PDA

View Full Version : Mech/Legionnaire book cover


lavhoes
November 10th, 2003, 07:41 PM
Hey guys, first WIP post here.

This is a cover I'm doing for a friend's miniatures book entitled Multiverse. Alternate-future Romans / Greeks / Samurai / whatever other group you'd like to see tech'd up all duking it out on post-apocalyptic arenas.

Pretty fun stuff.

Anyway, since I'm doing a bunch of concepts for the guy I offered to do the cover as well, incoporating some of the ideas I've been presenting for the book. And, well, here you go:

http://www.darkensai.com/art/covertest6.jpg

I think it looks great (I just started digitally painting a week ago), but I can't help but feel that it might be better.

Just so you know: the mech and the soldiers and the buildings were all zoomed-in texture work. The ground employs a base dirt/crack/crevice texture I created that allowed a lot of unique variation over the wide dirt floor. I was going to paint over it some, add some rocks and some more drop-shadows and highlights, but my friend says it's perfect like it is.

I've just got the ships and some guys (the blobs are people, I swear) in the background to paint in, and maybe add a few more dropships up in the sky, but other than that I'm done. What I could really use are some touch-up advice, maybe some tips on how I could improve the image artistically.

Anything you have to offer would be greatly appreciated.

lavhoes
November 11th, 2003, 04:16 PM
Is it that "meh"-worthy? I dunno, I'm kinda new at this.

I'm almost done with the guys. I decided to drop the ships because they were too distracting:

http://darkensai.com/art/cover1a.jpg

Giacomo
November 11th, 2003, 09:38 PM
Looks great...your digital painting skill is way ahead of mine! The sky and the ground plane look fantastic. However-

I can't really figure out what's up with the background mech...I can tell it's some sort of robot, but what's an arm/leg/head/gun is completely beyond me.

Same problem with the foreground figures...I can tell they're human, but I don't have the foggiest idea what they're supposed to be doing. One of them might be aiming a gun. Hm.

The only advice I can give you (and this is somewhat extreme) is: keep the background and the ground plane and start from scratch on the foreground, adhering more closely to the traditional laws of perspective. If it were me, I'd work out the mech and the figures tightly in pencil to make sure it was clearer what's happening before I painted them in.

Sorry if that's too blunt. I'll be sure to offer feedback on revisions you post.

G