GURPS

Space dragon – a sci-fi monster for role-playing games

By The Illustrator | 2011/03/16 23:28 Posted in GIMP, Graphics Tablet, GURPS, Illustration, Role-Playing Games | Comments (0)

space dragon monster

I’ve always been a big fan of giant space monsters, however uncool they are with real sci-fi fans, and I really enjoy painting them. Giant space monsters are very infrequently encountered in more realistic games and TV shows like Star Trek and Eclipse Phase, but they are a fun addition to a more relaxed, space opera type game. I really like GURPS Space, because you can make the game anything you want it to be, more realistic like 2001 a Space Odyssey, or really B-movieish, like Buck Rogers.

The physics of an animal being able to survive in deep space, and fly through the void quick enough to catch a spaceship is fancyful in the extreme, but it makes for such a cool image that it’s hard to resist.

I’ve created this monster from bat wings, lizard feet and a lizard’s head. The great thing about the Internet is that if you need reference images for your illustration, they are just a Google search away. The image is far from finished of course, as soon as it is done, I’ll be adding it to my portfolio of sci-fi role-playing game art wonders. But it will need to lose all the blurry and smudgy bits, and have everything the same sharpness as the wings and feet.

new link image to game art, illustrations and sketches

By The Illustrator | 2010/12/28 20:47 Posted in 3D, Blender, GIMP, Graphics Tablet, GURPS, Illustration, Role-Playing Games, spaceship | Comments (0)

Inspired by the website of an illustrator whose work I was interested in, I have decided to update the link to the main part of this website, where in theory all the best examples of my illustration are to be found.

This is a screenshot of the link she had designed for her illustration website…

portfolio link

…as it appears in the blog sidebar. And here is the image block I created, inspired by the one I saw at Luckhaus’s site.

portfolio link image

It’s amazing how much of a sense of the full size images it is possible to get from such tiny thumbnails. Each thumbnail in the matrix of images is only about 40×40 pixels. You can now see the link image in the navigation bar to the left of this post. I hope it will be very tempting, and make you want to visit the main portfolio site.

The images in the matrix are from left to tight, top to bottom;

A mecha – a giant robot design for use in games such as Mechwarrior, Battletech and GURPS. This example is small and swift – little more than a suit of power armour really.

A 3D spaceship – the mesh and renders were created using Blender over the course of several months. The 3D spaceship model is available for download and use on a creative commons attribution license.

A spacewoman – a character for other players to meet as part of a sci-fi role-playing game adventure, or for readers and viewers to experience as part of a book, film or animation.

A lost penguin – a fun illustration, perhaps for a children’s book or other more light-hearted medium.

An illustration of a close encounter – possibly a scene from a sci-fi novel. The astronaut has already been hypnotised by the strange alien being and is in grave danger.

A spacesuit concept sketch – the very early stages of producing the design for some futuristic power armour for use in sci-fi settings, as part of games, animations or comic books etc. The equipment used by characters in these fictional far-future settings goes a long way towards telling you who they are.

A spaceship concept for a game – an initial pencil sketch turned into concept art using MyPaint. This page has both the original pencil sketch (with a few colours and a starscape added in GIMP) and the more finished concept painting done with MyPaint. The difference that can be made to an image using this free painting program is truly amazing.

A dinosaur – a quick sketch done for an art challenge website, but one which I think turned out well.

An elephant – an illustration for a children’s book character. This was done exclusively in GIMP using a Wacom Bamboo graphics tablet, and I think it shows that GIMP can hold it’s own against even dedicated painting apps.

A sci-fi transport – a moon buggy speeding along the surface of an ice moon. This is the sort of artists impression that would be a nice addition to a set of role-playing game rules.

A robot spider – actually a repair drone clinging to the side of a spaceship waiting to spring into action and deal with faults, damage and even intruders. It’s the sort of thing that could make it more difficult for players to board a spaceship they encounter while playing a role-playing game.

A monster – a concept sketch (just the raw pencils) for a monster that might be encountered as part of a sci-fi or fantasy game.

A derelict spaceship – or is it just running silent and lying in wait. The page includes the illustration for this spaceship design and the staistics needed to use it in the GURPS role-playing game sci-fi setting.

An aircar – the sort of thing agents of the future use to travel from scene to scene of their adventures, be they in film, fiction or gaming.

A spaceship dogfight – two sister spaceships vie for advantage in some far-future conflict.

Digital painting concept art role-playing game character

By The Illustrator | 2010/10/14 07:09 Posted in GIMP, Graphics Tablet, GURPS, Illustration, Role-Playing Games | Comments (1)

the science-fiction illustration is just about complete

I’m calling this character Breezer. She is another spacewoman and she seems to have gotten herself into a wee bit of trouble, judging by that huge alien just around the corner. The painting is going quite quickly but each time you finish something just the way you like it, you realise that there is still a ways to go yet.

It all started with a quick sketch in GIMP done with the graphics tablet.

quick sketch

When I started the sketch I hadn’t really decided on anything yet, except I wanted it to be a character and that the composition and lighting should be relatively simple. I was keeping an open mind about what the character would eventually look like, but I did decide that I wanted a nice dramatic pose.

more detail

As the painting progressed the background started to change into a sort of deserted space station and the character in the foreground ended up wearing a bulky environment suit. There is still very little detail at this point and all of the mark making is still very free and expressive. I have been downloading a bunch of brushes for GIMP from the internet, and although they are all very skilfully made and produce really interesting effects, it is surprising how quickly I went back to the default solid round brush.

adding detail to the spacewoman

Here I’m adding a little more detail to the spacewoman. Her face is becoming a lot more defined. I used reference from a magazine for the face but the bright orange vac suit is straight out of my memories of cheap British science fiction shows of the 70s.

it's about half way I reckon

It’s starting to get really close now.

The proportions are a little out and the lighting isn’t dramatic enough. the metal surfaces of the space station ( or whatever it is) are too monochrome and it’ll be a good feeling to post the finished image to the content part of the website. the most up-to-date image, and a more detailed description of the character can be found here.

concept art with expressive strokes and detail

Illustration Friday, GURPS Spaceship

By The Illustrator | 2010/10/05 23:05 Posted in GIMP, Graphics Tablet, GURPS, Illustration | Comments (0)

Spaceship hiding in asteroid field.

It’s a long time since I did a digital painting for Illustration Friday, but today I got back into the swing of it. I’ve been playing with my Bamboo Graphics Tablet over the last few days, and it’s a lot of fun. I’ve found a way of making marks with the stylus that look a lot like oil painting. Actually I just make a nice big mark with the brush and then blur it with the blur tool, like you would mix real-life oil paint.

On top of painting this spaceship image I also came up with statistics so that it can be used in the GURPS Space game. The GURPS Game Spaceship is here. I really enjoy designing stuff for my Tarazet world and then coming up with concept sketches in GIMP. And Illustration Friday is a good excuse to do at least one per week. With all my other commitments and interests, not least 3D, this is probably an ambitious schedule however.

Of course the more I experiment with the graphics tablet, GIMP and digital painting the more I learn. Today, even though I ended up producing a colour illustration, I started out painting it in black and white. I then added colours on top once I had got the shading worked out a little bit. It worked very well, and it’s actually an old technique.

A simple image like this one with just one machine and a background with not too much going on can be painted quite quickly, so who knows, maybe I will be able to produce an image a week for Illustration Friday after all.

GURPS Spaceships Design Spreadsheet

By The Illustrator | 2010/09/22 02:02 Posted in GURPS, Illustration, Role-Playing Games, spaceship | Comments (0)

A spaceship with full GURPS rules

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GURPS Spaceships Design Spreadsheet – Steve Jackson Games Forums. Thanks to ericbsmith for this, If you are designing a super-high-tech starcruiser, you should probably be using something a bit more advanced than a pencil and paper, and this spreadsheet sure is advanced.

And on his website he has a cool book full of Aliens.

I’m still sketching lots of spaceships and it’s nice to be able to come up with GURPS stats for them quickly. I ended up creating a much simplified flow chart sort of thingy instead, to really speed up spaceship numbers crunching and design.

So putting the starscape generator for GIMP I found yesterday, and my new GURPS spaceship design flow chart together, I give you the P-Lifter class support spaceship. I’ve made a page for it on the content part of the website. A page with spaceship illustration and proper full GURPS stats.

When I was producing the illustration I came up with a nice new trick. I scanned in the sketch and replaced the white background with transparency as usual, but then I duplicated the spaceship.

I used one duplicate for the thicker black lines around the edge of the spaceship, and the other duplicate, turned down to about 50% transparency was used for the more delicate lines suggesting access hatches, windows and other assorted greebles on the surface of the spaceship hull.

I’m quite pleased with the effect, and it’s real easy and quick to do so you can expect to see more of it in my 2D GIMP images from now on.

After having fun making 2D images it’s now back to creating a textured 3D spaceship model. And of course once it’s done I’ll be getting out my flowchart to come up with some stats for GURPS.

Starbright Illustrations (blog)