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Female character sketches

Every now and then I want to scratch the character itch. Here are some female character sketches done on my spare time. It's good to wake the figure drawing muscles a bit. Sometimes the job doesn't allow enough time to practice the human form as much as I'd like. Female characters are notoriously challenging to get right; I thought I'd share some exercises.

Some head exercises to try out different personalities. Maybe the 4 on the left belong to the same gang of punk outlaws. The rest are a bit more random, especially bottom right, which is obviously inspired by Solid Snake :)

No real theme here other than powerful female characters. The one on the right is obviously a nod to Star Wars.

The process, starting from basic pose suggestion to finding secondary details, then cleaning up the lines in a new layer, and making some needed changes to make the pose more dynamic as well as adding basic tone with copic marker (Sketchbook Pro).

Armory Concept - XCOM 2

Another sneak peek at the XCOM 2 artbook. This is a concept for XCOM's mobile base, the "Avenger". It's where you will spend countless hours customizing your soldiers!

XCOM 2 Sectoid Concept Art

Here are a couple of images to give you a taste of the XCOM 2 artbook!

This is the early concept for the Sectoid in XCOM :

Official Sectoid description From 2K Games:
"The Sectoid from XCOM: Enemy Unknown makes a return in XCOM 2, but even the least-observant soldier on the battlefield is bound to notice some new characteristics. See how the Sectoid is taller and almost human-like now? That’s no coincidence!
Through human gene manipulation, the alien invaders have managed to breed a new version of the Sectoid. This improved Sectoid gains a hefty, intimidating frame, all while retaining its well-known psionic abilities. One such ability is called Mindspin, a roulette-type mental attack that has a chance to disorient a soldier. Mind Control also makes a return, though in XCOM 2 it’ll be a much more early-game threat.
As for weaponry, Sectoids will once again brandish their patented wrist-mounted blaster. The Sectoid pictured above must have forgotten its weapon at home."

XCOM 2 Artbook!

XCOM 2 might not be out until February 5th, but that doesn't meant the Artbook has to wait!
Check it out on Amazon and snag your copy today!

The future in XCOM 2

An early take on the Alien-ruled future of humanity in XCOM 2. It was used for a limited edition lithograph at ‎FiraxiCon‬, (Firaxis Games' Convention in Baltimore) this year! 

Nepal

I've finally finished a piece that I started way back in April as a sketch responding to Nepal's devastating earthquake, and over time became a more involved painting. The effects of the disaster go well beyond aftershocks - they are still being felt today by millions of Nepalese people in several other forms, many of which are intangible. This is my personal attempt to capture that feeling. Whether that's in literal or symbolic form is up to interpretation.
-P

XCOM 2 Announced.

I am proud to announce XCOM 2, the sequel to the critically acclaimed XCOM: Enemy Unknown!! I am so happy to be able to show some of what we've been up to. I am posting links to the images on the articles themselves for now, and will update with large sizes if available.
I specifically did the "New world order mood concept", the "Sectoid Concept" and the "Propaganda Center atrium concept". I also did this image of the "Avenger" from the first IGN article.
Check out IGN's coverage during the entire month of June!

Screen capture from IGN

Final 5 day art challenge post

Final post for the 5 day art challenge, where I show 3 pieces of my work each time. To keep with the "sketchiness" theme overall, I will end with some quick observational exercises. Plain and simple - these are done in a brief sitting and are meant to work the eye out a bit. The top 2 focus on precision and are very slow, the middle are quick, mostly 2 minute gestures from a live model, and the bottom bunch are 5 to 20 minute compositional thumbnails at a couple of Baltimore cafés.

5 Day Art Challenge, Day 4

Day 4 of the 5 day art challenge, where I post 3 pieces of my work each day. I missed yesterday. Too bad :)
For today, I am posting some more color sketches, this time purely from imagination. I think these are the kinds of sketches I do most frequently with digital media. Many times I begin these on my tablet when I'm having coffee or tea somewhere, then work them up at home. I am mostly sticking to mood with these, without getting too much into the nitty-gritty. The top one started as a piece I did for a friend's project, which I then decided to take a bit further.
With some rare exceptions like faint glows for fire or fireflies, when making these types of pieces I like to keep it as "manual" as possible, without the use of effects or filters. Often, as I admire other work online, I see what otherwise would have been perfectly good pieces muddled by "color aberration" or other post effects that detract from the original strokes. Sometimes these fx are useful, but most of the time they are unnecessary, which is why I try to keep it simple.

5 Day Art Challenge, Day 3

Day 3 of the ‪#5DayArtChallenge‬, where each day I post 3 pieces of artwork I've done.
This time I am posting three quick color studies I did. Every now and then I take a trip through streetview and do a quick sketch of something I like (observed, never color-picked or painted over). Then I go in and make changes to the layout and color, sometimes many, sometimes almost none, depending. Again, trying to keep the strokes simple and loose for stuff like this. I realize how little I know when I start to go into detail and it starts to get that "overworked" look. There's always room to grow.

5 Day Art Challenge - Day 2

Day 2 of the #5DayArtChallenge, where each day I post 3 pieces of artwork I've done.
I am focusing purely on loose sketches for this one. I enjoy doing line work the most - I've been doing it since I was born :)
Veteran animation master Glen Keane, during a talk about his art and passion in general, said that the work he enjoyed looking at the most, and that he found most inspiring, were the line scribbles of small children. There is a playfulness and character to children's line drawings, and it gets lost once our hands and minds get conditioned. I like keeping my line playful whenever I can - it's a nice counterpoint to the strictures and rigidity of everyday "adult" work.

5 day art challenge, day 1

So I'm not too familiar with the "5 day art challenge", but I've been nominated by Steve Ogden to post 3 pieces of artwork I've done, every day for 5 days, so here it goes!
For the first batch, I'll start with some quick sketches that I liked. Two are from life, one is not (as you can obviously tell)...

Canyon at Dusk

This is a piece I've been toying with for a bit. The idea started as a color study after a trip I took to the Grand Canyon and Sedona's amazing red rocks. I had read up on the history of the Canyon and how rangers would patrol the early roads ahead of caravans to make sure they were safe, Since Pumas (or Mountain Lions, as they are also called) naturally live in this habitat, I thought it would be interesting to create a moment of tension between the rangers and the puma. This is clearly the puma's territory, but the men seem to be armed? What will happen? 

I'll be posting a couple of earlier WIPs soon -- I'm currently at CTN Expo and the bandwidth here is terrible so I'm uploading what I can.

Fantasy Color Sketches

I really enjoy doing quick color exercises.Some of these were really simple to make, like the one ion the top left, while others were "massaged" for a much longer time, like the bottom left. 

I basically start with a very simple composition choosing two colors, one that will provide the main atmosphere and another one that will contrast it. Once I have these I start adding other colors that inform not just the composition further, but also nudge the mood as needed (sometimes I go by the seat of my pants). I hope to be uploading some more of these again sometime soon (I hope).

Jellyfish Evolution

Here's an image I've been dabbing at for a bit in my precious spare time. I have a sort of fascination with jellyfish, not just visually, but scientifically and environmentally. As our oceans become more acidic, jellyfish are becoming one of the fastest growing species (in numbers), not just because of their ability to adapt, but also because of the lack of predators and the increasingly unbalanced ocean ecosystem. Who knows what evolution might bring hundreds - or thousands - of years into the future!

National Geographic photo study

I am a subscriber to National Geographic Magazine, which I've always loved to read and look through. It often has arresting images, and in this case I found an amazing photo in an article about Breton women and their traditional dresses and hats. 

This picture in particular caught my attention, and I decided to do a study from the physical magazine. However, when I compared the printed image to what I saw on National Geographic website (located here), the colors were way off, so I decided to do the study from the image on the screen instead. Since this is a study, I painted strictly from observation without any color picking or overpainting.

I also tried out some compositional changes to fit the figure in the frame a little differently. The photo is gorgeous and masterfully taken, but I wanted to see how changing the weight of the figure and the direction of certain lines would change the flow. 

XCOM: Enemy Within Concept Art

I am finally able to post some of the work I did for the XCOM franchise, both for the DLC (known as Slingshot) and the expansion (known as XCOM: Enemy Within). They were really fun projects to work on; we now had the chance to refine and add onto what we had created so far, also giving us time to explore certain aspects XCOM fans had been requesting :)

I was tasked with tackling a bit of everything, from environments to props to characters and enemy units. The final result was a fantastic, universally acclaimed expansion and DLC (don't take my word for it, play them and you'll see!). It was a behemoth effort that came together very well, and further solidified Firaxis' prestige as a top-notch game studio.

The first project I worked on after finishing XCOM: Enemy Unknown (the original 2012 game) was its DLC, Slingshot. It involves a mission in China with a rogue Triad agent that betrays his organization to join XCOM as an elite soldier, in order to prevent an all-out alien onslaught by attempting to take down one of their battleships.

A mood painting for a cutscene's establishing shot. The location was not pinned down when we began, which is why this looks a bit more like Tokyo than Shanghai.

The Triad defector awaits the XCOM squad at a cemetery.

Mood concept for the train mission in the DLC

For the first time, we were taking on making fixed characters. That is, characters that were not randomly generated or customizable, which was the norm in XCOM so far. From an artistic perspective this was exciting, because it meant we could develop the character's backstory and narrative, and have it reflect on their appearance, which is always fun. 

The first was Shaojie Zhang, who, as mentioned before, was a Triad defector, willing to risk it all by providing valuable intel against the aliens in exchange for joining XCOM. He had to look rough but not grunt-like; somebody with dirty money who was clearly a criminal but was also loyal to humanity (oddly enough). He wasn't a higher-up, but wasn't new to the business; a seasoned gangster who was willing to turn the page to fight the aliens. 

Zhang's concepting process begun with head explorations. Since the game's limitations wouldn't allow for different body types, we knew we'd get the most bang for our buck figuring out the face first - especially considering the close-ups in the cinematics. 

It turned out to be a quick decision from our Art Director David Black. He pointed at the head in the bottom center and said "yep, that's him." Then it was just a matter of dressing him up, which was really quick since Dave had a pretty good idea of what he wanted, and a whole bunch of reference to go with it.

For the next set of missions there was going to be another character. This one was a little different from Zhang. Her name was Annette, and she was a much harder nut to crack. It took a significantly larger amount of iterations and back and forth with the Art Director to get her right at the concept stage. She was a much more subtle character; a young captive with psionic powers that she'd only begun to grasp. This made for a conflicted personality and made figuring out her looks quite challenging. I explored many options, from age to hairstyle to fashion choices, all while being constrained by the game's body type limitations. 

Again, we focused most of our energy on getting the face right, since the cutscenes would focus on it quite a bit. To facilitate the transition from concept to model I sculpted the faces in ZBrush, so that the modelers and animators would have an actual 3D model to work from once the Art Director approved it.

The first version we thought could work is on the far right (above). Annette had the youthful look of a teenager-- slightly edgy but also vulnerable, reflecting her conflicted personality. 

After letting the concept sit for a while, we decided to explore the "captive" side of her: a less casual, more "institutionalized" look, as if she had come from some sort of facility, but without giving her a straitjacket.

The clothing was right, but she looked too aggressive and the head scarring was too obvious, so we opted for a more subtle look. After a couple more face variations, our AD Dave Black went in to paint over some final changes (second image above), and Annette was done! It was a very difficult balance to achieve between youthfulness, maturity, inner conflict and newfound power. It was a great tag team effort between Dave, myself, and all others involved in the team. I enjoyed every minute of it!


Another aspect that made XCOM: Enemy Within such a great expansion was that there was now a rival human faction that wanted to destroy you; an anti-XCOM, pro-alien organization called EXALT. Initially they were supposed to be more simple mercenaries, but they soon evolved conceptually to something more intricate.

We toyed around in the early sketches with more distinctly different looks for the units. Regular, almost merc-like EXALT grunts, and more menacing genetically modified units. As we tested these ideas within the game's context, we realized that having your XCOM soldiers shooting other humans just didn't feel right -- it felt like a line was being crossed. Thus, we revised the look of the EXALT faction and went for an "unnatural" look, as if they had started to undergo an alien-inspired transformation. This made sense conceptually as well, since EXALT are alien sympathizers who want to rule the world once the aliens complete their plans. It was also a smart idea from the production standpoint, because by covering most of their facial features, as if hiding something, it then allowed us to save plenty of development time by using one model with swappable class-based attachments.

Below is XCOM's answer to the EXALT menace -- a covert agent force that is sent to scout out possible EXALT strongholds, allowing the player to not only respond to attacks but possibly pre-empt them.

So another fun element to the game were the genetic modifications to your soldiers, or "Genemods". I was tasked with illustrating the images that would be embedded into the UI on the Genemod screen. These were really fun to do, and a nice change of pace from the other work I was doing. They represent each Genemod available in the game, with a couple of extra variations I liked.

In order for the Genemods to work, there was a new substance called "Meld". It was supposed to be a newly discovered, finite alien resource that would bridge the gap between your soldiers' molecular biology and the Genemod and M.E.C. elements (the Mechs). This would effectively allow your units to "evolve" into the next stage. But for that you had to acquire the Meld from the maps, and there was only a finite amount of time to do so before it expired. 

Below are some explorations of the Meld containers found on the map, as well as a visualization of what the Meld molecules themselves would look like when under a microscope. The latter was also used as a concept for the actual Meld cinematics.

A "Flying Spider Shark" I believe the Seeker has been called. The Seeker is a unit that we had conceptually thrown around ideas for during development for XCOM Enemy Unknown (before the expansion). Back then it didn't make the cut, but it was now being resurrected as a new enemy unit. The Seeker is a floating, mostly invisible enemy that seeks out your soldiers to incapacitate them and drain their life away. It only becomes visible once it attaches to your unit. Creepy. 

Below are some explorations, as well as the final design. I used ZBrush to help me visualize his form, which also facilitated the concept-to-model process.

The following are sketches for the Venomorph, an enemy unit that we explored, but which didn't materialize into a final idea. Sometimes things needed to be thrown out to give way to higher priorities, and this guy was one of those cases. Many compared him to the Snakeman from the original 90's X-Com, and I don't disagree! The Venomorph's modus operandi was to "occupy" some poor civilian's body, then operate it as its own until he matured, not unlike the Chryssalid. The difference was that the person acted fairly normal, and not like a moaning green zombie about to burst from the inside (like with a Chryssalid).

  

Civ V expansion

Our Civilization V team at Firaxis just announced their latest expansion! I helped them out with concepting out the King. 
Here's a link to the article on Kotaku:
http://kotaku.com/5990726/civilization-vs-newest-expansion-pack-will-take-you-to-a-brave-new-world

Civilians and soldiers

Throughout the project I was asked to provide a lot of faces for soldiers and civilians, which was probably one of my favorite things to do. Later on I figured out that zbrushing the heads was actually just as fast if not faster for me, and it made more sense for the pipeline because there was an actual 3D asset the modelers could use.

(Images Created by: Piero Macgowan for XCOM: Enemy Unknown. ©2012 Firaxis Games/Take Two Interactive)

You'll notice these portraits framed in some office levels :D

These are straight up portraits of two members of the xcom team, Matt Demaray on the left and Adam Goodrich on the right. We had fun using the Matt model (called a"Demaray" in the office) to populate levels with dead people early in the development.