So, after beating my head against the wall for half the day yesterday trying to come up with a replacement for the engine grills on Polaris, I decided to break away from designing spaceships for a little while and do something completely different, try to clear my creative palate so to speak.
Weeks ago, I did a rough, stick-figure sketch inspired by Gears of War 2 for the Xbox 360. I often play it with a good friend of mine named Joe, most often on Xbox Live but occasionally together in split-screen mode. It was on one of these latter occasions, as we were running and gunning through one of the higher waves of Horde mode with well-practiced coordination, that we suddenly found ourselves in over our heads against a courtyard full of high-powered enemies. As if synchronized (which we often are given the uncanny way in which our minds seem to function in parallel at times), we both fired off a few desperate shots and then dove for cover behind the same little chunk of stone wall at the exact same time just as the whole army of Grinders, Maulers and Boomers opened up on us like the Allied fleet at Normandy.
You probably had to be there, but the whole tableau struck us both as so hilarious that we had to pause the game until we regained our composure. I decided right then that I had to do an illustration of that moment with me and my friend in COG armor jostling for that meager bit of cover and sharing a look somewhere between "Oh, s--t!" and "Hey, find your own damn place to hide!" all while the world around us disintegrates in a hail of bullets and rocket explosions.
First, here's the incomplete stick-figure sketch I started with, trying with considerable difficulty to work out the poses of the two characters:
The viewing angle, the poses, the foreshortening and various other issues were giving me a hard enough time that I had pretty much decided I needed some photo references. I was going to get together with Joe and mock the scene up, but somehow just never seemed to get around to it.
This morning, I loaded it back up and just started painting like crazy, trying not to overthink it. By late this evening, somewhat to my own surprise, I had this:
Obviously, it's nowhere near finished, but I'm quite pleased at the progress I made in a day's worth of work and how well it turned out, especially since the only photo references I wound up using were some pictures off Joe's Facebook page. Easy enough to get my own right by looking in the mirror, but I have to confess I've never really made so close a study of his before.
By the way, that's me on the right and Joe on the left.
Tomorrow I'm back to work on Polaris and Grandeur, but I'll probably return to this now and then when I feel the need to imagine something besides hyperdrive geometry sails and warp engine bussard cowlings. Variety is the spice of life, after all.
Weeks ago, I did a rough, stick-figure sketch inspired by Gears of War 2 for the Xbox 360. I often play it with a good friend of mine named Joe, most often on Xbox Live but occasionally together in split-screen mode. It was on one of these latter occasions, as we were running and gunning through one of the higher waves of Horde mode with well-practiced coordination, that we suddenly found ourselves in over our heads against a courtyard full of high-powered enemies. As if synchronized (which we often are given the uncanny way in which our minds seem to function in parallel at times), we both fired off a few desperate shots and then dove for cover behind the same little chunk of stone wall at the exact same time just as the whole army of Grinders, Maulers and Boomers opened up on us like the Allied fleet at Normandy.
You probably had to be there, but the whole tableau struck us both as so hilarious that we had to pause the game until we regained our composure. I decided right then that I had to do an illustration of that moment with me and my friend in COG armor jostling for that meager bit of cover and sharing a look somewhere between "Oh, s--t!" and "Hey, find your own damn place to hide!" all while the world around us disintegrates in a hail of bullets and rocket explosions.
First, here's the incomplete stick-figure sketch I started with, trying with considerable difficulty to work out the poses of the two characters:
The viewing angle, the poses, the foreshortening and various other issues were giving me a hard enough time that I had pretty much decided I needed some photo references. I was going to get together with Joe and mock the scene up, but somehow just never seemed to get around to it.
This morning, I loaded it back up and just started painting like crazy, trying not to overthink it. By late this evening, somewhat to my own surprise, I had this:
Obviously, it's nowhere near finished, but I'm quite pleased at the progress I made in a day's worth of work and how well it turned out, especially since the only photo references I wound up using were some pictures off Joe's Facebook page. Easy enough to get my own right by looking in the mirror, but I have to confess I've never really made so close a study of his before.
By the way, that's me on the right and Joe on the left.
Tomorrow I'm back to work on Polaris and Grandeur, but I'll probably return to this now and then when I feel the need to imagine something besides hyperdrive geometry sails and warp engine bussard cowlings. Variety is the spice of life, after all.
