Black Dragon

Another Dragon, this one was commissioned for the book by Shayne Easson over at Phantasy Ink. Again, fabulous, fabulous people to work with, and I sincerely hope they sell bucketloads (especially with the new huge trend for eBooks that the iPad has spawned)

The Lizard King

Broken free from the chains below, the Lizard King is hungry for retribution. Not quite Dragon yet, and on the verge of ascension.

I’m delighted to say this piece is now the cover for Shayne Eason’s Phantasy Ink book coming soon: (website) – a company that have proven to be an absolute pleasure to work with (please, do pop by and pick up a copy!)

Red Dragon

Similar to the Blue Dragon (Midght Dragon) this guy was entire modelled by poly (slice, extrude, move) but this time in 3DS Max, as part of the process of learning that package for a larger project. As a yardstick, this one really helped me by having the Blue Dragon to compare to. It’s amazing to look at it now, as it’s embarrassingly “rubbery” when I look at it, I’d LOVE to revisit this guy with modern sculpting approach.

Strangley (even though it makes me sqirm to look at this now, as does most old artwork) it was phenominally popular at the time, and even ended up front page as an article on CGSociety.org!   There’s a “making of” the dragon article as well, which I’ll put here as soon as the rest of the content of this site is ready.

Swamp Dragon 2002

2010 :  Ohh this one has haunted me for a while, and frustratingly unfinished.  One of thes days I’ll get around to re-working it as it deserves.

2002: Partly modelled in Maya, partly painted in photoshop. This image is my step into making the dragon series. After the overwhelming response to the Blue Dragon (midnight) I decided to make a series of images based on the colours.

Being a glutton for punishment I decided to do the Green Dragon as the next in the series -to get the most difficult one out of the way. It’s incredibly hard to make a picture dramatic using just green colours as a theme.

Midnight Dragon

Ahh “Midnight Dragon” was pretty much the one that started me off on rendering Dragons. It’s one of those things I really enjoy doing on this side, as it never crosses with my main client work (even doing games, I’ve never had a project that required a dragon !).

The curious thing is, I also tend to use it as a yardstick now, comparing the capabilities of new software vs the tech that was available in the past. Midnight Dragon, here was done wayy back in 2002 and as such there were no sculpting utilities available, no normal mapping, no functional displacement mapping, basic shading etc, and god forbid you use more than 30k polys. This guy was entirely modelled and rendered poly-by poly (cut, extrude, move) in Maya (Maya 4, if I remember right)