"Learning to Fly" Character Design

Here's a character design piece I made for AnimationRigs.com 's "Master and Student"-themed contest.

Started off with doodles and fond myself in a funny mood (nice to change pace from all that dark, devil-worshiping art I usually do).  Came up with an old geezer being taught to fly by a wickedly cool old bird.

I started painting a background and got to the great point where I loved it so much I didn't want to put anything on-top of it... but alas...

Came up with some poses that seemed dynamic but also straightforwardly describing the figures - since it is a character design after all, and not a 'standard' artwork.  These started out as pencil sketches that were scanned in and colored (like a coloring book!).

And the final step:  Take forever finishing it up and tweaking every detail until you can't even tell what you've done to the piece for the last 20 minutes - that's the sign to STOP.

~Here's a link to the DeviantArt post:

http://levihoff.deviantart.com/art/Learning-to-Fly-187054811

Halo: Evolutions Volume One, available now.

Click to go to its spot on Amazon.

This pocket-sized edition of Halo: Evolutions features an illustration of mine for B. K. Evenson's short story "Pariah."  If you like sci-fi or Halo, check it out in book stores everywhere.

Art Recap: September

Here's a recap of recent work that's gone up around the internet in the last month.


"Back to Work" - Concept art

(Originally posted here.)

"Sigrid Svard" - Character Portrait

(Originally posted here.)

"Volley!" - Illustration

(Originally posted here.)

Apparently it was a green month.  Hmmm.


Alright... now it's really 'back to work'.

The making of "It Will Never End" - rejected illustration for Ubi Workshop's Art of Assassin's Creed.

So the prompt said basically to create your own assassin within the Assassin's Creed - the rest was up to you.  Any time period, any style, any medium, etc...

I decided upon crafting a near-futuristic (is that a word?) assassin.  Now, I figured a futuristic version might be popular, very popular.  But the execution of a piece of art is just as important as the initial idea, right?

So i opted to do something subtle.  No giant cities and flashing colors or giant mechs.  Just a hologram HUD and an electrified blade, with the real time and setting to be interpreted by the viewer.  Give it a bit of mystery and keep the viewer engaged (like making them have to read the text backwards to figure out what it says).

I started off with a rough sketch and fell in love with the idea (first idea included said 'gaint cities and flashing colors or giant mechs')

Then I broke the piece down and deleted the Googled lightning I had used as a placeholder.  I'm mostly just using a custom brush here to smudge the hell out of everything.

Really worked hard to capture a realistic likeness using a custom smudge brush, some thinner brushes for the hair...

...and some spotted brushes to add in some skin texture.  Started adding in some color as well so I could start to figure out its affect on the piece.  I was trying to create an assassin with a darker skin color... but with all the reflections and lighting that came later, that was kind-of lost.

The hologram was a lot of fun to do.  Used a number of built-in Photoshop filters on colored shapes to give me the effect I wanted.

Painted in his glove.  Looks really strange and doesn't fit at the moment so...

... I added shadows and details and highlights to immerse it within the work.  I also added the electrified blade and tweaked the whole image.  A scan of a sheet of paper that I wiped ink across in various ways was used atop of everything to give some slight texture to everything.  And it's done.

And then two months later, rejected! Hah.

Here's a link to the piece on DeviantArt, as well a shot of all these in-progress pics laid out next to each other.

Larvoid Follow Up

From a post a few back, I featured my Larvoid illustration for TGB Customs.  Well here is one of the actual figurines with the artwork on its packaging!  Very cool!

Evolution of "Virgil"

Here's a couple of comparison shots to show the progress of creating the Virgil character design, highlighted in the last post.

Sketching randomly led to an interesting portrait that seemed to work for a character from something I've been working on.

I then started on a more polished character design piece that would have a close portrait and a full-body design next to it.  He grew a bit younger as I worked on it.

The full-figure was fun to do, with a lot of temporary layers here and there that demoed wild and weird ideas as I worked on him (think that shoulder plate on the left, but all over).

And altogether...

Art Recap

Here's a recap of recent work that's gone up around the internet.

"Fires, Still Burning" - Concept art / matte painting practice

(Originally posted here.)

"Virgil" - Character design

(Originally posted here.)

"Watchful Protector" - Batman fanart, experimenting with using Google SketchUp to aid in the art process

(Originally posted here.)

"Cyclops" - X-men fanart

(Originally posted here.)

You can now follow me on twitter, by the way.  I'll update it whenever I upload a new piece anywhere on the web.