TESV:Skyrim - Art of Skyrim video montage

If you hadn't seen it here's a video that was put together of concept art juxtaposed with in game assets to show how the final product comes to life. This is a mixture of mine and Adam Adamowicz's concept art. There is a tremendous amount of work that happens in between these steps that requires teams of artists and coders to make happen. Without them, these would just be drawings. They're the ones who really bring it to life. Music is from the Skyrim soundtrack by Jeremy Soule.

TESV:Skyrim Concept Art pre-release

Hi everyone,

First of all, I want to thank everyone who follows my meager little blog for sticking with me and being patient. I've been extremely busy over here hence the lack of posts. As a matter of fact, I should probably be playing with my older son instead of letting him watch TV as I write this but never the less I rarely find the time to do this so strike when the iron is hot as they say. I plan on updating more often with art related materials that are either mine or things that I find interesting. If you have any ideas or things you'd like to know about I'd love to hear from you.

So that said Bethsoft has released some more of the work I've done for Skyrim over the last 3 years and I wanted to share some of that with you. As the weeks and months continue I'll likely be trickling more out there so if you're interested stay tuned and check in every once and a while. Also check Adam Adamowicz's blog in the coming weeks as I have a sneaking suspicion he'll be posting his stuff too. If he doesn't I'll pester the hell out of him until he does:)

Speaking of which if you have a few minutes also head over to the Bethblog for a link to our recent interview about the concept art process on Skyrim in the Skyrim Team Diarys.

As always I love hearing from you and welcome any comments and suggestions. Without further ado here's some of the most recent release of paintings I did for Skyrim. Thank you and I hope you enjoy.

-Ray

Life Drawing: Luzia Bel

Another drawing session with the beautiful Luzia Bel this Saturday...

Vine charcoal and newsprint

TESV: Skyrim - Gameplay Trailer

Here's the debut of in game footage from the project I've been working on for the last 2+ years! We have an incredible team and here is the proof! The footage seen is a mere glimpse into what's to come. Many more surprises are in store for the fans...:)

TESV: Skyrim: Concept Art

Newly released concept art in high resolution!

This one actually covers quite a few bases. I originally began this one as a simple concept painting of a bear but I decided to spend some time after hours developing an entire scene to pitch a few ideas on wildlife encounters in the game and duel wielding weapons. Luckily Todd was excited by this idea as it had never been done in an Elder Scrolls game before and he felt it was time to give it a go.

Video: Art of Skyrim

 This was released a couple of weeks ago on Game Informer's site but it's all over youtube now so I feel like I'm not scooping them anymore by featuring t here for a little more shameless self promotion...:) Ok, before you watch I have to talk about the fact that I don't speak in the video at all. To be honest it was a little awkward since I think the PR person was overzealous in controlling the message by not allowing me to be mic'd. My presence was essentially reduced to prop.  Ah well, I can't complain too much as all the art featured in this video is mine. Hope you enjoy:)

TESV: Skyrim: Concept Art - Time Lapse Painting

Hi everyone! Here's some new stuff to show! This is an example of a paint-over, painted by yours truly. A paint-over is the process of taking a screen-shot from the game and painting directly on top of it to visualize how to improve a scene. It's a bit of the reverse of traditional concept art but it falls square within the job description and it happens more than you might think. The next time you're cruising around the different concept art sites, keep in mind that many of the pieces your seeing are not necessarily 'from scratch' but are collaborative pieces done with level designers and character artists to support the end product. It's a bit of different beast than illustration. 

I recorded this back around Christmas 2009 using Camtasia and painting in Photoshop. I'd frequently stop and start the recording to make the clips more manageable in the editor so you may see a couple of dramatic jumps where I forgot to hit the record button:)

Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

I can FINALLY(!) acknowledge what I've been working on for the last 2 years! I am so happy and pleased to announce that myself and my good friend Adam Adamowicz have been hard at work creating the vast majority of the concept art for the 5th installment of the Elder Scrolls series. I am truly honored and thrilled to even be a part of such an amazing project and I cannot wait for fans to see the end result. Personally being here and working on this day in, day out represents a real turning point artistically which I feel is only the beginning of another leap forward. I won't say much more now, other than the game in it's current state looks a-mazing! Really. I can honestly say that being almost a year away from release this title already looks and feels incredible. This is a fantastic studio filled with hugely talented and cool people who pull off voodoo bad ass-ery on a daily basis and I'm so proud of what they're doing. They take my art and make it look a thousand times better. I wish I could show more but that will have to wait. In the meantime check out the super cool teaser trailer! I'll post more ASAP...

Gotta Have a Hook Challenge pt4 (the done-en-ing)

I think this will be the final. I played with the palette some and added subtle details and changes to fine tune it. I feel like I've gone about as far as I can with it before I overcook the pasta. Unless you have any other ideas I think I'm calling it done. As DaVinci said, art is never finished, only abandoned.

Gotta Have a Hook Challenge pt3 (Color WIP)

Here we are with some slight tweaks to color balance, dust, and dwarf details. I may dial down the overall saturation and shift the palette back to the more pinkish fleshy hue overall. The color harmony happening in this one is almost too perfect and a bit contrived. The previous version actually appealed to me a bit more. I may push it back toward that direction while keeping the other small structural changes I made in this latest version. 

Gotta Have a Hook Challenge pt2 (Color WIP)

Here is what I have so far. I'm mainly posting this to get some feedback. There is some fairly major stuff I feel I need to address but for the sake of objectivity, I don't want to influence any feedback I may get by stating my opinions. Thanks for taking a look.

Cheers,

-Ray

Life Drawing July 25th

Here's this weeks Drawing. Meh. Conte and Newsprint.

July 2010 Life Drawing part 1

Here is a sampling of life drawing from earlier this month. These are 3 - 10 min drawings except for the first which was a couple of hours. Conte crayon on newsprint. I kinda butchered the top one when I started drawing over it with white Conte. I should have left well enough alone. Ah well...:)

More to come later this month...

Gotta Have a Hook Challenge

Hi all, ol' Duder's got a lot of irons in the fire. Recently I've been participating in an open art challenge put on by WotC art director Jon Schindehette on his blog Art Order. It's been a lot of hard work and a lot of fun. Here is the assignment brief:

Description

Setting - A cavern

Characters - A Male Dwarf Fighter and a Hook Horror

Scene - The dwarf has just delivered a mighty smack to the hook horror and knocked it backward through a stalagmite and/or stalactite.

Details: The dwarf is wearing heavy scale mail armor. Wielding a warhammer and a heavy shield.

These are the thumbnails I started with: I chose number 3 as it felt the most dynamic and engaging to me: 

Here is the B/W drawing and value study that will serve as the foundation to the final painting:

 Next will be the final color phase coming up in the next couple of weeks.

 

Life Drawing Gesture Drawing

Who would've thought the Maryland/DC area had quite a thriving art community? I suppose it makes sense when one thinks about it for a minute. I'd never given much thought to Maryland until the weird idea of moving here reared it's head my way. Anyway, that said I'm making it a point to go to life drawing every week these days. Not only is it refreshing, it's *vital* if one is going to continue progressing to the next level. Montgomery College in Rockville has a great community of artists and models that meet on the weekends to do Short and Long pose drawing/painting sessions. I'm sticking to Gesture drawing right now to loosen up. I look forward to becoming more involved in the coming months. Here are some highlights from June 2010. These are all roughly 5-15 min Gesture drawings. Sorry about the poor image quality. I have no lighting rig or image stabilization available to me in the foreseeable future.