Delivery for the Captain

Final painting.

Rough modeling in Modo. I don't always do this, especially if it's not a concept for a 3D modeler to build, but the original concept was wider and showed off more of the environment.

When I do color roughs, a lot of time I'll intentionally use a brush that doesn't have a hard edge so it's much harder to get caught up in tightening everything to a final finish. This helps me fight my natural inclination to "final" as I go.

For an illustration, I'll keep the environment sketch a bit looser, but I usually keep the characters pretty resolved since the expressions and poses are what really sell things. I usually resketch over the faces as I'm finishing up the final painting.

Just a couple character ideas. The final painting only shows her from the back, but a little personality and major shapes helps a lot for envisioning where things can go.

Personal project that started with a mysterious island that had been flooded leaving behind all sorts of sailing vessels that people end up converting into homes. I still like this idea and hopefully I'll get back to it again.

This was the color idea that really grabbed me. I felt like the island needed to be a little mysterious and spooky.

Going for a Miyazaki feel.

The sea captain. I was really inspired by souvenir shop wood carvings of sea captains. I tried to capture that hard edged blocky feeling in his shapes and wrinkles.

An old curmudgeon practicing a little sea magic.

A lot of times I'll do a really quick idea sketch so I have a good jumping off point if I ever get back to it.

I always figured Witches kept cats and Wizards kept owls to keep vermin from getting into the magical items because who knows what might happen when they consume them!

Foyer Detail - I wanted that first view of the sub interior to feel like you're entering a sea cave, with a cozy, inviting room just over the threshold.

Coming back to the idea of a buried submarine that has been converted to a home, I decided to mock this up in 3D since this would be a tight space and working out the perpectival limitation of a curved wall would be headache to figure out.

I ended up mocking up a sub that would be much larger than the original painting that inspired it would indicate, but I wanted it to be this hall of interconnected rooms so the story could always introduce an new room or floor.

Since a sub is ridiculously busy with pipes and panels, I removed a lot, as if the sub captain had no use for most of the tech now, but left a lot of the piping for water and power on the walls as well as key control panels.

I filled the space with DIY furniture. Trying to get it to feel homey and extensive, but like it's a whimsical self-made home.

Each major hull rib separates a "room" of the corridor. The entry tube is like the garage, then the kitchen/dining/tv room, then the office den.

I keep the ribs "on" to help me visually keep the sections separate when I'm sketching, but "off" so I can make sure that they flow one into the other as well.

I really pushed the supernatural in this one. I wanted a graveyard where the tombstones have reoriented to form a pathway to an ancient pyramid also formed by tombstones.

Color keys for the tombstone pyramid. I really wanted to maintain the saturation of the top right, but pulled back a little to get the space working a bit better. I wanted to pull back on the green a bit, but kept enough to add a supernatural feeling.