After watching the Ryan Church "Intro to Painter DVD", I decided to try out Painter and see if I can make it work for me. Painter has a tremendous amount of depth and the Ryan Church DVD was invaluable in giving me a good overview of how the program works.

This image is a very different approach for me since I'm used to tight line drawings rather than loose painterly stuff. However, I really enjoyed experimenting while creating the image below, my first value study completed with Painter.

This is an "upgraded" version of an armor suit I did for the cover of the 2320AD RPG game. The design spec called for a unpowered armor suit with a high-threat combat helmet with removable respirator. I basically took the original armor from the cover art and beefed it up with a rigid armor shell. I was going for a look somewhere between the Halo Master Chief and the ESWAT "Orc" suits from Appleseed.

This is a WIP of a seaborne combat walker. The design spec called for a combat walker that could operate as a submersible and as a walking tank on land. This concept was fun and it has some Shirow-esque influences in the shapes. One thing I've always admired about Masamune Shirow's work (especially the Appleseed period), is that amount of thought he put into the functionality of his mechanical designs and his ability to render pleasing shapes.

Here is an in-progress version of a slightly futuristic special forces operator from a new game I'm illustrating. He's using a "Shirow-esque" bullpup longarm with holographic sight and suppressor, and he's got a helmet mounted sensor/comm suite. Still working on some kind of flip-down monocle sight or HUD visor.

Drawn with Alias Sketchbook Pro.

This is a sketch of a small gravitic lift drive armored personnel carrier. It can carry up to eight soldiers plus two crew. It's equipped with a turreted fusion gun, two outboard HEL batteries and point defense lasers around the hull. Entry and egress is through a deployable ramp at the rear or a smaller front hatch, though this is generally used only in an emergency. The lift drive mechanism and fusion power plant are embedded within the armored modules along the sides of the vehicle. Should human crew be unavailable, an onboard level 3 AI can provide limited maneuver and fire control.

This sketch went throught five major revisions before I ended up with something I liked. The asymmetric, wedge-shaped front window is my homage to the APC from Aliens, one of my all time favorite vehicle designs.

The ability to quickly save alternate versions of a sketch in progress as well as quickly create translucent underdrawings is proving to be invaluable for experimenting with design variations.

This is a suit of light armor for law enforcement. The plastic armor shell is worn over an undersuit of ballistic cloth. I may have to go back and recolor this one since I'm not really digging on the color scheme.

I am getting more accurate with my stroke placement and pressure using the stylus. I tried out an old Graphire stylus which happens to be compatible with my TabletPC, but it was pretty crummy compared to the stock stylus.

This is an example of my questionable fashion sense at work. Sort of a half cloak that hangs off the shoulder coupled with the ever popular hip hugging bodysuit.

I now understand that I have no idea how to draw convincing cloth. Another thing to put on the list of things to learn...

I'm making the switch to an all-digital workflow for art using a TabletPC. Where I would previously sketch in pencil, scan, resize, print, ink, scan again, paint in Photoshop, now I will open my TabletPC, sketch, ink and paint all in Alias Sketchbook Pro.

It's going to take some time to get comfortable with the stylus but I can already tell that I like it much better than my traditional Wacom Intuos tablet where I am drawing 20" away from where I am looking onscreen.

Anyway, here are two generic sci-fi people: spaceboy and gungirl.