Sorcerer of Severed Heads

SpeedKnight

The linework on these is really cool. But you're doing local shading, I think it would look better with a defined lightsource.

Quick Paintover:

Golden Yak

Bitchin'. That's awesome, whatever it is you did. I'll monkey with it in Photoshop some more to soften the shading and give it more of a defined light-source. Then I'll try some of that psycho cool color Megamau mentioned...

*saves for reference*

Captain Uglyhead

I really like Mister Snake-guts there, but Turnip is by far my favorite.

Also, though, the Skeleton Lord has freaky-big boots. If his feet are just bones, I'd imagine there's a lot of wiggle-room in there, unless they're padded on the inside, or otherwise thicker than normal boots.

His hands are kinda big too, but I guess those could just be magic gauntlets or something! :o

Edit; Oh, and if you're at a loss as to how the other part of the blade of that broken sword could be carried, I guess you could strap it to the other character's arm or something/have it replace the forearm, kinda like how pirates have hook-hands.

white_queen

Well Golden, I must say I'm impressed. I too play WoW, and am impressed with your concept designs of the pandarin. Even though I don't think they'll make the pandarin the new Alliance race, as cool as it would be.

I like the line weight you used on the illustrations, it adds some nice depth. Your tauren's face looks a liiiittle to animated, but the body is done very well. Your undead will look a little clearer to me if it was colored, the illustration looks al ittle busy, but it's good. The craftsmanship is very clean. Well done.

fadedletterslost

Nice line style... some wonky anatomy on them though, seems like you have Rob Liefeld syndrome... you know no waist...

Golden Yak

fadedletterslost wrote:

Nice line style... some wonky anatomy on them though, seems like you have Rob Liefeld syndrome... you know no waist...

It might just seem that way because most of them have no organs to fill out the midsection.

Anyway, onto business...

I am currently working on re-vamping my very own little corner of the web [plug]www.goldenyak.com[/plug], and step 1 is to put up a big 'Under Construction' graphic on the front page. Here's what I've put together so far:



's gonna be this happy little critchure with 'Under Construction' in fancy iron gold-wrought letters across the top. This is the result of a few evening's work, and I thought I'd take a step back and have it looked at. I want the wooden planks to look wooden enough, so comments on that part in particular are greatly appreciated.

srsizzy

Your stuff's prime, real beautiful. I'm glad your posting more.

Golden Yak

Added a bit here and there over the week to achieve this. Just a bit more lumber to do, then I can start on the lettering. Comments/crits welcome.

Mox911

Just a quick not, first off awsome, next just a picky thing... the smoke off the the stog should be lighter and less angular unless of course he is smokeing oil and the smoke is actually a flame... or it could just be me... I smoke too much... I see it tends to mushroom and get clearer twords the top...



sorry couldn't find a good picture of a stog. but thought this would at least show my point...

Golden Yak

Ah, an excellent point. Yes, though freaky and green be he, the cigar he's got should have pretty much the same properties as our primitive Earth cigars. I like the idea of using oil of some kind for smoking, but I haven't developed the backstory for this guy's race enough to start going into what they roll into their cigars instead of tabacco.

The train was a good reference. I'll find some more pics, then rework the smoke plume to something more suitable.

misosoup

One thing, I don't quite understand how the Candle is strapped 'pon his forehead, put like a big strap round it or something, I dunno...

Otar

Now, I'm no artist, I really wish i could be, but I'm not. So take what I say VERY lightly, but I think the wood in the "Under construction" picture looks way to exagerated, with the lines in it. But I absolutly love "Fear" and your skeleton lord.

Golden Yak

Hmm, that comment's a bit troubling. The wood in the pic plays a very important role, I want it to look at woodsy as possible. By 'exaggerated', do you mean too cartoony? Do the lines make the sunken parts of the wood look too thick, or make the wooden planks look too pieced-together?

I'd hate to have to redo it, cuz here's the finished product. Or rather, here's the product what have all the colors on it:



Just need to make up some 'Under Construction' text, which I will do tomorrow. Wurk KomPlete!

Otar

Golden Yak wrote:

Hmm, that comment's a bit troubling. The wood in the pic plays a very important role, I want it to look at woodsy as possible. By 'exaggerated', do you mean too cartoony? Do the lines make the sunken parts of the wood look too thick, or make the wooden planks look too pieced-together?

I'd hate to have to redo it, cuz here's the finished product. Or rather, here's the product what have all the colors on it:



Just need to make up some 'Under Construction' text, which I will do tomorrow. Wurk KomPlete!

I think it makes it look to overdone and sunken' in and sorta pieced together. Thats only my opnion, I like all your other work but this one seems weird to me.

srsizzy

You're candles light isn't affecting the wood, and most of the wood loks like there's no centralized light source.

Golden Yak

Haven't been doing much lately, but here's a few things I've put together this past week.


Maim Gorrvinnius, worked a bit on the shading. Think it looks a little bit better.


Shred Gorrvinnius, Maim's brother. Unshaded as of yet. He also doesn't get his name underlined. Somewhat less skeletal than his big bro. Still working on the concept for his weapon. While Maim holds the haft of the demon sword, Shred get's the blade. Not quite sure how he's going to wield the damn thing, but I'm thinking it's going to be so big that he'll need the two arms on one side to wield it. He's also had a bit of work done on the back to add the extra muscle power he'll need. Also, his guts are sticking out. All my undead have very little around the waisteline.

Working on concepts for another brother, a sister, and their father.


A critter called a Shadow Elf. Based on the shadow dwellers from the Ragnarok Online manga. Tried to work on my digital shading a little more. Crits on this guy are especially welcome.

AlyceInWonderland

I like these

The shadow elf is kind of freaky. Maybe because instead of hands it has really pointy nubbs. Kind of reminds me of a duke nukem game where people would catch on fire and they wouldn't have hands..but pointy arm nubbs. but I digress.

Well, not really, because I don't really have anything to say. These are pretty good. I want to see the 2nd one down colored.

Golden Yak

A creature concept I worked on during the down-time:

Urborg


Kinda a dragon-ogre type beast. Slow and stupid, probably a meat shield for some evil dark lord.

I scanned in the pencil lines before inking it, then decided to just do a quick color mock-up right onto the pencils themselves. Probably ink it later and try to put in a bit more detail... think I'll still keep him black though.

Golden Yak

Look and be amazed.

Do it.



I dunno what it is about monsters with stuff growing out of their back. I like 'em.

Like Godzilla.

He rules.

MagicToaster

This reminds me of Doomsday.

Dog

Golden Yak wrote:

Look and be amazed.

Do it.

Sexy Beast

I dunno what it is about monsters with stuff growing out of their back. I like 'em.

Like Godzilla.

He rules.

Hah, great. Mean looking. Reminds of that dinosaur with the completely armored back and the club tail. Could google the name, but I doubt anyone cares.

Diggin' the color choices. Great contrast there. I have one beef! The part where his left claw overlaps his groin area, I get lost. I had to concentrate to tell where his claws ended and the scales of his groin began. Might just want to thicken the outline around his claw there, so its easier to distinguish between the two? Also I just figured out what is making that area hard to understand, his 'index claw' is forming some major tangents with those groin scales. Instead of having the lines for the claw flowing into the lines for the groin, make the lines of the claw perpendicular to the lines of the groin, it'll clear that right up. I know it sounds silly, but it works!

Golden Yak

MagicToaster wrote:

This reminds me of Doomsday.

Another great monster with stuff growing out of his back.

Aeros wrote:

I have one beef! The part where his left claw overlaps his groin area, I get lost.

I hear what you say/write. I must avoid having stuff overlap with over stuff in a confusing way in future. Some shading changes on the stone talons might be able to help things in this case. Thanks for the heads up.

srsizzy

I'd say need more contrast. Brighter brights mostly. Really dim, not too much dynamic lighting.

Golden Yak

Okay, liking the feedback on my Rock Ogre thing. How's about I get youse guys to take a look at this piece of World of Warcraft fan art -



Recognize him?

It's Hakkar, the part-mantis, part-snake, part-bird, part-troll boss beastie of Zul'Gurub. Thinking of sending this in to the Warcraft fanart section.

Rolo

Okay, I know the critique has come full circle, but I can't tell where that light is supposed to be coming from.

eminkey2003

Eh, the drawing's pretty sweet, but I really dislike the colors. They're very local (different values of one color, instead of colors changed by a colored light source). And it looks like you used the smudge tool a lot. Try blending with lower opacity brushes instead. The background is kind of weak, just thrown on there with stock photos (?) and custom brushes (?). I think the colors are too bright and saturated too, it just doesn't work with this guy.

Scosglen

Practically no contrast, you're using a lot of local coloring as someone mentioned. It's also very busy and flat looking, to the point where it's midly exhausting to examine.

Yay for Hakkar though.

Golden Yak

Hmm, problems with the light source eh? Something to watch for in future. Thanks a bunch guys, I'll be sure to pay closer attention to lighting for the next one.

Golden Yak

I'm gonna be coloring this next critter specifically to work on the problems pointed out on Hakkar.



There's an obvious light source that I'm hoping will help me get the shading and lighting done properly. This'll be more of a step-by-step piece so I'll post more as I go along.

(I like the idea of the candle's faces starting out happy when the candle's brand new, and when they all melt down to being sad, it's time to replace your candle.)

Also, Ragnaros:



Drew this mainly cuz my WoW guild is poised to slaughter him for the first time this friday. If we win, I'll color him up. So far I like the lineart on him better than Hakkar's. I figure I'll add flickering flames in when I color it, overtop of the lineart. By fire, be purged!

Tam

I likes the monsters. Sum o' dem luks like yugioh monssers.

Golden Yak

Here's what I'm calling step 1. Thought I'd get some feedback before I went too far and see if the lighting is coming along all right.

Golden Yak

Colored up Ragnaros, even though we didn't get him last week.



I just couldn't wait.

Fantasyrogue

Ah, Ragnaros.. that brings back memories.

I think in spots (hands) it could use some more contrast.

I like the mole thing, he's cute. Since it's step 1, are you gonna work on the fur some more, it's a bit shiny and smooth at the moment but I'm not sure if the skin's finished yet or not.

(I'm no good with lighting advice though, I suck at it myself).

Golden Yak

Yeah, mole guy is far from finished. Right now I'm mainly concerned with getting the lighting/shading looking good, before I go in to more detail. I'll have to do some more work on him this week.

Golden Yak

Been working one a big piece lately. It's pretty obvious that I'm a WoW fan, and as my guild has recently started to poke around AQ, I decided to do some related fanart.

Here's the rough sketch of the whole thing:



It's rougher than my usual lineart, because I plan to paint over the whole thing, rather than coloring lineart like my past stuff. Here's the results of a few hours worth of work - a half-completed Silithid:

Maniac

i like those aq pics , the only thing im missing is that C'thun is so small and hard too see , dint see him to start with , he is a god , make him more visible

Deans

That Silithid's looking nice, but maybe you should change the color of the mark on his back. Since it's just a darker hue of the rest of him it's a little confusing at first glance.

Ape2001

I looks like a texture from the game, especially the legs, that's good isn't it ^^?

Golden Yak

@ Maniac - Actually, C'Thun himself isn't going to show up in this pic. The background is going to be a storm-clouded sky, with the black and blue clouds kinda taking the shape of C'Thun - almost like he's appearing in the clouds above Ahn'Qiraj. That's why he's drawn a bit more faded then any of the other elements. I might add a bit more to the top of the pic to fit more of him in... but it's getting a bit long already, so I'll wait until I've got everything else colored first.

@ Deans - Hey Deans. I've done a bit more work on the bug (see below)... if the back markings are still too similar a color to the rest of the carapace, I'll try darkening them or something, or maybe lightening the rest of the body. All of the back markings of the Silithid are the same dark color in the game, and I want to keep it close to the in-game appearance.

@ Ape2001 - I'm trying to get all the Qiraji critters to look as much like their in-game counterparts as possible, so if you think it looks like it's from the game, then yeah! That is good!

Anyway, did some more work on the Silithid.

Golden Yak

Okay, working on a fairly important 3D modelling project. I was given a few crappy, blurry screenshots of some spaceship/submarine battleship thing (linked below) and told that I had to make a 3D model (less than 3000 faces) and texture it with no more than 3 textures (512 x 512).

Here's an example of some of the pics I were given:

http://www.goldenyak.com/images/threedee/0002.bmp
http://www.goldenyak.com/images/threedee/0005.bmp
http://www.goldenyak.com/images/threedee/0010.bmp
http://www.goldenyak.com/images/threedee/0019.bmp

I don't know if it's from a show or a game or whatever. The images were just numbered.

Here's what I've got so far:









Here are the 3 textures I'm using for the various bits of the ship:





How's it look so far? Any suggestions on the model/texture? I've got another 200 polys to play around with, I could make some minor geometry tweaks. Texturing isn't my strong point, so suggestions would be helpful there. Another concern I have is lighting - I did some basic 3-point stuff for the fully rendered screenshots. Does that look okay? Everything relatively clear?

Anyway, this is my first major foray into the 3rd Dimension, and it was relatively fun, so I might start messing around some more with some big 3D stuff in future.

Oh, and if anyone recognizes that ship from anywhere, lemme know. If I could get some clearer pics, it would make this a tad easier.