Fantasy art

I have always been a fan of fantasy artwork. I think it comes from my love for horror/ Sci Fi movies. As a kid I usually lived my life in my head. Growing up as a kid in a small town in Alaska provided that opportunity to really explore the realm of Dream. The Alaskan landscape was surreal to me as a kid, with it breath-taking landscapes, crystal blue mountains ominously looming over the ocean peninsulas, and its dank and feral forests. I remember being afraid as a kid at the giant boulders that would be strangely placed around the Kenai Peninsula. They were at least 8 ft tall boulders. I was nearly certain there were secret tunnels or civilizations lurking under the boulders, hording the secrets of the world, or harboring some horrid monster from ancient times.

As I got older I started drawing more and more to expand the world in my head. The characters, the environments, the situations. As my talent grew I began to dive deeper into the strange and fantastic, I began reading fantasy books like H.P. Lovecraft's "Dreams of Terror and Death". That book opened a whole new world of esoteric adventures for me to explore. Thus, feeding my ever-growing imagination and pushing me to dive ever deeper into the abyss of artistic inspiration.

I recently got the chance to start working on a trading card game art. The topic of which they gave me was a fantasy character within a specific environment that they wanted. I created a practice piece that I instantly fell in love with. I loved the idea that they gave me a fantasy piece. I usually do more horror orientated work, so this was a good change for me to broaden my horizons in the genre. I have done a few fantasy illustrations in the past, but none that I can truly say that I really enjoyed. Or enjoyed enough to complete. However, I have found that certain tranquility in working on this fantasy piece that I have recently made ready to start coloring. Which will be another blog for a later date. Some artists that inspired me on doing this are Keith Thompson, Wayne Barlowe, Boris Vallejo, Frank Frazetta, et al. But, I got the most inspiration, believe it or not, from the early Nintendo game Rygar. Remember the floating castle at the end? That, and my experiences with Alaskan scenery made for an interesting environmental layout for my fantasy character.

I am really enjoying breaking out of my comfortable art style to create better and more interesting work. Not only does it improve my technical skill as a digital illustrator but improves my overall skills as an emerging professional artist. I hope you enjoy this blog and the artwork that follows it. Thanks for reading.

Dwarf Warrior progression

Here is a digital painting that I am working on in my free time. Its a work in progress. I am getting the work flow down going from basic silhouettes, to blocked gray scale, to finer gray scale. I am not sure about he compostition, comp gives me a lot of trouble it seems, and the overall mood of the piece.
I usually start with a bit of research, looking at a ton of artists and what they contribute to the industry. Artists like Kevin Yanner, Daarken, Francis Tsai, Fang Zhu, Boris Vallejo, and others. I will also study different types of action poses or in this case, Dwarf poses. Then I would move on to different armor types, and there is a large amount of references online that I have found on different armor. I tend to drift more toward the medieval side of armor, or I will tend to go more ancient in some cases, like Hallstatt Celts type armor. But with this piece I chose medieval. At first I wanted to use a large stone hammer for the dwarf, but it seemed to lack pizazz. So I ended up replacing it with a large cross bow.  I plan on using some Germanic style or Gothic style of artwork to ordain the weaponry and the armor. The ornamentation will reflect the time frame of the armor. The dwarf looks like a hunter type with the cross bow, so I decided to have an ogre or something large peppered with cross bow arrows to show the savageness of the dwarf. A mighty hunter of ogres. It seems to work. With the background I chose a single perspective in the forest. A hunter usually hunts in the forest, and a good place to find ogres I am told. So, I put them in a small clearing of sorts in front of forest trees. I put a fin on top of the dwarfs head like a roman soldier or something, it kind of looks interesting, but I think its conflicting with the rest of the armor. Anyway, here it is. Painted in Photoshop, and took about 9 hours so far.

Welcome!

Welcome to the first blog by yours truly, Ron Root. I am an artist exploring the digital medium of 2D and 3D design for games, film, or comics.

I began with character design early in my career. I was drawing comics in the 6th grade with a friend from down the street. Typical, eh? Just a couple of bros making up characters for the comics we were about to create. I really enjoyed characters that had some sort of edgy mask at the time. When I was in the 6th grade it was the hockey mask of Jason from Friday the 13th. Or, from Eastman's Ninja Turtles story KC Jones. The rugged brawny badass that has been hell and is looking to get back in by means of armored assault with heavy weaponry. There needs to be more characters like this in stories and art today. I will start by bringing characters that I have found in history that could use some light, to some biographic character of some seriously sadistic SOB's that I have known and written about, to story-worthy art. I am new to this blogging thing but I want to explore some processes or creativity as we transverse the realm of Digital Painting for Character Design.

Thanks for reading, and stay creative!