Environment No. 2: The Forest Road.

Oooh, the snow has finally made it to Essex today, so far though it is kind of wet and lame, hoping for some of the good stuff overnight. On to todays enviro. This was the purple green one and it stirred in me images of Mirkwood from the Hobbit so I started off in that vein.

I started putting in some shadows to create the forms of the trees, and lighter areas for the grassy bank over to the right.

Continued building up the forms and the contrast.
Then I added a road in to lead viewers into the picture, the sunlight streaming through the leaves was added last. I think the final result is a little more friendly than what I was originally going for. More like the Night Elf lands in World of Warcraft, but still quite pleased with its atmosphere.

Environment No.1 : Lake Castle.

So, to kick off environment week I started with this texture and it said to me trees and mist and water. I wanted to try and keep a watercolour feel to the piece and so worked on building up the trees quite subtley. I felt it needed a focal point and so put the castle in the lake.

I was pretty happy with the feel of the piece and didn't want to be to precious about it, so to finish off, I adjusted the contrast to give it a little boost and enlarged the castle, as I felt it looked a little puny before.

After I had finished, I was playing about trying to make it look more misty and after having whacked the contrast right down this night time version sort of evolved from it. Changed the season from Autumn to Winter, added a mysterious light to the top castle window and voila same piece different mood. Check back in tomorrow for the next one.

Next week is Environment week.

From Monday I am going to try and do an environment each day till Friday. I want these to be loose, quick environments, as sometimes I can get bogged down in the details and lose the feel of the piece. I have taken a basic texture and am going to see what comes out of each as the mood takes me. The textures you can see here:

So, check back in next week and see what I come up with.

Tha Work Thang #23: A few pieces.

As promised, here are a few pieces from some of the books I have worked on recently. In descending order. We have three equipment pieces from the DeathWatch RPG by Fantasy Flight Games; the Relic Blade, Tri flame vambrace and Skapulan Bolter. Images are copyright Games Workshop 2010.

And two pieces from Cults of the Young Kindoms from Mongoose Publishing, an Elric of Melnibone adventure showing an Evil Temple and Elric conversing with a water elemental. Images are copyright Mongoose Publishing 2010.

Tha Work Thang #22: Where have you been?

Hello all! or to paraphrase Jack Nicholson in the Shining, "Really sorry for neglecting my blog. My bad." (I think that line is in the movie, either that or, "All play and no blogging makes Jack a dull boy.")

Anyhoo.... just an update on what i have been working on recently. I will put up some images from these books when they are released, a couple of them are out now. I had a nice browse through the Deathwatch R.P.G. in Waterstones the other day, very nice book. (cough....comp. copy...cough.)

This has nearly all been interior black and white work, there was a colour piece in there somewhere.

So, in no particular order we have, "Blood of the Martys", "Edge of the Abyss", "Rites of Battle",

"DeathWatch", "The Frozen Reaches", all for Fantasy Flight Games.

Then we have, "Cults of the Young Kingdoms" and "The Abiding Book" for Mongoose Publishing.

Well, I must say, it's nice to be back. We must do this again sometime soon!