Cinders + Tumblr

Hey guys,

as you already may know I'm working since some time on our first indie project as MoaCube, a visual novel called Cinders. Below are some concept arts of characters, location and menu. I also started a Tumblr blog to quickly update one place with pictures - please follow me there as well, if you're interested :)

Rabbit Heart

New Art Challenge with friends! (I promise I'll manage to post something else soon). This time the topic was: Rabbit Heart. Based on Florence + the Machine song. Interpreted as we want. So here's my quicky thing. I actually had another one started, something bigger, but later did this sketch and thought it'll be nicer to finish first. So expect another rabbit soon.  I just missed those kind of pieces in my gallery.

Here's sort of a wip / tutorial picture, maybe it'll be useful for someone:

*edit*: ok, this pic got scaled down for some reason, here's a bigger version. Pen sketch, scanned, colours in Photoshop. Usual stuff :)

Medusa

Yet another art challenge with friends. This time the topic was: Medusa. Portrayed in a different than typical way.

I summed up few things usually associated with this creature: at first she was just a common monster but her myth has changed with times, later she was shown as a beautiful, yet dangerous creature, hunted by heroes but also loved by gods (Poseidon), with wings and serpent hair which she got after Athena turned her into a monster, being jealous of her beauty beauty (weird for a goddess of wisdom, but hey; she failed with the apple as well). So to show her in a different era I decided to put her in space opera setting and give her holographic wings. It was a nice exercise - something new for me, that I always liked, but never painted. I also didn't use any references at all, wanted to see how far I can go without it. Done in Photoshop and SketchUp (simple 3D model of the city in the background, which I later repainted).  

I might make a tutorial out of it, when I have time, as I saved most wip shots. Or just a usual gif ;)

close up:

The Owl Princess

Another Art Challenge with friends. This time the topic was: The Owl. Mine is an Owl Princess as you can see.

close up:

I wanted to practice painting flowers. Which was stupid. I used lots of custom brushes for the foliage. I also used a ref for the owl and wings (random google image), as I never painted one. And a ref for flowers, of course (my own). Or actually a few. And I think I based initial tiara design on some photo, but I changed it so much, I'm not sure if it even resembles it. I still don't know what got into me that I decided to paint such complicated foliage.

I'm quite happy with her owl-face. And it was fun to do something more stylised and painterly this time :)

Demonic Circus

Another Art Challenge. This time I came up with the topic, got it from a game name generator and just loved it. I got kind of carried away with it. Had so much fun with the faces that when I finished them I needed to make all the rest more realistic than I intended to. Ah well. One day I'll learn ;)

The twins were inspired by the twins from The Shining, and I used some random still as a reference for their hands. Just the hands though. Clown's hands are referenced on my own. No faces were referenced which is perhaps why ringleader's smile is so weird. I learned painting teeth hurts. Other than that, just too much time in Photoshop and Painter. Here are some additional close ups.

Phantasmat

Phantasmat - a game I've been working on since a long time - is out! It's a casual horror adventure game with Hidden Object and Match-3 gameplay. Lot's of fun!

I'm responsible for all concept art, characters (including animations), puzzles, Match-3 graphics and touching up most of final locations (lights, details etc.). I even painted the bloody crow, all single frames of animation (swearing like hell during the process). So you gotta see it. You can download the demo and try it for yourself.

Official website: Phantasmat - including trailer, screenshots, wallpapers etc. The game is on BigFishGames as well (#2 one day after release!). Collector's Edition only at the moment, but Standard Edition (without extra content and gameplay, but cheaper) is coming soon :)

Some concept art:

Some in game locations with mostly my work:

More images on game's and my own websites. Hope you'll like it :)

Day and Night

Another Art Challenge piece with friends. "Day and Night", we were supposed to depict day and night as a man and woman. At first I wanted to go with the Sandman look for the Night, making him a guy (I just recently re-read the series again, love it as always), but thought it'd be too cliche. Then it turned out everybody else made Night a woman, which - I guess - makes me even more cliche. Oh, well ;)

I wanted to make a proper tutorial out of this one, but no time for that, hence just few wip shots in a gif file (a bit big, so wait for it to load):




What you can see here is my usual workflow: first a rushed, dirty sketch. Some flat colours to get a general colour scheme. Then detailing the faces too much, which I always do, even though I know it would be better to work on everything at once. But somehow if I don't get the faces right at first, I quickly lose the interest with the rest. And after that, it's just lots of regular brushwork. One thing you can see here that works wonders in pictures is: adding shadows. Even if the picture has a diffused light and no big contrasts, just small hints of shadows (see last steps) really add to the depth of the whole thing.