Category Archives: Science Fiction

SF pictures from my sketchbook.

Fantasy, Science Fiction, Sketchbook pages

Dog-man, bird-man, space orc doctor sketchbook page

November 10, 2014 Will Beck Leave a comment

A sketchbook page from earlier this year:

There’s some dog-men sketches at the top – I was inspired by the make-up/mask work on the Die Antwoord video for Pitbull Terrier, which is a bit crazy and gory and so probably not safe for work and certainly not for children. Here’s a link if you’re interested:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvMXVHVr72A

The birdman sage idea I had when looking at a picture of an horned owl (with it’s longer ‘ear’ feathers) and I thought this would be a good look for an older, wise bird-man (or bird-woman).

The coloured in Space Orks are my ideas for what GW could have done when they brought out a plastic Space Ork Painboy earlier this year – some head options that reflected the classic Kev Adams Space Orks but in the newer, more brutal style.

GW stuff (Space Orks, Painboyz and so on) is fan art and not intended to infringe copyright.

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Science Fiction, Sketchbook pages

Skitarii sketches

August 20, 2014 Will Beck Leave a comment

I’ve been up to all sorts of art stuff which I’ve yet to show so I thought I’d share some drawings I made whilst reading Dan Abnett’s excellent Warhammer 40,000 novel Titanicus from a few years back. These are what (the heck) an Adeptus Mechanicus Skitarii could look like, including a doodle of the more feral look of the Legio Invicta skitarii.
Here’s the a link to a description on Warhammer40KWikia:
http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Skitarii

I tried to keep the look of the Forge World (Horus Heresy) Mechanicum troops and the new Imperial Knights too. I might work these up into a colour picture some time.

These are GW fan art and not intended to infringe copyright.

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Science Fiction, Sketchbook pages

Space Mutant Rat-Men Leaders

July 3, 2014 Will Beck Leave a comment

A brief diversion back to my ideas for how to get a relatively sensibly explained version of Games Workshop’s Skaven into the Warhammer 40,000 setting. http://www.willbeck.com/artblog?p=1111 These are mutant rat-men leaders and a psycho-rat-man with a couple of alternative heads. Like all the space rat-men they live a life of vicious in-fighting on drifitng space-hulks with the biggest or sneakiest getting to the top of the pile.

I’ve still to colour in my space psychic rat-man and also some special characters which I shall post here when I’ve done ’em.

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Science Fiction, Sketchbook pages

SF Citizen miniatures

May 22, 2014 Will Beck Leave a comment

I’ve been commissioned to design some Science Fiction citizens miniatures (fleeing from alien invasion, standing around and working) for a project Redfeather Casting is putting together. These could be suitable for any SF wargame or role-playing game but would be equally at home in games of Warhammer 40,000.

Here are my initial doodles:

And my more refined costume drawings:

More to come soon!

Here is the site where Red Feather casting is seeing how much interest there would be in these miniatures:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/30/588815.page

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Science Fiction, Sketchbook pages

Ogryn ideas

April 12, 2014 Will Beck Leave a comment

With the release of the new Citadel Miniatures Ogryns today I thought I’d share one of my own sketchbook drawings depicting these abhumans.

I looked at all of the versions going back to Jes Goodwin’s original militaristic one from the Rogue Trader era, Bob Olley’s classic characterful versions, the Perry Twins’ ones from the 1990s and also the computer game versions from Relic’s Dawn of War game which were partly based on the metal Mark Harrison sculpts.

What I tried to distill is the sheer size of these guys, with their brutal ripper guns and giant fragmentation grenades.

GW fan art and not intended to infringe copyright.

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Science Fiction, Sketchbook pages

Necromunda and Yakromunda sketches

January 22, 2014 Will Beck Leave a comment

Here are some sketches I’ve been working on over the new year for the Yakromunda site re-launch. (Yakromunda is a Necromunda gang and campaign management fan site and I was asked by them to design a new logo). I shall post more (with links to the site) when I’ve finished them (and they’ve been approved by the moderators of the site itself).

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Science Fiction, Sketchbook pages

Space Rat-men ideas 1

November 13, 2013 Will Beck Leave a comment

Earlier this year I heard about an abandoned Russian cruise ship drifting around the Atlantic Ocean and inhabited by rats ( http://phys.org/news/2013-02-abandoned-russian-ship-km-ireland.html ) I had always wondered how you’d make sense of having rat-men in Warhammer 40,000 and this led me to think wouldn’t there be rats in the holds of space freighters? What might happen to those rats aboard vessels lost in the warp?

I imagine Space Hulks ( http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Space_Hulk )
aren’t just inhabited by Genestealers, Orks or Chaos Renegades. Sometimes the rats on board would have mutated having been exposed to the warp (and perhaps having eaten warp-tainted cargo and human corpses). Some might have mutated into rat-men! Their equipment would reflect the technological environment they live in; not much wood, tools you might find on a space craft, scavenged and improvised weapons and armour.

I’ve a couple more pages of these to colour in, including my version of how a Skaven Grey Seer could be done.

Skaven, Grey Seer and that sort of thing is copyright Games Workshop; this is fan art not intended to infringe GW’s copyright.

A few of the things I’m working on at the moment

November 4, 2013 Will Beck Leave a comment

I’m working on a heck of a lot of things at the moment so apologies for no posts for the last couple of months. I thought I’d show you some sketches of a few of those ‘things’.

Some doodles from late last year:
Ideas for civilised beast-men and my whalephant design.

And from earlier this year:
SF beastmen (or Warhammer 40,000 Abhumans) and some Sunken World ‘Yrdin’ character ideas.

Some more Sunken World character ideas.

Also a return to my New Horizons characters from way back in 2006 (!). Just felt like seeing what had happened to them.

And some of the original designs.

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Illustrations, Science Fiction

Silas Alberec Captain of the Exorcists 3rd Company

June 7, 2013 Will Beck Leave a comment

Here’s my picture I produced for a Graphic Illustrator job at Forge World (I didn’t get it but did receive some very useful positive feedback). It’s from the Badab War (Book 2) by Alan Bligh and depicts Silas Alberec surveying the battlefield. I based him on my what I imagined an ogre-sized heroic space marine superhuman would look like! He’s taller than even an Imperial Space Marine would be; vaguely like a steroid-pumped Max von Sydow as Father Merrin in The Exorcist movie.

The ‘Orison of the Broken Tower’ symbol on his tilt shield I created from scratch based on the Tower Tarot Card and all the warding sigils and symbols were based on masonic symbols and hexagrams modified by me. There wasn’t space on my image for the cod-latin exorcisms that I had planned for his face.

All quotes are from Alan Bligh’s description of him in the back of the Badab War Book 2.

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Science Fiction, Sketchbook pages

SF Special Ops Infiltrator

March 21, 2013 Will Leave a comment

When starting an illustration that requires more invention than simply reference material I like to do a model sheet with the costume and equipment the character has. Here is my initial design for a futuristic spy (in stealth armour) and her equipment (sniper rifle, mini-robots, shotgun and pistol). You may recognise her from previous SF sketches.

Here’s the finished image:

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SF & Fantasy Art