Art Weekend: Business Casual (WIP)

Since this is a long weekend, technically I'm still on time. This is going to be a multi-week project.

I had a late start for this particular drawing. For the longest time I couldn't think of anything good to draw, but this idea came up in the last minute. The first draft of the drawing looks like this:

The idea is there, but the perspective for the chair is way too extreme and the leaning height is not right for Cecil at all. I also went back to previous pages of Future Sight and remembered Lynn has shorter hair. I went to Photoshop, dragged some things around, print, retrace, and came up with a second draft:

The pose looks a bit better. I like Lynn's new nonchalant attitude. Cecil's height still isn't quite right though, so I had to do more fixing. I retraced the corrected image in Photoshop and added some of the background back in, resulting in the trace on top.

There's still some awkward anatomy that'll need some fixing, but overall I'm pretty close to being able to color this piece, which is a whole other nightmare.

Art Weekend: Flash Duel Board Replacement

It's done:

The custom board is meant to be a replacement for the original board from Flash Duel, which looks like this:

Given that their second edition character cards look gorgeous, I was kind of surprised that the kind of blah player track remain unchanged. I do admit that visually the new board is a bit more noisy, but I really think the nicer background makes it an overall better package. You do have to be aware that square 9 and 10 are dark squares though.

Here is the artwork without the score track on top:

(Nuts, I forgot to put the shadow underneath the stone lantern! I knew I forgot to do something...)

Weekend Art WIP: Replacement art for Flash Duel

I talked about Flash Duel last Tuesday. There's a lot to like about the game - it's unique, it's fast, it's cerebral but not overwhelmingly so, there are times when you'll have to take a chance and win or lose, the next game takes like no time to set up.

The game is in its second iteration - there's a pedestrian version and a deluxe version of the first edition of the game, where one is a bit too bare bone and the other too expensive (laser etching everything probably costed a lot of money)... so with the second edition release, the card art got updated, a lot of the deluxe components are replaced with less durable but much better looking printed cardboard, except for one thing.

The track that the duelists walk on. It's so pedestrian. Compared to all the character art, the track is a relic that really, really needs to get an upgrade. And I thought, I don't do enough background/landscape pieces (I haven't done a single piece this last two months...), this is two birds with one stone!

Then the heat wave hits SoCal. God it's too hot in here. This is as far as I got with the times of day that's not melting my face off:

You can see the original layout underneath the new one. What I've drawn up is obviously a sketch and color test, but I like what I have over what was there already. It'd be best if I can plan it so the landscape would naturally have dark and light spaces (required as part of the game mechanics), but if not artificially darkening spots still doesn't look too bad.

Art Weekend: Card Illustrations

Alright, so maybe Art Friday as a concept isn't exactly working out. Weekends in general are just kind of a leisure time for me, and I'd rather not let my studies get in the way of my pleasure seeking (seems backwards somehow...). As a result, I think I'll just stretch the art stuff to include the entire weekend from now on. That way, I'd have more opportunities to get stuff done and maybe spend more time on a piece instead of rushing everything to completion.

Despite the heat, this weekend ended up being very productive for me. I'm able to go back and start working on the Pirates game (again!), and as a result of that I've drawn a few illustrations to go with the new card designs. They're more of a study than anything for now, but I'm still quite happy with the output:

This is the illustration for "strike", the first study I've done. The foreshortening needs work, and the soon to be cropped parts of the drawing are crude, but I think the pose is effective.

Here is one for "counter". I like the illustration, but it'll probably be scrapped later since the card it describes don't trigger unless the player is under attack. This probably works better as "ripose". Poses involving more than one person is always tough, so at least I'm happy with the characters' layouts.

This is "focus". Pretty simple. The hair and the beard turns out well.

This is "brutalize". Now that I have a second look I guess the poses are a bit wonky... at this point my hands are getting tired but it's also loosening up, so the anatomy looks wrong in several places but the idea behind it feels right. I was wondering why the right arm of the sword guy didn't look right - I think the forearm should be brought to the front.

Finally, one for "unload". Something frilly to finish up the set of illustrations. Man, that right arm looks super short.

After scanning the pictures, I've also messed around with painting one or two of them:

I tried messing with ArtRage's watercolor. I don't know why, but compared to their oil (not that I've actually painted with oil based paint) brushes the watercolor just feels wonky. It looks so cool when it blends right, though. I suppose one of these days I'd finally figure it out. Until then I should mess around with it every now and then.

One in Photoshop, a quickie. I need to find a way to get rid of flat slabs of color since turning on pressure sensitive size and opacity never feel right for me, so I end up having brush strokes with round tips.

Now, to prototype the cards... then I can do another post about the design changes to the game.