Obsessive Weekly: Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn

I've actually been obsessing over Rembrandt's etchings and drawings for a while now, but only just decided to post something about him. Now, I'm sure everyone has heard of Rembrandt and his awesome power with a paint brush, but the first things I saw from Rembrandt were his etchings/drawings. We went over a few of Rembrandt's paintings today in my Art History class which is what inspired me to do this post.

Here are my favorite etchings, drawings, and paintings of his:





This last image seriously blows my mind, I wish I could post the slide that Greer showed us, the colors were much more vibrant. Apparently, this painting is what made him interested in Art History, and I can see why!

Obsessive Weekly: Battlestar Galactica

It's 4:30 AM, I just finished playing a lot of WoW, and now I'm writing a blog post about my love for Battlestar Galactica. I truly live in the realm of geeks, nerds, and gamers. And, I am happy to carry these titles. :P Anyways, on with the Obsessive Weekly-ness!!

My boyfriend and I have recently become completely entangled in the web of awesome that is Battlestar Galactica. I'm talking about the re-imagined series, mind you, not the original series from the late '70s. Great acting, and even better writing, have kept us watching for three seasons now. Unfortunately, the show was canceled after it's fourth season so we don't have much left to watch.

Anywho, whenever I start to really enjoy a TV show or movie, I almost always find myself scouring Google pages to find some concept art for the show/movie. I actually wasn't expecting to find any concept art for Battlestar Galactica, but there it was! On this website I've never heard of.

These are some concept pieces for space ships for the fourth season:

A Cylon Comm. Array:

These pictures were actually among a large gallery of concept art from different sci-fi shows and movies. Check out the full article here.

Oh, and just in case anyone who reads this likes Battlestar, check this awesomesauce out:

I would've voted for him! :P

Obsessive Weekly: Shinerai on dA

So I definitely forgot to do an Obsessive Weekly post last week, but that's ok because I found a really super cool artist this week!

He is Shinerai of deviantART, I stumbled upon his gallery when I was looking for some dragon reference images. What I enjoy most about his work is his amazing use of color with his creatures. I found myself staring at one of the character reference sheets he made for at least thirty minutes, they're so beautiful and well thought out.

Here are two reference sheets he made for original characters and a digital drawing:

I do not own these images, they belong to Shinerai!

Obsessive Weekly: Atlantis

Alright, so this post has to do with my environment for concept art as well. I actually keep getting confused because I need to start conceptualizing ideas for my 3D environment in addition to the environment for concept art. :P

The animated film "Atlantis: The Lost Empire" has had a large impact on my passion for art, I'm obsessed with the character design and colors the creators used in the film. I'm mesmerized every time I watch it. In particular, I love the designs of the faces and hands of the characters, I don't really know why, but I love it.

This has to do with my environment because Nate and I started talking about the main setting that our character will be in for Project Null, which is the environment I've chosen to do for my assignment. We decided on a jungle-ish setting, just as long as it's really green because it has to be the opposite of the polluted metropolis that the main character originates from. It takes place in the not-so-near future so I might play around with creating some weird plants or something, haha.

So I just started sketching in Photoshop with some blue/green colors and I'll be posting some progress around 6 when my lab shift is done.

In the mean time, here are some shots from "Atlantis," tropical settings, and jungle settings:

Obsessive Weekly: Mass Effect

So in about the middle of the week I realized that Mass Effect 2 releases on the 26th of this month! I also realized that I hadn't played Mass Effect since my Xbox360's hard drive decided to erase itself last year.

So, naturally, I started a new game and found myself obsessing over the attention to detail that the creators payed to not only the vast universe that your character is able to travel through; but also the biology and even cultural aspects of the races the characters encounter throughout the story.

For example, the disciplined race called the Turian hail from a planet with a metal-poor core. Due to this type of core present inside the planet, there is a weak magnetic field allowing more solar radiation into the atmosphere. And, this is the cool part, in order to deal with this atmosphere the lifeforms on the Turian home world evolved metallic exoskeletons to protect themselves from the solar radiation. It just blows my mind that the creators put so much research into these other races, and gave them believable evolutionary details in their biology.

Wow, so many words! Here's some concept art for the first game that I really enjoy.

Turian:

The thousand year living and well respected Asari:

The synthetic beings called the Geth:

Obsessive Weekly for Concept Art: Star Trek

So, for a couple of my classes I'll be posting some things that I've been interested in or "obsessing" about twice a week (one post for my concept art class and another for 3D modeling). In retrospect, I guess these posts should be called "Obsessive Bi-Weekly" but that would make the titles really long and who likes super long titles? Not I!

Alright, for my first two posts I decided to make it easy on myself and just post about the guilty pleasures I revealed during our little get-to-know-you session for our first day of classes.

So, I give you... Star Trek! Or, more specifically, I've been interested in the evolution of the Enterprise from The Original Series and the recently released film.

Here's the original Enterprise in all it's glory:

I'm not entirely sure if this image is original concept art for the Enterprise or not, but it's a pretty good representation of the ship.

What I've always loved about the original Enterprise is it's simplicity. As you can see from the concept image, it's just a few simple shapes put together in a logical way so as to represent some sort of object that could move through space. In addition to this, you can tell that the concept artists wanted the ship to seem somewhat aesthetically pleasing with the diagonal neck (giving it a feeling of movement and sleekness) and slightly stylized main body.

But, I don't think this 1966 design would live up to today's expectations of an attractive design.

The new, 2009 design:

Now, keeping the original design of the Enterprise in mind, I think the concept artists for the 2009 film did an excellent job of not only enhancing the positive and simple aspects of the original Enterprise but also tweaking a few features to make it a bit more pleasing to the eye. For example, both the warp engines and the main body of the ship have been given more curvature to give the ship an updated, and sleek, science-fiction feel. Also, the way the saucer, neck, and warp engines are attached appear to be more seamless rather than just stuck on the ship.

After geeking out a bit about the two ships, and looking at so many concept images, I find that analyzing these two designs could really help me as an artist to determine what's currently aesthetically pleasing to the public in terms of machine design. Well, in the sci-fi world at least!

Here's a comparison picture of the finalized designs of the two ships: