"Huey Truck" WIP 1

A few directions that ended up at the Helicopter + Wheels design.

One technique that I probably don't use as much as I should is block modeling. It's something I've used infrequently for years but since the lengthened development time and increased complexity rarely pay off for the scale of work I tend to do I usually just sketch through the tricky parts. 

With some coaxing from a friend I decided to do it for the 4th design in the "vehicles that shouldn't have wheels" series I am currently riffing through. 

A render of the Frankenstein Sketchup model at what I would consider my usual 3/4 angle of comfort.

Since Hueys have some pretty fun organic shapes to them - and since Sketchup's 3D warehouse has more than I need to 'kitbash' this thing together I decided to go for it. I wanted to go with the front cockpit of the 'Venom' model but kept the body from the original Huey because the top engine cowling is more streamlined.

Here is what will probably be the final camera angle that I will render with.

Since my goal was only to model this up to ~50% I don't really have any drive to take this into keyshot and render passes or anything. I want to keep this process fast and loose which is always something i struggle with when building upon a 3D foundation. Hopefully I can do this more often and find a better balance.

Mobile Generator

Not as fun or as charming as the "Hermit Crab" but a little more intentionally designed - and I had to get it out of my system none the less.

Basically, a diesel-electric locomotive retrofitted for all terrain use allowing it to move into a position where it could switch over its generators to power camps, construction sites, etc. This one has been further modified for use in snow.

The S.S. Hermit Crab

Ever since working on the 'wasteland scout' I've had a back-burner plan to work on a bunch of different vehicles that have been retrofitted with wheels. Was really nice being able to belt this out in 2 evenings on the couch without worrying to much about it..

 

 

The Stone Breaker Flagship "Caldera"

The Caldera is the premier stone breaker currently seeing action in the northern territories. 

The Caldera acts as the spearhead for the navy's enforcement detachment. Capable of smashing through into coastal and tidal basins traditionally considered unassailable this breaker can clear a path at speed allowing for a dozen support vessels to follow in its cleared wake.

All cannons are elevated and loaded via mechanical assistance and can fire a variety of projectiles ranging from standard penetrators to explosive rounds that can be lobbed ahead to break up stonepack.

The ship is powered by a captive steam system for primary functions and arrays of sterling engines for auxiliary systems. A large central turbine around the collar of the superstructure also harnesses the strong convection current passed from the hull via heat pipes and acts to force air through the ship at high speeds.

The outer plating is created with an alchemic forging process that creates durable, insulated and most importantly, low reaction steel that molten rock cannot bind to.

This started out as a sketch on the iPad Pro using Procreate. At around the halfway point, the limitations of Procreate for compositing and effects were becoming insurmountable so I transitioned to Photoshop for the remainder which helped the workflow but hurt my time given.

This piece started off in the daytime because I felt like night + lava was a bit overdone on my end. But with the coaxing from some friends, I decided that the more dynamic lighting would be the better decision. All of these changes just added to the time spent waffling around without clear final vision.

  • Be careful turning first-draft sketches into final pieces.
  • The iPad Pro is great, but working on a large piece in 15-minute chunks every few days for over a month is a fast way to lose your vision and perspective on a piece.

Bring Your Own Base is now on Steam Greenlight

Most of you probably know and follow me for my art, so It may come as a surprise that for the past year or so I've also been hard at work as a PM and Designer, making Bring Your Own Base with a small team of friends.

We've been in the planning stages for upwards of 2 years, but work only truly began last October when we got a local prototyping grant that gave us enough runway to hire 2 coders full time. Since then we've carved out a solid, playable alpha build after many prototype iterations, playtests and redesigns.

We still have a long way to go. ALL of the art is currently placeholder and there are still a lot of core features that we haven't started work on yet. Our goal now is to get Greenlit, find a community and shop the rest of production around to a publisher or investor who believes in the potential of our team and BYOB.

If you are interested, we'd love your support and following as we try to push this boulder forward!

Clark

After the 30th reading of Dr Seuss's "One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish" the creepiness of the last page's image compelled me to render my own take on things. I kept my illustration pretty consistent to the book's image but ramped up the creepy by a few notches to help things along. Most of the work was done in Procreate on the iPad Pro and then finished in Photoshop.

The subject and style aren't really in my wheelhouse so I was interested in how my process would change working primarily on the iPad. Due to all the layer blending styles and Procreate's terrible non-existant folder and masking options the end result included 30-40 layers with very little structure or cleanup - and no easy path to flatten.

Loco-Motive

Ever since completing the Wasteland vehicle powered by a retrofit propeller airplane I knew I wanted to play around more in the realm of nonconventional propulsion sources. This was a first round sketch turned refined version of a steam locomotive that has broken free from the shackles of tracks.

Hopefully, I'll find the time and drive to do a few more revisions and make a finalized illustration in the next few months. The next one will be some sort of boat-turned-truck, harnessing energy from the propeller shaft (and possibly sail)!

Jumped from some rough bones paintover of a train image into this without much time spent fixing wheel perspective. I was also using Procreate on the iPad pro so no fancy elipse tools im afraid. I think this design is far more appealing than the two other versions below visually, but the engineer inside me really wants a more capable looking turning solution besides the two front wheels being on casters... 

An evolutionary dead end I'm afraid.

This one has some promise to me. I really like the airplane landing gear in the back to help steer the beast. I also hope to create some sort of machine that turns the reciprocating motion of the steam piston into something a transmission can use to power the wheels.

Drawing on the iPad Pro with Procreate

A few weeks ago I got my hands on an iPad Pro + Pencil and finally had time to work through my first piece on it. 

I immediately gravitated towards Procreate, and after a few sketches and rendering tests to get into the swing of things I dove into this guy. As a digital artist who hasn't kept a traditional sketchbook in quite some time I have a feeling that this hardware and software will be a liberation for me!

Alley sketch

Forgot to post this a month ago but spent an hour or so hammering out this bladerunner-esque alley scene. I need to do this more often.