bFrantz Sketches/Roughs - grab bag of character and creature concepts

[Brion Frantz]

I'm using this thread as my catch all for anything sketchy: characters, creatures, and miscellaneous early visual development for a variety of projects.
It's hard to choose what to label everything. Many of my "Sketches" were accepted by the clients without any refinement, which I guess makes them "Finished Pieces" but... I guess if it looks sketchy, it's sketch book work.
That goes for painty sketches too.

[Brion Frantz]

Ninja vs Schoolgirl scene. It's very recent, still a W.I.P. I was given the subject matter, and a very odd format size and ratio to work in... almost but not quite square. This piece has so far come together like a jigsaw puzzle as I tried to put in depth cues and scenery working around the figures. It still needs some cherry or plum branches coming from the vase, but I'm kind of burned out on it for now...

[Brion Frantz]

I'm still organizing these categories into some kind of structure as I go, so keep checking back. Also, I have stacks of sketches and sketchbook strewn around this place, so I am posting some old stuff as well as new stuff, just whatever I draw or come across that I'm in the mood to see up here.

The first set of pieces is from a game dev cabal I worked with on a Western/Horror genre adventure game (we're seeking capital, if anyone is down...). It was about a heroic Native American renegade who came across an old mining town where everyone had been psychically overcome by this ancient evil spirit and turned into horrible caricatures of themselves.

The turnaround roughs are for a creature/boss/character is the owner of a dry goods/grocery store in a frontier town. My concept was that after he was corrupted (as part of the overall plot), he was turned into a gluttonous monster that ate up all his stock and was too fat to move afterward, hence the net devil lure and the man-o-war jellyfish tentacles. He lures animals and unsuspecting players into the basement of his store, then sting, sting, grap, munch, munch, gulp.

Title: Mr. Man - Boss Monster- Concept Art Sketches
Medium- Graphite
Time to execute: 30 - 45 min. each (4 hours total for all 5 pieces)


The second group of pieces are super-rapid sketches for the same property done during a brainstorming session with the game designers to work out the player's power ups. All three with the icon, hero and animal spirits were done over the course of the two hour meeting, as we hashed out the idea.

Title: Renegade - Lone Arrow - Power Ups and Buffs- Concept Art Sketches
Medium- Graphite
Time to execute: approx 20 - 30 min. each, over 2 hour period

[Brion Frantz]

I was working on two concepts for an illustration based on the Snow White tale for Christmas, you can see the design I chose to advance on my deviant site. This was the alternate, and I still want to do something with it.

This one is further along than a sketch, I know, but I still consider it work in progress, since I'm probably going to re-render the whole thing again. I like the design, generally, but it's out of balance with the surface detail heavy in the lower right. I just missed the accurate angle of her reflection by a couple degrees. I like it enough though that if I go further, I'll probably find a model to photograph for the final.

[0dd10ut]

I love the amount of detail you put in your work. For the ninja vs. schoolgirl picture, you put a lot of effort into his pants wrinkles and his veins. The mirror one also had lovely detail in the chandelier and mirror frame. Keep up the good work.

[Brion Frantz]

Title: Manticore Skeleton/Anatomic Study
Medium- Black Prismacolor Pencil
Time to execute: 90 min.


Here's another work in progress from since Halloween. I was going to start working on muscles for this over my Christmas break, but I think I have to fix the upper plane (wing) humerus on each side so they are just ball headed instead of having the crowns. Then the wings at the scapulae could open to about 270 degree spread.

[Brion Frantz]

Title: Lamentors - Concept Art Sketches
Medium- Marker
Time to execute: 30-45 min. each

This is one of my many properties which will probably not see daylight for a long time, so I've decided to post them in here, to remind me to keep working on them.

The Dead God's Throne is a property based on characters and events in a world where mythological creatures are as real today as they were in the minds of of our ancestors. The sky god, the progenitor deity, has died, and all the other entities in the world's pantheon of gods have begun a power struggle to take his place and claim the legacy of the dead god's throne.

In the first post are two pieces showing The Lamentors;

The Blood-Red Lament

A nomadic procession of grief-mad mourners under the curse of the dead god's spilled blood. They do not eat, they do not drink, they do not sleep, they only go on. Called by many names; Orphans, Lamentors, The Greif Lepers, they must in turn also spill blood each day, or suffer the agony of an addict's hell. Any who would deny this influence eventually tear themselves apart with their own bare hands in remorse and delirium.

The cortege stretches hundreds of miles long, spreading across the world like a wine-dark rivulet flowing from a slashed artery. The followers mutilate themselves and butcher nearly every living thing in their path. The bodies of some victims are used to pave a greasy road for the progress of a great tomb of blackened, spattered stone that reportedly carries artifacts, or perhaps the dead god’s heart itself, still beating, pumping out the dark miasma of the blood curse from within that crawling crypt. The remains of other victims, usually children, are often carried by the savage mourners for days or weeks, in a twisted mockery of tenderness, abandoned only after some newly perpetrated horror presents freshly tragic victims.

They save alive only a maimed and tortured few in a thousand, to grieve and cry in their own agony and to mark for others the passing of the procession. Some of these survivors are also infected by the Geas of Mourning, and drawn along; add their wailing frenzies to the great train of slaughter.

So the influence of the curse grows and spreads each day that passes, and so must it go on forever, as long as the dead heart still beats, until every living creature lowers it's head, in sorrow, or in death.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
More to come, probably

B.


The Dead God's Throne and all associated characters, events and properties are copyright 2009 Brion Frantz. Any posts in this thread are copyright the same. The artist is not encouraging anyone to post their versions or revisions or to submit content or material. This thread is provided to help others learn the process of Character and Creative development.

[Kfeeras]

What, no replies yet? Well, in my opinion its anatomy and figuredrawing what needs most improvement to catch up to the rest. Your pencil rendering is really nice, like on the skeleton. Please post some of your finished works, too! I'll be back ;-)

cheers

[Brion Frantz]

I will be posting some of my finished creative and concept art pieces soon, there will be a separate thread for those.
This thread is really only for very quick sketch style works or rough works that are still in progress. I think it's important to share the development work too, so that artists and employers can see your thinking process behind your finished work.
Also, since most of these sketches are done on demand or out of my head, I have almost nothing in this post taken from direct photo reference (the color rough at the top is the only real photo referenced piece). I don't have anything against photo reference, and many of my fine art pieces and finished illustrations depend exclusively on direct photo reference, but sometimes ideas come at odd hours, or an artist has to draw for the client in front of them at the time, with no access to reference materials, or I'm just trying to capture something of the sense of the overall, without rendering detail.
For these reasons, many of my initial sketches are very rough, some with anatomical mistakes or distortions, but some pieces are still successful in catching the personality or the mood of the subject in spite of inaccuracies, and so I'm posting those kinds of statements as well.
There are links in my signature to my finished fine art pieces and my deviant site, where you can see some of the stuff I won't be posting on CA.
Thanks for your comments!

[Brion Frantz]

Title: John Carter, Warlord of Mars - Character Study
Medium- Graphite
Time to execute: 1 Hour

There was a similar sketch to this originally posted earlier in the thread. Parts of the rendering and anatomy were bugging me. So, for that reason, and in the interests of keeping this thread mainly devoted to new work in progress I reworked the sketch.

Here is the newer version. I wish I had a year just to develop this and other Burroughs' mars based works. hmmmm. Dejah Thoris...

[Brion Frantz]

I'm working on this piece in order to explore some new media techniques. I wanted something really high end from a commercial standpoint, and really challenging visually, so I chose Shakespeare's The Tempest. Act I.
Ariel shipwrecks Prospero's enemies on the island. Fire, Lightning, sails and rigging, a frilly shirt, and a transparent flying figure in the middle... ..this is going to be fun to paint...


The caption for this illustration is;

"Hell is empty..."

I also threw in some of my thumbnail sketches for the piece.

[sandeepbarot]

good work

[Brion Frantz]

Also Brand New, and just for fun...

A Vulcan Jedi Padawan.

Star Trek (etc. etc. etc.) Copyright and Trademark whoever owns Star Trek these days. Jedi (and Jedi Stuff) Copyright and Trademark Papa Lucas.

This is to satisfy a random-fan boy craving on the part of the artist only. Do not reproduce this image, PLEASE.

No entertainment lawyers were injured in the making of this piece.

[Hari Gopinathan]

hey man-- nice sketches--- but there seem to be some proportion errors in the limbs and heads in your sketches--- try using construction lines( dunno whether ur doing this already). it helps with sizing things approppriately.

[Brion Frantz]

We are the parasite of the city of the future.


Cyber/Steam environment design.

Alchemy, Photoshop, Illustrator, Painter