Eternal Seven

Lord Norab – Evil Old Man Portrait

Niva — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 06:38:46 +0000

This old man is about to kick some ass. This is a character from the Eternal Seven story, I’ve been developing the Jade subplot since the start of the year and this guy is in it. When I set about creating the drawing I had not planned on making this particular character but eventually it hit me that unintentionally as I’m drawing him, I keep thinking of the character in the story.

This was made in Photoshop, I started with a quick pencil sketch that I had in my notes. About 30 minutes of work in sculpting it out to make it look more 3D.

I’m doing real good! Posted two drawings in two days, beat that Watsini!

Cyborg Marine Sketch

Niva — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 06:23:50 +0000

I’m making this post just to spite Robert Frost. Yes the one and only…

This post is also dedicated to my good friend who likes to punch people in the face who averages 1 post per year yet somehow gives me grief for not posting recently.

I’m also dedicating this to my friend Mortimer, who no doubt will get this image from the interwebs before I’ve even posted it through his stupid phone.

Anyways…

This was a pencil sketch I put together over the last couple of days, I’m guessing about 1 hour of work went into it. Have fun and post more you fools!

Demonica Take Two

Niva — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 23:34:21 +0000

The Princess of Demons depicted by me once again.

I really enjoyed working this one and used a lot of hard brushes. Lately I’ve adopted a new workflow and it really helps me to refine the edges better which I hope is somewhat obvious in this drawing. This was done entirely in Photoshop, I’m guessing about 5 hours of work went into it.

More Demonica Art:

Here are some previous takes on this character:

Bar Rafaeli Portrait Study

Niva — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 06:52:52 +0000

Ok I made this a couple of weeks ago, I’m not too pleased with it but I’m posting it simply because of the amount of time I inviested in this.

All done in Photoshop, didn’t keep track of time but I spent at least a couple of hours on this. The mouth and nose and eyes, all gave me trouble. I learned a couple of things from this but it’s hard to say so looking at the results.

Elric and the Sad Giant’s Shield

Niva — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 08:06:59 +0000

A friend turned me on to the Elric series by Michael Moorcock and I finished everything I could find in the local bookstore sometime last year. While I don’t think the Elric books are as amazing as some cultists make them out to be there are some real good concepts here, most centering around the central character. What I found most fascinating about the books is the method by which these stories were originally published and this is another reason why I’ve been so motivated lately. Ever since finishing Elric I’ve made a big push with my writing though I’m afraid to show it yet.

Anyways, here’s a scene from the Elric series. Those who have read the books should be able to recognize it without the need of the post’s title.

As usual, this began as a tiny pencil sketch which I scanned and painted over digitally. It doesn’t look like much but I spent quite a bit of time trying to get this right and it’s still not right. In particular I really struggled with the colors of the giant but this is it for now. I have a hunch this one might get updated but I have a few other works in the hopper that really need some attention.

Finally a new header thanks to Sand & Mercury!

Niva — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 18:30:50 +0000

It has been years since I’ve wanted to make an animated header, but not by using an animated GIF or Flash.

Rant against Flash: Actually Flash was something I seriously considered doing but over the years I went from really liking Flash to not being such a huge fan. Perhaps this shift in attitude is due to Adobe’s refusal to support Linux as viable platform even to this day. Sure, now they finally got a flash player that works under x64, but good luck waiting for native versions of Photoshop and the rest of their software to appear in Linux anytime soon. Anyways, I’m with Steve Jobs on this one (though he’s still a retard about not putting the Flash Player on an internet device.) I really hope HTML5 will finally provide an open standard that would make Adobe’s Flash obsolete sometime in the next 15 years.

So, moving on to the news this post is about! At a first glance you might not notice, but I finally have a new header on the site which scrolls through a few slices from my artworks from over the years. Special thanks to Sand & Mercury for providing me with a motivating example and the info I needed to get this thing running. Over the next few days/weeks I’m going to have some new images up there but the hard work is done now and the entire WordPress Theme I’m using has been modified to make use of the JQuery Cycle javascript plugin. If you’re interested in using this plugin it’s very versatile and worth checking out, integrating it into the site was not very hard either.

Yay, everyone rejoyce, please let me know if you encounter problems browsing the site. I’ve tested under IE, Firefox and Chrome and all looks good though I might have missed some obscure corner of the site. At first I had a conflict with the Flash Slideshow Gallery I use on a few of the posts but I cleared that up now I think.

Guard Duck the Pocket Dog

Niva — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 05:27:18 +0000

I’m dedicating this drawing to my great friend Mortimer and his insatiable love for Pearls Before Swine!

The Hellhound below was abandoned on our plane after his master was murdered. The confused pup ended up wondering the Earth aimlessly until finding and adopting a baby duck.

This originally started as a pencil drawing which was then painted in Photoshop rather too quickly. I like it though, here’s the WIP:

Nude Vixen

Niva — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 05:55:49 +0000

The following digital painting was done for the CHOW 190 at conceptart.org

The idea was to depict a Kitsune which is the Japanese variant of a creature who is half fox half female… basically a vixen. I went ahead with a very orange haired green eyed girl who exhibits both traits of beautiful female and a fox. Perhaps I should’ve made her look more asian but I’ve yet to meet any natural asian redheads. Was that racist of me?

As usual here comes the obligatory WIP animated GIF:

A Book of Spells: The Magus

Niva — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 22:27:41 +0000

Every time I hear someone refer to “the Magus” or “a Magus” I can’t help but think of the character from Chrono Trigger who is perhaps one of the first really evil villains in a video game who ultimately turned out to be a good guy. Well maybe that’s not true, I’m sure others can bring up other examples, but the fact is that The Magus was extremely memorable. Well today I finished this drawing after about 3 hours worth of work on it, it was my rendition of the character though it was done for the CHOW 188 activity at conceptart.org

Pencil sketch first, matter of fact you can see the WIP below:

Enjoy, and long live the Magus!

Doomsday Dream Clan – Team CHOW 3 Final Entries

Niva — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 01:20:40 +0000

Below you can see our final entries which we submitted for the Team CHOW 3 contest. The topic which was thrown out to the teams was to create a Tarot Deck and each team had to choose cards which to illustrate. While the restrictions were to do a minimum of two cards per team member (artist) each team could only choose half of their cards to be of the High Arcana. Our team initially chose only two high arcana cards, the Fool and the High Priestess, because it was said bonus points would be awarded to the teams who did mostly regular cards. Unfortunately we never managed to finish the High Priestess, also no bonus points were awarded which makes me cringe because the High Arcana cards definitely seemed more interesting to draw. Now that I’ve been through two team challenges I’ve learned that following the guidelines is pretty pointless. Also it was very disappointing because conceptart.org decided to not publicize this challenge, especially compared to the previous one, as a result the artists who worked on this got very little exposure. Still, great work was done, and many of us learned a lot by participating (I sure did.)

Of the six cards we finished I only made the King of Pentacles and worked on the Fool and the Ace of Cups as collaboration.

The Ace of Cups initial concept (giant figure holding a cup filled with lava in a fiery landscape) was proposed by me. Clanlord did the initial drawing of the one depicted above which I then modified and colored, Headhunter put on the finishing touches to this piece.

Headhunter created the remaining 3 cards by himself: the Queen of Pentacles, the Four of Wands and the Two of Wands.

I’m real proud of the work we did during this challenge, I also feel I learned a lot as opposed to the previous challenge where I just did a big push in terms of gruntwork. You can see we didn’t do well in the final voting section but by looking at the quality of the work I’m now convinced it’s a popularity contest in ca.org when the final votes are tallied up. The good part is that we did great work and finished before the deadline while following the rules and sticking to the topic.

Special thanks to Clanlord and Headhunter for being on the same team with me, it really was an honor.