Hot wheels style racing

Here's a step by step process of an action shot.

I started with my thumbnail, a basic sketch using a blue pencil, here I make decisions about perspective and the general composition / layout before scanning it.

Once I am happy with the sketch I start to 'ink' the illustration and tidy up the line-work.

Then I add colour. I use 'flats' which means selecting an area of the illustration and filling with 'flat' colours (eg green and orange for the cars) I then start to airbrush and shade them to add definition.

Finishing the illustration involves building up the layers of colour, concentrating on each area in stages and building up the overall detail consistently. Finally I add a few effects to add some drama to the lighting.

Work in progress.

I'm experimenting, as usual, with a few styles again. Here are a couple of images I have done recently for two projects I'm working on.

I saw some fantastic concept art recently and this inspired me to have a go at a different style; below, I'm using a variety of brushes, the painting is still in the rough stage as I play around with different textures and marks. Once I've got a technique I'm happy with I'll have a go at working on a more adventurous composition.

The next few images are just typical 'pin up' style girls. Using no reference is helping me develop more accurate poses... also I'll admit I enjoy drawing girls.

I decided to push the cartoony style a bit more than I usually do to get a smoother look.

Will Solvit - some early work.

Here's a collection of Will Solvit artwork, some of it from back when the project was in its infancy. I was given a brief description of Will and from this I sketched the character you see below.

I was very pleased to be offered this job as unbeknown to me at the time some talented artists had also been pitching for the work.

The picture below was the original style of painting I used for the character, it was tonally much simpler. The grid reference is on the floor so that I can position the pose (when I'm sketching) and use it and an aid to help get the perspective correct.

A variety of quick spot arts and another cover pose.

Below is a transition from sketch to the colour-ups. Here I tried a couple of colour / lighting schemes. Whilst painting the last illustration I tried an alternative painting technique, this just helped me get a feel for the best way to work.

Real Heroes Firefighter

A month of so back I produced the cover for Real Heroes Firefighter on the Wii released by a great bunch of guys at Creative Distribution

This is the first bit of box art I've worked on and it was a pleasure. All games / products released for use with Nintendo hardware, such as the Wii, have to pass their quality standards, it wont get released as an official product unless they are happy with it, so I was really pleased (and relieved!) when my cover was signed off by Nintendo to appear on the pack and the promotional stuff!

Here's the final cover (back/spine/front):

Originally the concept for the packaging was to have a cartoony style to the artwork, below is the colour rough I produced to get across ideas while working with Creative:

That style didn't really settle well with this product so it was time for an overhall, for me to check out some more reference and crack on in another direction. We agreed a stylized realistic look would work better. So I quickly knocked up the following sketch:

By this point I was on the right sort of track however more realism was needed so I just painted more detail in. I chose the dramatic pose initially for a cartoon style but it dawned on me later I would need to paint in a 'sort of realistic' style but without a photo of a model in this position with all the firefighter kit on, yikes! Photorealism isn't my forte, although I'll give anything a bash so I cracked on and in the end I was happy with the result:

I added two guys in the background and made all the elements separate, so that they could be used for promotional material. I produced the artwork on an A3 sized canvas, that way if they wanted to use my artwork for posters etc it would be better if they didn't have to upscale from the smaller Wii box size. It turns out they were printed quite large for the E3 display as freestanding cutout statues.

Here's some of the key elements broken down:

During the project I had a play with some of my art layers to create a street art stencil style:

I hope you enjoy the game and thanks for reading!

District 9

I watched this film the other day and was blown away by the story and the visual effects. The mech suit worn by Wikus which features during the last moments of the film is designed by Greg Broadmore a superb, talented concept artist. I found the film so influential I've produce a graphic novel style piece - I've added a cooker, which at one point in the film makes a comically devastating weapon (as does a rather large pig!).

More poses.

More poses! this brings the total of Will Solvit covers I've done to sixteen. We decided to go with lots of energetic poses (my guideline was that they couldn't look too 'manga' but still had to be dynamic). After doing a fair number of these I proposed that props are added which tie the cover art to the story.