Pirate heads!

As it had been a while since I posted some character stuff, here's some characterdevelopment for the pirate thing I'm still working on. I had alot of fun trying to push the shapes, and explore different stylizations and expressions.

I wanted to do at least 101 headsketches, but because I just can't stop playing Uncharted 2 (also the main reason it took me a week longer to do this update), you'll have to do it with only around 75 Pirate heads ok! :D

-Edwin

Pirate Sunset

Here's another image I did, which is actually the last shot of a small storyboard sequence I'm working on. I hope to be able to work on it some more this week, so stay tuned :)

-Edwin

Environment doodles

Here are 3 environments I did this weekend, they took aprox. 3 to 4 hour each, done in Photoshop. They came out quite colorful, I had alot of fun trying to push the colorpallettes....I'm working on some more pirate-themed environments at the moment (read: I did some quick sketches on the train :P), so stay tuned :)

-Edwin

Waterfall

I spend some more time fiddling with custom brushes in photoshop this weekend, above the result. Though I liked the trees I did in my previous painting (below), they were very graphic; so I thought I'd try to give the leafs and grasses in this painting a more softer feel.

As always, feedback much appreciated, thanx!

-Edwin

The Arrival

Here's a painting I did for fun, to get myself acquainted with painting in photoshop instead of painter. I'm especially enjoying working with custom brushes, which in this painting are mostly visible in the trees. I really like the graphic effect it brings to painting, and ofcourse the simplicity of working with them :)

More photoshop experiments coming soon! :)

-Edwin

Children's Book - Environment Layouts

And here are some of the thumbs i've been doing to visualize some story ideas for my project; they're not in any particular order, nor does it contain a complete story...story fragments at best:)

To broaden my horizon I'm also still trying to get the hang of painting in Photoshop instead of Painter, i'll post some of those results here aswell soon!.

Thanx for looking,
-Edwin

Children's Book - Character Doodles

I finally had some time to scan in some of the stuff I've been working on. As a sideproject I'm currently developing a children's book, above some of the pensketches I did for some of the characters.

What i got sofar is a giant that doesn't really understand why his clothes don't fit him, a bunch of very 'handy' critters (my personal favourites), and the girl with the ponytails, which I took from my Wizard of Oz girl sketches.

Next up: environment doodles!

-Edwin

Darkness/Witchblade - Pencils

Here's something a little different then usual. I used to really be into reading and drawing comicbooks, but as time passed by my interests shifted towards concept design and gamedevelopment. As I was cleaning my room last week, I came across a big cardboard box under my bed,filled with all the comics I used to collect.

I started re-reading quite alot of them, which inspired me to do the above illustration. It features the 2 maincharacters of 2 Topcow Comics; Witchblade and The Darkness. Apologies for making the Darklings (the little guys in the picture) look like minions, guess that comes with the job of working on Overlord 1 and 2 for the last couple of years :D

This illustration was done with a blue non col-erase pencil for the undersketch, with tight pencils done with a HB technical pencil. Papersize is A4, which was big enough for this nostalgic piece of fanart :P

I also have a colored version coming up, aswell as a batch of story thumbnails I've been working on, but more on that later this week. :)

-Edwin

Pirates!

Quick Color Pencil
Here's the Pirate Parade I mentioned earlier, which was alot of fun to do! I can't find the time to color the whole thing, but I did slap on some basic colors to pop out the silhouets. Focus was to do a piece with some more movement and dynamic poses, less about characterdesign....looking at it now, I probably shoud've pushed the Pirate theme much more. Oh well. :)

I also have a photo of a work in progress version, but it's on my camera at work, I'll post that on monday. Now I'm off to play Little Big Planet again.....:D

-Edwin

EDIT 31/08/2009: Better late then never, here's the WIP photo of this illustration:
Happy now, Nick? :P

Wizard of Oz: Dorothy

And here are the thumbs for Dorothy!

Designing Dorothy proved to be quite challenging aswell, as you end up with 'just some random kid' quite easily. I eventually stumbled upon the pigtails to the side, which creates a strong silhouet and gives her attitude at the same time. I'm already looking forward to exploring her facial expressions and gestures :)

Only 1 character left of the main cast (Lion), but I'll have to dig through some reference before I ca start that character, so I"ll get back to you on that one :)

On another note:
I've also almost finished another 'parade' drawing (similar to my previous 'Witch Parade' and 'Circus Parade'), featuring alot of pirates. And monkeys. And even more pirates!:D
I hope to have that up here in a few days aswell! :)

Soooo, staaay tuunneed! :D

-Edwin

Wizard of Oz: Tin Man

I spent the weekend at my parents place,and got to work on my personal Wizard of Oz project some more. Above the thumbnails for Tin Man, which is such a great character to explore! A big inspiration was the Blue Sky Studios movie 'Robots', for those who haven't seen it, go watch it now! :)

I tried to keep Tinman's face as human as possible (except for the TV head :P), so it'll allow for a wide range of expressions.

After I've finished thumbnailing all characters, I'll probably start doing studies of expressions and gestures. I'll post Dorothy in a few minutes!

Wizard of Oz: Scarecrow

To keep myself occupied on the trainrides to work, I gave myself the assignment to redesign the characters of 'The Wizard of Oz'. Above some of the sketches I did sofar for ScareCrow.

As with the lifesketches, I used a 0.2 inkpen, and Photoshop for the digital color. Drawing with pens somehow streamlines my thoughprocess better, and forces me to think better about what I want to get on paper. If you're an artist, you should defenitely give it a try sometime!

Thanx to my collegue Gilles for making me switch to pens again :) Check out his blog at http://gillesketting.blogspot.com/, he'll appreciate it!

More stuff coming soon!

-Edwin

Bird Woman

Pencil sketch:
Here's something I did last week, sketch done in pencil, colors with Painter IX. I'll post up the sketch tomorrow ok!

Update 22/06: And here's the pencilsketch! :) As I've been doing more often lately, I've used a blue 'col erase' Sanford pencil to do the initial sketch, and did the tighter pencilsketch on top of this. The blue I filtered out in photoshop, leaving the pencilsketch as shown above.

More stuff coming soon!

-Edwin

Gameville - Triumph Studios Tour

Any of you ever heard of 'GameVille'? I hadn't actually, not before this dutch gameprogram showed up at our studio, putting together a featurette on Triumph Studios. :) Me and some of my collegues get interviewed, it's shows my workspace (above) and some closeups of my artwork (Gameplaysketches / Overlord thumbnails / Elf / Blue evil Overlord). :P

It aired this afternoon on RTL 4, but I forgot to watch it.....doh! Long live the wonderful world of internet TV! Check out my ugly mug at

http://www.rtl.nl/components/games/gameville/index_video.xml (Episode 9, skip to 7th minute or so)

It's in dutch though, but it should give a good impression of the studio nonetheless :)

And now, back to things that DO matter, more art! :D

-Edwin

Initial Layouts:

Here's a cover illustration I did for the dutch comicmagazine 'Paper'.
(Check out their site at http://www.brabantstrip.be/brabantstrip/peper/peper.htm ) .
The idea behind the cover was to display the 'joy of reading comics'. I did 2 quick layouts, the more dynamic one was chosen (yay!).

Because I didn't really like my last color experiment (Sultan, below), I tried to come up with a more traditional look (though still done digitally, I need my CNTRL-Z!). I ended up doing almost everything with the Chalk Tool in Painter IX, which gave it a nice and gritty look.

More stuff coming soon!

-Edwin

Just like old times....

I sat across this rather old lady in the train today, who was carefully putting on her makeup....which sparked the idea for this doodle :)

-Edwin

Sultan Squasher

Above the sketches and final color illustration I did just for fun, after browsing a bit through my Aladdin Artbook. :)

I started with the small inset illustration of the sultan trying to squash the little bug, which sparked the idea for the final illustration; the sultan about to be squashed by a dinososaur-type being :P

About the process:
Last week I've made the decicion not to do anything directly digital anymore, but instead first come up with a solid design and linedrawing on paper first.

Therefore, I've been fiddling with the process of first using a non-repro blue col-erase pencil to sketch things out, and tighten things up with a normal grey HB lead. It has it's pro's and cons, but the big advantage is that I tend to work much faster, and seem to be able to streamline my designprocess better.

Coloring was done in photoshop, which had been a while since I last did this. Normally I paint directly over a sketch with Corel Painter IX, and don't leave any the lineart intact.

Similar stuff coming up soon! :)

-Edwin

Subway Sketches

Here's a collage of some of the pensketches I've been doing on my way to work lately, trying to capture the wide arrange of people I see on the train, subway and tram.

I started 'subway sketching' after stumbling into the blog of Bobby Chiu and his Toronto sketchgroup, check it out sometime, inspiration guaranteed! :)

Their blog: http://bobbychiusubwaysketchgroup.blogspot.com/

As always, feedback much appreciated :)

-Edwin

Witches on the move!

I've been reading 'The Witches' of Roald Dahl lately, which inspired me to draw up these witches on the move, enjoy! :)

More stuff coming soon!
-Edwin

Back Online!

Just a quick update to let you guys know that I finally managed to switch providers and put all older JPGS back online, so no more invisible pictures on my blog, yay! :)

Also, if you want to contact me please use edwin@rhemrev.com again, thanx!

More pencilart coming soon!
-Edwin

Circus Parade!

I'm currently not getting as much personal work done as I would like to, due to crunchtime at work and my wrist acting up again.

But, today was a good day, above sketch was the result. It's a sketch that started out as a scribble in front of the tv, and ended up being the rather weird parade as it is :)

More happy news: I made it through the first round with my DominanceWar Entry, YAY! :D

My characterdesign came out 7th (out of 97), with the first 8 entries progressing on to the next round (I only barely made it, I know, but that what makes it so cool! :D). Check all finalists here: http://www.gameartisans.org/contests/dw/4/mini1/en.php

I'm also still working on the Main Challenge, for which I hope to have some updated characterdesign sketches for my Giant soon.

-Edwin

Robot Sketches

Some sketches I did after playing Ratchet and Clank on the PS3, check out this excellent game if you have the time, the characterdesigns alone are worth a playthrough! :)

Dominance Wars IV Update

Hey guys, here's quick update on things.

I've currently started work on the Main Challenge for Dominance Wars, check my thread and development sketches here:

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=282&t=742526

Some development sketches:







I'm also still struggling to switch providers, which I hope to have sorted out within a week (which would mean all images in my blog will be visible again.)

Important: those wanting to contact me can email me at erhemr@hotmail.com , my only email currently still working! *sigh*

-Edwin

Dominance Wars IV!

I'm currently participating in one of the biggest online artcontests on the internet called 'Dominance Wars IV', below my entry for their warm-up 2D Challenge. The assignment was to create a 'Warcommander portrait', so I came up with 'Junior'.:D

The backstory behind the character is that he's quite a bad-ass on the battlefield, but has a softspot for his mother, and carries her photo everywhere. :P I added a cheesy frame to my entry to add to the backstory, as the frame might sit on his mother's nightstand or something :P
The frame was a bit of a rushjob, but considering the deadline I'm still happy the way it turned out :)

For an overview of the competetion, please visit http://www.gameartisans.org/contests/minis/view_entries_cgsociety_2d_1.html
My entry and votingpage can be found at http://www.gameartisans.org/contests/minis/finals_cgsociety_2d_1538.html

Voting starts March 6th, all votes are much appreciated! :p

-Edwin

Spidey, Ninja-bunnies and more....

I spend a very relaxing weekend at my parents place this weekend, and did quite alot of sketching. I mainly focused on trying to come up with cool and dynamic poses, and what better to draw then snake-squishing girls, spideys and samourai bunnies! :D

-Edwin

Overlord 2 Concept Art

Finally I can show you guys some of the concept work I've done for Overlord 2. Our publisher Codemasters only released a few images, so I can post only these for now:

For a complete overview of Overlord 2 concept images, please check out this link:
http://allgamesbeta.net/2008/12/31/new-overlord-ii-concept-art

Hopefully Codemasters will release even more images soon, as some of my favourite (character) designs are not yet among these..:)

More personal work coming soon,
-Edwin

Dragon Rider

Here's a characterdesign I did for a small artcontest we started at work (Triumph Studios), with the theme 'Master and Pet'. Muchos kudos to my collegue and friend Daniel for helping me push my colors, be sure to check out his blog itcamefrombeyond.blogspot.com aswell!

Done in pencil + Corel Painter X.

As always, feedback and comments much appreciated! :)

-Edwin

Girls

Some girl-doodles I did over the weekend, done with pencil and Painter IX.

Merry Christmas!

Here's my christmas card doodle for this year, done in pencil + photoshop. I didn't have alot of time so I kept the coloring style very basic, which worked quite nicely.

Christmas holidays are coming up, which means more time to draw, which means....more updates coming soon! :D

-Edwin

Potter Street

This started out as a sketch on the train, a streetscene inspired by the many Harry Potter books I"ve been reading lately...:)


-Edwin

Environments

Some recent doodles I did in Painter:



Forest done in pencil/photoshop



-Edwin

Overlord best Dutch game 2008!

Overlord has been chosen as best Dutch game 2008! We won 2 awards, 1 for 'Best Game' and 1 for 'Best Visual Design' (which is ofcourse the coolest, with me being a concept artist and all... :p)

Some links to various articles:

Telegraaf
Article

FOK!
Article

Volkskrant
Article

We're currently working on Overlord 2 (pc/xbox360 /ps3), but it's cool to see part 1still being praised! :D Next to being a concept artist, I also did alot of 3D-modeling and texturing (e.g. Halfing Homeees!:D) on Overlord 1, so I couldn't be more proud to see our game still doing so well!

More stuff coming soon!
-Edwin

Happy Halloween!

Here's a piece I did for the October artcontest on http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/ , theme of the month being 'Graveyard'. Happy Halloween! :)

Done with my wacom and Painter IX. More stylized experiments coming soon!:)

-Edwin

BalloonBoy!

It's been a while since I did a detailed environment in pencil......it started as a scribble in my sketchbook on my way to work, and it evolved from there. Usually I only do rough pencilsketches, and finish it digally with painter or photoshop, but, this time I managed to stay away from my wacom, and take some more time to clean up my pencils :) More stuff coming soon!

-Edwin

Alias Sketchbook Pro

Hey everyone! I had a GREAT time in greece, and took a ton of inspiration (and about 1600 photo's) home with me! I didn't draw as much as I would've liked overthere, but I plan on doing some stylized greek environents based on the many photos I took, so stay tuned.

On another note: this weekend I got my hands on a copy of Alias' Sketchbook Pro, which turned out to be a program I'll be using often from now on, as it's ideal for digitally sketching and inking. Colors were done in Photoshop. :)

Capture the flag

A doodle I did this evening, another experiment with stylization and layout:
I'll be spending the next 2 weeks in Greece, so no update till September 15th! Hopefully I'll have some cool environment sketches when I get back :)

-Edwin

Character + Environment Doodles

Hey everybody! Yep, hell has finally frozen over and the fat lady is finally singing, because here's another update! Yay me! :D

Below some sketches and doodles I've been working on:

• Characters sketches from my sketchbook (Pencil)
• Monsterpile sketch (Pencil)
• 2 Treehut color concepts (pen thumbnail painted over in Corel Painter X)
• Environment thumbnails (done with pen, try to find the Treehut thumbnails! :D) Thumbs are roughly the same size as the originals pensketches.

I've got some more colored stuff, which I'll post within a couple of days ok!

And the reason it took me 8 months to update my blog? I was, and still am, very busy working on the recently announced Xbox360/PS3/PC Game 'Overlord 2'! :D

More info and 2 screenshots can be found at: http://pc.ign.com/articles/898/898670p1.html

Cya in a couple of days!

-Edwin

Stylization

Lately I've been working on giving my designs a more stylized look, which seems to be doing my art alot of good. After some experimentation how to give my art the desired look, I came up with the environment below.



I did this in Painter X, working from background to foreground, using the selection and chalk tool (for the grain) alot. It's almost like doing paper cutouts and then pasting it all together :)

Thanx to the guys at stripmakers.com for giving me alot of useful feedback!

-Edwin

MYX pages

Aaaaaahh, what the heck, here are the colored MYX pages aswell, due to be published by MYX Magazine in January 2008. For more info check www.myxmag.com or ask for it at your local comicstore, thanx!

Pencilart was digitally colored with Painter IX and Photoshop, and to give it that 'worn' feeling, I overlayed a papertexture, courtesy of the best free texturesite in the world, http://www.cgtextures.com/ (what's up Marcell!!).

-E-

Watercolor Vikings

Don't you just loooveee the holidays, being able to do all those things you never find yourself time for! I finally got around messing with my 'newly' aquired watercolor kit (I bought it like half a year ago!), this is what came out!

Next update to follow soon,
-Edwin

Robot thumbnails

Here are some robot thumbnails I did for a gameproject I'm currently part of, I'll put up some more info and links in a couple of days ok!



Thumbnails were sketched out with a felt-tip pen, thé perfect tool when you're in the thumbnail stages of designing a character!

Happy Holidays,

-Edwin

MYX Sketches

I've been asked to do 2 page comicdiary ('stripdagboek') for the dutch comicmagazine 'MYX' (http://www.myxmag.com/), so I thought it would be cool to put up some of the initial sketches I did for these pages. The comic will be printed in the January issue of MYX, so make sure you pick one up at your lo cal comicstore!

The concept behind the comic is that you first see me working behind my desk, and in the next panels you see what actually happens in my head during the idea-generation proces.

It sounds a bit vague, I know, but in the final (colored) pages it's all going to make sense, I promise!

-Edwin

CharacterDoodles in pencil

Here are some characterdoodles I did this past week while on the train on my way to work, the only personal doodle time I seem to have these days......you'll have to forgive me for not coloring them, next ones will have color again...promise! :)

StrookCovers and more

Here are 2 cover illustrations I did for a smallpress booklet, that will be presented on the Comic Convention in Houten, The Netherlands (http://www.strips.blogo.nl/). The booklet features a collection of authors, check http://www.strookstrips.nl/ for more information (not sure if the site is up and running already, but it will be soon :P).

Cover: Backcover:Ofcourse the backcover that went to press featured the URL StrookStrips.nl, not my own url....though that would've been smart to do actually....oh well. *sigh*

And another characterdesign, done just for fun:

In stead of the detailed (timeconsuming) painted look, I've been trying to simplify things and go towards a more cellshaded look.....I should have more silly characters up at this blogspot soon! :)

-Edwin

Creatures,Lairs and Kabouters :D

Here's some new stuff, enjoy!

Some quick landscape thumbs I did in Painter:

Some more charactersketches:

A creature I did inspired by the 'skeksis' creatures of the movie 'The Dark Crystal':

My entry for an artcontest on the Gnomon forums, the subject was 'Research Lair'.

I came out in 2nd place, and won 20 Gnomon Dvds! Yay me! :)

And that's it again for now! Next update will be an OVERLORD update, the xbox 360 / PC game I've been working on the last couple of years has finally hit the stands, and reviews sofar have been quite good!

I'll also post some links to some internet pressmovies that were released, on which I even get to speak abit...:S

-Edwin

Character Sketches

Here are some charactersketches taken from my sketchbook. Most were done during my stay at my parents place this weekend, and during the traintrip over there. :) Enjoy!

Some new concepts

The last couple of months I've really been busy at work (we're in the final stages of finishing our xbox 360 game OVERLORD, keep an eye out for it in June!), which didn't leave much time for me to do any personal stuff. But, here are 2 pieces I managed to squeeze in this last week:

Both were done just for fun, created digitally with my wacom tablet and Painter IX. I should have some more stuff up here soon, so stay tuned...:)

Till then,
-Edwin

Watercolor

I went to my parent's place over the weekend, which is the perfect place to relax. I spend some time doing watercolored sketches, below some of the designs that came out.







More stuff coming up soon :)

-Edwin

New work...

It's been a while, but here's some new work....I'm currently experimenting alot with both techniques as well as drawing styles, both with character as environment design.

Below some speedpaintings and colorschemes I did for a personal project of a stylized Zelda-like gameworld:





I'm w orking on some more charactersketches, which should be up here in a short while...stay tuned! :)

-Edwin

Here's a creature I did for a small artcontest over at www.weeklydose.com, which came out looking rather 'fuzzy'...:)



The rough sketch was done in pencil, digitally colored in Painter IX. More digital stuff coming soon!

-Edwin

My internet connection was down this past week, so I finally had time to watch 'The Dark Crystal', the superb Jim Henson puppet movie I hadn't seen since my childhood. I got alot of inspiration after watching it, which resulted in the drawing below. It came out looking rather chaotic though...:p

The concept behind this drawing is the one from the movie; a forest where you can't really tell foilage from creature, and vice versa. If you have the chance, be sure to check out the artbook of The Dark Crystal aswell, Brian Froud already took creature design to another level, way back in 1978.

More stuff coming up soon, probably some digitally colored drawings aswell :)

Well, I just finished up on the forest drawing I mentioned yesterday, it came out looking quite different then most of my stuff I've done sofar. I usually don't use alot of shading, but it seemed to fit the mood I was going for in this piece. The drawing is part of a personal project I'm working on, which couldn't be more fun.



I also thought it would be a good opportunity to post another environment I did about a month ago, which is done in a somewhat more 'realistic' style. It's very busy though, I shouldn't have drawn in those treedetails in the background I think....oh well. :)

That's it for now, more stuff coming up soon! Oh, and thanx for all the kind comments people, they really motivate me to keep going! :D

Here's an environment sketch I did for a personal project of mine, a bit more stylized then most of my environments. As always, comments more then welcome!

I'm finishing up on another environment ( a forest this time), I hope to have it up here in 1 or 2 days. :)

This weekend I went to 'Burgers' Zoo' (Arnhem, The Netherlands) with a friend of mine to do some animal sketching. We really had alot of fun, below a collage with some of the better ones I did.

Also be sure to check out some of the sketches my friend Patrick did over at http://www.kleinwerk.nl/ , he'll appreciate it. :)

My very first artpost, how about that! :) At work I usually work with painter and photoshop, but through guys like Robin Joseph (patchoforange.blogspot.com), I really wanted to try some tradional media aswell. Here are some weird alien creatures I did in watercolor this weekend, any comments ofcourse more then welcome. Some aliens are inked, some left in pencil, I myself prefer the latter one, it gives it a more loose feel I think....:) Well, this is it for now, more coming up somewhere this week! :)

Welcome to my Blog!

Due to a busy schedule I can't always update my own website www.rhemrev.com , so I created this blog to be able to share my doodles more easily, and hopefully get some good creative feedback on my designs.

I am currently employed as a concept artist / 3d modeler over at Triumph Studios, The Netherlands, working on an xbox 360 game. When not working on concepts for our game Overlord, in my sparetime I tend to stray away from the realistic, into the more loose and sketchy doodles, which I want to share with you in this blog. Next update (with art) to follow soon! :)