Joshua Gardener's Art Blog

Not alot to say here, (other than i totally changed some the design again, but im totally stable on it now) Im actually really pleased how this whole design came out, even after a ton of alterations i think i finally came to a design i was content with showing. Also since this is usually one of the later things i manage to come up with, i've decided to name her Claire. Nothing too ostentatious but a nice name. If i could change anything it would probably have been to experiment less earlier on when it didnt really add to my design, in the sense that it left me a bit high and dry in terms of time to allocate everything, also i wish i could have put more time into everything as i had an absolute blast doing everything.

Okay so in the end of one of these posts i said that i took away the pauldron because i couldnt make it work, well i put in the time TO make it work, because i really want it in. And thus this is born;  So originally i was going to can the pauldron, until i was staring at some league of legends poster work (some real good stuff there) and was looking at the face of a rocket launcher called 'fishbone' that Jinx uses, and i couldnt help thinking "wow, thats kinda what i want the pauldron to be" and so began my development journey. Using the head as a template i started painting over it to get a feel for the way it worked, and then started going off in my own direction with it, less shark head and more demon mouth. doing so gave me quite a few good ideas, but its only when i dug up some of my older designs from earlier on that i got my final piece.  Originally i created this alien looking thing, using segmented plates, i liked the idea of the demons lo...

When thinking about a promo image (like a wallpaper) I figured the best thing to do was to test the waters with some thumbnails for the composition and posing of the piece, and thus i came up with these. The idea was that i was trying to get in a bunch of different idea's quickly and without worrying too much about anatomy for the moment so that i could focus best on what design captured my characters...character. so to start that off i listed some of the keywords to associate my character with to help me figure out while i was drawing these, and to on reflection look at these designs and pick one out as a winner. Since the character is a paladin of sorts, the stoic attribute means i want something strong and impressive as far as posing goes in order to capture her strength, while wrathful is meant to indicate her somewhat violent nature when angered, so in this case i also wanted her to appear imposing or like she would end you if you crossed her. Lastly she is both holy ...

Somewhat shorter post this time round, as of this point im like most of the way there with the design, some final mashing and sculpting and i should be there. so here i actually just tried mashing two of my favourite designs together and then drawing over the result, it seems to have worked well because i was able to bring out the best of both designs, the bulkiness of the armour, layering on the legs and breastplate etc. additionally i also did a sketch of what the back of the chest piece would look like, since the armour has a big piece of symbolism for the demons they worship, i wanted a relic of the past and have a angel monument on the back with the wings splayed over the arches of the back, so both a bit of sculpting to the user and some lore.  Refining this further by painting more to refine areas of the drawing i've come to what i believe (at the moment) is my final design. I got very inspired by the league of legend poppy redesign and her armour so i wanted...

So Continuing from last time i did my armour work, i had made lot of progress in terms of just producing stuff, but i didnt have a lot of full model views done, so using my mashup as a starting point this time, i did more full sets. Overall i started going heavier, the appeal of this tough ass woman in plate gear was pretty much my fixation here, so theres few areas where any form fitting stuff is (which is pretty annoying in terms of feeling like you're drawing a character correctly) the first two here are mostly just variations on types of design, additions of pieces of armour (on the knees and the thighs mainly) but to mix it up a little i did go for a slimmer design, with a bit of a motif with the neck guard. However i didn't go for it too much as it conflicted with some of the 'Toughness' i wanted to portray, the breastplate was an interesting design though, nice division of lines there. About now i'm slightly starting to feel hesitant in my des...

Although i have a love of armoured characters, i would say i lack a lot of proper knowledge of shapes and how they are incorporated together in traditional armour designs, which i think hampers me when trying to create my own feel for an armour design. While i believe at this stage that i will not necessarily be going for 100% realism in my design, i do want their to be strong fundamentals and a sense of "oh that works" so to start my design i spent a while compositing other armour styles and getting the hang of drawing them, even coming up with some designs based on these mashups. Especially at the start so far this is a daunting task, looking through tons of reference images and pulling bits from both real life and fantasy based armours to find pieces that looked good and meshed together, i found myself drawing endless sketches for bits and pieces of various armour sections trying to capture the right sort of presence for my character. Additionally there was the m...

As of now I am fully started on a 2D project, the outline of which that provided we conduct ourselves within a proffesional manner and meet certain output criteria, we get to design something of our choosing (which is pretty damn nice to do). For this i've decided to go into making a character design. The first milestone of this little project, i that we have to define intent of the project, what am I hoping to create here, which involves me giving a rundown of the sort of character I'm interested in creating (some world details, backstory, base descriptors that sort of thing) as well as some imagery (which is definitely not mine) to give some information to my teachers.  In this sort of situation the intent is the "Sell" of the project, I'm trying to convince them that they want my designs. So if the above images didn't give enough of a rundown, my character is a one armed Knight woman, working as a sort of apostle to an order of demon...

For a little mini task I was asked to make a smallish sheet with around 10 of my most influential artists to my own work; All of our art is influenced by something, nature, history, people and other artists and so forth. I gathered some of the artists that have most influenced me in how i draw or the things i like to draw. I guess the place to start is from the top left to right as it were;  Chris Bourassa is someone i came upon with their Kickstarter for their game, Darkest Dungeon. This game featured really well stylized Gothic art. I particularly enjoyed the use of heavy shadows, its painterly feel and the unique characteristics of the art being used in the game (things like the eyes always being obscured) All in all the feel and subject matter of alot of his art was very encouraging to see. Next is the Art from Final Fantasy 14, although i've been having trouble tracking down specific names involved in the project, the point remains that their art has been ...

With a little more specialisation comes some assessment of where we are at, the new term allowed me to orientate myself more for 2D art (the more concepty side) as this is the kind of art that i prefer to do, and through that we needed to get a judge of how our skill levels were. For this, within the 2 hour session we had (more like 1hour 40 by the end of the intro of our lecturer talking) , we were tasked with doing 2 quick drawings; one of a diorama style of room view and a character in 3/4 view. Considering i did the room first as i wanted to get my weakest aspect done first i was more pleased than i expected with the results of this drawing.  the idea for this room quickly went to a sort of madman's hideout, someone obsessed with patriotism in the USA in a world where the US didn't exist anymore. I wanted to get this feeling of desperation and madness from the environment, so things like the grate being the only window, weapons carefully stacked and arranged in t...

While a little late, a new year is a new year and this year as per usual i am undergoing new projects for my course. To start off my new group project is underway...and this time i actually intend to post stuff on it here (cause last time my posts were entirely on the group blog, this time we're doing something different). At any rate the new groups project blog is at HERE  so if you want to see the new joint project i'm a part of i'll be there. secondly as part of some changes i'll be more strongly specialising in 2D art, as we were given the choice to start specialising at the start of the new term and we will be attending lessons that help improve our specialised skills. so new years resolutions here, just to air them out; I will hopefully be posting more frequently, mainly because it doesn't do me any justice if i have things to show, that i don't actually show. so there hopefully should be more posts here now. second is to just continue to refine an...