sketching over xmas

While i was away at xmas i took my sketchbook with me in case i decided to do any drawing. I managed to get hold of some digital art and 3d art magazines to read while I wasn't busy. I did some life drawing of emma on the beach but only a few drawing that are in my sketchbook which i may blog later in the yr as part of my extra life drawing work. I made a ninga knight thats crossed with a oriental style of knight that I saw in one of the digital art magazines which was my inspiration for this piece, which ive started to add some colour to in photoshop just for experimental purposes. I copied this style of drawing a character and added my own elements to it, i liked the way the knees and arms looked so these where features i decided to copy but the rest of it is my creation with the sword, helmet and top body armour.

I also drew this apetroll which is inspired by a cross between a cave troll I saw in a magazine and king kong from the video game, i like the way that a troll and a ape have similar bulging features and top heavy body shape, it is only a basic sketched drawing with some moderate shading so there isn't to much enthasis on it as a character design it was just an idea that popped into my head. I struggled with the hands and feet, i think i would need to look at anphibions and monkeys hands and feet to get more of a understanding of the type of mutional cross i would need to have in the hands and feet to make them look more like a cross between a troll and a ape. Other than this though i think its not a bad start for a new creature design for a sci fi sketch or something, I may try drawing him in orthographic views to model in 3d.

When i was browsing through a copy of digital art on holiday I saw this awesome space marine and a step by step guide how to make your own. So using this as a rough guide I decided to come up with a design for a space marine I could model in maya myself. I was inspired by a book me and my dad had both red on the battle of starlingrad during ww2 called "starlingrad" dada by anthony beevor and I thought about a similar battle over a russian city in a cold war period that may have escalated into another world war with new enginiered soldiers like post apocalipto marines similar to that off the shadow of chernobyl characters, the warhammer game series style marines or that of some fallout 3 characters. Anyway below is 2 images of the russian space marine i designed for my post apocalipto scene, a front view and side view for modelling the proportions are not perfect but they are a guide to model in 3d in maya. For some reason unknown to me there is shadow on the scanned images but you can still clearly see there design.