Asteroids

I've always enjoyed drawing spaceships since I was a child, this was a test piece to explore this area. The Explorer Class ship concept was one I'd long toyed with and I liked the idea of realising the old arcade game "Asteroids".

This image was created with 3DSMax (for the basic blocking out, lighting and rendering), ZBrush (for the detailing on the asteroids and ship textures) and Photoshop (for the final composite) .


Now that I've seen how I approach this subject matter I'm keen to work on more images with whole fleets of fighter craft, capital ships, dreadnoughts and explosions. That would be cool!

Trivia: Angry Robot/ HarperCollins Supremo Marc Gascoigne once pointed out that the ship design isn't as interesting as it could be - it doesn't really draw you in and, with hindsight, he's absolutely right! - I'll add more interest and intrigue on any spacecraft next time.

Grudgelore

Dwarf! Dragon! Coins! Corpses! Cavern! I went crazy for detail on this piece: jewellery, tattoos, the axe, dragon scales, charred corpses.

Once submitted, Marc Gascoine at BL wanted a few changes to make it more gritty and 'Fantasy' which I was more than happy to do as Fantasy art has a different aesthetic to it than Sci-Fi. The frustratingly great thing about this is, whenever these kinds of changes are made, I've always found the result to be better than the original.

Looking back at this piece now, I feel that my technique has moved to a more painterly style - so maybe Fantasy is a genre I'll revisit at some point in the future.

Artwork (c) Games Workshop 2009. All Rights Reserved. Used without permission

Trivia: Each coin in the piles surrounding the scene was individually modelled with a 'head' and a 'tail'.