Not-so-good guys and ART-rage

Inspired by Wreck It Ralph, I felt like drawing my own characters that could live in a CG animated movie as potential bad guys. If any studios are looking for a guy to draw cool character heads all day, give me a shout. I don't think I wold ever get tired of doing these.

Then I wanted to see if I could get a similar look of graphite and white chalk on toned paper in a virtual program. So launched Art-rage and went to town. It is a great program and should be in every illustrator's toolbox.

And finally for this post, here is a little thing. I am doing a novel cover where an object will be the main focus, not a figure, so I used the fantastic (and free) program Alchemy to concept out some cool dagger shapes for the Art Director to choose from. If you haven't used it, Alchemy is a program that lets you design largely with abstracts so you can arrive at very interesting shapes. Most of these were created with 'mirror' turned on so I could design one side of a centerline and it would do the same on the other. It has NO save feature, and no Un-do, so you have to make hard decisions and cross your fingers your next move doesn't mess the whole thing up. I like this aspect of the program a lot actually. (But in the end you can export a file for photoshop to work on top of.) It is amazing if you are a shapist. The AD went with 'F' which was my fave as well.