Axel Rueda - Concept Art (2022)

The workshop

My idea was to have the character use a big robot arm to create his other robots. At first, I struggled with finding a composition aroud this, but I tried to focus on abstract shapes and managed to come up with one I liked. I also did a lot of color tests, experimeting with various layer blending modes to obtain new results.

Paris after...

Wild Lands : Dead Bunch

For this project, the context was 19th century Wild West, and we had to create a scene with 4 heroes encountering a horrific monster and having to protect an ancient artefact. We had to emphasize the contrast between the Wild West and the Fantastic/Horrror settings that come in contact within the image.

As you can see in the process view, I radically changed the colors of the illustration during the process. I found the newer green mood by experimenting with photoshop adjustment layers and decided to keep it because I thought it mas more fitting with the mood of the project and was more in line with the rest of the illustration. It also created a complementary red-green color harmony within my drawing which i thought was nice.

The Antiquity Shop

These are the props I had designed for a previous assignment and that I had to use in the antique shop illustration :

Volcano grill

This was the last environment design assignment of the year. We had to pick a place (either a theatre, an art school, a fast food, a public pool, a cinema or a gym) and combine it with a time period (Prehistory, Antiquity, Middle Age or future). The result had to be in a cartoony style. I went for a prehistoric fast food, and thought it would be fun to have cavemen cook mammoth burgers using the heat of a volcano.

Before-After

Here are the sketches and color tests for both of the images. I had to finish this project faster than I'm used to, so I tried to go straight to the point and make safe decisions to gain time while not sacrificing too much quality. I am happy with how it all turned out given that I had to hurry to finish in time.

Character Design

Dota 2 : Assassin design

I spent a lot of time looking for an appropriate silhouette and pose for this character. Conveying the right attitude as well as ensuring the readability of the design was definitely challenging. Once that was done, I came up with different costumes that would fit what I had in mind, and went for a mix between the 3 for the final costume.

Achilles

I took a picture of myself to have the initial pose. I then started putting various pictures down pretty randomly, but I quickly realised that the image was not going anywhere (1st image of the process view) so I started again from scratch, this time with a rough sketch and an idea in mind. I used a little bit more paintover, and tried to combine various pictures for every element rather than trying to find the perfect photo for each and every part of the character. When I had all my assets in place (2nd image), I started painting in the lights and shadows and obtained the final result.

The pirate crew

For this character design project, we had to design a pirate crew, namely the pirate king, a cook, and an old pirate. It was the first character design assignment of the year and was the first time I was really trying to think about a character's silhouette, pose and costume. We also had to do 3 rough dynamic poses for each of the characters, which allowed to develop their personalities or tell little stories.

Here you can see silhouette thumbnails for the pirates, as well as the ones I picked and a line-up of the three characters :

The adventurers

For the second character design assignment of the year, we had to create a group of 3 adventurers and their mech. The adventurers had to be animals, and I decided to go for 3 rats to challenge myself to make varying shapes despite having to do the same animal 3 times. This choice also allowed me to design costumes with tiny objetcs that they use as their weapons and armor. It was really fun coming up with a role for each of the team members and designing the characters consequently.