A Medley of Work 2023

The Realm is an ongoing passion project to bring to life characters, creatures, props and eventually environments from an epic fantasy trilogy I’m writing. 

Rea is the first character using a method taught to me by my mentor. The AO, and Key shadow are painted in on a solid colour layer, which is inverted and masked. This process makes it easy to experiment with the flat colours added underneath.

Below is a colour variation and an alternative pose incorporating a crystal that is key to the story. In the end, I felt the crystal distracted from the character who is the heroine of the story. 

For the villain, I enjoyed playing around with the concept of a druid deforming himself with blood magic to become more powerful by adding elements of animals and other creatures. Pushing the anatomy and creating something that works but also appears morphed and wrong was an exciting challenge. 

This is a Helcane, a dog like creature made using blood magic from two roan hounds. My favourite piece of the series, I enjoyed studying canine anatomy and seeing how far I could push it. My primary inspiration was the Xoloitzcuintli (Hairless Mexican Dog). 

For this piece, they gave us a set of axes to paint over and alter as much as we wished. I wanted to challenge myself by creating weapons that would match the world I was building. Incorporating runes, arcane circles and source stones (the crystals) was a fun, unique challenge that forced me to get creative with my Photoshop knowledge. 

The Last of Us and the documentary series Life After People inspired this environment paint over. The 3D block out was provided along with the brief to create something post-apocalyptic. I first made edits to the image itself before beginning to layer on textures, then greenery. 

A 3D bust paintover inspired by the wild turkey. A 3D bust was provided with a brief to alter the bust significantly. I painted over the bust in grey-scale, set the layer to multiply, and added coloured flats beneath. 

This is a paintover of the first 3D model I’ve done in Zbrush. The prompt was to create an alien. I sketched rough thumbnails of an ape-like creature. In Zbrush, I created a zsphere skeleton and sculpted from there. I painted the sculpt then posed it. I saved a rendered image of a rim light, key light and fill, which I imported into PS for the paint over.  

Thank you for looking at my work. I hope you enjoyed it!