Vitalize Mech Unit 2

This is the heavy unit of the mech army. Credit to art director Ian Pestridge for guiding some of the design decisions.

Male Prosthetic Limbs

A few variations of the prosthetics seen in the previous posts, this time catering for the male soldier build. As usual, I included material references for the 3d artists to keep in mind.

Smaug Pre-Film Design

Remember my nightmare Smaug design? Well it got me thinking about what the real Smaug would look like which resulted in this. In the original sketch I had one central horn at the back of his head to keep faithful to the illustration John Howe did for the Hobbit book. However the appeal of a traditional two horned look became too tempting to resist. I also made sure to extend the snout further than I usually draw dragons to keep it to a more old school wrym look.
This drawing was also an opportunity for me to go back to my roots. Back in my high school days I used to draw dragons and such nasties all over my books. It was an activity that earned me a couple of nicknames and where my alias 'Bendragon' originated from.

Female Prosthetic Limbs

Continuing from my previous post. The game did feature some playable amputee characters. These are some renders of the final design we chose for the female characters. I did go through a bunch of thumbnail drawings which we whittled down with the art director. Our goal was to make the designs desirable and cool without sacrificing functionality. The researching stage was very helpful for me to recognise the kind of shapes we have in modern military.

Vitalize Mech Unit 1

Here is a concept of a mech tank I designed nearly a year ago for a game called Vitalize that isn't released publicly as of this point. The enemies in the game were giant walking tanks that could be piloted remotely. I started to design the mechs in SketchUp as it proved more convenient to design such a complex structure in three dimensions. You could design your heart out with a pencil but then find that it doesn't work from another angle so 3D meant I was able to design from all sides simultaneously.
Above you can see the Photoshop paintover. The second image is the final in-game model where my SketchUp sculpt has been taken to the next level with more details and textures by Steve Walker. The rest are all renders of my original model.

Nightmare Smaug WIP #1

This weekend I had a nightmare where I somehow got to watch the second film of The Hobbit. Not something worth having  a nightmare about but when I am so highly anticipating the screen appearance of Smaug the dragon, getting him right is a huge hope for me. It was John Howe's illustration of Smaug that got me to pick up the book all those years ago when I was in primary school. I was terrible at reading but just loved the art enough that there was no other choice during World Book day.
Anyway back to the nightmare. So now you have an idea how much I am looking forward to seeing the beast's design. The film in my head opened up immediately with the dragon flying over the mountainous landscape. It was such a shock cause normally monster movies wouldn't make the big reveal until much later in the second half. Usually monster movies can go down hill from the point we see the feature's creature. So this imaginary version of the Hobbit shot down my anticipation straight away. I was praying that at least we would not see a close up. But this being my nightmare we get just that! A close up of Smaug appears and his design was so off the source material. He looked more like an alien than dragon! I was outraged in a fit of nerdiness! My outburst must have been such that it had waken me a little, enough for me to realize this was a dream. Rage turned to delight as I realized "I could steal this Smaug design!"
So here is the sketch so far from today.

Monsters Ink Yourself

Happy New Year everyone! I hope this year I can start blogging my work more frequently. Life is fast and its hard to catch my breathe since I moved to London. I have been contemplating over my work and where I want to take it in future. Maybe you can see that progress in future :) So with the little introduction over lets get into the meat of what this post is about.

This is a project some of my classmates from the Arts Institute at Bournemouth (AIB) thought up. With the Monsters University film only round the corner we thought we would try our hardest to get into the university. But our applications were all rejected since neither of us classed as 'monsters,' not literally anyway. So our master plan was to create our own monsters alter ego and apply again!
After about half a minute's pondering I decided that it would be best to represent myself as this dragon character. Dragon has been one half of my nickname here you know.

Have A Bad Ass Christmas!

I was debating whether to put this up in light of recent tragic events. In any case I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas!

- Ho Ho Ho

PS6

 

Photoshop CS6 has some sexy brushes.

 Just before home time this came out of my pen.

Twist of Fate

Hey guys. I know its been a while, but moving to London has seen my productivity dip somewhat. With more freelance work on the horizon too I dont know how much extra work I can get together for you here. But this time round I have a T-shirt design for you to gander. Its for a Threadless contest in the theme of Minecraft. If you like it, please score it here: www.threadless.com/submission/460714/Twist_of_Fate

Vote for your chance to see me jetted off to Disney Land lol.

In other news, I am now on Tumblr. I will use that blog to share not only my own work but also artwork by other artists I admire. If you'd like to see whats on there please follow: benhoart.tumblr.com/

Deep Loot

A commission piece for my friends at Monster and Monster.
This is a promotional artwork for their deep sea diving, treasure hunting adventure game, Deep Loot. You can follow the progress of how the game is developing here, but I will be sure to remind you when it hit the stores.

Lunch Doodle

Inspired by Enrique Fernández.

Insect World

Since I haven't posted much in a while I went digging through some old work and found this on my hard drive. Really old stuff but strangely I dont hate all of it, so I'll drop it here. Looking back at this, I would have brought the characters closer to the camera so the perspective is more extreme. The boy character could have done with a more natural pose rather than that mechanical walk hes doing. But I do like the colours a bit even though there is no focus.

EDIT: Bah! This looks way better as a thumbnail. Once you zoom in, you can see its shit!

Pokemon - Dewchops

This is a Dewchops! Dewchops are notable for the giant bubbles they carry on their back, blown out from a single nostril behind their neck. The bubble balloon it blows is essential to its daily life as it aids them in floating along the lake which would otherwise be tough on their tiny limbs. Though generally docile, take caution when one becomes hungry. It eats so much!

Special thanks to Belinda Leung for the card template and to the Clockwork Ballroom for the topic.

Imagination

For the Clockwork Ballroom. The topic is 'Precious.'
I had a little brainstorm of what I regard as precious in my life, immediately some material stuff came to mind but what I am really grateful for is the little things I take for granted. Like family, friends and all the wonderful internal things, but the subject I wanted to portray for this topic was 'imagination.' I am grateful for the life I have, for being an artist and being able to express myself through a medium I feel a lot of passion for. Our minds are like our very own creative playground where anything goes, we are limited only by our own creativity. All the ideas and creations that inhabit this playground is something I consider to be precious.