Undead Guy

Nothing particular, just a random Undead guy.
The relevant thing about this guy though, (relevant for me, at least), is that I sculpted his face in ZBrush first, and coloured it later in Photoshop.

It might seem nothing worth mentioning, but for someone 3D-resistant as I am this is no small achievement.
What’s the word for someone who kills potted plants just by sitting in the same room?
Whatever that is, I am the 3D-model equivalent of those people.
Everything I do on a 3D software seems to come out slightly wrong. After half an hour of work polygons start sticking out from unpredictable places, common commands give unexpected results, things go generally not the way I’d like.
But I’m stubborn, so every now and then I give it another try and slowly but steadily I’m also improving.
Plus, I hadn’t tried ZBrush on my Cintiq yet, hence this Undead Guy.

There are two main goals linked to all these efforts on ZBrush (did I already say the learning curve is STEEP?).
The first one is that the lighting of some complex scenes is difficult to figure out without a model of sorts.
Some people make maquettes, others hire models. People like me, who for some reason can’t do either, just mock things up on a 3D software and take that as a reference.

The second goal comes from a recent freelance misadventure, so to speak.
When I was working on this I sent out a first version to FFG‘s Art Director, confident I had done an amazing job, and she came back to me by saying “that’s nice, however I’ll need WAY more details on the guy’s face!”
Thing is, that was pretty much all the detail I could already thing of. Nonetheless I painted over the first version and submitted a much more refined one.
Long story short, I had to go through four revisions in total before the final was approved.
I’m just not THAT fiddly with details, and it’s a lot easier (at least for me) to come up with a convincing facial anatomy by sculpting it first and taking that as a reference, at least when lacking a live model.

I’m still not sure about it, I’m just considering whether I could use that in my pipeline when it comes to paint more realistic portraits and bodies. For a start, colouring over a greyscale image always give a dull result, at least colour wise. But it’s worth making some more experiments.

So, here’s the big ugly Undead. Kind of a shortcut really, sculpting a ravaged, old skin is easier than a smooth, young one.
And what is he thinking of? Is he looking at the moon after he just discovered his days as a living being are over? Is he romantically longing for some fresh brains to eat? Is he evoking the Dark Powers to fulfil some of his unholy dreams? Who cares.
He’s just some random undead guy.

Here’s the process. Not really interesting maybe, as I barely coloured a greyscale screenshot. Yet here it is.

by Paolo Puggioni

Runescape Update – The Chaos Tunnels

Last Week we updated a pretty old Runescape area, the Chaos Tunnels.
The update also included the Brimhaven Dungeon, the Fremennik Slayer Dungeon and the Taverley Dungeon.

Beneath the southern areas of theWilderness, north of Varrock is a warren of caves, linked by mysterious portals. Delved from the rock by the power of chaotic magic, a strange enchantment holds sway over its tunnels and passages, drawing evil to it like a moth to a flame. For this reason, perhaps, the range of creatures within the Chaos Tunnels is far greater than you might expect.

Whatever its origin, it is certain that the caves are tainted by the dark hands of Zamorakian magic…

The Concept Artists Team worked on this whole bunch of environments (plus an awful amount of things yet to be released) pretty much at the same time, early this year.
Each one of us worked on a separate dungeon, so of course I’ll be posting only the artwork I’m responsible of. But you can find more in my friend and colleague’s website.

I was supposed to work on more underground areas as well, then I had to move to the Al Kharid rework, which took me quite some time.

Here’s a video of the environments in game.
Btw, No offence to the Runescape fan who posted it but I had to silence the music. Not my cup of tea:)

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-W_FZo1IjaA

The environments look nice in game. However, as you might have noticed I had designed the floors with a more irregular, uneven look.
I hate flat surfaces, If I could have things my own way I’d change Runescape into some kind of Roller Coaster.
However, steps and cracks on the floor are quite polygon expensive, and modellers often have to even things out to prevent the FPS from being unhappy.
This Dungeon is visited by many players at the same time, so I guess that was one of those cases.

The NPC are still quite dated. We’ll take care of them at some point!

by Paolo Puggioni

Some Runescape Weapons

I was recently allowed to bring home some of the weapons I designed for Runescape, some of which for the Crucible.

The Crucible is one of the latest PvP areas of Runescape.
We released it a few months ago, and as it happened often in the past few months it was a project I was REALLY looking forward to, which I had to abandon after just a couple of concepts to work on something else.

My friend Dave and I worked quite a lot on planning the area so that all the design requirements were met.
The Crucible is a sort of underground arena, set up by rogues on the ruins of a pre-existing ancient dungeon.
We had to convey a certain feeling of danger and uneasiness, make it as cool as possible and at the same time keep the poly count as low as possible because of the massive amount of players playing at the same time.

It took a few days of sketching, planning, and of going back and forth to the various departments of Runescape graphics to double check that our ideas weren’t too crazy.
This is usually one of the parts I like best.
Then, by the time I was ready to start sketching, I had to start working on something else:(

Anyway, I got back to the project just in time to draw a few weapons, so here’s all I’ve got of the Crucible.

The following are instead a couple of weapons (a weapon and a shield actually) I designed for the Runescape MTX shop.

I’ll close with something I remember little about. It’s a Runic Staff, but I’ll be damned if I remember what I did it for:(

The Tree of Life

One of this week’s 2D challenges on CGHub was titled “Tree of Life”.
I came upon it by chance and decided I would give it a try.

It is a known fact amongst artists that painting foliage isn’t easy. Most of them, even great masters of the past, avoid green entirely. At this point I should be mentioning a famous quote by a great painter, but my memory sucks so just take my word for it: painting green isn’t easy and few people like it. As it happens, I’m no exception, and I have issues with it. Sometimes.

The thing is, it’s not just Green. In an environment dense with foliage there are lots of things happening to light and colours. Firstly, light is scattered everywhere, and it changes hue depending on what it runs through or bounces off.
In a canopy, leaves facing up tend to reflect the blue of the sky and lose saturation (assuming they’re beneath a clear patch), leaves tilted towards the ground get more yellows and browns. Some of them are more transparent than others and might get as bright as lanterns if, for example, the sun is directly behind them.
BUT. If they’re thick and the light isn’t strong enough they just get rim light, scattering the beams around to complicate your life even more.

All leaves have the bad habit of casting shadows onto each other, shadows that can take on all sort of tints depending on the colour of the light they generate from, and the colour and value of the leaf they’re cast onto.
Most of them are also quite reflective, and have highlights of all sorts. Those closer to the ground are darker and warmer and usually stand out from the dirt, which is more often than not a pretty low value. Higher leaves are (usually) colder, and the light of the surrounding sky tends to bleed over their edges.
Long story short, drawing leaves is a bitch, at least for me.

This is why I decided to take part in the Tree of Life challenge, I need to practice on green.
I didn’t really do any research into the Tree of Life thing. I just meant to draw a vaguely fantasy-looking tree and see what happened.

Eventually I decided I didn’t need to paint lush vegetation, which I guess is a bit of a failure considering the reason why I decided to paint a tree in the first place.
However, leaves in this case would have distracted from the main focal point of the composition (the big ball of branches with the mystical fairy light in the middle), so I’ll have to postpone my practice on leaves to some other time.
Lots of green here, though.

For the time being, here’s what I came up with.

And here’s the process as usual.

If you want to know more about painting foliage, there’s a number of awesome posts about it on James Gurney’s blog (there’s a list of links to other related posts at the end of his entry).

A Dragon Hunting Sheep

After some struggle I finally managed to finish the dragon I sketched a couple of weeks ago.
This one has been a bitch. I made a first coloured version, and it sucked. The face of the dragon was awful, the colours were all wrong, the composition was meh.
So I did what every decent artist does when their work is unsatisfying: I moved the drawing to the trash and I started from scratch.

I’m quite happy about this last one, even though there are still quite a few things I would do differently if I could go back in time.
For a start, his head could be more tilted sideways to avoid breaking his teeth against the ground while dropping on the first sheep at full speed.
I meant to give him a flat under-throat, like a crocodile’s, to emphasise this. Then I ended up with something closer to a pelican pouch, which after all makes sense for a big predator used to swallow whole sheep three at a time.
I’m not sure whether this last solution works better or not. If this were a paid commission I’d draw two versions just to make sure.
Anyway.

The other thing I’m not entirely happy with is his body. The middle section doesn’t follow the curve suggested by the tail, or at least it does it only partially.
The dragon is supposed to make a sharp turn around the top of the hill and then drop on the sheep. Maybe his body could be more twisted?
Again, I would experiment more if this were proper work. Thing is, other ideas sprang to mind while I was working on this, and I just wanted to move on to the next one.

For the environment I took inspiration from the peaks in West Yorkshire, where I lived for a few years.

Those barren, dull-green hills under that constantly grey sky.
The reign of diffuse, unsaturated light, with the occasional, enterprising beam trying to pierce resilient clouds always heavy with rain. Often unsuccessfully.
I thought it would have been the right background for a dragon, especially because that beam of light would have been useful to put the focal point under some kind of spotlight.

Plus, I didn’t mean to draw the magical/smart/ancient/wise/treasure-hoarder kind of dragon. This one is more of a predator with just the basic instincts of flying and hunting.
The Peak District seemed to me quite appropriate for this kind of scenario.
Hills, sheep, savage nature and rain. And a dragon looming over all this.

Image with the process below.

by Paolo Puggioni

Other GOT Characters – Mord

Another character I designed for Green Ronin’s Game of Thrones – A Song of ice and Fire Campaign Guide.
Mord is a minor character in the Game of Thrones series, but he has an interesting personality.

He is the jailer at the Eyrie, he is brutal, half witted and at his best quite unpleasant.
By the description given in the books he is quite obese, with stained teeth and a lopsided skull, this as a result of an axe blow that just accentuated his god-given ugliness.
His favourite past time is teasing and torturing his prisoners, who are held in cells open on the side of the impossibly tall cliff the Eyrie is built on.
Most times detainees jumped in the void out of desperation, in equal measure due to the incessant winds, the tempting heights and Mord’s mistreatments.

What I meant to convey were his viciousness and dimness, only partially mitigated by his avidity.
Which, now that I think of it, are recurring traits of most secondary Game of Thrones characters.

As a side note, halfway through the process I realised my Mord looked like someone I knew, but I couldn’t point my finger on it.
Then it eventually dawned on me that he looked pretty much like the evil twin of what people considered the Fool in my old home town, back in Italy.
I remember I was pretty much one of the few who liked to talk to the guy. He wasn’t a fool at all, but he didn’t mind others to believe him such.
It lowered expectations and eased the pressure, he said. Also, he could afford to insult people in the middle of the street and yell swearwords every time he pleased, which is undoubtedly fun, cathartic and not at all frowned upon when you’re considered the Town Fool.

Awesome person, but yes, he was as ugly as a night on the toilet.
Once I realised where I was heading to, I just decided to go with the flow, and tried my best to stick to the face I had in mind. Minus the scar and the missing ear of course.
I don’t think he’s ever seen giving his back to the void in the Game of Thrones books (lest he got happily pushed over by his prisoners). But I chose to take this liberty to make who he was clearer.
As if keys and chains weren’t enough.

by Paolo Puggioni

Painting Black Skin, A Shaman

Painting black skin can be quite tricky, at least for me. Dark skin gets highlights in a completely different way from White or Asian, and can go all the way to white. It’s difficult to get it right.

I started this painting a couple of days ago, as nothing more than a doodle. I had just finished a freelance assignment, and after the incredible amount of refinement and detailing I had put in it, I just wanted to paint something just for fun, as loosely as possible.
So I randomly got a sketch from the series I posted a while ago and started to develop it a bit further.
Then I got stuck, I had just painted an Oompa-Loompa.

I started again, and managed to paint someone with an orange artificial fake-tan. I was getting close.

The third time I removed most of the reds and got the base colour almost right. After that, most of the work was done. By looking at reference pictures I noticed that dark skin bounces back a lot less light than white skin (duh!), apart from some areas around the eyebrows and nose, which are more reflective.
Painting the rest was just fun, and since I kept the layers I also exported a gif of the process.

I couldn’t help noticing that most of the creative part (the fun bit) is done in the first two-three frames, the rest is pretty much polishing.
I must ponder on that.

Towards the end – hey, all this took less than two hours, that’s unlike me – I felt the urge to think of a more creative name than “untitled1.psd”, and I just didn’t want to call him “Black Guy With a Fuchsia Headscarf”.
So I painted a few tacky ornaments on his head and there you go, a Shaman.

by Paolo Puggioni

Some Star Wars Concepts by Ralph McQuarrie

Ralph McQuarrie was a legend in the movie industry, revered by fellow concept artists and Star Wars fans alike.
For those who don’t know who he was, he’s the person  mainly responsible for the look of the Star Wars movies (the real Star Wars, not the last three shitty ones. Jar-Jar is not his fault).
He’s the one who designed Darth Vader, X-Wings and the other space ships, Jabba, the rebels’ outfits, Tatooine, the Rancor, I mean, everything.
He also came up with the idea of Darth Vader breathing through his famous device.

He’s responsible for the gritty “used future” look of the Star Wars universe, and his influence on the following generations is so huge that Science Fiction can’t prescind from his work.
His concepts were always so spot-on that Spielberg said “when words could not convey my ideas, I could always point to one of Ralph’s fabulous illustrations and say, ‘do it like this’.
As a matter of fact, it’s not difficult to tell how closely his drawings below were portrayed in some of the most iconic SW scenes.

Ralph passed away early this year. He had been retired for a while, so obviously his work is now being brought to new light by saddened fans and admirers, out of homage and respect.
I stumbled upon this thread on reddit that gathers most of his famous paintings.
I had some others on my Hard Drive, or in my favs folder.
Some others can be found on this website.

I’m pasting some of them here, whereas here and here you could find books with his complete collection.
Which, since I’m penniless as usual, are now saved in my wish list for happier times.

by Paolo Puggioni

The Lich – This Time With Colours

The Lich is the King of the undead world, no one argues about it. Where people’s opinion is split about the scariness of Slow Zombies vs. Fast Zombies (the latter being obviously the scariest), the Lich holds the position of the undisputed badass.
A Lich could bully around even a Vampire, and I’m not talking about frickin Edward, I’m talking about a real, old, pissed off Vampire.
A Lich could take on a Vampire any time, they’re that scary.

So, I meant to make some experiments colouring the pencil sketch I did a few days ago,then I thought than any colour other than blues would have made it too “merry”. So well, I went with a pretty classic palette. I hope I made it badass enough.

Also, since after all those years I dared to open the Animation Window in Photoshop, I put together all the WIPs in a practical Gif.
It moves!

Thanks to fellow redditor Pit107 for the idea.

by Paolo Puggioni

Sketches

Sketching random stuff first thing in the morning is the best way to get hands and mind to work.
That, and a mugful of coffee of course. Oh, and Death Metal. And a long bath.
Definitely among the first five best things to do before starting to work, anyway.

Contrarily to what I thought I’ve been pretty consistent with it in the last few days, so much so that I’m almost running out of ideas.
However, I found out that using textured brushes – which creates lots of noise and unexpected results – helps finding shapes where apparently there aren’t. Shapes form directly on the canvas without going through the brain first, which is pretty amazing if you think about it.

Anyway, this is one of the pages of lunch-break thumbs I took home from work.
I have plenty more on my hard drive at Jagex, but this is all I managed to get hold of today.

Plenty of colours I’m not used to. Yellows and loud reds.
I like yellow, I wonder why I never use it.

by Paolo Puggioni