August 3, 2014

Giant Cave Crab

Started this concept then got busy with a contract and then came back to finish it. The final version has some changes to the mouth area, when I came back to it I wasn't crazy about the initial design in my sketches.


During this concept, the exploration of texture and color were the most enjoyable.


Once I have an idea of a creature, I try to get as weird as I can while doing the silhouettes.

July 16, 2014

Personal project


I've been sitting on this stuff for a while and thought it was time to share them. This is some character work I've done for my personal project which I worked on in between my contract work, it's the same project that these environment concepts are for. I've been designing a side scroller shoot'em style game that's akin to the classic Metroid, Contra and Megaman games.

Before starting the project I had never work in pixel art but I've always had a tremendous respect for the style. In the modern age of gaming with stunningly realistic graphics, pixel art has proven to be a viable art style for games and it will always have a fan base. Learning to push individual pixels has been fun but often not as easy as I expected.


This was my first animation test, I chose the simplest creature to learn how to animate. My roommate during my time at the Academy was an animator and I picked up a lot of helpful animation tips from him.

                                                     

Here are some character sketches where I explored various shapes for the protagonist. I knew that a lot of detail would be lost when converting the design into pixel art so I focused on pushing the silhouette and shape contrast of the body and limbs.


These are the creature designs that I took to final polish. Although rendering these concepts to this level wasn't really necessary, I did want to flesh out these creatures to get a better idea of how they would move and interact with the player.

January 14, 2014

Concept for unannounced title


This is was the first rough I started when I began concepting for a project I am working on. Once I got it to this stage, I didn't like the direction so I left it alone and started another painting which was ended up heading closer to the direction I had in mind. By doing this rough I realized what design elements I wanted to avoid in the world I was trying to create. The terrain was coming out too familiar and not alien enough, so moving on to other paintings helped me flesh out the alien planet and develop a color palette.


 Once I had developed the alien world, it was easy to come back to this rough painting and take it to a finish.