Gypsy Danger, Heretic Slayer

Detail Version

What happens when you combine deadly pinup art with the grim darkness of the far future? Only Warrior Women of course! My friend Paul Gheran had commissioned a unique patch design to complement his already fearsome combat gear for his airsoft team to rally behind. The objective was to take the format of the brutal femme fatale of the Gipsy Danger art from Pacific Rim and spin it with the hallmarks of a resolute Sister of Battle, to be rendered in a stitched patch.

Paul's enthusiasm for the 40k mythos impressed me at every angle of the project evolution, and I could only hope to capture that energy in the final version. Myself a plastic addict (though loyal to the traitor legions of course) it was a fun project to explore some of the gothic stylings of the imperial crusaders in vectored glory.

---

Alternative Colour Scheme

---

Initial Exploration

---

Crow Hags

Trying to get back into the habit of illustration again, I'm going to try start with a new sketch every few weeks. Just for fun I'm going to spit out a few fantasy concepts that have been rattling around for a while.

When you hear a particularly nasty crow cawing, I just love the purity of the expression, even if it's the sound of something repugnant. One of our new neighbours calls across the street to her dog in what sounds to me like a similar sound, so why not bring both ideas together and create a cackling hag? For the sake of redesigning a classic fairytale trope, why not make three together? For variety I made their profiles exaggeratingly different.  I wanted every aspect of theirs to be gnarled, decaying, tangled, torn and messy.

The bottom left was the first iteration, I like the idea of semi-beast-like people who scrounge in the didrt for herbs and have tanlged branches in their hair. Each of them uses a shawl differently as an element of the elderly. There's something unsusual about an elderly person's nakedness, so I felt the partial clothing might emphasise that. Of the walking canes I had a last idea to make the heaviest roam ponderously on imporssibly tiny canes, feet dangling even.

More to come soon!

Pantheon of Fiends

Sample Album Cover

Full Illustration

The gods of metal are innumerably vast. This is first in a series exploring different character ideas based on the metal sub-genre that inspires it. I want to design each around a single word concept, summarized in the type of 'crown' interpretation each may have. AzerezA is inspired by Technical Death Metal, from bands like Origin, Psycroptic,  Beyond Creation, Fallujah and Gorod. A palindrome name, is representative of omniperception. He bears a crown of eyes, and peers into infinity using the Prism of the Faultless and Trisceptre. I wanted to push an imposing stature for one-who-knows-all-and-sees-all, so it took a bit of rework to try get it right after the first draft.

If you have the guts to see its inception, take a look HERE

Neojac Work

Finished at Neojac, and here are some of the fruits of my labor there. It was a fantastic experience working with the dev team to see assets created start to finish. I learned a hell of a lot in a relatively small amount of time. I feel that much more prepared for anything the next company I work for can throw at me. I also learned valuable lessons in polish, refinement of concepts, a bit of how Maya works and a myriad of CS5 shortcuts to expedite my workflow. The remainder of my work can be seen on my newly redesigned website:  www.danmarkin.com