Days of Future Pedro
Greetings!
I come forth today with more casual works. Quicker things executed with the intent of acquiring new skills, rather than demonstrating virtuosity.
First, experiments in colour and shapes.
Secondly, experiments in character, acting, and storytelling.
Logan and Laura
Hiei and Kurama
Yusuke and Kuwabara
Ryuko Matoi
And last, experiments in gesture and motion.
Old Man Pedro
WitchHunt
Osma
One out of the 5 characters I came up for a game design document I’m working on. It’s an action adventure game revolving around witches storming castles as a backlash to the prosecution of innocent women under unfunded accusations of witchcraft. It’s called WitchHunt :D
Abigail
Our starting protagonist. After noticing that her father was a cruel leader, murdering women without concrete evidence, Abigail makes a sweet little deal with a black goat by the name of Phillip. She gets the power necessary to protest her father, and in exchange all she needs to do are a few favours for her new friend, including giving him his fathers extensive library.
It was TONS of fun to work on her.
Gwen
A really fun character to work on, from her it came the idea that instead of a traditional attribute/equipment system, there would only be a ring system. 10 slots, 5 on each hand, all rings are interchangeable, but their slots matter. Dominant hand rings affects the Heavy Attack moves, rings on the non-dominant hand affect the Light Attack moves, and both hands affect the Area Attack moves.
A little nod to Miura-Sensei
Agnes!
The first character to pop into my head. Apparently I really like drawing gross things.
I was thinking that for the game you would only control one witch at a time, but you could “tag out” with another witch at any point. The catch is that it would require a fairly long spell cast time to do so, and therefore making it a risky move when enemies are nearby. If one of the witches dies, during the casting or at any other point, she is out of commission for that level. So for practical effects, the player has 5 lives per level, but the lives are attached to specific move-sets.
The last of the Witches, and the oldest of them!
A victim of persecution herself, Iria along with her four sisters were captured, tortured and killed under false accusations of witchcraft. During the torture Philip snuck in and offered the 5 siblings a way out if they became witches, but their feverish spirituality forbade them to do so. After days listening to her sisters desperation, each locked up inside an Iron Maiden, the cries faded, one by one. Iria was the last one alive. Moments before her last breath she called for Phillip.
A little nothing. Had a proposal for an illustration where I had to mash up 3 wildly different characters into one narrative image. This is the result.
I’ve been listening to quite a bit of rap lately and decided to paint some of those faces after I had a talk with a friend and embarrassingly realised I could’t paint darker skin tones at the same level as lighter ones.
The resemblance and facial structures here are really lacking, but since the goal was simply achieving and learning about skin colour, I think these were fairly successful.
Give those guys a listen!
Denzel Curry
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tULwXYKVkTs
Joey Bada$$ – His new album All-Amerikkkan Badas$$ is fantastic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOEHqkGFYCs
Chance The Rapper – I still like AcidRap much better than his other projects :3
https://youtu.be/e67Q-sTHVhc
A random assortment of studies. Feels like its been a long while since I’ve done any real painting.
I got my hands on a Cintiq 12wx! It’s an old model, but it works great! I’ve been doing some morning gestures to get used to it. I haven’t used it for any real work just yet.
Light Weight, Baby
Greetings, friends!
This update is not only lighter in quantity, but also lighter in style and in subject matter. Suddenly everything I produce seems to rely on lines and flat colours to convey ideas, rather than laborious rendering. A fun change for me.
In reality this wasn’t meant to be shown, as it was no more than a preparatory sketch for a yet to come illustration. The project is in the back burner for now. I was delightfully surprised by how presentable she became without it ever being a concern of mine.
For these other two characters, unlike the last, a lot more effort was sunk into making more graceful and presentable marks. They both began as witches (as did the previous character and as do most of the characters I draw). One remained a witch, who specialises in entomology, and the other transformed into a Cook.
Those were “low-commitment” characters, done with the intention of enjoying myself.
This is a small spot illustration of Alice getting lost in Lordran, and bumping into our favourite onion knight, Siegmeyer. Here I was trying to emulate the classic John Tenniel illustrative style for the original Through the Looking Glass/Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
“Mmm…mmm…
Mm! Oh-hoh!
Forgive me.. I was absorbed in thought.
I am Siegmeyer of Catarina
Quite honestly, I have run flat up against a wall.
Or, a gate, I should say. The thing just won’t budge.
No matter how long I wait. And, oh, have I waited!
So, here I sit, in quite a pickle.
Weighing my options, so to speak!
Hah hah hah hah!”
Gotta love those iconic Souls laughs.
Self-absorbed doodles.
A study on stylization.
Contemporary fashion studies.
In Between
Greetings folks.
This is a long overdue post. Summer has been somewhat of a roller-coaster. I had the pleasure of doing a mentorship with the amazing Sean Yang, it was very informative and I’m proud of the work I did, Sean’s guidance was a welcome help. The only catch is that most of that work is still somehow unfinished. I’ve re-enrolled at Emily Carr University and between being a student and working nearly full time as a supervisor at Starbucks, I don’t feel like I have the emotional and mental energy required to give those pieces the proper finish they deserve. I hope an opportunity to bring them to completion will arise soon.
What I CAN show from the mentorship are these 3 concept pieces. Gallie and Ligart are our main characters in this little adventure down the southern parts of the Lokrus continent. Ligart is a herpetologist professor and is looking to do field research. Gallie is hired as a guide and protector to accompany the professor in the journey. They meet up in Nereus, and head south into the woods.
The snake-resembling rocks is part of the multitude of weird things they find along the way.
Next up are some sketches/illustrations. I’ve been trying to convey more character and narrative trough my work. While I feel like most of them still miss the mark, it has been a lot of fun to explore those aspects deeper.
I’d like to give credit where it due here. I’ve been braving trough this territory using a few artists as guides, goals and inspiration. Kim Jung Gi, Saskia Gutekunst and Pietro Antognioni are their names, and you should definitely make yourself familiar with their amazing work, not only for their sheer drawing power and technique, but for how much story and personality is imbued in each and every drawing they produce.
This is one that I consider to be a bit more successful than some of the others. A low class kid, tired from the day, falls asleep while trying to replace their broken toe.
This one was extremely personal. My best companion past away recently and I wanted to make a memoir to the time we spent together. I’m afraid that due to under-planning, the drawing ended up being more about the room than him. Still working on how to make emotionally meaningful work for myself. It doesn’t come as easy as I thought it would.
A take on Baba Yaga.
Witches dress up for Halloween as Morrigan and Wednesday.
At some point I was experiencing skate culture vicariously through instagram and this is a byproduct of that. I feel like I’m missing the mark a bit with the character development/storytelling as these witches aren’t half as tenacious as the real-world females who habit these extremely masculine environments. Nothing but respect for them.
A 1 page comic about that one time my father “accidentally” registered me in the wrong program that was a 5 hour drive from home, rather then the one he taught, a mere 20 minute walk away.
Sketches of your favourite DPS-pretending-to-tank hero.
I’ve been drawing a LOT of witches lately.
Sketches of friends
A Pelican-Jug
Those are “hot-seat-collabs”. Collaborations were we switch seats every 10-20 minutes. Farily fast paced, loads of fun, and so far yielding nice results.
First one done with Brendan and Amanda
These three were done with Gleisson Cipriano
Miscellaneous studies
Obstacles
Hello!
With somewhat of a concise portfolio put together, the time has come to send it out. So far it’s been unfruitful. Dozens and dozens of emails sent, but only a couple return, with no more than a “we aren’t looking for anybody right now” for an answer. There isn’t much else to do but keep trying until something happens. I am convinced that the struggles now will only make the rewards taste better.
Here is another piece for the Lokrus project. Blind Mawd and her companion guide go looking for mushrooms and tubers. A noise diverges their attention from the ground, and forces them to look in the distance, scanning for threats.
I hope that the scene clearly communicates their relation. Mawd can only see through the companions eyes, and so she trusts them fully.
I explored a lot with the Mixer Brush tool during the execution of this piece. the way it behaves is very interesting and can be of great aid in creating visual noise in a very deliberate and controlled way. I’m still at the baby stages of learning how to use it, but I’m already convinced of its usefulness.
I just got past these guys for the first time the other day. (insert slowpoke joke here)
I now regret killing Super Ornstein rather than Super Smough.
The more I look at Smough the more I love his design. Dark Souls has a lot of direct and indirect influence from Berserk, but for me Smough seems like he was designed by Miura himself. Something about his size,weapon, blooby shapes, multiples eyes and ambiguous faces just hits the right spot.
This was a little sketch from I Am a Hero by Hanazawa Kengo
The comic is a good twist on a common genre done incredibly well, with some extremely relatable, interesting and consistent characters.
There is a live adaptation coming out soon that has me very excited.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK-Z1vas_9g
A couple explorations of texture. I’m still not sure how to apply it to anything in a effective manner, but it will come to me soon.
A character for an art test that got denied.
Some hands to warm up.
And more Lokrus characters.
Rising
Hello there!
I thought this post, and therefore this blog, should contain words rather than just pictures.
-Alyth
It was super interesting doing the research for this character. Learning about Mongolian archers and their recurved bows was a blast. It’s such a refined technology, but at the same time completely hand-crafted. It uses only trees and animal parts to produce an incredible precise and complex machine that is capable of storing and releasing high amounts of energy. Watching those guys work on those bows makes my own dedication and precision towards art seem mediocre at best.
I am happy with how Alyth’s suit and bow came along. I just really wish I could see her in action and really feel how strong willed and aggressive she can be.
Here is a map for the Lokrus campaign. I spend a good amount of effort to make the geography of the world resembling the Ouroboros represented on the projects logo. The idea isn’t for the viewer(you) to glance at the map and make the connection with the logo, but rather that the inhabitants of Lokrus saw the Ouroborous reflected in these shapes. The people from Lokrus take the Ouroboros as their all encompassing god who is not only the creator, but the world itself.
Here are some previously drawn characters, now placed within character sheets, with their individual statuses, levels, classes and tendencies.
I’ve been toying around with recording my process. Way back in the day, when I was but an impressionable little boy of about 15 years old, I came across “speed painting” videos on youtube. They were really just sped up videos of people painting things in photoshop, nothing exceptional in hindsight, but they had a huge impact on me at the time. I guess that this is sort of me reaching back, hoping that I can somehow impress that 15 year old kid again.
These were some quick explorations in an attempt to better understand how to utilize shapes in my favour when creating characters.
To end things on a good note, here is a humoured portrait of me, doing what I love.
Thanks for looking! I hope you enjoyed it!
If you want to chat about anything, just send me an email at pedroamato93@gmail.com
See you next time!
-Pedro
