36 replies to this topic

[John Clavell]

Hey everyone! It's been a while since I've posted any work on here, and I did make a promise I would do more! So here we go. I thought I'd take the chance at the start of this year to just indulge myself in a project which was not really going to go into my main portfolio. I wanted to tie it into MechWarrior obviously! So what I've come up with is going to be a series of recruitment posters for the Wolf Spiders.

I think I'm going to try to do three posters in the series as a total, each one trying to capture a different feel or emotional hook. As some of you may remember, my last work was a digital painting. That's not really my strong point, as fun as it is. So with this series I'm going to be coming at it from my usual angle. Illustrator!

The first poster in the series will have the hook "sex sells" while also capturing that feeling of becoming part of something so much bigger than the singular. It will depict what is meant to be a young Stacy Church, around the time she graduated from her sibko and took a promotion into the Wolf Spider Battalion.

First I do rough outs to keep an idea of the composition of the image. Then when I am happy, I start to illustrate in illustrator. To finish off the posters, everything gets taken into Photoshop where texture and fine details are added.

I think people generally like to see how stuff evolves, so I'll try to take shots of the work as it progresses. By the time I had thought about this, I'd already hammered out a lot of the face. Thoughts, and feedback always welcome. Hope you enjoy.

Edited by John Clavell, 05 January 2012 - 06:46 AM.

[John Clavell]

[John Clavell]

[John Clavell]

[John Clavell]

[Dranon]

keep up with the good work

[John Clavell]

Thanks Dranon! So I'll be working away on this today again. Just rolled out of bed, and figured I'd give you all a run down of where I'm at in terms of the above. The last update last night sees a really basic block-out of the arms and the vest. I wont be adding super details to the mid-arms and vest downwards as this will fade out so you focus on the Battlemechs. The hair is going to be the next big thing, that's gonna take me a while I predict.

[Ra-ul]

Good to see you picked up your pencil again. Can´t wait to see where this is going. This one has really got the feel of classic Battletech art so far.

[Adridos]

A really nice poster. Can I ask why did you use Annihilator on it?

[John Clavell]

Adridos, on 06 January 2012 - 04:01 AM, said:

A really nice poster. Can I ask why did you use Annihilator on it?

I wanted a Battlemech which made you think of the Wolf's Dragoons in general, to me the Annihilator is one of the big signature mechs for them in terms of the Inner Sphere. I thought about depicting Stacy's own mech, however, I'm not sure what she was piloting while in a Dragoon Sibko. I know the Battlemechs she later went on to pilot, however, I did not consider these mechs to ultimately make you think of the Wolf Dragoons specifically.

[TheTeacher]

I had read once that Stacy Church used a Timberwolf on Outreach and then the Hounds got her the Zeus-X. Personally, I love the Anni. It really is a Dragoon signature mech.

[John Clavell]

TheTeacher, on 06 January 2012 - 06:39 AM, said:

I had read once that Stacy Church used a Timberwolf on Outreach and then the Hounds got her the Zeus-X. Personally, I love the Anni. It really is a Dragoon signature mech.

Yes your correct. She did indeed pilot a Timber Wolf. I believe this was what she got assigned upon entry into the Wolf Spider Battalion or just after.

[John Clavell]

[John Clavell]

[Blackfang]

That's looking awesome, careful though some people on the forums might start to get excited haha. The finished illustration will be amazing.

[Ra-ul]

This is a great start, I have to comment some things though. The shirt texture looks too flat, needs some distortion to flow with the body shape. The nipples add a nice "touch" , I hope it will not get censored. I guess the illustration will be worked over later, it looks way to clean right now.

[John Clavell]

GraySho, on 08 January 2012 - 03:25 AM, said:

This is a great start, I have to comment some things though. The shirt texture looks too flat, needs some distortion to flow with the body shape. The nipples add a nice "touch" , I hope it will not get censored. I guess the illustration will be worked over later, it looks way to clean right now.

Totally agree about the texture. So far there is zero Photoshop being used in this. It's all Adobe Illustrator. The texture work in as an alpha mask. One thing I might be able to do is customise the texture with distortion in photoshop set to 1:1 scale of the shirt. I'll see if that will improve it (or I could just apply it in Photoshop afterwards). Thanks for the feedback man! About the nips. The top is meant to be tight, so it seems a little silly if it was to be censored. I believe one of the devs posted that 'bikinis are fine', so I take that as this is ok too. Currently working on the hair, in a nut shell, trying to get a really nice, realistic look in Illustrator alone is damn hard.

Edited by John Clavell, 08 January 2012 - 06:44 AM.

[Threat Doc]

Yeah, you have to start with the basics, determine what's going to be on the most basic level, and then build out from there. I think the shadow necessary to give the proper curve-age will come a bit later, but at this point it's not necessary and, honestly, would do more harm than good.

[John Clavell]

Unfortunately I've had to reduce the size of the preview images posted as obviously more people than I had expected have been viewing them and I exceeding the bandwidth limit on the hosting for http://wolf-spiders.org I've upped the limit, but also reduced the size of the files.

[John Clavell]