Concept Art
Taking a deeper dive into specific illustrations and projects through a conceptual lense. Designing characters, environments and placing myself into the world to understand how it would work with the Illustration.
Ansturm Der Untoten
Taking events from the Past, and adding a twist to them provides for an interesting conceptual process. This time around, we take the setting of al old world war 2 battlefront. An ongoing battle against the German and US forces. However while the battle above takes place, somthing sinister lies down below. An army of the undead from both factions rising up and slowly out numbering both the armies. Leaving a group of US and German soliders forced to work together to survive the Onslaught of the Undead.. or in German the “Ansturm Der Untoten”
While army soldiers may seemingly all look the same, and same for their undead counterparts. This actually offered up the opportunity to explore all the variations and creativity I could push a single concept. “Army Soldier” or “Zombie” being those individual concepts. And exploring around each of them to really feel out this world and put more personality into it.
After the character designs, I needed to get an understanding of the setting I was in. Even if i didnt plan on using a certain environment or background. I needed to flesh out this entire scenario and wherever that may take place.
Experimenting with what the no mans land would look like, as well as the inner workings of the facilities they are trapped inside. Then moving to the composition and getting creative with the posing and placement of our soldiers and zombies.
I knew the piece would be dark and have a single bright light source to help with conveying fear. So I worked with that when sketching.
Ansturm Der Untoten
An evil spirit takes over the body of hundreds of dead soldiers, turning them into an army of the undead. Only a few men are left standing trapped in the depths of the citadel tunnels under the battlefield. Hopelessly trying to survive the night of terror upon them. Surviving the onslaught of the undead. The Ansturm Der Untoten.
Altered Reality
Another project taking events from the past and altering them drastically to a new narrative. This time taking a war between Native Americans and British forces. However the twist is the British have discovered a new technology that after many trials, gave them access to power large mechanized soldiers on the battlefront.
Changing the tide of the battle fought, and the war overall as these mech giants had no issue or faults against any of their adversaries.
The challenge with designing the characters in this piece was about a level of accuracy. While there are many refrences to Native Americans and the warriors who fought in wars. Finding the balance between realism and fantasy was a struggle. As I wanted to push them to a more creative level, while not sacrificing the realism of their look. As far as the robot, that was 100% designed by me. And the struggle there was to create a mechanical soldier that looked like it belonged in that time period, where technology was not advanced in any way.
Conceptualizing the environment of the scene was a challenge in its self as well. I knew from the get go I wanted the scene to take place outside. And designing a “No man’s land” was fairly straight forward. But I still wanted to dive into the world I was creating, even just a little. Seeing what the construction of these mech giants would consist of, and if there were a scene to portray that, what would it look like.
“Altered Reality”
When the British forces in the 1700s discover a new element that radiates immense power. They experiment for months until learning of its potential. Using it to power large mechanized soldiers. Making their armed forces obsolete and moving their soldiers to engineers to craft the mechs. Armed with everything an entire platoon would have, standing at 8 feet tall, and immensely powerful. They changed the tide of war and oblitterred every battle field they were on.