Bohn Fresh - Art Blog

Old Models

2010-08-16T03:16:00.000-07:00

I decided to put up some of my older work when I first started modeling. My very first model was a futuristic vehicle from the future in the hypothetical situation where the sea level on the earth had risen from global warming. As such I created this for a heaily vegitated environment caused by rising humidity due to the warming and evaporation of water; a perfect weather for forests to thrive in. It was designed to have suspension to deal with rough terrain and debris, but also functional in water.

I'm quite proud of the texturing, though our models had no poly limit so it's highly inefficient modeling. My rendering skills were not the greatest either, so the frames are really dark. But I've learnt since last year and I'm confident that I'm improving. C: Here's some rough concepts I drew for the model;

My second model had requirements to be an organic character, so I decided I'd like to create a winged character with glowing effects, and so I designed a demonic character. The idea is that his demon parts are sealed in various parts of his body with amulets and charms, to keep his power in check. Here is the finished rigged and textured model;

These are a couple of frames taken from the animation I made using the rig. I added a glowing sweep effect when the scythe is swung.

And here's the concept art;

Blast from the past, haha. Well that's all for today. My next post will probably be more 2D art and sketches while I'm working on some models for Grimoire's new project; Made In China for iPhone. C:

Exigo Work + Freeplay

2010-08-15T02:17:00.000-07:00

The Freeplay exhibition is over, and it was really draining. Explaining how to play Exigo so many times was especially tiring, but overall I think it was a good opportunity to mingle with other game designers/programmers/artists and meet some people in the industry. I'm really lucky to have such a great team to work with and for our game Exigo to get selected to exhibit in the 2010 Freeplay expo.

I figured since my blog isn't very fleshed out, I'd upload some of my Grimoire work here;
This is our Grimoire Exigo poster, designed by the magical Erianto Sandjaja! I really love this design, haha. Please visit his blog for more art.

These are the player characters I modeled after being imported to UDK.

These are the 2D concept art images.

And this is some very early character and monster concepts.

I'll upload some more artwork and models shortly.

Sketch Challenge 5: Celestial

2010-07-17T02:01:00.000-07:00

I see a trend with a lot of my free draw artwork, that I like to add wings fairly often. I guess this comes from my childhood dream of being able to fly. I wanted to be a jet pilot before I decided to become a designer. Sometimes I wonder if I should have gone through with it, haha. Anyway, here's some sketches I drew for the theme.

These were basically just some quick sketches that I heavily abused with dodge and burn. I think the results were somewhat satisfactory. It was nice to draw some original works for relaxation.

I think I tend to like drawing darker stuff. I don't always imagine celestial beings as being pure and wholesome, and I think the darker interpretations are more interesting than the generic 'servants of God' depiction that you see in churches and childrens' picture books.

Although I had planned to update my blog weekly, monthly is a more realistic goal. I'm not very good at consistantly maintaining an update scheduale, but I would like to update my blog with some new and interesting things.

Sketch Challenge 4: Elemental

2010-06-16T23:31:00.000-07:00

The last theme was 'elemental', so I went with electricity. Though it doesn't seem very electric, I think I failed myself for this challenge... I got really tired of working on it, so it's an unfinished sketch. Maybe I'll come back to the theme sometime in the future, though I highly doubt it. I never really go back to revise my old works because I always find something new I want to work on instead. Oh well, anyhow, here is the sketch;

The new theme for this week/month is 'Celestial'.

Grimoire's Exigo project has been completed, though it's unfinished as a whole, it reached a presentable stage for the end of semester, and we'll be starting a new iphone project for semester 2. I look forward to working on Eri's game, it sounds quite interesting. I hope to be working on a small side project with HaMsTeYr, ie; Yang. Haha. I've done about 1/4 of the design document but there's still a lot of things I'm thinking about and how big I actually want to make the game. HMMM. Kind of exciting! If you'd like to see a short demo video of Exigo there should be a video embedded below if I've edited the html correctly.

Apart from that artwise I haven't been very active, I tried out Saejin Oh's brush set that was bundled with the issue 58 edition of ImagineFX with the theme of indigo children in mind. For some reason I think it kind of looks like Saejin's style?! But I only used his brushes, so I don't know why it resembles his art so much. WEIRD.

That's all folks.
Bohn out-

Fanart

2010-05-01T04:09:00.000-07:00

I finally caved and did it. I uploaded fanart.

I've been debating for a while wether or not I should throw up some of my fanworks here on this blog for a couple of reasons. The first being that the style I did the fanart in is anime/manga, which I suppose is pretty obvious in my art, but with fanart, I feel like my art is less stylised and less personal, and therefore more generic. The second being that fanart itself isn't as original as something composed entirely from scratch. I don't want to limit myself and portray myself as a fanartist, or at least not here. I want this blog to be a portfolio or what I can do, and something I can present to someone who requests to see my art. Thinking it over though I've come to somewhat or a conclusion. Fanart shouldn't be a bad thing, all art is inspired from something we've seen, heard, touched, etc. So being inspired by pre existing characters and story, in my own mind, isn't a bad thing. I feel like it's easier to connect with an audience who is already familiar with the characters I draw, and that I'm just building upon that base. It doesn't mean I put in any less effort or heart into an artwork, or that the composition and creation are any less thought through. I feel like I can be a creative artist as well as a fanartist. When it comes down to it, ultimately I'm drawing because I enjoy it, and if I enjoy fanart, then why not draw fanart as well as original works? So here's a small collection of Touhou related fanart, because I really love the Touhou series (as my friends know well). C:

One of my earliest attempts at Touhou fanart. Alice Margatroid, my all time favourite Touhou girl. I love her personality, maybe because she's portrayed as such a pitiful character in the fandom, and I seem to empathise a lot with her. I also really like her design and she's so pretty and fun to draw. <3This was my first time using Sai, and I used paths for ALL the lineork. Which was just crazy. I've learnt not to do that ever again.
I painted this from a pretty rough sketch, and this time it's Touhou's mascot shrine maiden, Reimu Hakurei! My personal vision of her is a lazy, do-what-I-have-to type of girl, but when she needs to be, she can be an ass-kicking bamf. I guess I tried to portray her here as being powerful but elegant. There was a lot of filtration experimentation and play with movement and colour composition, particularly with the backgroud. I got a bit over excited with the dress ripping though, aha.

Here is a picture I painted for Chinese New Year 2010, which is the year of the tiger, thus why I chose to paint Shou Toramaru here, and Nazrin by association. I think the tiger and mouse motif is interesting. Well I tried to use a lot of red and gold hues for the traditional chinese feeling, but being raised in Australia, I'm not very Chinese cultured although I'm half Chinese. Next time I will use animal references. Everythime I look at the tiger and mice I cringe inside.

I like to draw humorous pictures every now and then, and here's a few I had on my hard drive.
This picture is really old. Alice again, and with her BFFFL, Marisa Kirisame! Hahaha, I love their strenuous relationship so much. My favourite characters to play through Imperishable Night are Marisa and Alice because their dialougue is so entertaining. I like how they can work together whilst argueing and slandering each other, and that they're still good friends after everything is said and done.

More Reimu! This time with her Suika Ibuki motorcycle. She has such handlebar shaped horns, so that's where the inspiration for this picture came from. I really hate drawing chains, they're so tedious to draw at an acceptable angle, but at the same time, I think they look really cool if you can pull them off well.

Lastly, here's another more lighthearted picture (or horror themed maybe?) of Yukari Yakumo, and her shikigami, Ran Yakumo, and HER shikigami, Chen. I feel like they're a pretty tight family unit, Yukari being like the matriarch, and Ran being very motherly towards Chen. Yukari being a good parent is reading to her "kids", but being Yukari, decided to make it interesting by choosing this particular story.

I do have fanart from other series, but I won't post them here because they're OLD, and BAD, and UGLY. So from here onwards if I do decide to post more fanart, I'll only upload new pictures. Expect some new original sketches up here in the near future as I work on Eri's new theme "elemental"!

Sketch Challenge 4: Explorer

2010-04-10T23:14:00.000-07:00

Since Eri, Lucas and myself are all busy with our coursework, our weekly sketches have become more like bi-monthly sketches. I haven't had much time to work on personal art, but I finally finished a sketch for the latest theme; Explorer.

I originally started with a more generic sketch of an Indiana Jones type action/expolorer, but then I felt like it was a bit bland conceptually, and started fresh. The idea behind this one was an explorer of the skies, and the roped tooth is somewhat like a divination stick, and is guiding him to the sky shark that it belongs to. The lines over his skin are markings of his people, and I tried to keep his clothing to cloth, rope and feathery embellishments so that he's not weighed down by his garb. I think I probably went a bit overboard with the detailing.

If anyone is interested in my schoolwork, here is the untextured model of the constructor;

Hopefully it'll ok better once it's textured. So that's what I shall be working on after updating this blog.

I'm still having that image resizing issue with blogspot. If I use html from photobucket, it doesn't thumbnail them, but uploading via blogspot resizes them horribadly. I might reupload and fiddle around with this once I get some spare time.

Generator, Barrier and a Sketch

2010-03-12T20:43:00.000-08:00

Another Grimoire concept. After all the hoo-hah, we ended up keeping the name "Grimoire Studio", which I still need to create the logo for. All's well that ends well I suppose. Whenever I think about this project it evokes a feeling of anxiety and dread from somewhere inside me, it's really draining my freedom away and crushing my spirits. Maybe it's deprivation of time to spend chatting with friends that I miss dearly. I worry about juggling this project with my other studies and wonder if I have the capacity to get all the work done when it needs to be done. Well this blog is for my art, not my personal problems, so onward to the imagery!

This is supposed to be the generator (left) and the barrier, or forcefield generator (right). I designed the generator to appear as though it stores energy by using large energy charge areas, yes, the green glowy stuff. As for the barrier, I didn't want to to have a simple straight pole shape, so I made the base into a sort of tripod, or quadpod in this case. I realise how wrong the perspective is, however I decided to just sacrifice accuracy as this is going to become a model, so the art doesn't have to be perfect.

Primarily because of Grimoire, I haven't had much free time to do any art for myself, but I do a few sketches and speedpaints in between working to let of a little steam. Nothing really worthy of posting, but I did particularly like this painting I created of a sun beast.

One last thing before I wrap this up; Blogspot really loves to butcher my resolution when I upload images. I've been told that by uploading to Picasa I can get around this. However, I'm having some difficulties with that. I think next time I will try to upload to another site, like Tinypic or perhaps Photobucket. I hope to resolve the issue soon.

Sketch Challenge 3: Speed

2010-03-09T02:19:00.000-08:00

Even though I chose the theme for last week it was still a huge challenge for me! I did have a few ideas, but I wanted to try and think out of the box, and try something new. So I decided to try using Alchemy, and created the abstract background. I then used some minimal lines to define the subject and movement. The detail was left out so that the viewer can decide what they want to see.

Overall I'm pleased with how it came out, it was something really different for me. and I like the vibrancy, although it may be overpowering for others. Even the subject seems to be overwhelmed, haha. I really find the shapes and lines along with the patterns to be interesting. I hope to try using Alchemy again sometime.

Hmmm, I'm definately looking forward to the next theme.

Future Weapons

2010-03-08T18:45:00.000-08:00

Some more work for Grimoire, which is probably changing to some other name in the future because LUCAS DOES NOT APPROVE OF YOUR EVIL PAGAN WORSHIPPING. Haha, but that's okay, I respect religion and if anyone in our team is uncomfortable with that then I don't mind changing it. A happy team is a good team, in my opinion.

Anyway so the designs... I saved them in a sequence of my work process. It's a quick way to produce clean art so I thought I'd share my method.

The first step is sketching out your designs, I think the more sketches you do the more interesting results you'll get, but sometimes lack of time means you just have to make do with what you can come up with quickly. Sometimes I just do sketches digitally and go straight into the inking.

The second step is where I go over the sketch to neaten the lines and make them crisp. Paint Tool Sai is a great program to get really smooth lines. I tweak the designs here and there as I go when I feel like some part is not fitting in with the rest of the design.
The third step is where I add flat colour. It doesn't have to be perfect because I can change it later. The fill tool can be your friend at this stage.

The fourth step is where I add shadows and highlights.

And the final step is adding glows and whatever special effects. And that's my general work process. It's fast and clean. C:

Sketch Challenge 2: Alien

2010-02-28T16:42:00.001-08:00

When I think of 'alien' I think of two things, the huge black creatures from the Alien saga, and then I think of how Americans treat outsiders at the airport with their queues for American residents and their queue for 'aliens'. The way they segregate people makes me laugh. Well anyway, so I did this first sketch based on the fear that people have of others that are different, and how humans so quickly turn to violence when they don't understand. So this guy is somewhat of an alien to society and he's suffering because of it. In any case it was interesting and fun to try this facial expression and pose, haha.

Because I'm pretty sure I went and took some abstract approach to the topic rather than an alien in a literal sense, I went ahead and did an actual alien as well. That should cover everything, haha.

Well this alien is inspired somewhat from a rabbit-kangaroo type of hybrid, with a little bit of humanesque anatomy for a slight uncanny valley feeling. Though I'm not sure if that comes out at all (more of a weird Grudge crossover, pfft). Mainly a passive herbivore unless provoked, the impurities in the plants it consumes grow from it's back in bright green clusters, so that any predator trying to eat it will become poisoned.

That about wraps everything up. Now I have to think of a theme for the next challenge. Something that won't confuse my sketch buddies, hahaha.

Avatar and Airship

2010-02-27T09:31:00.000-08:00

I updated my profile with an avatar of myself;
I suppose this is one of my more cartoonish styles of drawing, haha.

And here is another concept sketch for the Grimoire game;

Sketch Challenge 1: Detective

2010-02-26T18:52:00.000-08:00

I'm behind by a week with the weekly sketch challenge, so I'm going to do the 'detective' theme and then post the 'alien' theme later in the week.

I wanted to do a dynamic action detective but a combination of drained enthusiasm and being mobbed with work meant that I went with the safe route and did a generic looking detective. Ah well. Next time I'll try to push myself more creatively. Anyway I focused on facial details, trying to make him look worn and rugged.

Well unfortunately these details sort of disappeared when I added colour. The scene also ended up being some strange looking surreal setting. I guess it's a bit mysterious, like a detective should be.

Futuristic Concepts

2010-02-24T04:08:00.000-08:00

Here is some concept work I'm doing for a university project. I have doubts about the future of the project but I hope my efforts aren't wasted on these babies.

This guy is the Operator class, or well, the guy who handles the machinery, kind of like seige weapons and such, except they're high tech and futuristic seige weapons! He has a power suit to help him get the job done, but compared to the other classes this is the most 'normal'. Well, at least this guy is still human.

This is the Builder class, although I tagged it as 'Constructor'. the names got switched around and I don't have the latest design document, so this is what I used. This class constructs structures and buildings, repairs things, puts up defensive barriers, etc. I made his arms and legs extendable because I figure that it would be conveniant to get to hard to reach areas and for building on certain terrains, etc.

This is the heavy unit, named Thor. I'm not sure if we're still using this name. I'll have to confirm. Anyway, the basic idea was to have an exposed pilot. In this case I decided to make the person sort of fuse with the machine in a way. Although it's temporary, but to synchronise the body and mind with the machine as to control it's movements effortlessly. Thor is supposed to have interchangable weaponry, but I really don't know where it would store it's weapons while not in use. So I thought maybe the arm mounted weapons could transform into other kinds of weapons while still being attached.

Hmmm, I actually forgot what the new name for this class is. I'm sure it has 'Nano' somewhere in it. Anyway this class is the healer/close combat class. I wanted to make it a bit creepy, so I made the arms and legs elongated for that kind of spidery-lanky feel. I wanted this class to be agile and a bit annoying to hit. The joints are very flexible, so even being hit and thrown around, it's still durable. Kind of like when you throw and squish rubbery things, they're hard to damage unless you're using a blade. Oh, this class can also give buffs to other classes and itself.

These are going to be such a chore to model, but I hope the effort will pay off. I think I have the upperhand of inorganic joints. They'll be easier to animate. But the details will be tedious to model. Ah... how will I get these down to 3000 polys. I'm getting a headache jsut thinking about it...

A fresh start.

2010-02-24T01:21:00.001-08:00

Hello all, I'm starting up a sketch blog so I have a nice portfolio. Hopefully this will be a good way for me to improve my art along with some of my university friends. Although I'm short on time at the present, I will be updating this in the future and maybe I can spruce up this layout somewhat.