Rey

Rewatched The Force Awakens, doodling, thinking about character. Thought it could've been cool if Rey struggled with anger. Her confrontation with Kylo could turn her off that path. 

September studies

Portraits, figures and some cosplayers. Pushing harder after all the other work from the ILM challenge came in. 

ILM Art Department Challenge

These were my submissions for the ILM Challenge, details of which can be found here!

The Moment

Bespin:

While on a secret mission to Bespin, Biggs got himself tangled up with a rogue Red Guard and the droid mercenary IG-88. 

Falcon:

After Han was rescued from the clutches of Jabba the Hutt, the team returns to the Millennium Falcon to regroup.

Tatooine:

While Jabba was busy feeding prisoners to the Sarlacc, a few opportunists made a break for a better life. Max Rebo stole a skiff from the barge, picking up Malakili, the Rancor Trainer and Oola the Twi'lek

Yavin:

Boba Fett was sent to Yavin to kill Mon Mothma. He ultimately failed his mission when he underestimated her diplomatic prowess. 

The Ride

"The Turtle" 

I wanted to design a vehicle whose primary job was to showcase my favorite aspects of Star Wars: swashbuckling, peril, co-operation, and a dirty lived in world.

"The Revenge of Alderaan" 

Trench runs and exhaust ports are great, but I wanted to explore a more blunt, emotional statement. The Rebels recovered the largest remaining piece of Alderaan, and they're going to punch a revenge-hole.

The Job

"Cages Cut Open"

A brave Rebel cuts some wires, releasing the wild animal cages. The Rebels know what the Empire doesn't: that Wampas go after Tauntauns like sharks go after seals. They use the distraction to their advantage. 

"Stampede"

The Wampas and Tauntauns are in a frenzy, cutting a path through the Empire's ranks. The Rebels use this to their advantage to gain ground. R2-D2 and C-3PO are caught right in the middle of the conflict. 

The Fighter is a 2-person craft, pilot and gunner like many star wars fighter craft. It can land on the ground by folding its fore-wings down. You can see in the reference that this is based on an upside down oil lamp.

The Carrier is mostly engine. It delivers the fighters to the lower atmosphere, flying overhead and dropping them like seeds. This ship is based off of a sideways Arabian tea/coffee pot.

The Starship is made up of Carrier ships, with a head and propulsion at the front and back. It's like a contained fleet, able to house as many Carriers as needed. This shape is meant to reflect a Hookah on its side.

Danji

The Danji are arriving in the cavernous, coral-like base of Sookah. They are exiting their ships and marching towards the nervous Rebels. Mon Mothma steps forward, meeting the Danji leader, who removes her helmet...

Swana

Here's my model sheet for Swana, with DD-3 on her wrist. She's based on Princess Yuki from Hidden Fortress, especially her eyebrows/eyes and her bamboo scepter/whip. It was a cool exercise to elaborate on the version of her from earlier.

DD-3  

He is very small, so I thought his primary task could be to "mind control" much bigger droids with various purposes (essentially making all droids his "swiss army knife" of abilities). I made him bronze to fit the Danji palette I've been working wit

"Plans" 

Swana removes her outter cloak and reveals the plans for the second deathstar to Mon Mothma, R2 and Admiral Ackbar. The plans were stuck in the head of an Empire Droid (RA-7), but DD-3 could extract them. 

"Combat"

Swana uses her flexible wand to deflect the enemy's weapons in order to engage in hand-to-hand combat. While she fights, DD-3 takes control of nearby droids to support her. 

"Pest"

Swana tries to sleep, but DD-3 won't stop chasing R2 around the interior of her ship. 

"Twelve!"

Swana - Aren't you the pilot who did the Kessel Run in fifteen parsecs?

Han - Twelve!

I wanted to echo Swana and Hans conflict with the battle going on behind them.

"True Manu Grit" 

It's always fun to design characters that are clearly up to no good. From left to right is: Bar Maid with her six legs, half-droid bounty hunter Manu Grit, Uru, Yot, big red Crax, multi-armed Myx Dur in front, and spidery Tar Ken. 

Rendering practice

Figured it was time to practice some rendering again

Eowyn

Come on, Aragorn, get it together.

A half-elven thief, guest-drawn for my brother's youtube channel @rndfantasy.

I've included the hour long process video with commentary. 

D'ni

Gehn and Atrus reach the subterranean city of D'ni. Just some fan art from the Myst book of Atrus.

Museum drawings

Study update

Some lunch-hour figure drawings (with some portraits of other attendees).

Our technical animator Aaron Dibbs let us come draw his horses.

Wolves

I've been doing a lot of wolf studies lately and I thought it'd be a fun challenge to make an illustration that focused entirely on wolves. Anatomy and reference drawings are one thing, but trying to create characters and tell a story uses a different muscle entirely. Pretty simple, implied story moment using some broad archetypes. Turn out that when drawing wolves it's easy to slip into mythological territory. 

Post-Montreal inspiration

I was fortunate enough to attend the Syn Studios "Gathering of Masters" in Montreal. Five days of talks, workshops, and hanging out with like-minded artists from all kinds of backgrounds. It was hugely inspiring to listen to James Gurney, Terryl Whitlach, Samantha Youssef, Raphael Lacoste, and many others. I've been home for two days and I can't stop drawing.

Right now I'm frantically running around drawing everything. Eventually i'll calm down and start focusing, but for now I'm like a humming bird with a pencil.

There are life drawings, animal drawings, anatomy studies, and even some airplanes (picking a subject I have little to no interest in and trying to lean into it).

Study 009

Studies - humans and animals

League of Queens

Episode #205 - The League has tracked Maleficent (with Jafar and Trident in hand) to the Godmother's tomb. Belle has learned to control her transformations, Ariel now wields Excalibur, and Jasmine has finally been freed from her lamp. Can Cinderella lead them to victory before Maleficent acquires the final piece in her plan?

That Disneypocalypse image I made a while ago was fun. In a continued attempt to get back into the swing of doing personal work I thought it would be fun to revisit this idea. A few extra details:

-Cinderella's armor is glass because practicality is boring. 

-Ariel wears a large, purple octopus beak around her neck. 

-After being set free, Jasmine turned her lamp into a dagger in the hopes it could kill Jafar. 

-Maleficent bears the scars of being stabbed in the chest by an enchanted sword

Getting used to the new cintiq

Best way to do that is with fundamentals.

Moonlight

Reveling in my old motifs again.

Leap

Something totally self-indulgent. Adventure shlock in Escapistopia.

axe sharpening

Marvel variant covers

I had the opportunity to draw some variant covers for Marvel!

Weird World #1

New Avengers #6

Avengers Standoff: Welcome to Pleasant Hill

2hr talk about concept art and process

My brother Tom Rhodes and I did a commentary track for my guest appearance on rndfantasy. We ended up covering a lot of ground on concept art, design, research and process.