Interceptor

This is an Interceptor I developed out of the bunch of sketches I drew a few days ago.
Again, it started as a “funny shape”, but since it does look fast and the first word that came to my mind is “Interceptor”, the name stuck.

I shall point out that these are not part of my – emm – Science Project (the provisional name for the other big thing I’m working on with a colleague of mine).
About that: I have a whole bunch of half-finished drawings that I’m planning on completing as soon as I can.

It’s just that I’ve recently been told that my portfolio is leaning a bit too much towards the Illustration side.
Not that it’s a bad thing, of course, but as a “Concept Artist” part of my job description should include some actual concepts before I move on towards other things.

Now, despite drawing this in just a few minutes, (thus disregarding any possible background story related to this interceptor, or any justification for its design choices), I did wonder what the most logical paint job for a spaceship would be, considering that its purpose is to chase and attack other vessels.

I thought that dark paint to conceal itself in the darkness of space wouldn’t make much sense.
After all, I would expect other high tech spacecrafts to have at least a radar, and they wouldn’t target an interceptor by sight.
Right?
Since camouflage is pointless, would bright, loud colours be more suitable? Perhaps, although it might tend to be a bit silly.
Eventually I went for a “we spaceships manufacturer don’t care about paint” kind of approach, and I left it with a plain metal look.

Again, I remembered about Screenflow this time, and I managed to record the whole process.
I know nothing about editing videos, so please refrain from insulting me about the poor quality and the mistakes:)

Also, the last one I made was reposted on MonkeysVsRobots (go have a look, it’s full of nice artwork!) so it may be worth making a habit out of it.

Enjoy some Vivaldi in the meantime.

by Paolo Puggioni

Speedfighter

I named this sketch “Speedfighter” (I know, duh, it’s in the title. Anyway).
I hadn’t really planned this ahead. As it often happens when I draw for fun at home, I draw things first and I find out what they are only when I’m close to the end.
In this particular case I was trying a technique the usual friend of mine uses sometimes to sketch environments and props.

The technique is about painting the main shapes in black with a big flat brush, and then detailing the rest in white.

Almost like a notan, but with more details in it.

So, nothing really new to be honest, we’ve been experimenting with notans for quite a while, and this is quite similar. However, it’s the first time I used it this way.
The result is a very nice comic-looking sketch and offers a lot of other advantages.

The big brush prevents you from going into details too early, and forces you to come up with interesting shapes early on rather than changing your mind further into the process. Also, since you only use one other colour to give more detail, you’re bound to use it sparingly and focus only on what is important.

Here’s a bunch of sketches I drew in under ten minutes. OMG ten minutes!

Now, since I have a key conveniently set up as “eraser” on my Cintiq (whereas  constantly reaching for the x key on the small keyboard on video to swap between black and white was quite awkward), I decided to erase the black instead of painting over it, which resulted in an interesting pipeline:
Having “holes” carved into the main shape allowed me to paint the layer beneath the main shape with a secondary colour. This meant that in just a few minutes I was able to complete the main sketch and knock out the colours, which means that 70% of the whole drawing was already pretty much finished.
The entire thing took me less than 30 minutes, which is surprising considering I don’t practice on hard surfaces that often.

So here’s the one I decided to develop further, our Speedfighter.

Since it looks fast and aggressive (there are guns on it after all), it was obviously a Speedfighter to me, but feel free to remember it as “the usual spaceship”.

I’m also posting a video of the process because I’m really loving this technique.
Enjoy some Bach in the meantime.

by Paolo Puggioni

First Flight

As noted in the Second Account of The Exodus, (pp. 349-5020) what every Swarm received from the Great Draft would be a crucial factor in their individual development for the centuries to come.

[…] despite most Swarms eventually settling with Solar Sails as their favourite mean of propulsion, the Second Swarm achieved such proficiency in their manufacturing and operation to be considered as the archetype of the Sailing Communities.

[…] handling wingspans as wide as 400 m. secured to their bodies was no easy task, and required years of training and practice.
Spacecrafts could rely on computers and automated systems to set their sails at the optimal angle in respect to the solar winds direction; Herons [N.d.A this is how Winged Prospectors are commonly referred to] had to rely entirely on their senses, skills and instinct.

Before they were considered fit for their first flight, aspiring Herons had to go through a lengthy and dangerous training: too steep an angle towards the main direction of the gamma rays could make their suits unable to handle the amount of space radiations, cause permanent damage or even death; inaccurate maneuvers could compromise the structure of their delicate and precious wings, while failing to achieve optimal speed, or cause them to be caught in the wrong tide, which would mean becoming separated from the Swarm, and being marooned in the depths of space.

[…] training in the use of Wings started at the age of four, the basics usually given by a parent or family member.
In order to get accustomed to the tough conditions in space, young trainees started their career even earlier than that, often secured to their parents’ suits by straps or shielded cradles.

At the age of eighteen aspirants would craft their own wings, using parts and components taken from the family heirlooms.
The precious Solar Thread was always treasured as their most valuable possession, and carefully stored back into the family’s vaults once a Heron’s career eventually came to its end.

[…]A Herons’ First Flight always occurred together with other members of the same class, with a solemn ceremony.
They would take off one by one, overseen by their instructors, then gather together in their first formation and perform a ritual flight around each vessel of the Swarm.

Only after their First Flight they were allowed to take part in the routine explorations that the Second Swarm relied upon for its sustenance.

by Paolo Puggioni

Another Spaceship, but With Solar Sails

As you might guess from the fact that this thing is floating in space, here’s another spaceship.

Now, you might think this is just another spaceship, but it’s not.
I mean, it’s obviously a spaceship, just not any spaceship.

It’s a beginning, a prelude, a precursor, a vanguard. Good or bad, it’s the first of a long series of concepts. Hopefully. (Is a group of 1 things already a series? You know, I tend to drop projects at the sight of the first shiny new thing. I’d like to think that I’ve done a series of things for a personal project).

Anyway. As I said in my last post, I would like to make an attempt at designing a Sci-Fi setting without using common Sci-Fi stereotypes. I might fail miserably – I don’t know yet where I’m going to with this – but who cares.

So, with the help of the usual friend I put together some guidelines for a storyline that should be supporting my next series of concepts.

I considered to share here the bunch of notes I wrote down, then I thought they are a bit too messy to make it an interesting read, so I came up with another plan.

One thing I LOVED of the books I read when I was a kid (Around The World in 80 Days, 20000 Leagues Under The Sea and such) were the illustrations you got every chapter or so, with a quote from the page the illustration was depicting.

I mean things like this of course.

I thought that writing a small background story after the images, as if they were part of a consistent body of work, will be slightly more interesting for whoever is going to follow this and, MOST IMPORTANTLY, more fun for me.

Furthermore, this way I can reveal the setting little by little, and also (ah, the joys of non-commitment) I will have the freedom to change my mind about the story halfway though, without nobody noticing.

Back to my spaceship, the idea of writing a proper background came after I did this, (actually it occurred to me like 20 seconds ago) so I can give you nothing at the moment. Nothing!

To be honest, in this particular case I didn’t even give much thought to the design, so let’s take this as a concept that is part of the project but actually isn’t.

Does it make sense?

The only really peculiarity lies in the design, as well as perhaps that there seem to be Solar Sails instead of thrusters.

This will indeed be quite an important part of the project. I’ll expand on this in the future, I promise.

by Paolo Puggioni

Just An Emo Phase About Design

Early this year I had what could be considered as an emo phase in my attitude towards art and design. Ok, despite this incipt sounding like a hippy’s mental fart, I’ll leave it exactly as it is.

This so called emo phase stemmed from the realization that, after a few decades spent drawing pretty much the same subject matters, I suddenly realized there was little or no room left in my head for real innovation.

Which, for a concept artist, is a big problem.

After ten thousands briefs, regardless of the amount of imagination under which they were conceived, a wizard is still a wizard, an elf is an elf, a dwarf is a dwarf. You can always come up with an original look, but there’s so much crazy you can add to an iconic image before it becomes unrecognizable for what it’s supposed to be.

This rant is not entirely about art. There is (and, alas, there always will be) a lot of room for improvement in my drawing skills. However, for a concept artist, those are just the tools of the trade. What really matters for our employers (and ourselves) is that the artwork we produce is indeed some sort of original design. Design is what we really do, and when you can’t think of anything really original to show people then something isn’t working.

So, I moaned about this with my friend and colleague, mostly during our ping-pong sessions (we have very few breaks, but when we do, it’s when I crush him at the ping pong table*).

I think the real problem lies within the visual design of well-established archetypes.

If it’s Fantasy, things must be designed in a certain way for them to be recognizable as “fantasy”. If it happens in Space, then things must be readable and understandable for the function they have.

So, a dwarf must be stocky, grumpy and wear a beard; a spaceship must have exhausts, cockpits and possibly a few cannons.

To be honest I might have been biased at the time I made these considerations, mostly by the vast amount of the (yet amazing) artwork found on Concept Art websites depicting space helmets, elves shooting arrows, warriors hacking orcs and things like that.

I got to the point when I felt I had already seen a similar version of pretty much everything. Hell, I can say the same of my own portfolio.

So, to cut a long story short, at the height of my emo phase I was wondering whether there’s a way to do things slightly differently, and possibly improve my portfolio accordingly.

The short answer is “probably not”.

I was watching one of Feng Zhu’s videos a few days ago, and he said something that struck a chord.

I won’t quote his own words because I can’t be asked:) The gist of it was: we HAVE to do things the way we do. We could, for example, decide to put more science in our Sci-fi designs, and make aliens as bizarre as they would likely be. If you think of all the life forms on our planet, and how weird and peculiar some of them are, you can imagine how far from our experience a creature from another planet could be.

I mean, just look at these.

Think of what would happen on a planet with a different gravity, a different level of radiations, different environments.
As a matter of fact, we can’t go “too crazy” with our designs: in a commercial product like a movie, or even in a concept made for fun, a subject matter designed with no regard for readability would be unintelligible for most of the viewers, save a very limited amount of very happy nerds. So, well, spaceships will have to look like spaceships, aliens have better have fangs and claws. Or at least a head with a couple of eyes.

Helpful (I’m not being sarcastic), but what shall I do about the repetitiveness of what I happen to work on?

Wouldn’t it be nice if the elements we consider as defining of two major genres of fiction (Fantasy and Sci-fi) were shuffled a bit, played with and maybe mixed together?

In order to do so I started thinking of a setting where a story could take place. Nothing fancy, just to have some consistency to base a few designs on.

I wrote down some ideas, I spoke about them with my friend while I was crushing him at ping-pong, and the idea got bigger and more defined.

As it turns out, it’s not a never-seen-before setting, but if offers the chance for some nice designs, so I think it could work.

I’m writing this down just because these conversations happened quite a while ago now, and I haven’t done much about it. So well, at least I’m getting the ball rolling.

Since this is becoming a big wall of text I’ll write about it in another post, maybe with the couple of sketches I’ve made so far.

*dude, if you disagree about my recollection of my ping pong skills write your own post about it!

by Paolo Puggioni

Artwork for The Hobbit – Black Arrow

This is the second (and last) illustration I made for Fantasy Flight Games‘ The Battle of Lake Town, which is based on the events of The Hobbit.
Disclaimer: oh my God I haven’t looked at this drawing for a while and I’m not happy with the guy’s face! Like, at all! OMG!

Oh well, I guess that means I got better at drawing faces in the meantime? Hopefully?

Anyway, if you’re familiar with the events of the Hobbit you might already know what this illustration is about.
The archer depicted in the illustration is no less than Bard the Bowman, the guy who SPOILER AHEAD, WHAT THE HELL THOUGH, IF YOU HAVEN’T READ THE HOBBIT YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELF kicks a ginormous dragon’s ass by firing an arrow straight into its chest, taking advantage of a weak spot that Bilbo Baggins discovered while made invisible by his marvellous magic ring.

Funny how Bard was the only descendant of the Lord of the town, who managed to escape when, decades earlier, the dragon decided – for the lulz – to lay waste of the surroundings.
Some families seem to be destined to great deeds.

What I meant to convey with his face (failing, apparently. Really, I don’t like his bloody face) is that Bard REALLY was a good guy. Responsible, courageous and altruistic, with a genuine interest in the wellbeing of his countrymen and none at all in his own gain or even safety.
As opposed, for example, to Legolas, who was more of a smart-ass with his bow and arrows, and who seemed to be more motivated by the sport involved in killing orcs rather than the actual Good implied in getting rid of them.
When Bard eventually killed the dragon and, acclaimed by his people, was offered the position of greatest power in the government, declined in favor of the current ruler.
Which, by the way, would happen only in Fantasy books.

This drawing turned out to be more difficult than expected, a lot more than the other apparently complicated illustration I made for The Hobbit.
Hell, there are few things more straightforward than drawing a guy seen from the front shooting an arrow.
At least that’s what I thought.
I got a lot of feedback about the arm being in the wrong position, the thumb holding the bow being too high or too low, and things like that.

The Art Director, who was obviously quite experienced in archery, went as far as sending me a picture of her own arm to show me a proper archer’s pose.

So well, it took a while but I eventually got there.
If I could I would shorten that nose by quite a lot. And change his mouth and a few other things.
But I guess I’ll live with that.

by Paolo Puggioni

Artwork from The Hobbit

Last year I had the pleasure of working again on one of Fantasy Flight Games‘ card games, this one based on the events of The Hobbit.
The last one I made was all centered on the Dwarves’ struggles, so I guess this work ties in nicely with the previous one.

The set is called The Battle of Lake Town (hey, they picked one of my cards for the marketing image on the website:)), one of the bits in The Hobbit most packed with action, so all the artwork obviously refers to Lake Town and its surroundings (which fellow nerds know as Esgaroth).

Both of the scenes I depicted -I’ll publish the other one in the next post – take place when – SPOILER AHEAD: IF YOU’RE ONE OF THE TWO PEOPLE ON THE PLANET WHO DOESN’T KNOW WHAT HAPPENS DO NOT READ FURTHER – Smaug sets off from its lair under The Mountain and decides to kick some ass.

As everybody knows, before Bard the Bowman eventually succeeded in sticking his favourite arrow deep into Smaug’s armpit, the dragon managed to happily wreak havoc over the highly flammable, wooden built settlement on stilts.

Now, while working on this kind of assignments I normally provide a bunch of sketches to choose from.
In this case the sketching phase was quite relevant, as the choice of perspective was quite crucial.
The scene was supposed to be seen from Smaug’s eyes, so I had to convey some degree of speed and “action”.

Since architecture in perspective is quite time consuming, I made a model of the city in Sketchup first, and drew over the mockup.

Rendering the scene was quite straightforward (no fancy lighting, everything was on fire after all), and the final version was approved straight away.

I would have liked to have Smaug’s reflection on the water, or maybe its shadow on the ground, but neither the perspective nor the lighting would have justified it, so well, this is what I came up with.

I’m quite curious to see how they rendered Esgaroth in the upcoming Hobbit movie.
Illustrations set in The Hobbit aren’t as widespread as those for the Lord of The Rings, and I basically found no reference for the architectural style of the area.
But well, Tolkien Estate approved it so I guess it wasn’t too far from what the author had in mind.

Later this week I’ll post the other illustration I made for this Hobbit assignment.

by Paolo Puggioni

Hoverboard Concepts

A few days ago I happened to think of hoverboards, so I thought I could draw some.

I can’t deny I’ve always had a thing for hoverboards.
Well, I’m sure I’m not the only one.
Let’s say I’m just one of those who have a thing for hoverboards.
They are one of those unkept promises that people from the 80s still begrudge, together with jetpacks and flying cars.

I check daily on Amazon for availability, with no success.
This is the only one I found, which doesn’t really hover, it’s way too pink and disturbingly too 80s.
Plus, the auction starts at 30000 USD.
Oh well.

Not that I’m complaining about the technology available today, of course.
I mean, my grandma used to fetch water from the river with a vase balancing on her head so, well, tap water technology is already pretty cool if you asked her.
Also, I draw things on a screen. And when I touch the screen, things happen. Ok, sometimes they don’t happen at all and I have to download and reinstall the drivers of the bloody screen, but it’s still pretty cool, and nowhere near as upsetting as not having a hoverboard.

How difficult can it be to make one? We have laser guns! They were in everybody’s list of things they expected to see in the future, and here they are. Why not hoverboards?

We should set our priorities straight, people. Lasers are cool, there’s no denying it. But they really look at their best when shot at alien invaders from a real spaceship, so the timing is all wrong here.

So, in case scientists ever happen to read this and were undecided what to focus on next, here’s where I would put our R&D money for the next few years:

– fucking Hoverboards, let’s get them out of the way guys.
– flying cars (you can hoverboard to the office for your work commute, but you do need a flying car if you have kids).
– decent robots (ok we’re getting there)
– warp drive spaceships (just a few years for those)
– ONLY THEN, laser guns

Should THE GOVERNMENT agree with my list, here’s some quick designs. Just in case.

by Paolo Puggioni

A Frozen Apocalyptic City

I decided I had to brush off my matte painting skills, so the first thing I thought I could do is your classic post apocalyptic city.
Only, in this case, instead of being a city depicted after a nuclear event, or a big ginormous tsunami caused by asteroid impact, or a zombie invasion, or an earthquake, or an eruption, this city is just frozen solid.

Considering it has been winter for like 8 months now, it’s not difficult to imagine why I came up with this original idea.

Also, I remember once I came across the picture of a block (in Siberia maybe?) which remained without heating because of a power failure or something, in the dead of winter, at around -50 degrees. The buildings were literally filled with ice. Imagine your freezer (well, my freezer actually, as I never clean off the ice build-ups. Maybe you do. In mine you can hardly fit a sausage now). It was like that. Like my freezer.
Damn I can’t find the link, or the images. Oh Well, just trust me.

Anyway, I figure a major natural event cutting the power during the winter could cause some serious trouble. People without heating, all huddled together in their houses to get some warmth from each other’s bodies. Engineers, as well as rescuers, would be impaired by the extreme elements. Eventually no one would go outside to take care of things, stray dogs would roam the streets fighting for their food with looters, all would be made fragile by the cold, glass would shatter, building would crumble, OMG it would be chaos!
Or maybe we have a plan B in such an apocalyptic occurrence, who knows.

In the meantime, that’s how I see it.

I took a lot of shortcuts with this one. First, it’s a shallow perspective. All the major planes are facing the camera, so I didn’t have to distort the textures too much.

Then, well, a frozen post apocalyptic city is easier to paint than, say, the carnival of Rio. Definitely less colours to deal with and no people around to be drawn.

I actually almost considered adding some characters to support the story, but the scale of the composition made it quite difficult to introduce other elements (like, as I said, dogs and people) without them being completely unreadable.

In the end I think the lack of characters actually adds to the sense of desolation a post apocalyptic city would give.

by Paolo Puggioni

A Spaceship

Someone recently pointed out a disturbing absence of spaceships in my portfolio, so there you go, here’s a spaceship.
Now, spaceships are a quite tricky subject.
The thing about them is there’s a LOAD of them on the Internet, so it doesn’t matter what you do, more often than not someone has done something slightly similar to yours, only slightly better.

Well, this applies to pretty much everything you do and post on the internet, so it’s no big deal.
Then there’s the matter of how you approach your spaceship.

Should it be something completely void of any technological coherence? After all, it could be built like a million years into the future, and you can’t possibly fathom what kind of magic our descendants would be capable of. Therefore you can just go nuts, put a bunch of shapes together, chuck it on a starlit background and there you go.
Or should it be something more plausible, which could be set a hundred years in the future? In that case the design could be pretty close to today’s taste, materials would be pretty much the same and all the elements (windows, thrusters, communication arrays) would be just an upgraded version of those we already use.

I knocked out this one in a fairly short time, and to be honest (being as it is my first break from Fantasy in months) I went for the safety of a well-established look. If I were to do it for an actual game (or had I given myself some more time), I would have developed something a bit more imaginative.

For the time being, here’s just a spaceship.

As a matter of fact, I’ve recently been complaining to a friend about some repetitiveness in the designs you see around lately.

In fantasy, as well as in sci-fi, some visual languages have become excessively archetypical, and most artists I see around seem to mix up ideas that are a bit overused at the moment, without giving it too much thought.

Aliens have spikes and fangs, villains wear black, wizards have a beard, elves dress fabulous and so on.

Hell, I’m one of the worst offenders, sometimes you can’t really do whatever you want, especially when you are paid for it, and your audience expects a certain kind of image.

Anyway, my complaining sessions resulted in the outlining of a project that I’ll be working on in the next few months during my spare time.

I’ve got nothing at the moment, so don’t hold your breath.

It will be a sci-fi setting, deliberately designed to avoid well established clichés.

So well, hopefully I’ll be drawing more imaginative spaceships.

In the meantime, remember that spaceships are like pizza, or sex. Even when they’re bad, they’re still pretty good.

by Paolo Puggioni