Dragon Rider

Yes, it's been a while. I am working on a few sketches but this is the first I was able to finish to some degree. This was fun to work on. Thought it would make a nice little twist to have the horizon turned upside down. It is also brighter and a little more saturated than my usual work so it's an attempt to explore a new direction.

Rider

This started as a simple pencil scratch on paper. Now when I look at it I feel the Frazetta influence that must have come over me after reading about his passing away. Anyways, I see her as a hunter that has learned to control this big but simple minded creature.

quick sketch

Work has kept me from posting more, so here a quick study. Never been good at painting people so I'm working on improving myself.
Have several painting in the works that I hope to be able to finish of soon and share.

- stay tuned

Mothership

Ghost Recon - game covers

A while back I did a lot of sketches pitching for the cover of the next Tom Clancy - Ghost Recon: Future Soldier game. It was one art director and me (with me doing all the sketches) competing against 4 studios that wanted the job. We ended up in the final round against one studio - but lost, as they had a perfect round presenting finished covers using photos of guys in rented gear with rented real weapons. Oh well, I gladly lose to somebody that better equipped. The cover that was finally picked was honestly very good.

But here I am showing a fragment of the many sketches I did for this. Most of them were not even presented but just for brainstorming concepts and ideas. I am glad to finally share some more of my work from Ubisoft.

Urban Warriors III

More of my ordinary people studies. This time the Fund Manager and School Girl. All the weapons on my urban warriors are based of real weapons (more or less). I'm saving the best character for last... be prepared.

Knight

My latest scribble.

More to come.

Urban Warriors II

Second group of unlikely soldiers. Again based on people I see on the street or on the train. Can't remember if they were actually holding the weapons or if I added them later...

When I have done enough of them I'm holding a Beauty Pageant where you get to pick a fav. Aight, I'm outta here.

Urban Warriors

Been sketching a lot of people on the train to work lately and had the idea, what if I give them a weapon. Suddenly they become warriors, have a unique story behind them.

More to come.

Vehicles II

Continuing some vehicle explorations. The left one is a light combat unit while the right one is more of an exploration unit that can drive through rough terrain.
More to come.

In Mutation we trust

As sci-fi horror is one of my favorite subjects- here a mutant freak from the darkest corners of my subconscious. More to come.

Vehicles

My latest sketch. Call this one the Predator.
Mo' to come.

Oldie

This is something I did a while back but couldn't show either. Now it has been released so finally I can show it. The goal was to show a maelstrom and for scale I added the ship being sucked in. Below are two more sketches I did for it.

Avatar

As Ubisoft has released the Avatar Game I can show some of my work that I did for it. My involvement was in the idea and sketch stage. I was not involved with creating the final art or how it ended up (so don't hold it against me). I was very excited to be involved although only for a brief period and you get to see some of my sketches here above.

I was asked to do an action oriented pack and had not seen the movie or any images of the real characters. I had only seen some concept art and the AMP suit. This is why the Na'vi in my sketches is not a perfect match to the one in the film. When the movie came out I was very happy to see the battle scene between the Na'vi and the General in the AMP suit as that had been one of my ideas for the cover as you can see above. The last colored sketch was where I was asked to integrate the face from the poster. That idea was finally chosen. The last two images are the actual released covers (perhaps there are more versions that I am not aware of). I am going to refrain from giving my opinion to the end result and let you make up your own mind...

A new beginning

A Frankenstein type of character as I really like the tragic monster.

more to come.

iPAINTED

Happy 2010 everyone.

One of the things I set myself for this year is to sketch more. Yes, I will post more so keep dropping by.

Here a sketch done entirely on the iPhone. Not much of a finger painter I realized but still fun practice while on the BART.

More to come.

Ramblings and Rough Women

Wait, I have a blog? Time to post so here is a WIP of an old sketch. Never got it to where I wanted to so I shelved it for the time being. This was the second of my female Gladiators.

As the year comes to an end its time to reflect. Now I've been with Ubisoft six months and hopefully I can start showing some of my stuff soon. For example I got to do some quick sketches for the Avatar game cover which was loads of fun - which leads me to the movie itself. Decided to write a little review about it, since I am a movie fanatic.

My problem with most action - sci-fi - fantasy movies nowadays has been that they rely on awesome effects to occupy you for the length of the film so you won't notice what a crappy story it actually was. So I am a little ashamed to admit that.... this time it worked. I guess James Cameron's 500 mio payed off because it had me stunned from the very first opening scene. Here is how I justify my thumbs up: For me there has to be a purpose for the use of cgi in a movie. The reason for that is that nothing can replace real settings, actors or props. As soon as you use cgi you are taking the viewer one step further away from "reality" and people are less emotionally invested. Actors also come less sincere across if working in pure green-screen studios talking to tennis-balls on sticks; or so I feel. This is also the reason why they still build real sets and haven't replaced real actors yet - cgi just feels fake if over-used. Sometimes I have not been aware that something was cgi and not real. For me THAT is special effects! I don't want to be taken out of the moment by going: oh, that was cg...

The dilemma comes when doing sci-fi or fantasy. There you often can't get around it simply because the stories are about fantastic things that don't really exist. Mix-matching real actors with fake surroundings or fake characters is always really hard. This problem was something Cameron avoided pretty well. Apart from some minor scenes the "real" human actors never entered the cgi world and had so much interaction with the creatures or the Na'vi. For the most part the story was split from the moment the main character entered his Avatar. From there on it was pure cgi and somehow I had less problems with that. So for me the entire movie was more of a fairy tale than a sci-fi action movie. It was just that thing about leaving your body behind to go into that new-beautiful and vivid world. And man, they did a hell of a job creating that world.

While watching the movie I never stopped staring, trying to take in all the details, colors and shapes they put in it. It was playful and took your imagination for a ride. The world they created was breath-taking to me and the 3d enhanced the experience by bringing you closer to it (or right in the center of it!) I for one was sucked in by the simple scale of things (the trees, the human digging machine)

But enough of the cgi. Now to the design.
I have to agree with people that have said that the design of many things could have been better. The creatures all had that extra set of limbs (two more legs, two more wings) but then resembled a lot the animal world of earth (the horse, the rhino, the wolf). Somehow I felt they could have taken it further being that you have a new planet and within that a whole lot of room to play with.
The human tech was not really innovative either - resembling so many things that one has seen before. And as simple and sturdy the AMP suit was it reminded me a lot of the suit Ripley used in Aliens to fight the Alien Queen --also a Cameron movie surprise.
And I had the feeling they deliberately kept the suit rather sturdy and less streamlined or sophisticated as to make it not too unrealistic. But when I then saw how it moved, ran(!) and even jumped(!!!) out of an exploding airplane without the guy controlling it looking like he was shaken at all.....!!!! I felt they could have designed it more high end.

The Na'vi were well done in detail and character expressions. But it was still a cat-human hybrid and not so unfamiliar to those kind of fantasy characters.

And that leads me to the story. After 5 min I already knew how the movie would play out and the trailer had also given you a pretty good summary of it. There were absolutely no surprises or plot twists... or even character reveals or developments that didn't meld perfectly with the set direction. This made me wonder - if you have 500 mio budget.... you should be able to hire someone talented to write you a little more sophisticated story, or not?
Personally I really didn't like the native American analogies they put in there. It felt like taking the values of a pretty much extinct people and going - oh its kinda cute, lets put it in the story. They could have for example had similar values - and not EXACTLY the same ones.... the whole praying for the animals as they take their lives...

Again, for me this was thus a very naive, simple story and more of a fairy tale that anything else. I do think that Cameron has set a new standard for the use of cgi and as sad as it makes me saying this - I think simply for the effects its worth watching.

Hey, Johannes....less talking and more drawing...

ok ok!

DistortioN

Yep, it's been too long. Time flies when you're...extremely busy. Got a lot of stuff done at work but will have to wait to show it as the games won't be released yet.
This time it's a mutated accountant. Always have fun distorting the human shape and I draw deep inspiration from the classic movie "the Thing". I will be doing more of these that I have already sketched :P
Also a quick face study I did from a frame capture...

Outer Space IV

Guess what...more ships. This time a space station and a cargo vessel. More to come.

Outer Space - Mothership

Pushing the scale - yet another ship scribble.