The Marauder Cave Concepts

At this stage I felt we were lacking environment concepts, so I decided to produce something fast and loose for the presentation. I originally began produces a Son's of Iron lair, going on with a loose black and white thumbnail, without much direction:

As you can see I included religious iconography, but the overall surroundings felt too much like an enclosed cave. I thought that with the Marauders being the rouge outlaws of the world, drawing some influence from the pirate theme, I thought that they could perhaps burrow into caves and have hidden lairs. I laid down some phototextures:

Similarly to previous Resistance tank piece, I colour dropped the values and began painting over the photos, allowing texture to subtly bleed through:

With the forms now taking shape, I began to introduce atmospheric elements such as lighting to give a greater sense of volume and depth:

I finished the piece by rendering out key areas, such as the torch lit Marauder lair itself, and added in a Mech to give a loose sense of scale (Considering the approximately 18 foot Mech of the last piece):

As we already had a Resistance Mech concept prepared for the presentation, and Adam was making headway with SOI Mech designs, I wanted to take this cave concept and create another production piece for a Marauders Mech. I used the above as a photo plate, duplicating areas of it, rotating and distorting them and bringing in more photo textures from online searches in a technique commonly referred to as 'photobashing.' Although this term seems derogatory, it is a legitimate technique used in the industry, and it pose its own challenges. Concept artist Titus Lunter popularly uses this technique to produce stunning artwork, and he discussed it in a recent live stream 'Level-Up' session: link.

I added lineart to place the Mech in the scene. I felt however, that the mech took up too much of the scene, so I scaled it down and added more detail to the background:

Next I began to colour the lineart. I chose bright saturated colours to draw focus to the Mech, going with mainly bold uncoordinated primaries, to give the sense that the Mech is made from collected scrap:

Finally, I would like to talk about the design of the mech. I had the idea of working to the pirate theme by giving my design a peg leg. I included lots of string and tape, thinking back to something Tim said along the lines of the Marauder Mechs looking like they shouldn't really work but somehow do. The central piece is the Jukebox. Although we are working around the 20s era, we are bringing in broader influences spanning up to the 1950s. This gives us greater stylistic advantages, and is justified by the idea of a technological boom taking place that pushes forward both science and potentially culture:

I feel this works quite well as an early initially concept, but reflecting on it, perhaps the values could be a bit tidier. The contrast levels between the Mech and human in shot are similar, meaning they appear to be on a similar plane. The Mech would look further away, thus upping the scale of the environment as a whole if I knocked back the values a little, creating the illusion of mist distortion. After a discussion with one of my tutors, I am beginning to consider presenting my work in an art book. If I choose to do this, I will go back and adjust any included images to a printable standard.