Science Fiction sketches and drawings
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).
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.
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.
These are some ideas for new statues for Warhammer 40,000 as I think the Imperium deserves more variety in statues (and a more martial pose)!
I figured that the kit wouldn’t need to be as configurable as your usual 28mm miniature but should have a few optional heads and weapons so you could use several of the same statue in a game. They need to look like exaggerated stylistic statues and not just a 28mm or bigger miniature painted like a statue which looks wrong on the tabletop. I’ve designed a Saint or Battle Sister as I think these would be commemorated as statues as well.
Again this is fan art and not intended to infringe on GW’s copyright.
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.
Copyright Games Workshop. Used with permission.
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:
Here’s the inked (on paper) and coloured (digitally) version. I created the runic language from looking at Tolkien’s Angerthas (Dwarvish) runes and making them look a bit more technical.
I’ve some more ideas for these and some other human variants; I just felt that this page needed some colour.
This is still fan-art and not meant to infringe on GW’s copyright.
I always liked the Squats (Space Dwarfs) in WH40K and felt they’ve been unjustly maligned over the years so here are some of my ideas for them. First are a couple of heads and a hero with bionic hand and power-hammer, also some ideas for their runic language (so not to be too Nordic but also retain the geometric nature). Then there is a tunnel fighting armoured warrior with an axe-boltgun and combat shield (that expands from his armour) and a ‘Living Ancestor’ psychic.
More on this soon! (Hopefully).
This is fan-art and not meant to infringe on Games Workshop’s copyright.
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!).
At the moment one of the things I’m doing (apart from Steampunk King Arthur, my comic and a few ideas for my blog) is continuing with some SF stuff. These are early ideas from my sketchbook for some future colony police (thanks to my brother for that one!). I’m trying to get a coherent look and feel for them, though they’re more practical not too dissimilar from police forces around the world right now; so I need to inject a bit more futurism.
I’ve been looking at the science fiction police from Ghost In The Shell, Appleseed, Patlabor, the security forces in Brink, the police in Blade Runner, The Fifth Element, American football helmets, paintball masks, and futuristic motorcycle helmets. I intend to create designs for the robots, detectives and space army too, we’ll see how it goes!
