I had the blessing and curse of taking 2 vacations this year. It wasn't easy to ditch the family and have some time alone but every so often I'd drop a flash bang and get out to try my hand digital painting out in the wild courtesy of my iPad Pro and Procreate.
I never did this kind of stuff even back when I drew traditionally so I am pretty far behind the curve.
After the 30th reading of Dr Seuss's "One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish" the creepiness of the last page's image compelled me to render my own take on things. I kept my illustration pretty consistent to the book's image but ramped up the creepy by a few notches to help things along. Most of the work was done in Procreate on the iPad Pro and then finished in Photoshop.
The subject and style aren't really in my wheelhouse so I was interested in how my process would change working primarily on the iPad. Due to all the layer blending styles and Procreate's terrible non-existant folder and masking options the end result included 30-40 layers with very little structure or cleanup - and no easy path to flatten.
One of the last tanks still in service based around conventional chemical weapon systems, the Hammerhead has been around long enough to see the scope of armored warfare change around the introduction of Ultra Capacitors and Railgun based platforms.
Originally fitted with a 150mm smoothbore cannon the Hammerhead proved itself in multiple theaters as an armored platform that could break through and survive both conventional and unconventional warfare.
Now, 45 years past its induction date, the Mark 9 variant of the Hammerhead represents the last chapter of the tank's service life. Deemed unsuitable for a modern mass driver refit, engineers decided to replace the entire weapon system from conventional shell ammunition to a hybrid one capable of loading and firing missiles that can tracking and target air and ground units.
The substantial room in the front of the turret cheeks originally used to store fuel cells for use in partial EV mode were made redundant with power density gains and have been converted to house 2 revolving auto loaders capable of carrying 8 missiles each. The directional doppler radar, multi-spectrum optics, and advanced FCS systems help find targets even obscured by optical and thermal concealment and while relatively slow, the missile payload is highly adaptable and capable of defeating many types of countermeasures with decoys, shielding, and split warheads.
Up-armored with EERA, a point defense laser battery and technically only requiring a crew of one overseer, the Mark 9 Hammerhead's mixture of affordability, reliability, and ubiquity make it a strong choice for embattled governments in the years ahead.
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The original art for this was done in Sketchbook Pro around 2014 at the start of my Recon Vehicle project. I liked the tank a lot but felt (maybe wrongly) that making a recon vehicle could be more interesting than making a tank. Every 6-8 months I considered finishing this piece.
It was only recently, with my purchase of an iPad Pro that I had the time to noodle around with this while watching TV and the like. Instead of taking the design further with more thumbnails I just found myself noodling around on it in Procreate - which is why if you watch the process video you see me trying out dozens of little tweaks and changes - and only towards the end making sure some perspective issues were in check. (Curse procreate for not including an ellipse tool!!!!)
Once the bulk was done, I finalized values, composition, and lighting in Photoshop.
I know in some ways this is a bit more on the "Form" side of things, so some functionality has been sacrificed. Feel free to point it in any case! I really enjoy theory crafting discussions
Lastly, the Handgun is the player's default secondary weapon until they pick up another dropped by an enemy. Simple both in form and function but with a large moving slide to help give it more visual impact.
Keep up to date with our progress at www.bringyourownbase.com andhttps://twitter.com/anvilheadstudio
A big goal of ours for these weapons was to create something that was 80% plausible and 20% pure fantasy. In this way, all the weapons have proper alignments in regards to ammo feeding and ejecting however the reciprocating actions on top and moving magazines and magazine wells are purely there as juice for animation.
The SMG's secondary is a fairly slow moving missile that can help the player zone enemies at medium range or to blast down a few walls when need be.
Keep up to date with our progress atwww.bringyourownbase.com andhttps://twitter.com/anvilheadstudio
The Shotgun allows players to do great alpha damage at close range while the secondary railgun is good for landing medium to long range skill shots or temporarily punching through multiple walls.
Keep up to date with our progress at www.bringyourownbase.com and https://twitter.com/anvilheadstudio
Ever since I helped cofound Anvilhead Studios, a year or two ago I had to keep it on a back burner and devote what limited focus I could spare towards business dev and game design / project management.
Recently, due to some very generous friends, family, wife and a great state grant program I've been able to transition into a temporary full-time capacity to help us accelerate towards the launch of Bring Your Own Base's (BYOB) MVP release.
The default rifle shown here is one of the first pieces created in an attempt to polish our game up enough to stand out, but not so much that we run out of money and find ourselves without a solid game foundation - a tricky balancing act.
Keep up to date with our progress at www.bringyourownbase.com and https://twitter.com/anvilheadstudio
Here is the ranged version of the flying enemy for the Train World. I wanted to add in a tech element that matched the world and give it a more armored feel so it will exist as more of a threat.
15 Frame idle animation - for when he is chilling.
Flying with intent.
Firing loop.
And a bonus 15m sketch. The prompts were for a vehicle with the tags "Loner" + "Prairie".
This was one of my first concept rounds at JB gaming - so lots of range trying to figure out the right mixture of scary and goofy.
We needed a generic flying enemy for Grave Danger's initial development. I started out a few months ago with a blob enemy covered in tentacles but didn't know enough about Spine to make it work. Here I am coming back to a more general purpose design with a bit more work under my belt and things are working out better.
I decided to animate the wings by hand and not with a rig due to the complexity of the perspective and animation, so started up drafting a few tests in Photoshop before drawing out the sprites and putting it all together in Spine.
Initial test.
Revision 2 with the body assets blocked in.
Blocked in the wings.
'Slow' 15 frame idle animation. The up and down strokes are held for a few frames and the tips of the wings are deformed with bones for a bit more organic look.
Here is the desert skin in the "Aggro" animation. The mouth can't open much larger than this at the moment.
Next stop will be to duplicate this project and create a ranged version with a projectile weapon below where the tenticals are.
Update: Removed the blur on the wings for now at the suggestion from a friend and I feel that it matches the game style much better than before. It was his opinion - and I agree - that the path blur I was using before looked more like a DoF effect and not like motion! Thanks, John!
Also tweaked the wing membrane color for the desert themed bat. Will hold final judgement for when he is in game.
And a bonus melee attack animation I forgot to export last time.
Finally got around to adding in Spine's really solid skin system and applying it to the default enemy rig.
Because the heads are all slightly different (and have different bones and animations) I had to kind of work around that by creating and attaching empty blank images to the skins for inactive heads. Im sure there is a better way but a brief search didn't reveal anything and we are on a deadline! This seems to work, but I'd love to know about other approaches.
The standard weakest 'train engineer' variant. Right now only the weapon, skin color, headgear and wrist strap are different, however if given the time I can make all the assets custom.
Maybe a bit too aggressive for the game, but will see if it grows on me. I think he is pretty badass regardless.
Next step is to create a "Caster" / "Shaman" version and add in some more general use animations.
Here are some early shots of all the pieces finally put together in Unity and set in motion along with an 80% final train interior asset set.
Many of the exterior assets have simple scripts attached to jitter them in place however the wheels were animated in Spine.
Still has a lot of polish to go! Check out https://twitter.com/GraveDangerGame to follow along with development.
Characters and character animations were created by Tony Ferguson
Currently the chairs are too big and nothing is animated, but things are snapping together pretty well. Other than the insane amount of layers to work with contraction and expansion things are pretty straight forward.
Ever since completing the Wasteland vehicle powered by a retrofit propeller airplane I knew I wanted to play around more in the realm of nonconventional propulsion sources. This was a first round sketch turned refined version of a steam locomotive that has broken free from the shackles of tracks.
Hopefully, I'll find the time and drive to do a few more revisions and make a finalized illustration in the next few months. The next one will be some sort of boat-turned-truck, harnessing energy from the propeller shaft (and possibly sail)!
Jumped from some rough bones paintover of a train image into this without much time spent fixing wheel perspective. I was also using Procreate on the iPad pro so no fancy elipse tools im afraid. I think this design is far more appealing than the two other versions below visually, but the engineer inside me really wants a more capable looking turning solution besides the two front wheels being on casters...
An evolutionary dead end I'm afraid.
This one has some promise to me. I really like the airplane landing gear in the back to help steer the beast. I also hope to create some sort of machine that turns the reciprocating motion of the steam piston into something a transmission can use to power the wheels.
