Another Quick Thumb...

I decided to include Half-Circle Sea Hold as one of my selected environments for the EOW challenge. Here's the quick thumbnail sketch that I did the other evening (took a break from all art yesterday to celebrate Thanksgiving with friends -- yay! -- still feel full from all the lovely foods....mmm.). Anyways, I've already decided on some layout changes to this one to better frame the Sea Hold docking cavern; and of course, will be including people to help show scale and context (particularly for those unfamiliar with the various Pern locales).

Some Quick Thumbs...

Here are some quick environment thumbnail sketches I did for my EOW epic last night. I've already rethought the layout on two of them. :) I might end up doing a bowl-side view from the Hatching Caverns instead of the current aerial view...well, we'll see. I've been thinking that I may end up doing interior scenes for the final two environments, too. I'll decide tonight for sure. Time is running out!

It's Gonna Be Epic!

Had just a bit of that nostalgia feeling while doing some minor research today for the current ConceptArt.org Environment of the Week (EOW) challenge. It's the 100th challenge, so the topic has been appropriately selected as "Epic", and for my epic series narrative selection: Anne McCaffrey's Pern. Yup -- that's my not-so-great first acrylic painting posted above that I did in high school some 20 + years ago -- totally inspired by those dragons, that world, and Michael Whelan's interpretation of the same. Now, I've got to come up with something completely different! And, also still not in the direction that Tony DiTerlizzi went with his Pern version. :) The challenge deadline is December 9th to give us all enough time to come up with concept art that meets the following criteria:

• Come up with an epic narrative (my pick, "Pern")
• Your epic saga of choice is going to be pitched as an RPG
• You create 5 different environment concepts from this narrative
  
• The art must be cohesive (in other words they all need to be from the same artist style, same world and be visually designed)
  
• Presentation of your five Enviros and the design of the layout and titling counts!
  
• As does a consideration of the possible player demographic of your game.

In any case, this project will give me a great opportunity to rapidly develop some additional environment concepts which I've been lacking in my portfolio. Sketches I have plenty of, heh. This rather topsy-turvy year has somewhat allowed me to continue to revise and update my online portfolio to include more of the kinds of artwork and project opportunities that I would like to be working on all (or at least most) of the time, rather than the extremely varied art and design projects that I've done in the past just so I could pay the bills. :)

Anyways, as a long-time fan of the original Dragonriders of Pern I'll enjoy pulling out a few of those visuals that have been stuck in my head for so many years from reading and re-reading the two series (Dragonriders of Pern and the Harper Hall trilogy) from elementary school through college. Ok, alright -- I admit I still re-read the Harper books every now and again (and, nope -- I don't plan to read the new ones).

Introducing Norbert

Yes, this is a drawing of Norbert. Where did I meet him? Well, I had a dream about him the other night. Not entirely sure what made me imagine this kind of a character since I haven't been drawing any dinosaurs or reptiles of any sort lately. My more recent projects involved creating art about Christmas, crystals, canids, and comics...but no reptiles. Hmm. And, just how do I know his name is Norbert -- well, in that dream I asked the safari guide what he called him (this was a rather convoluted dream), but he hadn't given the creature a name; so in honor of Hagrid's baby dragon (you know the one...from Harry Potter) I had decided to call him Norbert.

He's a juvenile of his kind of whatever they are. I don't remember that part if I ever knew. And as a juvenile he's actually about the size of a camel which is rather bigger than a large dog. When we were "introduced"...I remember I had my back turned to the tent opening (I was unpacking my bag on the cot), felt somebody nudge me on the back, and when I turned around I just about freaked out because of all of Norbert's rather large sharp and many teeth right in my face (!) but luckily he just wanted to be petted.

The guide also told me that Norbert had kind of adopted the tourist group as his own herd. This turned out to be a good thing because the adult versions of Norbert weren't quite as friendly although they were happy to see us...as dinner. I do remember seeing an adult checking us out when we were walking along the river, but I didn't see the entire body...just the rather large head floating alongside, about the size of a mid-size car, and later the large and vicious claws when he reached out to grab some "food" that happened to be walking along the riverbank. I think that, like the hippopotamus, the adult versions of Norbert tend to spend most of the day floating in the water and, then like the Nile crocodiles...they reach out suddenly to snatch their prey whether above, below, or beside the river. But, they do have those rather long and sturdy legs, like the dinosaurs...so I imagine they could still trot right on out of the water if they felt like it...or were hungry enough.

Yeah, this dream had an edge of nightmare about it. But, Norbert was sweet. I'd like to write about him in one of my stories some day. :)

International Self-Portrait Day

It's International Self-Portrait Day over on the ConceptArt forums. Above was my quick contribution for this year. Yeah, no pink in the hair. For now. Posted the initial pencil sketch below, which was colored in PS7 as usual and posted above. Hmm...about an hour coloring.

In other news...keeping rather busy with freelance. Lots of creative juggling.