Ship Street

There’s something about Tudor buildings I just love. The silly imbalance and top-heavy design of them always makes them look like they should fall over. I always imagine Ankh-Morpork would be full of them. The wizard staying at the Ship Street inn here is *obviously* up to no-good in his room..

Modelled and rendered completely in Maya, textures painted in photoshop. It pretty much started out as an experiment in repeatable 32bit displacement mapping that I was tinkering with (the castle) but then I kinda got carried away as a 3D doodle. Pretty happy with the result though.

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!)

Fall 'n Angel

Having never had an opportunity to sculpt a female character, this piece was more a study than anything else. The usual imagery of angels is terribly cliche’d, and I was trying to depict her as both relaxed in her nudity and seductive at the same time.

Fall ‘n Angel was never intended to be vulgar, though I must admit I enjoy the Victorian attitude that people immediately adopt in response (naturally!).

Quite interestingly, women seem to appreciate her natural form (larger thighs, and heavier knees than normally associated with model types) whereas men react mostly in defense of what they know. Fallen Angel really has been a wonderful insight into the psyche of peoples perception (and I can’t pretend not a joy to work on)

“All art is immoral.” – Oscar Wilde

Demon Head

This guy is unfinished, but I got distracted at the same time as Blizzard had their big Diablo 3 announcement. With that in mind, I thought it was good to let him go as practice, rather than feel like I was jumping on the trend (there would be bound to be a lot of Diablo fan art with that kind of announcement).

The Bridge Inn

The Bridge Inn is somewhere I’d love to explore. It’s outside the West Gate of the town of Penaggon; A pub where Pirates and Wizards can drink in peace -safe in the knowledge that the city guard are close (but not too close for comfort..)

They also serve Newky Brown Ale!

Because I do mostly 3D imagery, I decided to try my hand at painting again (cut and pasted from 2003). This image was painted directly in photoshop, entirely from mind ( though I must confess, mostly as a ” doodle” .The perspective may be all wrong, but at least there’s not a straight line to be seen.)

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.

Mercedes Monster

Mercedes Monster was requested for an advertising campaign a few years back. They intended to push the “beast under the hood” as a real monster presumably to appeal to that part of the market they were missing out on (hey, I never question these things!). It was supposed to be very organic, but include elements of the car and engine design (note the bizarre nostril/logo layout).

Mercedes Monster Head

Casplade

I’d not done any character work for a while at this time, and then I was asked by the guys over at DeviantArt for a “Dark” themed image for their 2004 (done in 2003) Calender.  It also seemed like a perfect excuse to get this guy out of my head.

Entirely modelled in Max (polygon box modelling) and textured in photoshop.  Again, please bear in mind the poly limits available at that time, let alone the modelling tools – Vanilla max, no mudbox/Zbrush/BodyPaint etc.

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.