Speedpaint - alien environment

Experimenting and playing around with different techniques and approaches:

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.

'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.

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.