new user - Matt Haley - "G.I. SPY" concept art

[yelahttam]

Hi all -

...I'm a new user here, have been following all the great talent here and thought I'd finally post some art, urged on by my friend across the pond, Mikael Noguchi. This is first in a series of concept pieces from "Jack Hunter: G.I. SPY", a comic-book/video game pitch I'm doing, the piece shows a potential design for the German flying saucers that appear in the story, set during WW II. Comments and brutal crits are welcome.
http://www.matthaley.com/images/Saucerprodart3.jpg

[Ismail]

Looks nice. :)
Checked out your site, love the work too. :) Looking forward to seeing more. :)
One thing I'd like to see is more vibrant blues in the sky to contrast on the flying saucers. :) Open baby blue sky with white clouds, unless that's a dawn sky light, which would be neat to see a purple sky, with tinges of orange and yellow and vioklet. when the sun sets. :) Your call of course, I like what you have already, play around in Photoshop with the hue of the sky. :) See what floats your boat. :)
Neat, thanks for sharing. :)

[darkcult]

Nazi UFOs!
Now, that's original! I like the idea.

Nice.:D

[I.was.ink]

This is a really nice piece, and great concept.

theres a few things I would improve on though. I suggest working more on the ufo to the right, he doesnt look as finished as the one to the left. I might put him shooting as well, i dont know...

I would like to see the little guy in the bg getting blown to bits by the enemy fighters. I think it would add more to the piece. It's sort of like, if you cropped in on the ufo in the foreground you wouldnt need the other guys. Know what I mean?

I hope i helped!

-Iwasink

[johanson]

Hey Matt,


I dig the piece. I really do. But something has been bugging me.

I’ve been looking at it for a while. I’ve been looking at it for so long because (and this is silly), I’m having a little trouble discerning which direction the ships are flying. And yet that’s dumb, right? Intellectually, I recognize the gun ports on the fronts of the ships, and know that those are tracer rounds firing from the front, towards us. However, on a basic level of visual impression, I get the feeling that the ships are flying away from us. I may very well be alone in this feeling. Lord knows that it wouldn’t be the first time I was wrong.

Anyway, I’ve come up with a few theories about why I’m getting this impression. But I’m not sure that I want to waste your time with my half-cocked theories if I’m totally alone in my thoughts on the piece. And so I’ll just say this: If anyone else has had trouble with the front vs. back thing, an easy fix could be to give the ships nice dirty, dark exhaust trails. That would instantly establish direction. It could also make for a nice visual icon for the Nazis in your book. Just picture a hundred of these saucers, all flying in formation, each ship pulling two black streaks across the sky.

Like I said, I very well may be wrong.

I look forward to more of your posts,

-andrew

[Red_Rook]

^he is right I think its because of the lighting. :) They are darker in the front then in the back. Thusly making them look like they are fling away. :) :) Thats why :)

I trying to get in as many :) as ismail. :) :) :)

[McNallyism]

hey, did you ever see the designs the luftwaffe had for a saucer-type craft with helicopter blades running along the perimiter of the fuselage? Apparently they were going to have an extra set of cutting blades that extended beyond the helicopter blades so it could shear the wings off of incoming bomber groups! I saw an illustration of it so it HAS to be true! heh heh.

I've never quite unsderstood how Germany seemed to have so many resources during that war. Every male of fighting age was enlisted, yet they still managed to crank out an endless supply of weapons, equiptment, etc. all the while keeping up agressive development of new technology. Not to mention fighting the entire western world. Slave labor I guess.:(

This looks like a pretty cool project from what I can see. That design looks pretty authentic and I like the painting style. The real challenge, of course, would be to differentiate it from all those other "retro-scifi-WWII" properties out there.


-Sean

[foster]

hi matt, you are another of the artist that got me started in comics, well at least seeing your work made me want to draw comics. this goes way back to the ghost special. you were making some incredible art then and i can see you have only gotten better.

glad to have you and your experience on board here.

on the painting, i would love to see you draw the clouds and play with the shapes more. right now the mix of painted sky and flatter ships make the sky more interesting. but in fact the ships are very cool. they just don't have a chance against the saturation and brush work of the sky.

jon

[yelahttam]

Hey all -

....wow! Thanks for all the replies! To address them, yes, I wrestled with the idea of how to make it clear which direction they're flying in, and opted to not have a blur effect on them so they'd be clearly visible, but I may go back and add one. There wouldn't be any dirty contrails on the saucers, as the conceit is that they're powered by some kind of anti-gravity in the script, but that may change. I have indeed seen the designs for the supposed GErman saucer that had blades coing out of the saucer rim, made it look a bit like a flat helicopter, but that dsesign is actually copyrighted by another artist, otherwise I would have used it. ;) You're dead-on about the clouds, liek I said, I would much prefer to use Painter, but it takes a ton of RAM, andf it'll have to wai tuntil I get some more. I'll post a revised version soon. Thanks! - mh

http://www.matthaley.com

[johanson]

Hello again Matt,

I just noticed that you're from Portland, Oregon. It's always nice to meet new folk from the Beaver State. I actually grew up about eight miles outside of Tillamook, in the ridiculously tiny community of Cape Mears. If you've never been there... go, it's heaven on earth.

Anyway, just wanted to say hi/welcome to ConceptArt. I'm looking forward to seeing the revised saucers.

-andrew

[Boom]

thats pretty cool, matt.

I think Jon (Foster) already pointed out a few of the things that also sprang to my mind when seeing you concept. Additionally you could also try and variate the color on the flying saucers abit. The skycolor would probably show quite alot in the hue of the fighters and right now they seem quite abit local colorish with almost no interaction with the sourroundings (the sky).

With this in mind, the saucer furthest away would loose most of it's local color due to distance and atmospheric colorblending... It's one of the powerful tricks to indicate depth in the 2d medium...

welcome to the forum... :)

[yelahttam]

Hey all -

...your crist have been really helpful, I'm stil new at color, and it's good o tbe reminded of how to simulate depth and atmosphere. Here's the new version, I also wanted to add some drama to the piece. Enjoy! - mh

http://www.matthaley.com/images/Saucerprodart4.jpg

http://www.matthaley.com
http://www.gispyonline.com

[JeniThus]

I enjoy this post much. The ships are, quite simply, very cool.
I think the depth concept that was mentioned earlier is an issue that you could confront in a couple other ways too.
1. Colored refection of the sky and eachother on the surfaces of the saucers.
2. Atmosphere around the ships, like fog, mist or little whisps of cloud aroudn them, the density variations would increase definition of space.
I Look forward to seeing more posts from you!