Hungry Bird

A darling baby bird, waiting for a nourishing tidbit from Mommy.

Sketch: I was very pleased with how the rocks turned out.

Detail

Memento mori and memento iPhone.

A Floating Island Was His Home

I've always been obsessed with terrariums, and the idea of little microcosms, self-contained worlds under glass. I would love to own one of those EcoSpheres with the brine shrimp and algae.

I decided to do a pretty ambitious but light-hearted picture of space terrariums with an attending spacecraft, as well as an artificial sun. I started Thursday, August 29, and am now pretty much finished.






Here is the rough pencil idea:

I will post more images of the many elements that went into this.

Gold fish bowl detail, with Sea Monkeys (brine shrimp)for food:

Snake and mouse with succulent plants:

Space Bird plane with chimpanzee pilot:

Some elements shown in wireframe and preview in Illustrator:

Sea monkey overkill:

I wish the chimp pilot showed better — handsome fellow (or lady, can't tell).

The terrarium/aquarium pebbles were taken from another image where I had created rock textures (see An Unfortunate Discovery), and isolated bits with a mask and a layer effect to create highlights and shadows. Those layer effects take a lot of trial and error to get then to work, but it can be worth it.

The snake was done with a custom scales brush in Illustrator, then altered with the Line Width editing tool. The rest was done in Photoshop.

Windup Assassin Cricket

Every gentleman or lady should have one on hand.

Hydroid

A fantasy microorganism. I did this one in Illustrator with custom brushes.

Update: added textures in Photoshop.

Wamphyri Warrior III

Another one, this one in color.

Another Mechanical Fish

I was playing around with Illustrator, pondering how to create fish or snake scales elegantly, and I ended up with this image (I finished in Photoshop).

Update: I did a color version and added details.

Update: I changed the water, colored some scales a steel color, and made all the rivets steel.

Wamphyri Warrior II

Another Wamphyri Warrior. Did this one today.