12-10-13

Finished up Jezal:

12-9-13

Here's the next part of the First Law character designs:

Jezal Dan Luthar, officer of the Kings Army. 

12-3-13

Continuing with the First Law Trilogy theme, here's Inquisitor Sand Dan Glokta:

I had a lot of fun with this, partly because he's pretty much the polar opposite of Logen (both in terms of character and the design), and partly because I've found a new technique for drawing characters quickly and cleanly:

Get the design down quick with a rough greyscale sketch, then move in with a detailed line drawing. Color overlays on top, then just work and refine things. Figure out all the issues with proportion and pose early, so everything after is merely a matter of cleaning up.

Just for fun, here's a jig I made to do some color correction on the coat:

Blue Man Glokta!

12-2-13

Finished up Logen:

And just for fun, here's a close-up on the face:

12/1/13

More and better Logen Ninefingers, the Bloody Nine:

8-15-13

What has my old friend Kezar Stanyon been up to?

Fully armed and armored, with a retractable helmet and a pair of anti-projectile/anti-personnel launchers on the shoulders. 

8-14-13

On to the Frigate:

Twice the size of the Corvette, the Frigate can carry either a pair of railguns and a large number of missiles, or an additional set of point-defense gauss cannons and a laser cannon aimed through a 2 meter mirror, which gives it an effective range of around 100 km.

8-12-13

I'm taking the whole "realistic spaceship" thing in a slightly different direction:

The Corvette is still realistic in that it has no magical shields, no artificial gravity and no faster-than-light anythings, but I've scaled back the size of the the fuel tanks and radiators. The drive-cone(in yellow on the top left) is a borderline-magical drive reaching efficiencies that are likely borderline-impossible. At around 100 feet from nose to tail, this would be the smallest ship that can carry a militarily useful drive and weapon complement. The lower Corvette carries an auxiliary reactor in order to power the railgun in the nose. Both ships mount two (possibly four?) point-defense gauss cannons in the back.

8-6-13

Dusted off Maya 2010 and modeled a space cruiser:

Here's the sketch I was trying to recreate:

While these models are no where near where I need them to be for what I have in mind, the fact that I retained enough memory to bang them out in a few hours gives me hope.

7-30-13

Mars-Pattern Hoplite Power Armor:

Europa-Pattern Hoplite Power Armor

7-29-13

Working on some plausible mid-future spaceships:

That's a Torpedo Frigate up top and a Destroyer underneath. Each carries a few point-defense gauss cannons and the Destroyer mounts a pair of railguns. In order to power those big guns, it needs a reactor in addition to the main drive reactor, making it heavier and more expensive. The red things are radiators so the reactors and crew won't melt.

More to come.

7-22-13

Worked on the Cyberpunk environment a bit more:

Added a few more people, put some missiles on the truck, I think this piece is starting to come a little more alive.

7-15-13

Finished the Plausible Mid-Future Space Marine.

7-10-13

More space marine:

7/8/13

Plausible mid-future Space Marine*:

The main weapon is computer-controlled and aim wherever the user is looking. I figured that a few hundred years from now and we wouldn't be trusting our notoriously unreliable meat** to aim weapons anymore.

*I'm not a fan of the term Space Marine, simply because it's so heavily freighted with baggage. Orbital Marine doesn't really cover it, Vacuum Marine is probably more accurate but has strange cleaning connotations.  Astro-Anything just sounds weird.

**I realize that eyes are still technically meat.

7-1-13

spaceshiptime

6-30-13

Little bit of power armor before bedtime:

6-26-13

More Ninefingers:

More cyberpunk enviroment:

6-14-13

New environment work:

I need to focus on making the crashed drone look more stripped for parts, and add in some more people and make sure they look more ragged and cyborgy, but it's a start.

6-6-13

Finished Mulan:

Also banged out a quick sketch of Logen Ninefingers, from The First Law Trilogy.

5/31/13

Getting there:

Pretty much just the ground and a few little tweaks here and there.

5/30/13

Got some color on Mulan:

5-28-13

So, I gave cyberpunk Mulan another go:

I'm already way happier with this direction: I got the face to actually appear feminine, and at least sort of Chinese. Also, her gaze is pointed at the viewer, instead of needlessly off to the side. I kept the power armor pretty much the same, but thinner in the waist as compared to the hips. The helmet section unfolding shows off some of the visor interior, as well as her completely non-regulation haircut.

5/18/13

Way back in the halcyon days of 2010, I did a futuristic rendition of Aladdin. I always meant to do other, sci-fi cyberpunkish versions of Disney characters, but never got around to it until now.

I figured that Mulan was a good candidate for a sci-fi makeover, so here she is in power armor. I need to get in there and make her face more feminine, and I also need to focus more on the cool-hot contrast with said face and the rest of the piece, but this is definitely going in the right direction.

I'm also inordinately pleased with the rendition of the armor, and how much it looks like the armor from the original movie.

5/15/13

Map time!

After dozens of iterations, I'm pretty pleased with this. Some more tweaking will be done, but this is the bones of it.

Here's a little peek into my process:

I keep a Miller-Projected map of the actual right next to it to help keep things as realistic as possible and scaled interestingly.

4-22-13

Getting pretty close here:

I'll probably poke at it some more tomorrow.

4-18-13 One More Time

Here's another one I've been working on:

Little bit of sci-fi for the homefront.

4-18-13

'Bout ready to call this done:

4-8-13

Still environmentin' :

Looking at it now it would appear that the platform the lighthouse is sitting on is waaaay out of proportion but whatevs.

4-3-13 environment

Quick enviro sketch:

4-3-13

Gonna get this guy finished eventually:

4-1-13

Trying out more environment work:

3-13-13

Trying out a new method for some more Sandman slim:

It allows for a pretty fast ideation of characters, as well as making me use actual lineart again. 

2-21-13

I put in some time on Broken Angels-era Kovacs:

I flipped back through the book and remembered that he gets his left shoulder shredded up in the very beginning and the Wedge pulls him out of the hospital early, hence the scarring.  I just realized he can't have gloves or the bio-plates in his palms to interface with the pistols wont work. Anyway, hope to get this wrapped up soon. Then on to the combat jacket and possibly a depiction of the polymer spacesuit.

2-19-20

Working through the various Kovac's, here he is while fighting for Carrara's Wedge on Sanction 4:

2-14-13

Happy Valentines day from the Mobile Infantry!

2-13-12

We got ourselves a two-fer today!

First up, the second sleeve that Takeshi Kovacs wears in Altered Carbon:

And secondly, yet another whack at the Mobile Infantry Marauder suit: