CGAA Summer Speedpaint Challenge: High Noon on the Veldt

One poor, probably lost Voortrekker's day just got a lot worse.

CGAA ACT Speedpaint Challenge 01

All right, all right, so it's twenty minutes past midnight on day two. I'm nocturnal, don't judge me.

In other news, abstraction and I still don't get along. We had an agreement; I didn't like it, it didn't like me. We were considering a mutually beneficial restraining order until this came along.

Mostly-Blind Study of 'Shipwreck in a Rocky Inlet' - Carlo Bonavia

Did something a little different today. In the vein of the Technical Challenge in the Great British Bake-Off, where the contestants are required to use their baking knowledge and instinct to replicate a bare-bones recipe, I decided to make a very quick study from a painting - in this case, Carlo Bonavia's 'Shipwreck in a Rocky Inlet'. From there I no longer looked at the original, instead relying on my early sketch and my painting knowse to highlight what I did and didn't know.

Shipwreck in a Rocky Inlet - Carlo Bonavia, 1757

My initial sketch, the only part of the painting that actually referenced the original. Observe the absenve of the ship - this continues the whole way through, because I was more interested in the overall landscape than the fiddly details of the ship.

 

Attempting to come to terms with that rock.

Ehhh... let's add 'rock' to the list of things I need to study.

Let's throw 'clouds' onto that list, too.

And my final, with distinctly absent shipwreck and a lighthouse that was definitely not there in the original. It needed something to be sitting there, and that whole side was dark, so a lighthouse seemed the obvious choice. Oh, and just for good measure, put 'water' on the list as well.

And here's the original again, for comparison's sake. Goddamn, did I lose track of it. Nevertheless, despite not having a technically brilliant outcome, I learnt a lot about what I don't know, which in some cases is far more important than actually learning something objectively useful.

CGAA Speedpaint Challenge - Day 9

'The Ice-Castle of the Yeti King'

25 minutes

I'm speeding up! This was pretty fun; came about a bit saturated, but at least it reads as blisteringly cold. Wanted more of a fortress feel than a castle, with a small village populated by serfs providing labour in exchange for safety within the walls.

CGAA Speedpaint Challenge - Day 7

'Exclusive! Santa's System for Simultaneous Present Delivery Revealed!'

25 minutes

I dunno, man. It started out with the elf reading the paper and went on from there. As you can see, value is still not my strong point.

CGAA Speedpaint Challenge - Day 3

The Gingerbread Palace in the City of Sweets

1 hour-ish

I told myself that I wouldn't take longer than half an hour on this one - see how well that worked. I'm not happy with the final result, courtesy of spending most of the time working on it fighting the values until I decided 'stuff it'. Should've started in black and white. Ah well, live and learn.

CGAA Speedpaint Challenge - Day 1

'A Christmas Tree Jungle'

40 minutes

Okay, so it's more a forest than a jungle, but I am an absolute sucker for those old-timey Christmas cards with their scenes of Victorian-ish winter life. Besides, this is hardly the first time I've taken liberties with a brief.

Photo Paintings

 This week Phil had us working from photo scraps to make colour schemes and find shapes and compositions. Fun times!

'La Forête de Mille Coleurs', because everything sounds more artistic in French.

'Monstrous Pachyderm' - nice colour, but seriously unrefined. That gets fixed.

'A Misplaced Boat' - this one was fun with colour, but for some reason I lost interest once the forms were all blocked in.

And finally, 'The Elephant Queen, or, The Indian Elephant as Imagined by Howard Phillips Lovecraft'. This was far too much fun.

Rhymes With Nantucket

I have two weeks left, a bunch of stuff to do, and absolutely zero patience left with this painting. I can read it, I'm not being graded on it and I have stopped giving any tosses at all about it. I'll figure out the surveillance room on the fly. Let the building begin.

Professionalism!

Photoshop Speedpaints

Photoshop Phil had us working at ludicrous speed today - 15 minutes on each set of three sketches, or 5 minutes/sketch. It was pretty fun, and you can see my work loosen up with each sketch.

 

We then grabbed our favourite of the panels and worked into it for ten more minutes; amazing the difference a deadline makes! Phil showed me how to make crisp snow shadows with the lasso tool, which not only sped me up but immensely improved the final outcome.

Not Dead... Yet

I've basically lost the past week thanks to a flu-y thing that's knocked me on my backside, but I've got a bit of work to show for it.

Step one of that painting (contextualisation has been worked out, I'll be incorporating the surveillance room into the shot, but for now this is what I'm going with). Super blurry and loose, apologies for that, should be finished by Monday.

Then my brain decided it couldn't focus on Photoshop so I tried making a few 3D assets for the scene instead.

 Well, this isn't so bad...

Easy! Let's try something a little trickier...

Ugh... edges. H'okay, maybe something a little simpler...

Oh god, oh god! Abort! Abort! Mission failed! All units, fall back! Oh god, there's triangles everywhere! Fall back!

So yeah. Unproductive week, courtesy of my immune system not caring that I have a deadline.

Atlas Final

 

And the atlas is done. I went for a sort of world-tree/Yggdrasil motif for the cover, rather than text. It was almost a Celtic knotwork tree until I realised that I don't hate myself quite that much. Also, the reason #5 looks good is because I've seen it before. I have no idea where, but I am 98% certain it already exists.


EDIT: Figured out where it was from. Apparently I was channeling Ursula Vernon.

There are worse people to channel.

Hero Prop Concepts - Atlas Mundi

The Soldier's hero prop is an atlas. Basic structure of it is done, it's codex-bound to suggest being ancient (and thus almost certainly stolen). The covers and inside maps haven't been designed, so that's what's coming next.

Figuring It Out

Two more concept painting sketches. These two were disproportionately difficult and time-consuming (you can see where I got bored and frustrated), and after I gave up on them I worked out why. Neither of the two paintings looked like the space I wanted them to be, because I already had figured out and put down that space; I just didn't realise it.

Obviously it will take some tweaking and refinement, but at the very least I now know what I'm doing.

Initial Colour Thoughts

Starting to think about colour. None of these feel particularly 'right' to me; perhaps it's just the low level of finish, but I have no doubt it's also my innate struggle with surface colour and making them work together in realistic lighting.

Clockwork Soldier Initial Thoughts and Thumbnails

Upon talking to Phil, I've reached the conclusion that this clockwork soldier is a weapon of war, a 'person of mass destruction'. I'm alternating between it being purely a clockwork automaton that has somehow developed sentience and a human brain (or part of one) piloting a clockwork body. Either way, the clockwork soldier has become outmoded and is no longer an effective weapon, so his creators want rid of him. Unfortunately, he is very well-made; so well-made, in fact, as to be completely tamper-proof, so deconstructing him is out of the question, and simply setting him free is too risky given his weaponised nature. As a result, he has been locked away and forgotten in some vault or bunker somewhere, to wait for the day he finally stops.

Phil and I discussed the possibility of the soldier being a reluctant warrior, not wanting to harm anyone but, being what he is, having no other choice. I imagine him as quite a gentle soul, not naturally aggressive but with a truly impressive in-built arsenal that makes him a danger to be near. Locked away in his vault he tries to hang on to the human soul he either has or developed, surrounding himself with personal treasures and trying to make the dead, empty vault into a home. Despite being completely alone and isolated he still tries to live as well as he can.

A not-so-quick concept painting where I just noodled with  design and tried to force myself to design in perspective and on the fly, something I really struggle with (check out all the isometric drawings in the thumbnails for proof of this). Not fond of the actual rendering, but design and perspective-wise I'm not unhappy at all.

And, just to finish, a super-quick study of Al Capone's prison cell, to get a feel for a 'home-y' prison.

Photoshop Exercises 2

And part two, the more refined stuff. #1 was originally just an attempt to get out an idea that's been chasing me for years and has never quite come out properly that accidentally became an exercise in three-point perspective. #2 was just noodling with colour and composition, while #3 appears to be me channelling myself this time last year when I did 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. What it's actually supposed to be I don't even know any more.

Photoshop Exercises 1

Aaaand this is part one of two of what I've been up to in Photoshop Phil's classes. First four are quick thumbnails to get a feel for composition, last two are (rather obviously) perspective exercises. #2 feels like it could go somewhere, if I zoomed it out and threw in some curvature to the bridge, as well as define the three 'layers' of the painting more. #3 was a (possibly ill-advised) attempt at replicating a fisheye lens. Not sure if it worked, but it was interesting if nothing else.