Tag Archives: science fiction

Science Fiction sketches and drawings

Daemonhost and Underhive sketches

This packing and throwing away is taking much longer than I’d thought. Flippin’eck! I’ve tonnes of stuff acquired over the last decade and a half.
OK back to my old sketches; following on from the previous post here’s a page of Daemonhosts.
Here I’ve deliberately avoided Brian Nelson’s amazing Cherubael sculpt with his twisted scrawny look. The bloated floating creature perhaps is possessed by a Nurgle daemon, I’ve provided the radical Inquisitor who’s using him a vortex bomb collar in case he gets out of hand! Not sure quite when I did them, probably before the Necromunda sketchbook, entirely in inks and acrylics with no digital jiggery-pokery.

Back to Necromunda for these portrait sketches, me refining the look of the Ratskin and Redemptionist.

The tiny composition sketch refers to an image I’m not sure I’ve ever posted online, my Badland Scout (from 2005). He’s a guide to the ruined hives so has a little bit of a tribal look to his gear.

These next pages feature a sketch of the priest from the start of The Fifth Element (the late actor John Bennett), a bunch of Scavvies and then some Pit Slave portrait compositions.

All fan art and not intended to infringe Games Workshop’s copyright.

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More of my Underhive sketchbook

I’m in the middle of moving house at the moment so I haven’t had much time to add images to my website. In a break from frantically packing I’ve uploaded some more of my Necromunda sketchbook as I promised. The next pages are me working how to make the Necromunda Enforcers have a more hive world look but still keep the Adeptus Arbites/Judge Dredd feel to them. The quilted jacket was a medieval reference from Jes Goodwin’s early Arbites drawings (from White Dwarf 130, way back in October 1990!).

The next page has some refinements of the Necromunda Enforcer design taking elements from John Blanche’s Inquisitor Sketchbook with his slightly Fifth Element inspired Arbites. ((Wikipedia entry for The Fifth Element) (IMDb entry for The Fifth Element)). On the opposite page there are some early plans for the Scavvy gang member portrait.

The next pages are me working out the hairstyle and scene for the Scavvy and a pose for the Ratskin too. Ratskins are rumoured to be descendants of the original colonists of Necromunda who have adapted their existence over the millenia to make use of the utterly polluted hyper-populated world.

I’m still not sure the Scavvy is scary or mutated enough on the next page but I’m refining the look of the Ratskin portrait.

And the last pages for today are a sketch of a Pit Slave woman, some tracked feet for the boss Pit Slave, a sketch of an 28mm Inquisitor conversion, a floating fat Daemonhost (more of him later!) and some ideas for what would become my Scavvy portrait.

As always with my Games Workshop sketches they’re fan art and not intended to breach copyright.

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More Underhive sketchbook pages

These next pages are me working on the hulking Goliath ganger, followed by some early Outlander sketches. I was wondering which of the Spyrer classes to portray and also working on the Redemptionist Deacon, a deliberate homage to Pat Mills and Kevin O’Neill Nemesis The Warlock’s arch-foe Torquemada (and his Terminators). (Wikipedia entry for Nemesis the Warlock)

Here’s how I took a self-portrait photo (on the left!) and used it as reference for the crazed mutant preacher who wanders the lower levels of the Underhive. I didn’t just paint over it, I like to draw from it rather than ‘tracing’.

On these pages I was considering a BioShock Big Daddy look for the Pit Slave image, there are some doodles of Necromunda scenery too. (Wikipedia entry for Big Daddy)

Some more outlander sketches and an entire Pit Slave gang, including a robo-gimp(I don’t want to know if this is a ‘thing’) a Ned Kelly axe head chap, various cyborgs and a creepy tech to repair them.

All of this is fan art. More very soon.

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Underhive sketchbook pages

As promised here are some more of my sketchbook pages. These are a selection of pages from my Necromunda Sketchbook from 2008 (it’s 120mm 148mm, so smaller than my usual A5 one). I really like to look at other people’s sketchbooks and the one’s I had of mine when I was at the Hysterical Games Stand at Salute this year really got visitors interested in the miniatures.

This got me thinking ‘What’s a project I got really into?’ Well there are a few ongoing ones but the Necromunda Underhive one was a real labour of love for me and as I’d scanned in the sketchbooks a while back I would just need to arrange them into the order I had drawn them and upload them here.

It’s no coincidence that Necromunda was a really popular game; it required just the box with its rules, plastic miniatures, multi-levelled plastic and cardboard buildings inside and was a fairly simple, easy to learn ruleset which encouraged campaign play as part of the game itself. (Wikipedia entry for Necromunda)

In fact it’s still going strong online and Games Workshop have very belatedly cottoned on to this by dipping their toes in the water with their Shadow War:Armageddon game.

I was asked by Major Gilbear (not his real name, he’s a character from Dan Abnett’s Gaunt’s Ghosts series (Wikipedia entry for Gaunt’s Ghosts) by to produce a banner for the Underhive forum website (this site is now defunct though YakTribe Gaming are still using many of these images. Yak Tribe gaming site)

These first eight pages depict my initial ideas for the Underhive Houses of Hive Primus on the Hive World of Necromunda. I looked at as much of the original artwork from White Dwarf magazine, the game itself, it’s precursor Confrontation, the miniatures for inspiration and also threw some of my own ideas into the mix.

More on this tomorrow!

All fan art and not intended to breach Games Workshop’s copyright.

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Happy New Year! Some Dregs Dragoons

Happy New Year everyone! My final concept designs for the beast-riding Beastkin.

I decided the beastmen wouldn’t ride actual horses but a future horse-like beast and I wanted to add an element of a bovine or caprine animal to it. Now, I had a photo on my computer of a strange (to me) animal which I found was called a Takin and its larger, more convex snout seemed perfect. Takin animal
Incidentally the beastman balancing on a horse to shoot is based on a photo of a WW1 german cavalryman.

Microworld Games

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Dregs Tank Hunter and Mobile Artillery

These are the final concept designs for the Tank Hunter tank and the Mobile Artillery tank (both based on the same chassis, vaguely WW2-inspired). I gave the tank hunter metal tusk-shapes to give it a brutal look and the artillery tank a load of spikes on the ‘dozer blade so they would look different at a glance on the tabletop whilst still retaining the spiky, ramshackle nature throughout the range.

Microworld Games

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Dregs Armoured Transport and more sketchbook pages

Some more of my work for Microworld Games, this time the Dregs’ armoured troop carrier. I imagined the Dregs would be like a tribe of warriors and this could be their mobile long-hut. This one was partly based on the AAV-7 amphibious APC which has a jutting front like a jaw (for travelling in water).

These next two pages are of my initial ideas for the Dregs’ Mobile Artillery Tank and Tank Hunter with lots of little beast-men riders as I thought they’d add to the noisy, boisterous nature of the army. On the opposite page are some early ideas for the Beastkin Dragoons, beastmen riding on horse-like beasts to war.

Again these haven’t gone into production yet, but if you’re interested do go and have a look at what has:
Microworld Games

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Dregs tanks sketches and Main Battle Tank

This is another Miniatures Concept project that I was commissioned for earlier this year. It’s for a range of Science Fiction 6mm miniatures produced by Microworld Games for epic scale fights. I was to produce some concept drawings for the various units for the Dregs, the mutant beast-men. I was given a brief description and some images to start with so I based my initial sketches on these to get a flavour of the units.

This first image was of the Dreg’s Main Battle Tank. It had to look functional but also brutal so I had a look at British Chieftan tanks as they have a distinctive silhouette along with some other directions from the brief (including a G.I. Joe tank!). The spikes, trophies and extra armour were all added by the Beastkin Raiders themselves. I imagined them riding the tanks to battle, eager to leap off into the melee.

They’re not available yet, hopefully will be soon, here’s a link to the website:
Microworld Games
More images tomorrow.

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Science Fiction Xeno archaeologist ideas

Currently I’m having a bit of trouble uploading images to my website but I managed to get this one; a page from last year’s sketchbook showing some ideas I had for a Xeno-archeologist exploring dead alien civilisations in a gothic SF world.

I imagined her to be a cross between Indiana Jones and Adèle Blanc-Sec (Adèle Blanc-Sec) more than Lara Croft. To help her she has hired a psyker to detect psychic traces of lost civilisations or artifacts, an ogre-like breed of human as a bodyguard and porter. She has also hired a mercenary human and an extra-terrestrial guide and carries her treasured finds in a stasis-vault with suspensors and a pop-up auto-turret laser.

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Colony 87 Returns!

Colony 87 returns! The kickstarter here:
(Return to Colony 87 – 28mm sci-fi civilians)
This was funded within hours and the miniatures have been sculpted by the excellent miniature sculptor Mike Anderson.
These are concept drawings for the second wave of Science Fiction civilians for Colony 87 miniatures:


These are some of my initial sketchbook pages for this commission.
The first was a SF Recordist, a scientific type to accompany a noble or other advisor recording everything (smells, sights, Electromagnetics, as well as sound). Jon Boyce (my client) suggested I look at a tank crew head gear and Gaff’s (Edward James Olmos) hat in Bladerunner. I also wanted him to have a different body shape, so I based his size on the movie Dune’s Piter De Vries (Brad Dourif) combined with the Hannibal Chew (James Hong) from Bladerunner’s hat. A stenographer’s typewriter provided a retro look for his personal computer.

For the mechanic I had the idea basing her on Firefly/Serenity’s Kaylee(Jewel Staite) as a starting point and the welder/junker started out based on a photo of a Japanese industrial worker.

The Advisor was meant to be a power-behind-the throne character so I examined various fantasy and SF advisors – the tall hat was a reference to Turkish historical viziers and also to the sinister fellows that follow Emperor Palpatine in The Return of The Jedi.

Jon Boyce had a very specific idea for the Priestess so essentially I recreated his small drawing and the Planetary Botanist was an idea that had been requested by several people in the first wave. The broad-brimmed hat was a nod to Moebius’s drawing of Planetologist Kyne for Alexandro Jodorowsky’s Dune project. I thought he might have had some injuries examining alien plants so a bionic hand seemed appropriate.

My previous post: Colony 87

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