Train Guy Update

I've been pretty busy on my freelance projects, and getting stuff together for thought bubble (under a month left now...) so I haven't been able to add much of 'Train Guy' project for a time. 

Currently the game revolves around brawling atop of a moving train to protect it's cargo, key part of this is obviously the design for the actual trains. Fundamentally I want to have an upgradeable train that consists of 3-4 upgradable components, all of which can be upgraded with more visually outlandish iterations. In short I wanted to have a train that can part by part be upgraded from a old vintage Steamer, to a futuristic Mag-Rail bullet train, via some glorious 30's sleek body work (I'm kind of a fan of incongruity) Below is the first step of dividing assigning sections to the an upgradable quality. (Cant wait to mock up some variations based on these)

While the visual aesthetic is still floating around a few possibilities I really loved looking at the old rusting trains with pipes valves and tanks galore, but even condensing some of that into a reasonable simple design was really tricky. I realised pretty quickly that this sort of inorganic design is actually pretty challenging to get down through drawing and painting, so this was a great project to switch to 3D for a little fleshing out. 

Ultimately this game could even be in 3d at this stage so it's been a really good exercise in figuring out the  direction for this project this has been as much of a 'game' design exercise as a visual one.

 It's a bit of a slow train, but for now I feel it's getting somewhere.

Isometric assets

Recently been playing around with doing some isometric game stuff. My personal work tends to the untidier side of things at the moment, and I've been doing some really rough and ready concept work over late summer early autumn too - so it's been a while since I've done any fully rendered stuff. Actually been pretty fun! 

Stamps!

Quick WIP preview of my comic project for Thought Bubble this year. It's um, about stamps.

Hands On

An offshoot from my ongoing 'Train Guy' project. Once I've perfected getting the quality nice these are hopefully going to be prints.

Priestess Process (sort of)

I don't tend to do process stuff of my pictures, technically speaking I don't feel my process is necessarily disciplined enough to warrant it. I've been working professionally as an artist and designer for five or six years now (and  drawing for significantly longer) and as time's gone on I get much less of a kick out of rendering for rendering's sake, and get more caught up in the subject matter and mental processes of drawing from imagination, I mean life's short right? 

Could be a part of how anyone's creative engagement with their work will inevitably change, (or could just be damn laziness...) either way here's kind of a 'creative' process I went through in looking at a priestess type character. Ultimately I think it was abandoned as concept, but it was fun working through these various stages, thematically and stylistically.   

Anyhoo- signed up for the Schoolism workshops in London next month so that'll be a chance to re-engage with the process side of things no-doubt :)

Train Guy: A Lover and a Fighter

Been  having fun designing this guy. Started off with a loose Bauhaus/Constructivist feel, with silly proportions, but wanted to flesh him out in his physicality with these paintings.

 Initially a tongue in cheek Desperate Dan like character who is all things to all men I wanted to be stern and combative, but also creative and gentle. It's been fun drawing a character with silly arms doing a variety of tasks. Next step is to jump back onto the really angular, possibly vector style to see if the solidity of these painted versions can recombine with something more stylistically true to the initial stylistic inspiration of the constructivist figures of old Russian propaganda.

Guilty Faces...

Some test images from a current side project, based on some of my street sketches of the past 6 months, I was keen to have a rough and unpolished way to include these into something. Currently planned to be involved into a comic, I'm deliberately keeping things a bit wonky and messy on this one as its all being done very piece-meal, and the real goal on this is to combine into a small coherent story, so rougher the better at this stage, will probably weed out the weaker images later down the line.