Oriax Reloaded

This is revisit of a character from The Silver Cord graphic novel I worked on named Oriax. If you have not read the novel you can read it on line for free and download a PDF version as well on the website http://silver-cord.net/ The guys over at Disruptive Media http://www.disruptivepublishers.com/index.php showed interest in making a line of Silver Cord Dynamic Themes for Playstation 3 users. Co-Creator Steve Masseroni asked if I would do a color treatment of Oriax for the themes and give him some golden skin. There is a bunch of cool things possibly in the works for The Silver Cord, I'll keep you all posted as it happens, for now here is my redo of Oriax followed by the quick color comp I sent to Steve for approval and The original concept art by Steve Masseroni.

Rapper JAY Z

From Wikipedia: Shawn Corey Carter (born December 4, 1969), better known by his stage name Jay-Z, is an American rapper, songwriter, record producer and entrepreneur. He is one of the most financially successful hip hop artists and entrepreneurs in America, having a net worth of over $450 million as of 2011. He has sold approximately 50 million albums worldwide, while receiving fourteen Grammy Awards for his musical work, and numerous additional nominations. He is consistently ranked as one of the greatest rappers of all-time. He was ranked #1 by MTV in their list of The Greatest MCs of All-Time in 2006. Two of his albums, Reasonable Doubt (1996) and The Blueprint (2001) are considered landmarks in the genre with both of them being ranked in Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. Blender included the former on their 500 CDs You Must Own Before You Die. Jay-Z co-owns the 40/40 Club, is part-owner of the NBA's Brooklyn Nets and is also the creator of the line Rocawear. He is the former CEO of Def Jam Recordings, one of the three founders of Roc-A-Fella Records, and the founder of Roc Nation. As an artist, he holds the record for most number one albums by a solo artist on the Billboard 200 with eleven. Jay-Z also has had four number ones on the Billboard Hot 100, one as lead artist. He married American R&B singer Beyoncé Knowles on April 4, 2008. They gave birth to a daughter named Blue Ivy Carter in January 2012. On December 11, 2009, Jay-Z was ranked as the 10th most successful artist of 2000s by Billboard and ranking as the 5th top solo male artist and as the 4th top rapper behind Eminem, Nelly, and 50 Cent. He is also ranked the 88th greatest artist of all time, according to Rolling Stone. From my hometown Brooklyn New York, here is my caricature of Jay -Z followed by the reference pic and some process shots.

Alchemy sketches

This is a series of ideas I came up with in the Alchemy program that will be used to create characters and paintings in Photoshop. The majority of them were created using Alchemy's mirror function. I love the randomness of the program, It gives me yet another technique to create images from abstract chaos.

Google Sketch_up compositions

Here is a few thumbnails generated using google's 3D program Sketch-up version 8. Just simple shapes obviously nothing special here, using the same model and lighting it differently and zooming and panning around the model to generate some interesting compositions that will later be used as a base to paint over in photoshop. Below that are some more creature design explorations and the beginning of a dinosaur model done in z-brush.

Studying The Studies

Studying figure drawing and anatomy from the usual suspects: George Bridgman, Kent Hultgren, Burne Hogarth, Gottfried Bammes, Charles Bargue among others. Also from pics of random people photos I have saved on my computer.

Scribbles

Some Gesture drawings and creature / Alien design thumbnails from the past few days.

Some Process shots

Here is a concept of a mech possibly inspecting some kind of mines? Not sure what they are but I thought it was alright to leave vague both in detail and description. It works as a concept though. Below the piece are some process shots, so you can see the progression from abstract to something more recognizable.

Sons Of Anarchy-Ron Perlman

From Wikipedia: Ronald N. "Ron" Perlman (born April 13, 1950) is an American television, film and voice actor. He is known for having played Vincent in the TV series Beauty and the Beast (for which he won a Golden Globe), a Deathstroke figure known as Slade in the animated series Teen Titans, Clarence "Clay" Morrow in Sons of Anarchy, the comic book character Hellboy in both the film of that name and its sequel, and as the narrator of the post-apocalyptic game series Fallout. In 2010 he provided the voice of the Stabbington brothers in Tangled, Disney's animated film adaptation of "Rapunzel". He is currently the narrator of the television series 1000 Ways to Die on Spike Below is my caricature followed by a screen grab process shot and some pics of the actor in and out of make-up.

Creature ideation and development

Some creature development for a personal project of mine. Using z-brush as a thumbnail generator allows for many happy accidents:) These Thumbnails were made by using a default model and filling it in black in z-brush, then using the layers changing and pushing and pulling the shapes around, then carry them into photoshop. Focusing mostly on the design and silhouette shapes and not the details. Z-brush master Cesar Decol Jr. is doing a creature design workshop where he goes into detail about this technique. He's a great teacher, I watched a webinar recently that he conducted with Ryan Kingslien of visualarium.com and learned tons. Definately take a look around the site, these guys know thier stuff.

Ron Perlman Studies

Some quick thumbnail studies of actor Ron Perlman. Getting my ideas ready for my next caricature.

More Than Meets The Eye

A couple of quick and dirty Transformers inspired helmet designs. These were generated using the mirror functions in Alchemy and Corel Painter 12, the tweaking and some quick textures in Photoshop. It really is just two different helmets that were tweaked to make a few more ideas.

Creature Concept

This is the dragon design that I posted as a sneak peek in the last post. Below it is the first pass based on the thumbnail on the upper left corner. As you can see the horns and wing did not make sense with the anatomy so they got scrapped for a better design. I used a picture of a plate of BBQ Chicken and Beef ribs that me and my wife made for the 4th of July for my color pallet. Proof that inspiration can come from anywhere:) This was done as an exercise for Anthony Jones's creature design course on Schoolism.com

Alex In Wonderland?

Here is an illustration I did using an abstract ink blot thumbnail as a jump off point. The ink blots just looked like mushrooms to me, so I thought why not do a cool version of Absalom with a gas mask hookah and a Steam punk garbed character that's obviously a long way from home. And while we are on the subject of Alice In Wonderland... I finally finished the Johnny Depp/ Tim Burton caricature I was working on. I can't even count how many projects these two have done together. I love their collaborations. I wonder if Tim gets jealous when Gore Verbinski uses Depp in his films:) Next up is a W.I.P. of another assignment for Anthony Jones's creature course. Followed by some random doodles. enjoy:)