Page 23 of 'The Piano'

My first comic book is set for release early next year and I'm trying to nail some steep deadlines. Here is, with the kind permission of my editor, a preview of work in progress on page 23. On another note, I'm currently working on a painting demo video (on the side to keep me sane) that I'll post up as soon as I'm finished. Hopefully it will inspire and help.

The Dark

With this illustration I'd like to quote Ed Young, illustrator of one of my all time favorite children's books:

“To all the wolves of the world for lending their good name as a tangible symbol for our darkness.” 

― Ed Young, Lon Po Po

Wolves are amongst one of the most noble and beautiful creatures on our world.

It begins... developing a visual language for...

Some early rough sketches for conceptual work on 'The Piano'. Will be posting more into this post as time goes past. This is for 'The Piano Hall'. Coming up, details, props, and characters.

Below: describing the objects in the hall

 Please be reminded that ALL ARTWORK AND TEXT COPYRIGHT © CIRO CORREIA, UNLESS OTHERWISE ATTRIBUTED TO THE RESPECTIVE COPYRIGHT OWNER - IT IS ILLEGAL TO PUBLISH OR PRINT ANY SUCH ARTWORK OR TEXT WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION BY THE ARTIST. I guess I'm saying just ask me.

Last painting of 2011 - city in the sky and environment

Very last painting of 2011, just finished minutes ago (excluding edits, i'll probably want to do later). Now, I'm gonna kick up my legs and chill with my fam for New Years. Happy new year and see you next year ;) .

Original done for Concept Art test, this is a concept of a city in the sky with surrounding environment. My own musings and ideas on it are that the city is a kind of entertainment hub for city slickers, corrupt officials, celebs and so on. A kind of floating city of vices. Damn just remembered wanted to add some steam emitting from the city vents. Will have to do that later. (updated)

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

edited version - updated 5th jan 2012

SciFi Environment - WORK IN PROGRESS

I recently did a concept art test and this was one of my submissions done in a 'rough-in painting style'. (waiting in anticipation). I liked the rough so much that I decided to take it further. I'll be posting up some of the other submissions as well, rework them etc... So here is the first of the work in progress images for what I'm doing with this. These are really low res. Will post more in this thread as I find time.

Above: WIP 1

Above: WIP 2



Below: WIP3 (updated)

Below: The original rough. I had to portion my time over three images, and ended up doing as much as time permitted. I thought the image had potential. So, I'm taking it further. 

Here are some of my original thumbs for the image.

WORK IN PROGRESS - 'Catgirl'

This is a very low res work in progress post on my 'catgirl' painting. I've sorted out the color palette and I'm working from back to front. Laying down forms and shapes and keeping to my plans. Ultimately I want the girl to be the key point of interest with foils  pulling your eye about the image so I don't want to overwork the background. Been quite busy of late, will have more posts up soon.  

'The New World' environment

Involuntary settlers on a New World, like their forbearers arriving on the shores of the continent of North America. These new settlers carve the mark of the familiar and comforting on a cliff face near the crash site. I wanted the light and colors to be super vivid like the light on a planet that had two suns and some different conditions to the ones on earth.

Work In Progress for 'The New World'

Involuntary settlers in the New World. This post has a selection of images from my work in progress for this environment concept. This is the image before final color and other adjustments - an alternate version.

Part of the brief was to create an image of a crash site where the survivors have taken salvage from the wreck and created makeshift dwellings in the surrounding cliffs and  in the hot and dry desert conditions. In the brainstorming and ideation phase I had the idea that some of the survivors, longing for Earth and their culture managed to carve a representation of the Statue of Liberty into one of the cliff faces. This was of course after they finally accepted that this was going to be their new home. This was not in my original thumb but I felt it carried the spirit of the brief into a higher level. The piece is finished but not finely worked off, as I tried to keep it in the conceptual art zone. I think I'll revisit this theme. I have a series of other images planned, 'in the great hall'... 'the view from the statue of liberty'. I was throwing ideas around about the city that had resulted from the crash site, what they might have called it perhaps 'New New York' but thought that that might have been to obvious. It might be more likely that they didn't give it a name at all, hoping for rescue someday.

thumb sketch:

before change in perspective:

The image shows the valley and scene of the crash a few decades on. The survivors have had children and some have moved out of the valley. A few remain 'in the valley of origin'. One of them stares up to what seems to be a craft or two of some sort breaking through the atmosphere. Rescue?

Below I've added a screen capture of some of the painting and sketching process:

Environment - Ship Down

Environment Concept Art. Ship goes down on strange and hostile planet.

Concept Art - The Crypt

Concept Art for game level. I created a few different versions of this during editing to try optimize the light.

Character Illustration of Amazon warrior.

This was done as an art test for Gameloft.

Here's a screen capture of me drawing a female amazon warrior. I got a brain numbing 'head cold' a few days ago. Those who know me know that I'll to paint through anything. I created quite a pile of tissue paper next to my work station. I didn't include all the thumbs and roughs that I did in the video. I tend to cluster the similar poses together, these I usually put on their own page and then I produce my main thumb from there.  This is what you see in the vid, The page with the rough thumb pose I produced from a few gesture drawings. I'll post the completed sketch in one of the next posts.

Character design process for 'Gisthorn the Magician' Part 3

Side and rear views:

Character design process for 'Gisthorn the Magician' Part 2

Here I've taken the chosen rough thumb sketch to the next level. Next I'm going to do a side view and a rear view. It's still rough and aimed at getting the character idea across, from here on it's mostly just spit and polish. Gisthorn is a main character from 'Tales from the Sunless Sea', he helps the boy on his journey back home. He is meant to be a 'mentor' and protector. I went the non-human route because Gisthorn is almost 'ent-like' in temperament. He is head and shoulders above the other characters and the boy sometimes rides on his shoulders.

Character design process for 'Gisthorn the Magician' Part 1

Character Sketch 'Gisthorn' Part 1 from Ciro Correia on Vimeo.

Speed painting - World Revisited part 2

Speed painting from Ciro Correia on Vimeo.

more speed painting...

Here is another speed painting from the experiment I mentioned in my previous post. I decided to do this one in color for variation. I'm enjoying the quick and dirty instant gratification of speed painting. I wanted to add a few fish and spawn more jellies but its just a speed painting sketch so I didn't get round to it.

Speed painting - World Revisited

Speed painting, I only recently began to seriously look at speed painting as a means to sharpen skills and to create concepts faster. This is one of my first 'serious' attempts and I'm hooked. Still forming my visual language in this method but I know where I'm going with it. Feels good. I've been applying some of the amazing principles that Marcos Mateu-Mestre teaches in his mind-blowingly awesome book 'Framed Ink'. As a start I drew out a thumb of the composition with only the dark and lights as blocked out shapes with the focus (this is where I'm applying what I've learnt, I do thumbs normally but this adds edge) on conveying the emotion of the piece as the main overall message. I used this basic thumb to design other thumbnails, I think I did about 6 or 7 but changing the details and elements or subject matter. This was an experiment first of all to show that these emotional/basic compositional thumbs could be applied to anything. The second was to see how effective the target emotion could be conveyed. This was the idea and composition of one of the thumbs that I took and speed painted. I'll probably post up the other ones as well. I screen captured the speed painting process and hope to post that up later as well once I've complied it, etc.

I'm working on a color and finely rendered version of this.

Dungeon Delve Challenge

This is my entry for the Dungeon Delve Challenge. Thinking back about the time I spent on this. It was, not only pure bliss but I learned a hell of a lot too. 

My adventurer slash hero has found himself out of his depth. As I was sketching and thinking about my character  I had this backstory rumbling through my head: He is a rich noble with aspiring ambitions of becoming an adventurer. He got lost after purchasing a dud map, at the local watering hole, of a nearby mountain 'dig' site that happened to be infested by all sorts of monsters. Gung-ho into the underground halls he went, ill prepared and under equipped. Got into a few tussles, badly wounded. A few days later he is lost and in deep trouble. Visit the art order site for cool posts from Art Director Jon Schindehette. Makes for some interesting reading.  http://theartorder.com/

Loathar the reprehensible

This is a 'in progress' concept sketch of one of the characters from the Kei-Sylph world. Some background first. There are five monster clans living within the cliffs and mountains that form the plateau that border the city states and settlements of Kei-Sylph. Some also infest the 'roots' of the mountain/mesa formations that the settlements are built on. This character sketch is of Loathar, the chief of one of the clans. Clans are organized around the different species of the race's genus. His clan's species is extremely battle hardy and prone to meaningless violence though every once in a while a more intelligent and crafty member has been able to organise the masses into a powerful and well disciplined army (for their kind that is). Loather is one of these leaders. They're similar to toads because their physiological make up, their natural habitat and habits.

Since doing this sketch I've made quite a few changes, one of them is to add more toad-like features. I sketched out the initial character to resemble my roughs and added elements and changed proportions as I went. 

First post: environments.

Here are some development sketches and finals for some environments I recently worked on. I'll try to give more detail on this world in later posts. These environments are part of the same city/fortress/citadel or area. The hidden gate is lower down than the view of the dome and is nestled in a crevasse between the main plateau and the butte/mesa like formations often referred to as  'air islands'

The image above is a development sketch of the hidden gate. A long forgotten entrance to the citadel palace of Kei-sylph. Below is the 'finished' image.

The image below is a view of the dome and elevated boat ways of kei-sylph. Its a development sketch. The image below that one is a near 'finished' render of the environment.

Hope you like my work and my new blog. :)