THUMBNAILS

After watching Feng Zhus latest amazing video, I felt inspired to at last try my hand at doing a page of thumbnails... 

These took 5-6 hours but it's my first go at this and so I'm looking to speed up my process..! 

I tried to get in a lot of variation, both of subject matter and values- it's quite a challenge.

MORE CONCEPT ART

After eeking away at this, I've finally got my new concept piece done... this one is showing a typical scene you can expect to encounter if you're ever unlucky enough to find yourself in the vicinity of ++ THE FEEDERS ++

This area, which should measure about 3kms by 3kms can be thought of as a perimeter around the centre of NOVA ZONAs affliction, and is directly linked to the incident that unfolded to create a New Zone on the once relativity uneventful Border Island (Kordonu Ostrovy).

If you did manage to somehow pass this "perimeter", your life would be almost immediately on a count down as there is yet no known way for living beings to survive for more than 20 minutes in the actual Ground Zero of NOVA ZONA... hence, there is a lot of interest and exploration attempts to pass THE FEEDERS as who is to say what you could find where few have managed to tread and return..?

The vague similarity to a Concentration Camp is intentional- I visited the Dachau Concentration Camp a few years back and was struck in all sorts of ways, but the visual appearance was absolutely horrific to me.

As for the relevance of the actual spheres themselves- lets just say that there are exactly as many of them as there were civilian inhabitants on Border Island... each one represented a once living person, now long dead.

Where you see a full single sphere- that was an adult. 

Where you see clusters atop each other or otherwise joined- that represented a family unit.

Where you see a half sphere- that was an infant.

So from this hopefully you can begin understand the horror of what the Border Island Authorities were actually involved in, and believe me- it's not even close to revealing the enormity of what they were doing over a very long period of time- that part you will have to discover for yourselves.

MORE CONCEPTS

Two more concept art peices here, one for NOVA ZONA and the other was directly inspired by THE LAST OF US.

With the NOVA ZONA image, I roughly modelled out the scene first, dropped a few lights in and rendered it out and used that as a base to start painting over. The main advantages of this method is you can obviously nail your perspective spot on from the off (I adjusted the lens also, to be a bit "fisheye"), and you can tweak the light sources until you're more or less happy and then go from there.

I was trying to create another atmospheric piece, this time of an interior that subtly hints at an Anomaly down that big round tunnel- hence the greenish blue glow. 

During the process I had all sorts of variations of anomaly drawn up, but the more in your face they were, the less convincing they seemed to me- I even had loads of greenish yellow gas pouring out of the entrance but it seemed too over the top for what I have in mind for NOVA ZONA... 

I even sketched in a Stalker, pressed right up against the wall under the light to show him trying to summon the courage to turn the corner but it made it look too "gamey"!

I also decided to do one directly inspired by THE LAST OF US as I've never played it but have seen enough of its development artwork to really want to have a go myself.

From seeing various screenshots, I really liked the way their artists tried to convey a sense of nature reclaiming the earth after mankind has gone and also that the apocalypse doesn't necessarily have to be a grim and desolate wasteland all the time- there could be little pockets of beauty and graceful decay if you were to look hard enough.

Again, I'm trying out different techniques here, having first done a very basic model and light pass and used that as the basis for starting the paint over.

There were a lot of little details in this one that needed fleshing out, so it took a little longer than it should have really.

CONCEPT ART 03

Hi, another concept piece here as I'm finding it close to impossible to grab any meaningful free time to work on the actual objects as I'm also trying to get acceptance on to a Concept Art Class early next year so have to dedicate a bit of spare time to that end.

In a way, it's a nice compromise as I can build up my folio alongside fleshing out more ideas for NOVA ZONAs vast landscapes too...

Anyway, I hope you guys like it. :)

CONCEPT ART PRACTICE

This is an image I completed using a different technique, as I'm currently trying to refine my concept art.

I started with a photo plate and used that to colour pick and to get some values from- this is the end result.

I'm pretty happy with it as it only took about 5 hours and was really good fun- it's a nice way to approach a piece. I tried to rely as little as possible on the underlying photo, drawing over most of it and completely creating a new environment.

This image was inspired by a great tutorial by the amazing Shaddy Safadi..!

It's a great way to create a nice clean sharp piece from a photo, and the method lends itself to being really flexible as everything is on its own layer with a corresponding layer mask.

I chose this photo as it presented quite a challenge because it's in values only and those values are really close together- it took a lot of squinting to see the value separation and I resisted the temptation to "fog out" the background behind the train to make it pop more than it does in the photo.

3 SHOT VARIATIONS

At the risk now of over using some structures, I've taken three shots of the same scene to again show how much the atmosphere can change on NOVA ZONA- I haven't got time to create any new structures right now and won't have for the next few months so this'll be it for awhile unfortunately.

Either way- I hope you like them...

And most important of all, follow this one simple rule at all times when on NOVA ZONA:

WHAT A DIFFERENCE A DAY MAKES, TWENTY FOUR LITTLE HOURS...

Two shots with two purposes: 

One to show the difference a single day can bring forth whilst traversing NOVA ZONAs many splendid environs.

Two to answer numerous requests by certain unnamed individuals seeking sun soaked Zones. (Ie: "Why is it always f&*$£!g raining in NOVA ZONA..?!")

++ IN THE LOFTY HEIGHTS ABOVE THE NEW ZONE, THERE ARE SOARING ANGLES THAT BREACH THE CLEAR DAWN ++

++ IN DARKNESS SHEER, TRAPS AND SNARES WITH HEIGHT SHALL INVADERS CLEAR ++

The "++" quotes above and below are taken from a guide that will accompany the release of NOVA ZONA: "SURVIVAL BY MEANS OF DECEPTION THEN EXTRACTION FROM THE NEW ZONE"

++ THIS PLACE EXISTS TO KILL YOU ++