Concept Art

Kung-Fu Drood ? 

I knew this module would be a challenge for me as I'm a bit out of practice with my drawing skills. I was asked to produce character and environment thumbnails like those created in the conceptual stages of games design.

Silhouette is key

By quickly sketching in Photoshop with a large round brush, playing with shapes and forms, it's possible to rapidly develop character's. 

My first attempts threw up a variety of designs (just squint your eyes). I decided to concentrate on a shape-shifting, druid/crow, character, too much Game of Thrones i think!!

I wanted a dynamic character, one that could change forms in one fluid movement during combat.

With the release of WoW: Mists of Pandaria and popularity of Kung-Fu Panda, i decided it was time to level the balance and chop some pandas heads off!

Kung-Fu Druid was born!

 

I used illustrator to ink up the poses of my character that i'd done on paper. Then painted them up with Photoshop. Pretty pleased with my first digital matte painting :)

I wanted my environment to have a mix of Celtic and Asian influences but with the idea of underlying, ancient, mechanics protruding from the environment. I quickly reverted back to 3DS Max to develop concepts. I also experimented with Vue X10 for the first  time, it's a piece of software I'd always wanted to try, and it's one I'll be using in the future.

Vue produced a great silhouette backdrop when i rendered out the Z-Depth of the environment i created using it, i need to improve my Photoshop skills to blend the floating islands more naturally into the background.

I rebuilt the environment in Max trying to set up a little settlement around the lake as the starting area for my character. I love the Ink and Paint render in Max so used it to capture the work in progress. Given more time I'd model a few more building assets, set up pathways and railings, vegetation, and work on the textures, but the seed of my game idea is there!