Concept Art | Simon Krieg

LAWLESS FRONTIER
A world of outlaws, dangerous creatures, and shameless facial hair.

Lawless Frontier is a sci-fi western concept art project that has been keeping me busy for the last 8 weeks and I'm thrilled to finally share it with you all.

Saddle up and enjoy the ride!

Here you can take a look into my creative process when I tackle character design; starting with rough silhouettes and slowly building it up. I wanted to create a main character that would visually express the merciless world he lives in as well as his determination to improve his condition.

For the Rover vehicle, I wanted to design something that could look like it could drive off roads into the wasteland but also, hold heavy cargo and multiple characters. The negative space in the middle creates an iconic silhouette and really sets it apart from the other, more generic ideas that came up during production.

My creative process involves kitbashing SketchUp models together as well as sketching some additional details if need be. That way I can jump into rendering and colors faster and really take the artwork to the next level.

This prop was a great opportunity to try and design directly into Blender before I take it to Photoshop. Learning new tools and especially 3d softwares is a key factor for concept artists and I'm doing my part into integrating it into my arsenal.

Those are two good examples of how I mesh my knowledge of 3d and 2d to create environments with a line heavy finish. After I'm done with the 3d scene, I take it to Photoshop where I paint the ambient occlusion pass, colors, and then finally texture pass.

Those production paintings were a perfect way for me to step away from lineart and orthographic views and let my colors speak a little.

I wanted a dynamic creature shot to add some life into the project as well as a more tranquil yet ominous shot to introduce the potential antagonists.

And to close this entry off, here are some looser paintings that I created to make the game world feel larger. I imagine this adventure could take us into a dangerous system of caverns, a city perched atop a jagged rock, a forgotten temple where the air is toxic, or to a derelict space station for a fetch quest.

Creating those is a ton of fun as it lets me use my many tools to generate striking visuals within a short amount of time.

Find more on my Artstation, Instagram, [email protected]