Shapes and Lines

I’m going to be all kinds of busy over the next couple of months, so I thought I would make another quick post in case I don’t have time in the weeks ahead.

This is a concept painting I did for “Fallen Empire: Legions” last year during the games development.

The idea behind the character design was to take familiar subject matter, in this case ww2 bomber nose art and plane markings, and apply them to a sci-fi …ish high-tech design. This is not an uncommon ploy in design, and not far removed from anamorphic caricature drawing. For example, if I was gonna draw Charles Bronson as an animal, I would draw him as a catfish.

But I’m sort of getting off the subject there.

So by combining something that has a strong identity and common familiarity with something that is completely new or unknown to the viewer, you make it more accessible to them, and more believable. Not to mention that it gives you a ton of material to work with.

Also included is a close up of the shoulder art. I had to teach myself to paint ww2 style pin-up girls for this little detail of the design. On the upside, I spent a lot of time doing “research” looking at pictures of girls in swim suits.

The demands of design work can be like that. Who would have thought that when I first approached the design for a gritty, battle ready, robot death thingy, that I would need to know how to paint a girl in a one piece? Not me.

In other news, having received approval on the basic design, I’m currently working on an additional set of character designs for Push Button Labs “Grunts: Skirmish”.  You can checkout images from the project and the beta sign up page for their “Push Button Engine” here.

-Todd

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