel television apart with a line from an EKG breaking through it.

A few days later I came up with a few thumbnails, and here was the one we agreed upon.

The image above was the first image we were working with.  As you can see, I’m shooting for a feeling of force from the blast.  I didn’t sketch in the EKG since we were working on two different kinds.  An EKG that is going to the extreme right side through the TV and the blast and an EKG that is sort of flying toward the viewer.

Here are the PS edits of the files I toyed around with.

The first image, I created the 3d-version of the logo with the EKG popping out towards the viewer.  The second image, you can clearly see where I made the EKG read shoot outwards towards the absolute right.  So far, Dr. Novachord wanted the image shooting out towards the viewer.  I really dug the thumbnail of the 3D EKG instead of the horizontal version.

When we Doctors decided to select the logo with the 3D image I continued to finish out the line work for the logo.

You can see that I had some questions about what sort of EKG line to use breaking out of the television that was being shown.  Dr. Novachord desired the EKG line with the sharper set of lines.  Which was the “Test-EKG2 explosion with the Sharp lines.”  After a good stint of figuring out what colors I wanted to lines he wanted I began coloring the image.  I had a slew of other sorts of problems that came up as a result of a lack of planning on my part, but I was able to clearly find a work around for what was happening.  Since I wanted to add a more than normal cel-shaded effect to the explosion, I needed to add a few Photoshop filters to create the lighting for the blast behind the television.  This is where the fun began.  I had to get rid of the actual lines that outlined the explosion and create a form of filtered explosion that worked, yet didn’t take away form the colors that made up the explosion as a whole, IF that makes any sense.  These are what I came up with that Dr. Novachord seemed to appreciate.

I’m hoping you can feel the blast from the TV completely being rocked from the explosion in the background.  I added some lighting effects that ended up needing to be redone during the post process.  Afterwards, I finally threw in the EKG line that was supposed to be ripping through the television and the blast itself.  It came out looking like this:

I think it looks alright as something’s been bothering me since I reached this point.  As I stated before, there is a lot of work to be done, and we’re going to complete it whence the good Doctor returns from his trip in Canuckia. (Canada)  Once he’s back, we’ll have this bad boy up and finished and added to his site. 

The main issue is the image you see is probably going to be a WHOLE lot smaller than what you see right now.  I like to work really huge so I can get all sorts of detail in and in case the client might want to work a bit larger.  If you’ve got any questions about it, I’ll be sure to answer.

I’ve got work in the morning so I’m gettin’ this sent up now.  I’ll catch you guys on the weekend with an update hopefully, and if not, I’ll see you next week.

Peace, out.

Greetings from the rear everybody!  Moved back from the front for a little rest and relaxation.

I’ve finally got some other commissions that were overdue turned into a few people, and now I’m down to only a few left.  I’m pretty proud of myself.  These moments don’t come often to me, so please….allow me to relish in the moment of achievement.

Out of the commissions that I have left, one of my friends paid me to provide him with a mock comic book cover for one of the greatest cartoons on televison at the moment:  The Venture Bros.

I needed inspiration to start working on this project so I attained the 3rd season on DVD, and it was amazing.  Sadly, I ended up watching it more than working on the comission, but my friend, Mackie warned me that it was going to happen.  I watched the season in like two days at work.  Oh well, I’ve since been pumped to finish this up.  However since I’ve started it, I realized that I was going to need a post for this week and Mackie has decided to be completely “unamurrican” (He’s totally Canadian, seriously.) and not let me post anything more than these two images on what we agreed to create.  I think it’s gonna work out pretty well though.  I think I’m going to shoot for a more of a stylized painted approach rather than stick to the usual cel-shade this time around.  I need to completely refresh my skills.  Amazingly, I actually started off digitally painting;  however not along the same skill levels that Dr. Conspicuous and his amazing realism, but it was the way to work for me at the time….but now that I’ve been hooked on the animator’s cel-shading, my painting part of my brain has completely atrophied.  I plan to rectify that with this piece.  Gotta get that muscle back to its full “stre-unth.”

So here is the thumbnail and the first rough that I ended up working on earlier this week:

The final rough that me and Mackie agreed upon.

From the poses here, it’s sort of an upward shot of both Brock Samson and Dr. Thaddeus Venture.  It’s probably pretty sketchy to tell but you can sort of see Brock keeping the Venture back from something that’s glowing in the foreground in front of them.  Normally when I usually sketch out my work, I’ll always draw up another rough image with detail in pencil.  This time around….I did it completely rockstar and didn’t use sketches to get some of the work started on Brock.  It’s all still crazy rough, and it took me way too long to do it though, longer than I would if I just went over the lines again in Illustrator.  I probably won’t do it for Dr. Venture.  Peep Brock below:

The art style of the show is rather special to me.  So as I was drawing up Brock’s face and body, I realized how my “cartoony” art style is very similar to the show, potentially making this project a breeze thus far.  Obviously they use a bit more facial detail when doing close-ups in show than I would normally use, but I threw those in because Brock isn’t Brock without with his angry face crinkles.

One of my main concerns at this point would be the various line weights that I’m using for the outlines are essentially going to be gone if I’m going to go the painted approach to the image.  I’m not quite sure what I’m going to do about that yet, but I’ll deal with it when arrive at that juncture.  Wish me luck, kids.

Peace, love, and whiskey.  I’m out.  See you next week!