I could tell this session really went well for me, I was very pleased with my pieces from this week, I think the rust finally came off from missing figure drawing for a few months- enjoy. And very impressive from this week’s new model who held some obnoxiously uncomfortable poses for decent amounts of time.
So my newest pinup is based on a Manga I am reading called “ATTACK ON TITAN” Which is basically a post apocalyptic future where humanity lives in a walled city as the Earth is over-run by cannibalistic giants that eat people. Right now I am on volume #6 and I quite enjoy the series. As I work on building up my folio, I have an anime con coming up in January 2014, and I know this show is popular (it’s an anime as well, which I have not watched yet) so it should be a hit at shows, and since I like it… and who doesnt like cannibal giants…. I decided to do this piece as my newest project.
The layout and pencils took about a week to get where I wanted them- volume 6 detailed a new Giant that is a skinless woman, who is smarter than the average giant, and alot of the issue is her killing the “good guys” the SURVEY CORPS of the last bastion of humanity as they ride a bunch of horses around towards a forest- they use horses to get around, and wires with guns to launch the hooks from their hips to stab the giants in their necks… go read it or watch it to find out more on ATTACK ON TITAN… but I digress.
Anyway, I wanted to give the size of the female giant in this piece and at first in my thumbnail my thought was to go over her looking down with the soldiers on their wires trying to cut her- see below I didn’t think it worked. Then I went with a straight forward Giant woman crouching with a horse running at the viewer- straight on, and not dynamic at all, but I liked the elements- then later that day, I was brushing my teeth, and just saw the thumbnail of the crouching giant in my head and moved my internal camera to the left and down and looked up- and saw the image rotated in my head. I made a rough sketch of the giantess from a worm’s eye view as a rough sketch, then made some traces of my rough sketch of the giant and a sketch right on tracing paper for the rider so I could move his image around on top of the Giant. After I was satisfied with the composition, I cleaned both images up , and then transferred it to a board and did the detailing. Now this book has kinetic art, but weak on the detail, so I had to really guess and dig to find out the layout for the uniforms and monster body. Id love to ink this book for the artist/creator Hajime Isayama and give his excellent layouts some of the detail they deserve, probably not going to happen, but It can’t hurt to dream a bit. Enjoy the pencils, especially the guy getting crushed in the giant’s hand. Take a look at the hand closeup below the finished pencils… it was fun to make that gruesome detail of the twisted and crushed limbs, I always love finding details like that in other artist’s work so I like to pay it forward to other fans to find this sort of thing. So be on the lookout…. Ill be inking this piece soon!
Reference Material
Well my fifth and final Dr. Who piece really turned out well in the final pen and ink version. Once I realized that the Black would be dominant on Davros’s person and life support machine, and the outer space background would be pure black and made a tactical decision to use Black as the dominant color for the nuke and Dalek killing Movellan POV. The center Dalek in full black with a “nuke flash” in the background was a fun way to do a Dalek differently, and the Movellan really pops with the black outlining the Dalek eye stalk and gun framing the beam cutting the figure. On a smaller note the pen and inks also really made the little details like the wires and screen partitions look really stylish as well. Overall, this piece worked for me, and was a great send off to my 5 piece Dr. Who series.
More rust coming off at figure drawing class- check it out
There were some small fixes on the hands of the two Cyber Troops in the foreground and alot of labor on the detail in the background. I elimated the tank driver as I really got into the nuts and bolts of how the tank space worked- and I didnt see the space for the main gun with that guy sitting there, sometimes you get more into this sort of thing than you think you will! Overall this piece turned out just like I imagined this scene would be which is a fun final result. The inks really brought out elements like the guns and cybermats- as well as highlighted the overall composition of the piece.
I hope you enjoy it as much I did making it-!
I’ve been away from the Art Alliance for months, but back again last week here are the results, I was rusty, but as always a good workout of the fundamentals.
Davros: “Now, you will tell me the reason for every Dalek defeat. With that knowledge, I will programme them. With that knowledge, they will know their errors and how to avoid them. With that knowledge, there shall be no defeats! We will begin…..” from Genesis of the Daleks 1975
And so my fifth and final Dr. Who pinup begins. I knew in the back of my head I wanted to end on another classic villain I loved as a kid- Davros, the creator of the Daleks. As a fan of the militant villains that the FASA Dr Who RPG fleshed out in the 80’s I was obsessed with the crippled and evil Davros who was introduced in the 70’s on BBC as the twisted genius that created the cybernetic Daleks. Davros first appeared in the 1975 Episode “Genesis of the Daleks” and then back in 1979’s “Destiny of the Daleks” & 1984’s “Resurrection of the Daleks” where a new (and very lame) enemy of the Daleks called the Movellans apparently had the Daleks at a “logic” impasse in a huge intergalactic war.
To quote: “For years, the two were locked in a long stalemate, each side’s purely logical battle keeping them in deadlock. Hundreds of Dalek and Movellan battlecruisers flew across space, without a single shot being fired. ”
Again, more lame from the BBC- we never saw the fleets, and the Daleks were always thinking outside the box on the show, now they dont fire their guns and can’t make a move in a war?? as a fan, I was left thinking “What the f***?”
The Movellans ultimately defeated the Daleks offscreen with a biological virus…. as a fan, I was left thining “What the f***?” yet again.
The Movellans were androids with a metrosexual/rasta look that were the height of lame late 70’s/ early 80’s design. It looked as if the Movellans came off the set of SOUL TRAIN or SOLID GOLD, I was not pleased at all as a fan of the Daleks that this was the endgame.
I WANTED THE DALEKS TO WIN- and if they were to lose- the freaking Movellans? A totally lame villain didnt deserve to win… surely they had a better nemesis than that. And then Dr. Who the BBC television show went away unti the 2005 reboot, where a new improved Davros was involved with a war against the Time Lords and the Daleks kicked enough ass to fight the Time Lords into a mutually assured destruction in a “Time War” – and I was left thinking “What about the Movellans? As much as they sucked- THEY WON THE WAR!! Where was the resolution?” On top of that the BBC never showed the Movellans after 1979, and we never saw the galactic war the Daleks Lost- and then, did they come back and win the war to become the New super Daleks? WHAT HAPPENED THIS MADE NO SENSE FROM START TO LACK OF FINISH?!?!?!
Ah poor/incomplete writing and cheap production values from the BBC yet again- a storyline we never liked …that we never saw a resolution to ….just gets ignored, and then we just move on since the writers realized the Daleks kicked ass and needed to be the top dog of the villain food chain of the Dr. Who Universe…. and who needs a lame android from the late 70’s to get in the way of that?
In the Movellan Dr Who Wikia page I saw that a 1997 book based on the 8th Doctor tried to retcon the old Androids off the show… to quote from the Movellan Entry here… where the Daleks lost a writer would eliminate the old dreadlocked robots once and for all…..
” Fans have, generally speaking, not warmly received John Peel’s suggestion, in War of the Daleks, that the Dalek-Movellan War never actually happened. “
And I realized that nobody liked the Movellans, and the BBC was just lazy and hiding from a lame decision in the first place. So this project was in many was a correction to do several things, besides being a great piece of Dr. Who artwork.
1- Show the Daleks kicking ass on the Movellans
2- Davros running the show from a headquarters area- he sort of looks like the Crypt Keeper, which works for him here.
3- Illustrate elements from the War on the Movellans that we never saw, at all. This includes a space ship battle with a Movellan Ship and Dalek ship (hey wasnt this a battle in space with two war-fleets?) the Daleks using a nuke in a city (they are radioactive mutants in hard shells, wouldnt they use nukes liberally on the enemy?) and finally the close up death of a Movellan via a Dalek. We all hate the Movellans so that brings some closure to the composition of the piece.
4- Make the up close Movellan death, horrific. I hated these guys and wanted to end this with a bang, so I felt a laser cutting one in half from a Dalek POV was what I wanted to see.
5- Make the continuity that I wanted (and I suspect many fans would as well) in one spectacular image around Davros, and the Daleks defeating the Movellans- once and for all, once Davros fixed the virus and put the Daleks back on top- then they are free to fight the Time Lords, or whatever adventures they need to have.
So here is my final pencils, pencil tracings from my thumbnails and layouts and the original source material I used for the character and ship models. I hope you enjoy this piece for some killer artwork, and well, my own little retcon with Davros, the Daleks and the Movellans -which in this piece the Movellans are sort of cool for once!
I look forward to inking it soon!
FINAL PENCILS
DAVROS /DALEK/ MOVELLAN PENCIL LAYOUTS
SOURCES
Here are the final three creatures I’m doing for Arion Games Advanced Fighting Fantasy System Monster Sourcebook Beyond the Pit 2.
A totally fun project with some cool evil monsters!.
Here is Vitriol Essence, Vlodblad and the Weevil Man
Here are four more creatures I’m doing for Arion Games Advanced Fighting Fantasy System Monster Sourcebook Beyond the Pit 2.
Without any more fanfare….
Here is Prowler, Quartz Golem, Arctolyce , and the Snuffer Hound
Here are four creatures I’m doing for Arion Games Advanced Fighting Fantasy System which is an offshoot of another childhoold favorite of mine- the Fighting Fantasy Gamebook Series from Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson. I loved this series of books as a kid in the early 80’s and it introduced me to Russ Nicholson’s amazing style of Pen and Ink which inspires me everytime I put ink to board! I still enjoy paging through these books today, and I hope my son can enjoy them in a few years when he can read, and roll some dice!
Im doing some fill in art for some of the old art that they were not able to get the reprint rights to, so it’s amazing to get my creature artwork into a book with some of the classic FF art that Russ did back in the 80’s. I love doing this old Fiend Folio style art, so it’s been a treat to visit these monsters!
Arion Games is doing a kickstarter here for the Creature Manual these pieces are for, the book is called BEYOND THE PIT 2
So if you want to read more about the Fighting Fantasy books here and I also enjoy reading a Fighting Fantasy Blog – great guys, and lots of fun catching up with them reviewing the books as they re-read them in 2013. You can read that blog here.
Without any more fanfare….
Here is Blood Lurcher, Angaroc , Bakk-Ruman, and the Chrabat
