Tommy Graven - Concept Art 2023

The Cyclops

I read somewhere that early people saw the elephant's skull with its big central cavity and assumed it must instead belong to a cyclops-- so whether this was ever true, I started there for my creature design. That project became this concept for an upgraded unit inspired by some of my favorite old PC games.

Blocking out the anatomy was really a crash course in Zbrush for me, so some of the more precise posing like the hand resting on the weapon was left to the paintover.

Because I had the values of my fully lighted render as a base, I went directly into painting. As a result my color alts were done with blend modes rather than flat colors, seen below along with the early thumbnail sketches.

Warcraft Weapon Design

This personal project came more and more into focus as I worked through it. With an assortment of official concept art and game assets as a style guide, my goal was to create something fresh that was still recognizably grounded in existing weapons, characters, and themes of the Warcraft universe.

The final deliverables here are a staff and a sword, legendary-level weapons for the two player factions Alliance and Horde respectively. My references further below will clarify many of my design choices.

To give myself some direction, I started with the theme of the planets, namely Mercury and Jupiter. As I found the colors and shapes that worked best for Warcraft, that theme definitely took a backseat, but I feel it served its purpose in getting me this far.

(above) Early notes, refs, and shape exploration
(below) Flat colors and alts of the selected designs

This ended up a great exercise in holding myself to a style that I've always been inspired by, as well as crafting new designs for weapons that have already been iterated on for almost 20 years now. I'll be treating myself to painting some of the other concepts here very soon!

The Mountain King