Latest two 'drawing a week' uh... drawings!

Theme: Electricity Thief

This week we're going to be designing a creature that ingests electricity for nourishment. This species tends to be considered a pest because in areas where their population gets too high, it causes blackouts, and occasionally sends these infested areas into the technological stone-age due to their sucking up of so much delicious energy.

"This particular crow-sized, avian species used to be something of a rarity. They used to roam the stormy skies in small packs of three to five, scavenging off the natural discharge of electricity. As it spends 90% of its time in the clouds, higher than most other flighty animals, the eyes are situated low down on the head. Its beak acts as a conductor. The electricity is attracted to the point, which then leaps towards the adapted tongue and is thus consumed.

However, once they learned that power cables and telegraph wires were a much easier and abundant source of food, they left their high altitudes to settle in more urban, grounded areas. The more readilly available food increased their survival rate and their numbers grew. They now exist in swarms of thirty or more, causing constant power outages with their feeding frenzies.

Half the main bird pic missing I'm afraid due to random CS5 crash. Thank feck for printscreen eh."

Theme: Orrery Chamber

An Orrery is a room that has a model of the solar system in it. This is an open topic. It could be strategic, mystical, scientific, or whatever else you wish to imagine, similarly it could be ancient, steampunk, alien, futuristic, etc.

"In the not so distant future there is barely a spot of soil left to shit on due to over industrialisation. However, because of the general, eco-warmongering public, many new buildings now support their own eco-systems and habitats.

One of the first buildings to do this was a newly erected science museum, where the Orrery was built to be an observatory and greenhouse."

"You are part of a development team working on a third person survival game called Sparks. The game takes place in the rundown village of Cog and its surrounding landscape. The natural world has long since turned its back on mechanised industry and is slowly but surely cleansing the land of its presence.

You play as Sparks a teenage robot struggling to come to terms with natures hate of the industrialised world, each day Sparks' village is attacked by natural creatures. By day you help defend the village from attacks, by night you explore the surrounding areas and gather resources to aid both Sparks' and the Village’s development."

The above TL;DR is the blurb for the main project I'm working on at uni, we're in week 3 now! If you didn't guess the above colour schemage and whatnot is for the protagonist Sparks. This is pretty much his/her/its final design and hopefully I'll churn out a pretty, polished concept image before long. Now moving onto the village and general surroundings concepts!

Belated life drawing from last monday. Blogger hasn't been wanting to upload my pictures lately, so got around to taking these to uni and uploading them here. Was in a rather sour mood so not my best round, but I should be getting back into the swing of things.

Very busy with current project, dissertation doings, Dare to be Digital competitioning and finding time to have a life somewhere in between. Not to mention all those annoying foibles that come with living in general. That said I'll upload some progress from the current project of suicidal tendancies asap, plus yesterdays life drawing. This blog will not be defeateeeeeeeeed!!

Just a quick update, a couple of pictures from the weekly challenge me and some friends are doing. We choose a subject from the ConceptArt forums and spend between 1-3 hours on a picture.

Theme: The Zodiac Warrior

For ages a war has been going on between 12 different tribes, all of them empowered by a different starsign. The Zodiac Wars have been the stage of many famous powerful warriors and mages, yet none of them powerful enough to overcome the others. Which starsign channels the most power? Who will end the Zodiac Wars?

Theme: Pissoir

The brief this week is to create a public toilet, pissoirs (public urinals) being a subcategory. This is fairly straightforward, but in addition the toilet must be designed with a certain city or location in mind. After all, who would use an exposed pissoir in Winnipeg in January?

"The Jeeves 5000 is finally here from Auto-bog Ltd!!

This buttling, defecation exposal 'bot is the perfect edition to any 5 star resort. Why waste your precious relaxation time by having to extract yourself from your leisure activity and hike all the way to the nearest lavatory, when it can come to you! With brand new patented bladder and intestinal sensors, the Jeeves 5000 will always know when you want to go. Its specialised hover disc allows it to settle at any height or angle for optimised comfort, not to mention getting it to the site in record time. Never again will top-dollar paying holidaygoers have to wipe their own arses."

Hastily put together trailer for the Orb game. I normally wouldn't put it up here but this is as much as anyone will ever see of the game. It isn't particularly playable unfortunately but hey, lesson learned. Or lessons. Or something. 'Swhat university's about right?

Below for your viewing pleasure is a work-in-progress I didn't manage to finish for Valentines. Will get there someday though when I find the time in amongst the new projects.

Two promotional images for the Orb game, which is finally done and handed in! I don't think I have ever been so stressed for a project my entire life. Still, there's the dreaded 'train-wreck' project next, where we get to work in massive teams along with coders. We could barely get the 4 in our group organised this time around.

I. Am going. To die.

Ha, really sell myself don't I? Hopefully will put the actual game up on the 'net somewhere, once we get the okay with the chaps who originally pitched this. Screenshots don't quite give the same feel unfortunately.

Got some actual progress to show you for the uni project game (which is called Orb by the way)

I'm definately no animator, and though I would have liked to spend much more time on these I don't think they're too shabby. They'll be about half the size in the actual game so hopefully all the raging mistakes will be shrunk down to an unseeable size!

Also a couple of screenshots from in-game. Personally not very happy with the scenery work, it all looks rather flat. Unfortunately there's no time to create full, majestic, depthful masterpieces with the bajillion other levels I've got to do. Not that I'm complaining, managed to learn a few things by stumbling my way ungainly through this project.