Messy Monsters!

I'm not a very tidy person. Therefore, my house is quite a mess.....which inspired the above drawing.

I looked around my livingroom,and started wondering what it would look like if all my clothes, furniture and other stuff would suddenly come alive....I know, quite an unusual thought, but I guess my brain just works that way.

This combined with the fact that I also like drawing kids and flying beds and wonky stairs, the above drawing came out, enjoy! :D

-Edwin

Overlord 2 - Character Concepts

Well, hell has finally frozen over, as more concept images of Overlord 2 have finally been released! Above a compilation of some of the character concepts I worked on during this gameproject. Stuff is at least 1 year old, but it's cool to be able to show it to you guys nonetheless. :)

View the full list of new images at gamona.de), with awesome work from fellow partners in crime Daniel Ernst , Gilles Ketting , Sjan Weijers and Chris Evenhuis.

Next: my long overdue christmas card! :P

-Edwin

SketchJournal Thailand

Well, after 3 weeks of backpacking through Thailand I finally made it back again! You guys miss me? Anyone? :P

Souvenirs I took home with me were lots of freckles, a bruised ankle (whitewater rafting is still awesome!), a body full of mosquito bites *scratch*, aprox. 2000 photos, and last but not least; a sketchbook filled with pensketches I did during my travels. :) I tried to do aprox. 1 pensketch a day, resulting in the sketch journal above.

Scenes were done directly in pen, which was a struggle at first, but eventually turned out to be a fast and comfortable way to visualise the above images.

Well, as I'm still fighting the jetlag monsters, I'm off to bed again............I love sleeping :)

-Edwin

Prepare....FOR ADVENTUREEEEE!

Well, the time has finally come, because as of tomorrow.....I'll be BACKPACKING THROUGH THAILAND FOR 3 WHOLE WEEKS!!!!! WHOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOO! :D

Ofcourse I'll be bringing my sketchbook, in which I hope to scribble down some of the many exotic temples, cities and people I'm bound to encounter along the way :)

And being the cool and sporty guy that I am, here's 1 last sketch before I go, a quick sketch of me and my friend Roel (the belgian guy with the beer), striding through the jungle. Not sure where I can plug in that microwave, but we'll find a way....:P Done in colored pencil and ink by the way, didn't have time to spend time behind the laptop :S

Up up...and awaaaaaaaaaaay! :D *strikes a superhero pose*

I'll be back december 12th, so mark your calendaarr! Cya in 3 weeks! :D

-Edwin

PirateFight!

Hey guys! I haven't been doodling as much as I would've liked lately, but I did manage to finish this pirate scene today, yay! I sketched it out in red pencil first, and then did a tight linedrawing over that. Above both the original and cleaned up version :)

Oh, and I'm REAL excited, cuz within a week I'll be backpacking through Thailand for 3 weeks! But I'll be sure to do at least 1 more post before I leave, I'm working on a sketch featuring the backpacked version of myself (!) and my good friend Roel, so stay tuned :D

-Edwin

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

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.