Back to the 2015 Recap Post

I still have two speedpaint posts coming up soon, one for November, and one for December, but today I'm just going for something fairly quick and easy, one of those Review of the Year things that all the cool sites are doing these days, plus some thoughts on my goals for this year.

I don't recall ever doing one of these before (I have done year end speedpaint reviews, but those paying attention will know those usually come around in May, for reasons), so here's the format - I'll give a quick overview of what I've done, and then pick my 4 favourite pieces to show again and cover why I like them, and one piece I hate.  These are ones I personally like (or dislike) - not the most popular, and my preferences for my own work might seem a bit strange.  All good?  OK, let's begin.

This is almost every image I painted (outside of my day job) in 2015, with one major omission which I can't talk about except to say it exists (a shame, it would have made the top 4), and a couple of others I just remembered (but aren't worth redoing the image for).  If you click on it it'll blow up to a size where you can actually see what they are.  They're not in any particular order, and not all of them have had associated posts yet.

There are 72 images on the sheet, but some of them contain what I'd consider multiple pieces in one (and some contain multiple pieces I don't think count as more than one), so it's actually well over 100 things (I make it 142, depending on how I feel like counting at the minute).

Of those, 64 are speedpaints, which is awesome for reasons I'll get to.  The rest are commissions and random side projects.  That's not bad going for something I do in my spare time, and even then not as often as I feel like I should.

So of those, which do I consider the most successful pieces of the year?  Well, I'm surprised at how difficult it is to choose (you know I'm rarely a fan of my own work, but I have to admit, there's some good stuff tucked away in there), but I think, at least today, the following qualify:

White on Black

Photoshop Speedpaint taking 110 minutes, based on an older Skullcandy advertisement.

I liked this one so much I did a companion piece, and also considered doing others along the same theme (this may still happen).  This one was one that came about really quickly - I saw the image it was based on, thought "I should paint that!" and did it almost immediately.  In addition to that I made changes and choices that I wouldn't usually make, and I think the result, especially given the time I spent on it, is a quite striking and polished image.  Everything just sort of works together, from the one bold colour (pink/red) in an otherwise subdued palette, to the more graphic nature of the composition and pose (actually fully intentional for once), to the strong light shape of the headphones in the otherwise dark (but not fully black) surround.  One of the few pieces which turned out almost exactly as I planned, rather than turning out OK due to some happy accidents.

Me

Photoshop Speedpaint taking 120 minutes, based on a snap from my cellphone 2 minutes before.

Well, this one is awkward.  Not only is it a speedpaint I have yet to post in a speedpaint roundup (that'll be the next post), but it's also a self portrait.  I'm not the best subject for portraiture, by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm generally available, and this was for Self Portrait Day (November 1st).
So, if I'm a terrible subject, why is this here?  Because despite the unfortunate subject matter I'm of the opinion that this might be the best portrait I've ever done, speedpaint or not.  Everything about it came together, and speaking as the person probably most familiar with the physog in question, it looks exactly like me.  The colours work, I like the feeling of depth that it has.  Really, the only things wrong with it is that it's of me, and I really can't remember how exactly I did it (I usually keep those step by step images for my memory's benefit as much as yours, and in this case I neglected to capture any).

So that's how my ego managed to make the top 4 of the year :/

Urban Assassin

Artrage Speedpaint taking 115 minutes, based on this photograph from DrunkHobo-Stock

Much like White on Black, this piece was a concentrated effort to do something a little bit different.  I worked looser, and with very different brush settings from those I'm usually comfortable with. This is the case for a handful of speedpaints - sometimes it works out, other times it's a disaster.  In this case it worked out, and I've used a similar technique twice since then, once for the book cover featured in the last post.

In this case though, I think the original worked out the best.  I'm slightly amazed by how well this piece works myself, given I know what went into creating it.  Small things, like exactly how little work went into painting the hands and face, but how they still came out looking really effective.  Usually capturing those elements takes quite a bit of work, but here there was very little repainting - what you see is essentially what I painted, stroke for stroke. Now if only I could work out how to do that every time I'd be set.  In the meantime, some of the techniques learned creating this piece led to two other fairly successful pieces, and that is enough to get it a spot on this here list (also, he does look pretty badass).

Not So Innocent

Photoshop work, based on this photograph by AmethystDreams1987

This is going to be a fairly short writeup.  There are actually a few elements in this picture where I think I did similar things better elsewhere (such as her hair), but I'm picking this one for one reason - that jacket.  It took a really long time to paint it, but the end result is probably worth all the time I put in.  That, combined with how much this piece transforms the photograph it's based on is really enough to place it in the top 4 despite its flaws.

Well, making that list was remarkably difficult.  Much more difficult than I was expecting when I started this post.  Looking at the four, I'm interested with how dark each of them is (in terms of lighting, but also in terms of subject in two cases).  Does this mean I just like strong contrast in a piece, or is it just a coincidence?  Blowed if I know.  

I do know the next section is easier though - what was the worst thing I did this year?  Scroll on MacDuff, and discover the horror:

Crap Tarzan

Crap speedpaint taking 25 minutes in Photoshop, and not worth a minute of it.

Really, I'm not even going to try and justify it, it's just pure crap.  There might be a kernel of an idea that could work quite well, but as it's own thing...  Yeah, no.  I can't blame the short time spent on it either - I've done a lot better in a lot less time.

So that covers the year, more or less, with one other thing to cover.  A year ago I said my resolution was to do more speedpaints - one a week.  I pretty quickly changed that to four a month, as that seemed more manageable.  

This grid (or at least 75% of it) was created then to track the speedpaints I was doing, but at the time all the green boxes were black.  Three columns of 16, so 48 cells, one for each image I needed to do - each time I completed one, I would fill in a box with green.  I'd filled those by mid September, back when I painted Bruce Lee, so I had to add another Column.  Since then I've done another 16 paintings, the last of which I'll be covering in the next two speedpaint posts. So I blew past my personal challenge to get a total of 64 speedpaints done (to varying degrees of success). Rather more than 1 a week - Go me.

One thing I realised while doing them though, was I'm still too reliant on direct reference.  Nothing wrong with that (especially when painting at speed).  I could probably work from nothing but straight reference from now until forever and nobody but me would mind.  It's not like I'm ever going to stop working from direct reference completely either - It's can be too relaxing for that.  

Even so, I want to go back to working on some of the fundamentals, and if that's at the expense of the number of speedpaints I'm cranking out then so be it.  This year's resolution is to work on those fundamentals, which will also aid my painting from direct reference in the long run.  Things like proportion, human anatomy, perspective, composition, and colour theory. 

I also realised that the speedpaints were getting to the point where they were less speed and more just paints. so I'm going to change my personal terminology a little.  Anything under 100 minutes can still be a speedpaint (that's still pretty fast for some of the things I've managed to do), anything over becomes just a quick painting.  The intent is to do more speedpaints, and just the occasional painting - even if that means they go 'unfinished' when the time runs out. 

This doesn't effect much as far as you're concerned - they'll still all come under the speedpaint umbrella as far as posts are concerned with the same internal gut feeling on whether they count or not.  There will also be Studies, which will be where I'm tackling something specific.  Those might be as little as a few brushstrokes, as long as I learn from them.  You'll get to see those too, but possibly under a different post.

Oh, and my other resolution is to get the rest of the sketch posts up to date ASAP - if some of this study is going to be traditional (and I intend for it to be) then it might be beneficial to get it up where I can easily find it - and by extension you can see it to.

So this year things are shaking up a bit while I go back to basics.  Back to the drawing board if you will.  Hopefully the only difference you'll really notice will be in the quality of the results.

Until the next post, Happy New Year! I hope 2015 was a good one for you, and 2016 is even better.

A Psychochronography in Chrome

Well, this is a little awkward.  Usually I write these posts and time them to coincide with the launch of the book they're about.  In this case though the good Doctor Sandifer released it on Boxing Day (That's December 26th for those of you who don't know), which is also the day after Christmas, so I forgot.  Sorry.

Anyway, we're here now, so lets get on with it.  As ever you can catch up on the previous Psychochronography posts by clicking here and working your way back to the beginning.  You don't need to do that though; the short story is that I do occasional book covers for Philip Sandifer, who writes critical analysis of (usually pretty geeky) things.  This is one of those.  The explanation for using the word Psychochronography I'll let you dig out for yourself.

So back in June Phil contacts me about doing the next cover in his TARDIS Eruditorum series, and just as an aside he mentions this other book of essays he's working on called  Guided by the Beauty of Their Weapons: Thoughts on Science Fiction in 2015.  Do I want to do the cover?

After some general back and forth this was my reply.  I think I've already included this in the speedpaint posts over the last couple of months (since it was one), but that was without the text; this is the one I actually sent Phil.  He wasn't keen.  Well, maybe he was, but he wasn't keen on it for this book in particular. I was busy on the Eruditorum 6 cover then, so it sort of sat on the back burner.  He pointed out that the ship in the background looked like a Cyberman, was this intentional?  It wasn't, but in retrospect it really does.

A while later I had an idea of something to speedpaint and thought "If this works, it might make a good cover", so I did the speedpaint about three times the size I usually do them, and ended up with the above, but bigger - a lot bigger.  Slapped some text on it and mailed Phil the following.

He was keener, but felt the colours and layout were too similar to Eruditorum 5.

Well, easily fixed thanks to the magic of computers.  Phil seemed happy, I was reasonably happy.  I Did a new custom logo this time too.  I don't remember the genesis of it, except that the rougher paint style suggested wear and tear to me, so I wanted the letters of 'Weapons' to look a little chipped and worn.

Months pass, and I decide I should take another crack at the idea for the cover.  It's not that I dislike what I'd done before, just that I didn't feel it fit as well with the theme of the title essay as it could (The effect of the Sad  and Rabid Puppies on 2015's Hugo Awards.  Look it up, it was quite a mess).  The above was the first go at it - took about 35 minutes I guess.

And then I did this revision before cropping it and sending it to Phil.  More enthused than before!  Got what I was going for! The Hugo award is traditionally a Chrome Rocket (based on a 1950's hood ornament).  This doesn't look exactly like one, but close enough, and he liked that.  So all I had to do now was make it ten times larger and we're good to go!

This is the sad image.  I was going to extend the piece into a wraparound illustration, but for reasons I'll get to it didn't happen (yet).  Other than that this is basically the quick painting above (which I'm also counting as a speedpaint by the way), but with a little more work on the rocket design.  That left part may yet happen incidentally, but obviously not for the book, since it's available to buy.

I got busy at this point.  I had a lot on at work, and a trip to Russia to plan, and Fallout 4 came out, which basically evaporated a week of my life (I don't game as much as I used to, so 20 hours in a game is a big deal these days.  I've played a lot more since, but not with quite so much focus).

Right before I was going to head to Russia Phil emailed me.  Could he get the cover in two weeks?  Not the whole thing, just the front, for the Digital edition.  For some reason if you don't get your final cover set a few weeks before they cancel your preorders, and there were some.  The slight ridiculousness of the Digital version needing to be finished before the Print version is not lost on either me or Phil (since, in theory at least, a print version is more immutable than a digital one).

I wrote off the back cover part of the painting at that point.  I realised there was just no way I could get that much done in time.  I hoped I could get it done for the print version, but realistically it wasn't going to happen. With that in mind I knew I should focus all my attention only on what was on the front.

One thing I wasn't terribly keen on in my sketch was how the rocket was lit, or more technically how it was reflecting (pure metal has no diffuse response y'see?  It's all just reflections).  To combat this I made a rough rocket and made it chrome.  Took about half an hour, and gave me a rough lighting reference (this was from Marmoset, using one of the default environments).

Then I started on the trees.  The colours were taken directly from the rough, and I built them up in three layers.  I knew there were going to be more trees in front of them, so I deliberately kept them sketchy so as not to take too much time or to draw to much attention to them.  With the background trees done I turned my attention to the rocket, adapting the rough to the sketch I had, and to the environment, and to the colour scheme I was using.

Then I went to Russia.

I could write a lot about Russia - Saint Petersburg to be more precise.  I'm not going to though (at least in this post), but suffice to say I had a lot of preconceived notions about what Russia was going to be like, and other than the Airport (which was very much as I expected) I was wrong.  The city and it's people were all wonderful (at least that I spoke to), and the food was amazing.  Also a shocking number of people speak flawless English, and even those who speak less still speak it very well (and they'll tell you "My English, it's not so good," when it's clearly exceptional).  Anyway, digression over.

Jetlag is no fun.  I've had Jetlag a number of times over the years.  Usually on a Trip to the UK I'll get it for a few days, then relax and enjoy myself, and then get it again on the way back.  Well, Saint Petersburg is three hours further away, and turned a fairly unpleasant  thing into the most crushing fatigue I've ever had, and just as I got over it I came back and had it all over again.  And I had a front cover to get finished, now within 48 hours.

I had planned on the Jetlag being the same, more or less, as what I get coming from the UK, just lasting longer.  Well, that was wrong. It was hellish. Did the cover anyway. I just can't remember much about it to relay to you.  You'll want to click on that image to enlarge it by the way - you can do that for most of the other images in the post too.

The only thing I can really remember about the process, as shown above, was that I used a technique and setup much closer to that I use when I paint Acrylics with real media.  I'm fairly confident I could paint something pretty close to this on a canvas; just much, much more slowly.  In ArtRage (which I used) this basically means taking the Oil Paint tool and lowering the pressure and the amount of thinners, then making the brush a lot harder.  The result felt a lot like the real thing to me, except I could sample colours from the image, instead of needing a palette (the initial colour scheme being defined in the rough of course).

After that lot, all that needed doing was adding the birds, and them putting it in Photoshop to apply the rest of the cover trappings before cropping it and sending it off to Phil for publishing.

So I got it done on time, with a few more days to spend on the rest of the cover for the Print version (most of which I spent at work or asleep, because Jetlag).

It was only after this that I noticed that due to my being drowsy while working on this version of it the logo had an issue with spacing and I wanted to get it fixed for the print cover.  It's minimal, but it bugs me, and will probably bug me every time I see the Digital cover - or maybe I'll forget and bever notice it again.

And here is the final cover for the print version.  The shape of the rocket ended up being a motif elsewhere, especially on the spine, but also as part of the area for the Barcode, and as a silhouette on the rear cover.  Other than that there are some minor layout differences to the version shown in progress above, and for the first time (since it's not era inappropriate) there's the address of Phil's site on the back, as well as a credit for me.  Overall I quite like the result - the cover painting has just enough retro to it to evoke what I was going for, but the overall design of the logo and the cover feels pretty modern and fairly fresh (IMO).  Mission accomplished.

Now I just need to get around to finishing the rest of the painting...

You can by the book from the following locations:

US Kindle   US Print
UK Kindle  UK Print
Smashwords (epub version)

And Phil's launch post is here.

Covers so far for Philip Sandifer:

A Psychochronography in Blue (Part 6)

I think, by now, you probably know the drill.  On the chance that you're a newcomer to these here shores you can read the previous entries in this series by clicking here. You don't need to in order to follow along, but the option is there if you need it.

So, new cover for a new Phil Sandifer joint, this one being the 6th of the main series of TARDIS Eruditorum, 'The Unofficial Critical History of Doctor Who' (because Phil loaths a short subtitle).  To see Phil's post on the subject, click here.

By all rights, this should have been my personal favorite of the series to do, as it lands smack dab in the middle of an era I hold dear.  Oddly though that very fact made it less satisfying, as nothing I could do would ever live up to the memories of the ridiculous gaudy graphic excesses of the mid-80's (the prime example of the theme being the 6th Doctor's much maligned coat).  I did my best though, in line with Phil's preferences, and quite like the result.

You may note that it looks a bit like a book cover, but also ever so slightly like a cover from a video game.  There are reasons (other than just myself and Dr. Sandifer being colossal nerds), but we'll get to that later.  If we follow Dylan Thomas' advice to begin at the beginning (which wasn't actually advice), then we track back all the way to a set of thumbnails.  Ideas and options for further exploration.

This is actually the second set of thumbnails I'd sent, the first consisting of only the first row.  Let's break down the thought process in picking the 'right' one (you'll note none of these tally exactly with the final cover - we'll get there).  The cover had an additional difficulty this time, since it had to cover two Doctors instead of one, complicating the amount of information the cover had to relay.

The first two were dismissed because Phil thought they might be too 90's - they're not, being pretty strongly mid 80's, but if Phil's memories were throwing him off he wouldn't be the only one, so they were out (I think there's some potential in the second one for some other things though).

The last one was dismissed because it might be too obscure (It's based on Queen's Kind of Magic album cover), and raise questions in those who got it as to why the book didn't contain an essay on Highlander, which then raises the question, why wasn't there an essay on Highlander?

This left the other two as the only strong contenders in the first batch.  From the rest, Phil liked the Rubix Cube TARDIS (And I've now forgotten why we didn't push another round with those, because they are sort of fun), ruled out the neon faces and crest, and liked some of the Logos.  The C64 ASCII art TARDIS was deemed too plain, but it did bring up that we both have associations with the era and the Commodore 64 computer.  Some logos were liked, and some were not.  Somehow, through the discussions, the following resulted.

In these you can see the first real signs of what would become the final cover.  It also raised a lot of points for discussion, such as how noisy the cover could be in terms of looking like a photograph of a graphic over just being the graphic, and how the books apparent age is worked out (this wasn't an issue before, but this one has two Doctors, and the next covers time outside the airing of the show on TV).  For the record, the book covers are intended to be era appropriate for the end of the time covered within them.  And I just realised that this is the first book without the dates it covers marked. Bugger. Not the end of the world though.  Moving on.

So from that we arrived at these two, which are minor variants of the same (one was ironing out some things I wasn't sure I could do, like making it look as though the image was a photograph of a CRT television), including the heavily sloped A, because nothing says 80's like a heavily sloped letter or two - just ask Jean Michele Jarre.  Phil approved the first, and then went radio silent on the second because he was busy - this may have had the longest gestation period of the covers since we were both tremendously busy at various times during it.  The last book technically took longer, but most of that time it wasn't under discussion, so much as sitting on my hard drive doing nothing.  The first email on the subject of this one was back at the beginning of June.

Anyway, he didn't respond for a while, which gave me time to mull things over - always a dangerous occurrence.

Phil also writes Last War in Albion as you possibly know.  Last War in Albion is about the mystical war between the writers Alan Moore and Grant Morrison.  That sounds weirder than it is, but it uses that to explore the history of the two and all sorts of asides in a similar way that TARDIS Eruditorum uses the alchemical aspects of Doctor Who as a springboard to other diverse topics of discussion.  Anyway, that's all by the by, the important thing is that that reading it reminded me of the rear cover to Alan Moore and Brian Bolland's The Killing Joke, which is a playing card featuring Batman and The Joker.

Since we were already discussing the possibility of the cover containing a computer style illustration it made sense to make the playing card idea following that sensibility, and furthermore, once I did it the whole thing looked to me like the cover to a video game from Rainbird or Firebird; things like Elite, Starglider or Morpheus (I may be showing my age here).  Based on that I wanted a screenshot on the box.  A screenshot of the non-existent TARDIS Eruditorum game.

I may have nerded out a little over this cover.  Again.

So since we're in nerdville I may as well go a little further and cover some things I did for the cover that most people will never notice or care about.  If you really don't want to know any of this, scan on down past the red framed text.  If you're a hopeless saddo like me, then it's time to get (gently) technical, a little personal and somewhat old school.  Reminiscence is likely to happen.

Geek Starts Here

So I got my start in digital art a long time ago in a country far far away.  We'd borrowed my grandfather's Dragon 32 computer for a few weeks, and so my dad, being a hopeless geek himself, decided to learn to program it.  I was 8, and Oh My God That's My Son's Age!  I only remember one thing he did, which was a graphics package called Doodle.  It was pretty amazing, featuring such advanced things (for the time) as rubber banding & limited animation.

It should have sold thousands of copies and funded the next version (which he started on but never finished - pixel editing and zoom were on the cards); it sold about 10 copies.  After that we gave the computer back, and eventually got a Commodore Plus/4.

Nobody remembers that computer it seems, but I rather liked it.  I learned to program a bit myself, and worked out how to do art on it.  This involved working a picture out on graph paper and entering the colours and co-ordinates as a program.  Eventually my dad bought me an art package for it - I don't remember the name of it sadly, but it was a start.  For old times sake here's a link to a video of the C+4 rip-off of Boulderdash; Icicle Works.

Eventually we got a Commodore 64 (I think I was 11 or 12) and a copy of OCP Art Studio and that was pretty much it for me, I was hooked.  Eventually I got an Amiga with Deluxe Paint, and then a PC with Photoshop, and then a tablet for it and so on and so on.

But I did a lot of work on the C64.  A lot.  In fact my GCSE art project was done on one (this was a combination of original art and loading screens from various games copied pixel by pixel from games magazines.  Yes it was partially plagiarism, but I didn't appreciate that at the time since I was doing it the hard way, and learning a lot at the same time. You'll note I credit pretty much everything when I can these days - Guilt from when I was 15.

But this does mean I have a pretty solid understanding of the limitations of computers, specifically the C64, circa 1986.  With that in mind I decided to be as accurate as I could.

Firstly, I did it the dumb way.  I should have looked for something like HermIRES, which purports to simulate the C64 limitations on other systems (I just found that while looking for something unrelated, and I'm totally going to snag it in case I need to do something like this again).  Instead I set Photoshop to use double wide aspect pixels and did it in there with the pencil tool and the C64's 16 colour palette and resolution.  Yes, the C64 had double wide pixels on it's multicolour mode - it also had a limitation on 4 colours per 4x8 'square'; I couldn't simulate that limitation, but I did my best to stick to it anyway.

So that got me the Game screen and the Playing card, but back in days of old the way you'd get things from the computer into a magazine or on to a gamebox was to photograph the screen, which gave such shots a fairly distinctive look.  Here's a couple of scans from the old Zzap 64 magazine -1, 2 - note the screenshots are slightly blurry and slightly distorted and you can see the pattern of the TV's electron mask.  Sometimes you'd have the slight shadow of the screen's redraw too, if the photographer messed up the exposure.

So I wanted to simulate all of that, even though it would be quite likely nobody would have any idea that I had.

Short of buying a CRT, and working out how to hook the PC up to it, and then photographing it (yeah... no thanks), I had to simulate it.  I did this by creating a small mask pattern and then repeating that for each pixel in the simulated screen.  For the low resolution CRT display (400 x 480i) this worked out at a whopping image of 12240x8160.  Into this I would paste my simulated C64 resolution image, and then scale it up using Nearest Neighbor mode (which doesn't blur or sharpen the pixels).  Some additional fiddling with blend modes and offsets and such gave me a pretty reasonable CRT look.  Then that was duplicated, flattened, and the next step was simulating the photography of an actual screen, which involved distorting the previous image, adding  some vignetting and some reflection off the curvature as well as a little bit of a redraw shadow.

Yes, that was a bit long winded, but I think the results are pretty good.

Geek Ends Here

After that it was predominantly a case of finalising the layout, adding the text, doing the wear, lightening the blue, that sort of thing.  Stuff I've covered in many of the posts about the previous covers.  I did go back and add 'rounded' corners to the playing card, and give it a little perspective and a reflection though, because 80's, and I also cut it out of its 'screen' a little less accurately because back then people did such things by hand (you'll never notice, it's really subtle).  I also cut out the torn label by hand, but it's basically using the exact same technique as I use to do the wearing on the cover, and I covered that back on Book 2.

One thing that's worth covering here though is the Chrome logo.  Because 80's chrome is the best chrome.

I've done a lot of chrome over the years, firstly because I was actually around during the 80's, when everything had some chrome, but then because I was doing vehicle logos for things like Saints Row (now there's a Before the Blog post I should do).  Usually I can do a pretty reasonable job by hand, or with filters or by using layer FX.  None of that would work here (at least on its own) because the logo was too big.

So it's all done with vectors, other than a drop shadow and slight bevel overlay using the Layer FX options.   This was actually pretty easy - a couple of gradient shapes, an outline, another gradient, done.  Not terribly in depth, but worth noting that I did something I'm very familiar with in a very different way.

Once Phil had the final page count I decided to put the original Pixelated Doctors image on the spine, because the spine was huge, and I liked the image.  Phil submitted and there was a mistake somewhere that meant I had to reduce the size of the spine again, but the image still fitted just fine.  Both myself and Phil were a little surprised the cover didn't get rejected due to some of the text being upside down.  That actually answered a question we had over a previous cover, but didn't  have the guts to try back then.  This wasn't done as a test for this cover - we just forgot it might be an issue until it wasn't one.

And there you have it.  This is the second and last 1980's cover, since the next book covers up until 1995, so I'll have to brush up on my 90's before then.  I promise the next one won't have a huge influence from era specific home computers though.  Well... maybe not.

Even More Board: The Hunters

As predicted, nothing got done last week. We had friends over for the weekend, and a BBQ on Saturday with lots of friends over. A lot of fun, but exhausting (so many kids!). This weekend was a little more relaxed, so new post, even if I should have written it yesterday (I actually did write it yesterday, but Blogger had an issue so I couldn't post). Today's subjects are actually from a while ago. Fortunately my wife is building a TARDIS, so that allows us to head back to the end of April for a recap*. Told you I was a bit behind. So behind in fact that this post will cover three things at once, though they're all related. This post ties in with the previous one regarding "The Most Dangerous Game", which you can recap on by clicking the title of it. That I just wrote. Back there.

All up to date? Good, let's go look at the "new" stuff.

There she is, looking all aloof and dangerous. Down below you'll see her partner in crime, the Male Hunter (who also graces the thumbnail), but you know what they say; 'the female of the species is deadlier than the male**' So we should get the most dangerous one out of the way first. In the game both the female and male hunters are actually as deadly as each other - identical in fact. They reside on opposite sides of the same card, for which these images are for. There can only be one Hunter, but the player can choose if the Hunter is male or female by flipping the card. Pretty neat. So I didn't really paint her first because she was the deadliest - rather I did her first because she was the scariest. Artistically speaking.

You see, I already knew what the male hunter looked like, having painted him once already, and I'd already more or less figured out what I wanted his pose to be (and found an excellent reference), so in theory he was going to be easy. The female one though, I had no clue. Was she young, old, ugly, pretty, fat, thin? No clue! (I'm just going to call her the Huntress from now on by the way, it's easier, though the game does not differentiate beyond the picture). So I needed to come up with a look for her. I didn't want her to be the traditional seductive busty pin-up of the pulp era, but I also wanted to at least give a nod to that. I did know I wanted her seated - lording it up over the viewer in a superior manner, so that was something to go on anyway. I also decided, eventually, that she should be somewhat femme fatale, and of indeterminate age.

Firstly I needed some reference. I could have got someone to model for me perhaps, but I felt it couldn't be all that hard to find a good picture of a woman sitting down I could mangle to get what I wanted. I actually found one very quickly, with this image from Faestock on Deviantart. You may note that the pose is about 80% there already in the image on the right, and the arm of the left image looks suspiciously like the one the huntress ended up with. I grabbed a bunch of other reference too, for clothing and the like, but that was pretty much it for the pose.

The very rough proportions (not shown here, but top of the head to the bottom of the foot, where the head should go, that sort of thing) I traced to save time. I then used a grid to fill the details in, but made several small changes as I went.  Why grid when I already traced - well, the tracing, rough as it was, mostly just aided me in not having to count grid squares to figure out where the side of her face might fall, that sort of thing.  Obviously the grid wasn't going to help much with clothing and such, so those I had to figure out as I went along. The outfit is reasonably authentic for a woman in a 'masculine' role during the 1920s through to the '40s, and the shirt and black tie give her a slightly facist air I think. Tyler was a little concerned (rightly) that her ears being pushed out by the helmet, and the upturned nose made her look like a pig. I assured him I was just worried about proportion and the locations of the features at this point, and she wouldn't look like a pig when she was finished. I traced the gun directly from an image I found online, and then made some small alterations so the perspective matched a little better.

The central image is of the initial underlayer, and you can see it's pretty simple stuff. Unusually though I was working with a predetermined palette I'd worked out to keep everything harmonious. Amazingly, with one small exception, this did not bite me on the behind later, and I think it worked out pretty well.

The first pass on the trousers and shirt went pretty smoothly. another thing I'd decided in order to give it a feel that fit with the early 20th century was to try and evoke a little J.C. Leyendecker. Not try and copy his extremely distinctive style (that would be a pointless task - I'm not up to that challenge), but just make nods to it. The obvious hatching of the colour in parts (especially on the trousers) is part of this - though Leyendecker does this very differently, it's enough to evoke the era I think (there's a more obvious homage to his work a little later on). This style was quite new to me, but put me in mind of something falling somewhere between the hatched inkwork and 8-bit style pixel art I've done in the past.

Not a lot extra to add for these steps, although I did reach the conclusion in the second image that I should leave at least some of the lines from the original sketch visible in the final to add a little definition to some areas. It just looked slightly better with them than without. I was, if you were interested, using a very hard round brush in ArtRage to get the more hatched paint strokes, with stylus pressure controlling the size. This is very different to my usual work flow, where I use a soft rectangular brush with the transparency being pressure controlled.

And here I take it to completion. The first and second images pretty much finish up the painting, with the third just having some cleanup, and a repositioning of the composition a little as I thought she was a little high in frame in the middle stage. The circle in the background is a slightly more overt nod to Mr. Leyendecker, and the colour of it was the only mishap I had with the defined colour palette. Originally it was more of a pale yellow, but that clashed far more than I thought it would, so I switched for this orange shade, which I think works far better.

And so that completed the Huntress. Before moving on to the Hunter though, here's a closeup of her face. You may note I switched her originally black hair for brown. No reason for this other than it looked better, if less sinister. It's also possible to see the hatching I've done with the paint better here, especially on the Helmet. For the most part she looks fairly young, but I've pushed the shadows under her eyes a little, and pulled in her cheeks, which in conjunction with the hatched style means she could be older than she might first appear.  Hopefully you'll agree she looks less porcine.

As previously mentioned, I already had a pretty good idea of how I wanted the Hunter to look.  Since I wanted this obverse side of the card to mirror the first I decided to keep the orange circle in the same location, and the background and colour palette predominantly the same.   With the exception of the jacket he's wearing more or less the same as the Huntress.  A large cravat type neckpiece, a slightly different style of helmet (both in the original image I did of him for the cover) and more masculine boots, but otherwise the same ensemble.

Since I already had quite a bit of reference from the searches done for the Huntress, along with the image that inspired the stance in the first place (a picture of Michael Caine from Get Carter) I could get on with this one more or less straight away.  Unlike the Huntress, and Despite the reference used for inspiration, the images used for reference were far too disparate to use a grid or to trace (though the clothing reference for her was of a similar type), so I sketched it in and then refined it over a few iterations.  Like the Huntress I did trace the Shotgun with some minor changes.  The hardest part was getting the face recognisably the one from the cover, though from a different angle, and in a different style.

Once I started filling in the large colour areas I pulled in the background from the Huntress so as to have it the same.  Obviously I would need to adjust the shadows later, but at this point it was enough to be getting on with.

I realised here that unlike the Huntress, where I had a singular reference I could extrapolate the lighting from, in the case of the Hunter I did not. As a result I used simple blobs of colour to represent the rough location of the lights (more like the direction the lights lay in), the first based on what little lighting I'd already painted up to that point.  From there on, like the Huntress, it was mostly a matter of filling in the coloured areas based on the lighting, with the available palette.  This time it was a little trickier of course because I kept having to work out roughly where things would be lit from.

Here's a rough process image of the head.  Fairly simple - the flat colour was laid down, and then cleaned up over a few iterations.  I cooled the orange of his flesh tones quite a bit from the initial lay-in, though the colours do poke through right to the end.  if you're curious as to the difference between the two images to the right, you'll see it's mostly just showing the changes to his neck, which looked quite peculiar being as thick as it was before.

And this takes him to completion too.  I did cheat the palette a little to give the shotgun a slight cherry stock, but I thought it wasn't so far removed as to draw the eye particularly.  I then added the boots (both the Hunter and Huntress have far rougher boots than anything else, as I found them quite difficult to get right), and pulled in the orange circle from the other image.  It needed a little work though, as I hadn't painted behind her when I first did it, so there was a big hole I had to fill in. Hardly a major problem though.

More of an issue was his belt.  Like the Huntress I gave him a Sam Brown belt, but when doing the sketch I'd made a mistake - the strap was over the jacket, the belt under it.  One could not connect to the other!  A bit of editing moved the belt on top of the jacket, as that was easier than repainting the area and removing the distortions of the strap.  After repainting the shadow (the background was all on one layer) I signed it (in his right boot, not shown here), and called it quits.

Just for the sake of completeness, here's a closeup of the Hunter's head.  You can see that like the huntress I've left the sketch in place, with some editing, to add a little depth to some of the transitions.

Finally, Tyler needed a logo for the front of the box.  I'm not going to go into the process there, as it's not particularly interesting, but this is the one arrived at.  The intention is to give it a pulp feel, while also keeping it modern and eye catching.

And that's me done.  This time I am hopeful for a return next week.

*She really is building a TARDIS - Alas I don't believe it's fully functional.
**What? Don't look at me like that, Kipling seems sort of appropriate given the subject matter.