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Storn's Art & Characters thread.


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Re: Storn's Art & Characters thread.

 

The ArtOrder concept tuesday rolls along and this is the next installment.

Link: http://theartorder.com/?p=606

 

This is my "swiss army knife" concept. It is an Elven Sky Chariot, and it is tries to live up to Jon's expectation of

"This is a machine that has more add-on’s than you can imagine. It is the MacGyver of machinery. Able to do anything, anytime."

 

I actually kept the "add-ons" to a minimum, but the addition of manipulative "etherkinetic" arms I think gives it the aspect of being able to meet lots of mission parameters.

 

I had an odd inspiration for this one... as a kid, I was very much into building Tamiya tanks from WWII. Especially those from the North Africa campaign (Matildas, Mark IVs and Grants...oh my!). Those models, especially the SAS lorries and jeeps really captured my imagination. I love all the gear that was just slapdashed onto these vehicles.... shovels, axes, bedrolls, camouflage nets, you name it. It was that practicality of the soldier that I tried to infuse into this image. Yup, its fantasy, but ya still need a bedroll, cause you ain't sleeping that Elven "egg". So there is all kinds of odd gear spackled to my Elven Sky Chariot.

 

elvenskychariot72.jpg

 

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Re: Storn's Art & Characters thread.

 

Okay, y'all get a repeat of the elven sky chariot... but I wanted to gang up all three flier concepts for the upcoming Roaring Skies challenge over at the ArtOrder blog. Link to the ArtOrder blog: http://theartorder.com/?p=606

 

I really had fun with this... just goofy fun.

 

The Warforged is kinda Eberron specific... but the thought of giant dudes plugging themselves into even more gigantic machines seemed kinda fun to me.

 

Illthids using their mouths to manipulate their machines seemed.... appropriately gross to me.

 

Hope y'all like...

 

StornCookRoarSkyTrio.jpg

 

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Re: Storn's Art & Characters thread.

 

Three super hero/villain concepts for ya peepers.

 

First up, Quagga, which I didn't know until I took this commission, is an extinct animal, somewhat similar to the zebra. The client had a very specific photo to work from and I gather she is a speedster.

 

Quagga72.jpg

 

Next is Carapace... big bruiser type.

 

Carapace72.jpg

 

Last is a teke of some sort. The patron wanted normal street clothes.

 

Tendril72.jpg

 

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Re: Storn's Art & Characters thread.

 

Here is some fun feedback from the clients. A friend of the below shown couple commissioned from me a picture of their characters as a wedding present. They were so nice to send me a photo of them posing with the pic in question. check it out. gave me a wide smile when I got in the email.

 

RauceJBIIIF72.jpg

 

weddingpic.jpg

 

And then the same patron got one done of his very own characters done.

 

SnipeF72.jpg

 

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Re: Storn's Art & Characters thread.

 

I pride myself on meeting patron's visual requests and often times, exceeding them. Yah, that sounds a bit boastful, but I would like to think I'm pretty good at this gig. But boy, the last couple of days, I've been hammered by not quite meeting the expectations of the patrons. On Tendril, seen above, the patron actually was quite clear on wanting the psi-tendrils to come from her hands... I just simply missed that in the reading of his write up of her. Duh. (I've since fixed it, it is why I try to save things on layers in a PSD format of my "in progess" art files). Then I made Snipe's hair too orange-red... supposed to be more brown.

 

Then there is doing art for friends and characters you know and love. Any picture that I do for my own table based on established characters take about twice as long. Because I'm fretting about getting that vibe JUST right. And god forbid, I have to do one of my own. Then it is 3x as long. As I know that character so much more intimately than others. Something about characters who I don't know, just working from their descriptions from patrons, is very freeing. Or if they are very new to the table and not a lot of expectations have been built up. For the record, I've tried about 6 versions of my main RDU Champions character, Vector, and have never been happy with the result.

 

So, when Neil and Geoff ask me to do Geoff's Hurricane for RDU, I said sure, because despite what I just said, I LOVE doing characters from our actual games. Love it. But this was a concept from, oh, say a couple years ago... and then I had both Geoff and Neil weighing in on the visuals. Which is cool. However, I went and emphasized all the wrong things. Geoff mentioned Hurricane being a bit cocky. But he also mentioned that he was immortal, born in 1588. Neil wanted some real gravitas to this character, as in the RDU, Hurricane is supposed to be a BIG GUN. Geoff really wanted the RAF symbol an the color scheme to draw from the WWII Hawker Hurricane fighter. There was some talk between the two of them about retro looks and jumpsuits and so on.

 

Which I did. And I did this. And they weren't happy.

 

Hurricane72.jpg

 

So the word "regal" came up for the redux. Wanted more intimidating. Earth tones and no cape... tough to make regal, let me tell ya. But I tried again. We will see if this one passes muster. And oh, yeah, then by looking at the character sheet, I noticed a whole mess of wind powers... so I snuck that into the visual as well.

 

huricane272.jpg

 

Now, I'm not complaining. I'm actually chuckling at my own hubris. I thought y'all might be amused as well. And once again realizing what a responsibility it is to give a visual to such powerful imaginary constructs that exist in an entire table's imaginations.

 

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Re: Storn's Art & Characters thread.

 

I'm sure your "hubris" has enriched a few games that will snag the first piece for a visual reference. I know I had you give the commission you did for me a minor tweak and it took you no time to respond with a new pic. I am still amazed by the end result and your talent. And you can't beat the value.

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Re: Storn's Art & Characters thread.

 

Regal, to me, is how Alan Davis draws Captain Britain. Like gravity doesn't weigh him down and the sun is shining just for him, things he takes for granted as divine right. Not only sure of his place in the world but that the world likes having him be a part of it. Paternalistic, but not patronizing, and also noblesse oblige. Someone who can stand akimbo and not be self-conscious, ironic or cheesy.

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Re: Storn's Art & Characters thread.

 

Regal' date=' to me, is how Alan Davis draws Captain Britain. Like gravity doesn't weigh him down and the sun is shining just for him, things he takes for granted as divine right. Not only sure of his place in the world but that the world likes having him be a part of it. Paternalistic, but not patronizing, and also noblesse oblige. Someone who can stand akimbo and not be self-conscious, ironic or cheesy.[/quote']

 

Quite.

 

JG

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Re: Storn's Art & Characters thread.

 

Here is my version of Tuatha for a Champions superhero game I've been involved with. The character is a hybrid speedster-mentalist-mystic power armor conglomeration.

 

This is the first time I've "inked" and "pencilled" totally digitally. Usually I pencil and ink by hand. Some fantasy stuff, I skip the inking and color over pencils.. for a non-comic look. But with some new software, I wanted to see if I could do it.

 

It took me about 3x as long as a usual commission. I find especially the inking, new to Gimp, very difficult... took me a bit to get a solid thick to thin and vice versa solid black line. When I ink by hand, my hand doesn't shake, but the wacom -Gimp inking- I got some pretty shaky line as my tablet seems to be super sensitive... especially for long strokes along a horizontal plane. But overall, I'm happy with the outcome.

 

Tuatha72.jpg

 

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Re: Storn's Art & Characters thread.

 

Here is my version of Tuatha for a Champions superhero game I've been involved with. The character is a hybrid speedster-mentalist-mystic power armor conglomeration.

 

This is the first time I've "inked" and "pencilled" totally digitally. Usually I pencil and ink by hand. Some fantasy stuff, I skip the inking and color over pencils.. for a non-comic look. But with some new software, I wanted to see if I could do it.

 

It took me about 3x as long as a usual commission. I find especially the inking, new to Gimp, very difficult... took me a bit to get a solid thick to thin and vice versa solid black line. When I ink by hand, my hand doesn't shake, but the wacom -Gimp inking- I got some pretty shaky line as my tablet seems to be super sensitive... especially for long strokes along a horizontal plane. But overall, I'm happy with the outcome.

 

Tuatha72.jpg

 

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Looks really good Storn ... are you using an Intuos or Cintiq tablet?

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Re: Storn's Art & Characters thread.

 

Do you ever encounter the difficulty I've run into recently in Illustrator of the pen point suddenly zooming off in a random direction? I thought I'd take the recent death of the external hard drive I had some of my HERO character art on as an excuse to redo them in a different purely digital style (inspired by Dr. Destiny's work), and while I like the results so far it's hella frustrating to be carefully working on an intricate outline and then have to stop and delete a long string of unwanted anchor points.

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Re: Storn's Art & Characters thread.

 

Needs Celtic symbols and more bronze coloring to be prefect, but very good all the same.

 

 

More please

 

 

QM

 

It has celtic symbol right there on the chest... that is a celtic knot circle... and then knots on the arms. But I wanted 'em very indistinct and faded. Not overt at all.

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