Pages from my sketchbook.
Here is the final design with some other troops sketched in to show his monstrous size. His evil gauntlet can magically slash and crush things from a distance or produce dark smoke to obscure the battlefield.
I’ve almost finished the first Demon Lord picture; here are some ideas I had for his weapons and a Demon Lady. More soon.
While I’m working on a concept design for a Demon Lord I thought I’d show some sketchbook pages on how I come up with a final image.
Before starting this project I wanted to establish a few ‘rules’ for my Demons – firstly not much hair or fur, secondly no hooves and lastly no lava!
The first doodle is from my sketchbook from 2005; a demon sketched in a matter of minutes.
I liked the look of his long angry face and a few years later I thought it would be ideal for the first Demon Lord; a huge brutal looking monster. These are some of my ideas from my A5 sketchbooks.
Another page of characters from the Sunken World. These are slave guards who accompany the Gurgus (an amphibious race of fish-men bred to interact with humans; acting as merchants, ambassadors and slave traders). These creatures were inspired by blobfish (Psychrolutes Marcidus) and handfish (Brachionichthyidae ); I had previously doodled them in May 2011 with my Thulhid designs.
http://www.willbeck.com/artblog?p=45
The humans and other races that the Thulhids prey upon are enslaved by having horrid magically-modified crustaceans attached to their necks that allow the Thulhids to control the host telepathically. The stress from this eventually means the host dies; so periodically the Thulhids and their fish-men servants need to acquire more slaves.
A couple of concepts for characters that move from port to port in the Sunken World plying their magical trade. The sea elemental is a variety of water elemental with added seaweed and kelp!
The druidess has summoned an air elemental and is accompanied by her monkey-cat familiar.
More of my designs for demons. As I had doodled a flying demon (carrying a warlock) I wanted to see if I could create a more detailed version.
I scribbled a few ideas but it was while watching a dinosaur program on the BBC website I thought the way the Hatzegopteryx had been animated gave me an idea for how to draw my flying demon that wasn’t obviously a like dragon or a wyvern. I later had the idea that if endangered it could vomit acidic bile on an opponent.
Finally my first non-Christmas themed comic page (apart from my Mr. Scarecrow one which I drew at art college).
I approached this as a professional comic book artist would, from (my own)script, thumbnails, drawing and inking the panels and so on. An excellent exercise; it really made me appreciate the skill of my favourite comic-book writers, letterers, colourists and artists.
The next one will be at least two pages long!
Fonts by Blambot
Another digitally-painted page from my Steampunk King Arthur series. Here is the rebel knight Sir Mordred (bastard child of King Arthur and his sister, Morgana) and some portraits of other knights that have attached themselves to Mordred’s rebellion. On the right is Queen Morgana la Fay herself; a scientist specialising in chemical weapons (which she drops onto the enemy from her zeppelin).
I wanted the rebels to be a little darker in feel to Arthur’s forces; so I exaggerated this with an asymmetrical haircut and spiky shoulder plate for Sir Mordred. His helmet homages the film Excalibur and Queen Morgana has a deliberate Maria the robot (from Metropolis) reference and also the shiny breastplate that Helen Mirren wore in Excalibur.
A brief diversion back to my demon concepts. Here is my idea for the warlock demons; I hope the notes fairly are self-explanatory but here is a bit more description:
Demons warped through their use of dark magic are usually stunted and need creatures (slaves or other beasts) to convey them to the front line. Here I’ve designed a dog-demon for the weirdest-looking warlock to ride (controlled by a control rune linked to his master) based in part on cryptozoology’s ‘Texas Blue Dogs’.
http://www.forteantimes.com/features/fbi/6298/texas_blue_dogs.html
Next, for my ghostly-gas polluting demon I doodled some ideas for the way he could travel around (a balloon or carried by a flying demon) but the bloated soldier demon seemed to suit him (it?).
And finally for the arch-warlock, the most powerful wizard in the demon army (apart from of the Demon Lords ) he required a more high-tech magical way of moving around and fighting so I invented this automaton-cage device.
Some progression from my sketchbook (I hope) on my SF police designs and some possible portraits (with a bit of digital paints, no likenesses are intended!).
