Wednesday 14 December 2011

Digital Art - "Mr Stork"


Rough pen sketch, scanned
then placed over a
textured background
Another of my entries for the Imagine FX magazine forum weekly competition.

Title: "Mr Stork"

Brief: "Produce a full colour, full body, character design for Science Officer/First Officer Mr Stork"

Description/Info: "Following on from challenges #193 and #202 - Mr Stork serves under Captain James Quack as the Starship Interpond's stork like Science Officer/First Officer . Based on the very similarly named Mr Spock from Star Trek, and good friends with Captain Quack, Lieutenant Uhurow and Dr "Bones" Macaw."

Work in progress
It flopped a bit in the competition, due to not being clearly 'Spock-like', but I was personally rather pleased with this one.

I went for more of a retro-scifi Flash Gordon/Buck Rogers look, and it turned out to be a fun, vibrant little character which I started and finished within 4-5 hours. For this version I strengthened a couple of highlights and added a couple of antennae on the little sidekick alien, but it's otherwise the same as the final competition version.

Final Painting

All work is the © copyright of W.D.Lee and/or the respective companies, individuals or organisations to which the work is related. No infringement is intentional. No reproduction or copying is permitted without express permission.

Monday 12 December 2011

Digital Art - "Dark Days"


One of my entries for the Imagine FX magazine forum monthly competition.

Title: "Blade Runner"

Description: "Ridley Scott has decided to remake Blade Runner with the advantage of today's SFX. He's looking for a Concept Artist who can best envision what this world might look like."

Pen and Marker concept illustration
I spent quite a bit of time on this one, and I'm reasonably happy with the results. Given that the brief described a remake of the film and Ridley Scott is in fact genuinely making a sequel, I originally thought I might do something in a more 'up-beat' style. Perhaps envisaging one of the off-world colonies that were never seen in the original film, but that would share visual similarities. After seeing some of the other entries, however, I realised that people were expecting something more reminiscent of the original film, so I went for the dark and moody atmosphere already established. Perhaps not the best choice in hindsight, but it was fun to do something in a Blade Runner style anyway.

I started with a quick pencil sketch, that I then went over in ink. Once I had erased the pencil, I shaded it with markers, to create my initial concept illustration. When scanned, I then roughly coloured this, as a guide for the larger full piece.

In order to keep the atmosphere without directly copying, I avoided looking at too much reference material from the film. I wanted things to be filtered through my own imperfect memories, that way alterations that creep in hopefully introduce a few unique elements to the otherwise established look and feel. There's a bit of everything in there, for Blade Runner fans. A sushi bar with neon lighting, a cityscape in the background with flames from one of the buildings, an antennae-laden blimp advertising the off-world colonies, a spinner launching or landing, pedestrians with self-illuminating umbrellas, sheets of rain and of course a suspicious looking character in a futuristic trench-coat...
Final Painting
All work is the © copyright of W.D.Lee and/or the respective companies, individuals or organisations to which the work is related. No infringement is intentional. No reproduction or copying is permitted without express permission.

Sunday 11 December 2011

Digital Art - "Batcave"


Initial sketched ideas
My apologies to any readers, as I haven't updated my blog for a long time. On the plus side, there's a few things I can post, so here's the first of what I plan to be three new updates in the next day or so.

This is another of my entries for the Imagine FX magazine forum weekly competition.

Title: "The Bat Cave"

Brief: "Depict the Bat Cave how you think it would look"

Description: "Paint the Bat Cave in a graphic novel style (dark comic style), include control panels, and show an innovate entry/exit."

Early Work In Progress
I wasn't especially pleased with how this one came out, but it was good fun and achieved fairly quickly. You'll notice that for speed, I also re-used my vehicle design from a post or two earlier, as a new version of the Batmobile.

Final painting

All work is the © copyright of W.D.Lee and/or the respective companies, individuals or organisations to which the work is related. No infringement is intentional. No reproduction or copying is permitted without express permission.