Edmund McMillen
Edmund McMillen has been a lifelong resident of Santa
Cruz, California. He is especially fond of drawing, his favourite subjects being
monsters. Edmund spent most of his childhood
with his grandmother, whom he considers to be the greatest source of support in
his creative endeavors. Later in his life, Edmund received a box from his
grandmother that contained all of his drawings as a child. Many of these
drawings can be seen by unlocking 'The Box' in one of his games, “Basement
Collection”. McMillen's initial graphic work was in independent comics. While
he has largely abandoned this field in favor of video games, he has released a
series of comics featuring Meat Boy, the title character in the video game
“Super Meat Boy”, as a promotional tie-in for the game.
McMillen has a very simple and some would say naïve style of
art it is almost childlike, but it retains a sense of grunge and his games are
mostly in a way disturbing, which for me has a lot of deep meaning and truth
behind it one game in particular that has a lot of cultural, religious and
media references in it is “Binding Of Isaac” this game includes a long list of
controversial subject matter such as cancer, stem cells, demons, sins, the
devil, fallen angels, god, potentially blasphemous content, a crying naked child
and many many more, the story is influenced by the biblical story of Abraham
who would kill his son Isaac to prove his faith to god. McMillen has a style closely related to that of
Dan Paladin the artist of “Castle Crashers” with the black outlines block
colours and simple but effective artwork and style.
this is a art style i like very much and at some point would like to stray from it to develop my own style. I am not a realistic sketch artist nor am i a realist i look more toward Surrealism and abstract or expressionism. its easy to see what style the artist uses and what he will continue to work, if he were to try explain this to somebody he would be seen as somebody with no skill, but put in practice it works very well and you can see this with concept art.
Dan Paladin
The
Second of my main artists is Dan Paladin who works for a company called “The Behemoth” they made a many games a few of which are called "Alien hominoid" and “Castle crashers”. The
Behemoth is a video game development company that was created in 2003 by
John Baez, artist Dan Paladin (aka Synj), and programmers Tom Fulp (the creator
of the popular Newsgrounds Flash website), Brandon LaCava, and Nick Dryburgh.
The Behemoth development studio is located in San Diego, California. The company is known for producing simple games with
Paladin's signature 2D style. Their first console game was “Alien Hominid”
it gained critical
acclaim by the media and the members of The Behemoth quickly gained status as
indie developers focused on bringing old-school styles of video games back into
mainstream gaming. The Behemoth's second
game, “Castle Crashers” Since
its release on Xbox Live Arcade, “Castle Crashers” has become one of the most
downloaded games, with over 2.6 million copies sold by end of 2011.
"Castle Crashers" is possibly my favourite game of this art style and the art style works incredibly well and this picture does it no justice when playing the game the visual matches the play it can be funny, it can be serious cartoonish but it still portrays gore when needed. the concept art for this was very simple but showed exactly what the artist wanted to do and when he applied colour to the four main characters stood together it worked and he used complementary colours together notice the order they are stood is the most visually appealing as possible.
Above is some art of development for a boss on "Castle Crashers" the development is vast all of Dan Paladins first 'sketches' are very simple and un-rendered but it holds the basic shape and colour and i can very much relate to the development my own drawing will be very quick and start like the one on the left but if i like the idea of the concept i will develop it to roughly the same level of the one on the right.
Isaac Hannaford
This guy right here is a concept artist in the games industry. with over 9 years experience in the games industry, Isaac Hannaford works as the Lead Concept Artist at Bungie in Seattle, Washington. Isaac has contributed to many top hitting projects including "Team Fortress 2", "The Punisher", "Saint’s Row", "Red Faction Guerilla", "Halo 3", "Halo 3 ODST" and "Halo Reach".
his work is realistic and futuristic very much realism and detailed and is, to me, fantastic here is a sketch of Master Chief with a Magnum no colour or background but the detail and rendering of Master Chief is brilliant to get that amount of depth to a character with just a pencil and paper to me is amazing its so simple and structured but keeping all detail on the character is the best thing to do with concept art, no background means the eye wont wonder and everything interesting on that page is the character you are trying to "sell"
here is a coloured, rendered and detailed scene, taken from a sketch and then rendered on screen the use of a dull colour pallet complement the underground a damp feel to it. the scene itself it a metamorphic area a cave with built in pillars and rooms and metal floors you can see wires coming form the room to the left possible to power the lights for the cave its a well thought out scene with great colour and feel.
his work is realistic and futuristic very much realism and detailed and is, to me, fantastic here is a sketch of Master Chief with a Magnum no colour or background but the detail and rendering of Master Chief is brilliant to get that amount of depth to a character with just a pencil and paper to me is amazing its so simple and structured but keeping all detail on the character is the best thing to do with concept art, no background means the eye wont wonder and everything interesting on that page is the character you are trying to "sell"
another sketch is used here to get the feel of Emilie being a bit of a badass he has a skull scratched into his helmet with a knife on his shoulder ready for a quick stab also he has a full belt and straps with grenades attached to him as a sketch it is very good detailed enough to make everything out rendered to get a metallic feel of his armour and the shading to his under layers again only detailing the character.
H. R. Giger
Giger's style and execution have been very influential. His design for the "Alien" was inspired by his painting "Necronom IV" (below) and earned him an Oscar in 1980.
His paintings are both amazing and twisted most if not all have sexual references Giger got started with small ink drawings before progressing to oil paintings. For most of his career, Giger has worked predominantly in airbrush, creating monochromatic canvasses depicting surreal, nightmarish dreamscapes. However, he has now largely abandoned large airbrush works in favour of works with pastels, markers or ink.
Above are some concepts of "Alien" from the very successful franchise of well, "Alien" you can see only slight differences to what they used in the film but the core elements are very much there the slick form and snake like element with outer ribs and the cylindrical head to me represents a penis, he is keeping his signature design but following the guidelines of what the film wants his ideas are detailed and informed it shower proportion and texture for me this is very good concept art.
