Some News and Some Mummies

I have been very, very lazy with my blog recently.

So much so that I haven’t even posted about some pretty big massive news about my new (umm what’s the word?) working situation?

Well, first off I’m not working at Jagex anymore.

No more Runescape, no more Friday Pub lunch with fellow Concept Artists and Art Director, no more amazing training days to London museums.

I had an amazingly good time at Jagex, and the people there are the best bunch I’ve ever worked with, I’ll truly miss a whole lot of them.

I know, people often say that when they leave a workplace, but I did leave some good friends behind, so it was quite tough to go away.

Good luck mates, I’m sure I’ll see some of you around (no really, this industry is ridiculously small, I met four ex-colleagues at the new job. I’m bound to work again with someone from Jagex at some point).

On the other hand, after more than four years on the same project and little more, I really needed a breath of fresh air, which is why I’m also very happy to work at Sumo now, on Little Big Planet.

I have just started, so it will be a long time before I will be able to post anything of what I’m doing here.

Plus, it’s also taking quite some time and effort to adapt to a completely new game, so well, don’t hold your breath for that.

Luckily, while clearing my machine the day I left, I found a whole bunch of Concepts I made for Runescape that I had neglected to share.

So it looks like I will have some material to post for the next few weeks (more about my recent laziness in my next post).

These three guys below are, as anyone can see, mummies.

 

 

 

I have no memory of where and when they were plugged into the game, if I remember correctly they were part of a big update, but for one reason or another they didn’t manage to go live for quite some time.

This is what one the old Mummies looked like, just so you know.

Modellers at Jagex did an amazing job translating the new mummies in 3D, but what made me jump up and down with joy were the animations.

Unfortunately I can’t find anything on the internet to link. If you happen to come across the new mummies with their animations give me a shout.

That’s all I have for now, I’ll post some more Runescape stuff in the near future.

by Paolo Puggioni

Three Oracles

I painted these oracles over the course of a few lunch breaks.

They weren’t intended as oracles at the start, rather simple anatomy practice.

I had recently come across a massive folder, filled with anatomy reference, naked people in all sorts of positions. I can’t even remember when I saved the whole lot on my hard drive.

No, it was not my porn stash. These were naked people in respectable, artsy poses.

I thought “hey, it’s almost my lunch break, this is the Universe telling me something, I should probably practice some anatomy today”.
I started drawing the first naked woman (the one in the middle), but for some reason I was struggling with her eyes, so I left them blank for a while.

Because the best way to face a problem is to think about it later, right?

Long story short, I ended up liking her that way, and I thought “this could be a seer or something, which is pretty cool. But the main thing is that I’m done with that eyes issue”.
I gave her a weird head gear, because that’s how oracles roll.
I added some clothes, because I couldn’t think of any logical reason why a seer would walk the Earth wearing just a funny hat.

Still, I had already spent some bloody long time painting her entire body, and it would have been a pity to cover her up completely.
So I kept the half-undressed look (or half-dressed? Gosh, which is the optimistic view here?), somehow recalling iconic images of Sybils and ancient female oracles.

Just guessing. It’s not like I did any research on the matter this time.

I painted the women on either sides during a couple of other sessions, and then I went back over all of them adding ornaments and weird symbols to tie them together.
I think that helped them look more as part of “an Order”.

The Order of the Three Oracles, maybe?

Like, there always have to be three of them. The rite of passage consists in being blinded by a spitting snake or something like that.

Each one of them will give you just one part of a prophecy, but you never know whether it’s the beginning, the middle or the end.

Also, they have to be fit. That’s crucial.

Either way, here are some close ups.

What have we learned today?

Not much, probably.

Apart from “if you can’t be bothered to draw eyes on specific women, turn them into blind, attractive, half naked oracles”.

By Paolo Puggioni

Painting Black Skin, A Shaman

Painting black skin can be quite tricky, at least for me. Dark skin gets highlights in a completely different way from White or Asian, and can go all the way to white. It’s difficult to get it right.

I started this painting a couple of days ago, as nothing more than a doodle. I had just finished a freelance assignment, and after the incredible amount of refinement and detailing I had put in it, I just wanted to paint something just for fun, as loosely as possible.
So I randomly got a sketch from the series I posted a while ago and started to develop it a bit further.
Then I got stuck, I had just painted an Oompa-Loompa.

I started again, and managed to paint someone with an orange artificial fake-tan. I was getting close.

The third time I removed most of the reds and got the base colour almost right. After that, most of the work was done. By looking at reference pictures I noticed that dark skin bounces back a lot less light than white skin (duh!), apart from some areas around the eyebrows and nose, which are more reflective.
Painting the rest was just fun, and since I kept the layers I also exported a gif of the process.

I couldn’t help noticing that most of the creative part (the fun bit) is done in the first two-three frames, the rest is pretty much polishing.
I must ponder on that.

Towards the end – hey, all this took less than two hours, that’s unlike me – I felt the urge to think of a more creative name than “untitled1.psd”, and I just didn’t want to call him “Black Guy With a Fuchsia Headscarf”.
So I painted a few tacky ornaments on his head and there you go, a Shaman.

by Paolo Puggioni

The Lich – This Time With Colours

The Lich is the King of the undead world, no one argues about it. Where people’s opinion is split about the scariness of Slow Zombies vs. Fast Zombies (the latter being obviously the scariest), the Lich holds the position of the undisputed badass.
A Lich could bully around even a Vampire, and I’m not talking about frickin Edward, I’m talking about a real, old, pissed off Vampire.
A Lich could take on a Vampire any time, they’re that scary.

So, I meant to make some experiments colouring the pencil sketch I did a few days ago,then I thought than any colour other than blues would have made it too “merry”. So well, I went with a pretty classic palette. I hope I made it badass enough.

Also, since after all those years I dared to open the Animation Window in Photoshop, I put together all the WIPs in a practical Gif.
It moves!

Thanks to fellow redditor Pit107 for the idea.

by Paolo Puggioni

The Lich

“A fusion of our typical idea of Death, the Grim Reaper and Anubis” is the next item in my to-do list.
I don’t know when I’ll have the chance to work on it since there is an awesome freelance assignment I’m about to start. But a bit of research and some sketches are as good a way as any to spend a cold Sunday on this wind-swept island (\complaining about the weather).
The description fits that of the classic Lich, so that’s where I started my research from.

I discovered that pretty much every folklore has its own version of this powerful undead.
Where zombies, ghouls and wraiths tend to be mindless, savage creatures with little left of what made them alive, a Lich is always an individual who was already powerful during his life, who eventually managed to retain his powers and wits through some kind of dark magic.

Back when I used to play Dungeons & Dragons the Lich was the encounter that scared me the most. Not only because of his dreadfully high stats, but rather for the idea of this timeless creature animated by its own dark magic, forever basking in its own power surrounded by horrors it created itself.
You’re always an intruder in a Lich’s lair, like a scared mouse in an old, grumpy cat’s house.

One thing I always found a bit off-putting of the fantasy tradition concerning Liches is the fact that they always seem to like adorning themselves with tacky death metal paraphernalia.
Ok, they’re dead, (undead actually), and used to messing around with necromancy during life. But really, do they have to wear rings with skulls and stuff like that?

They already have an ugly face, and bones and sinews clearly visible under their mummified skin, aren’t other skulls hanging from their belt a bit redundant?
I’ll try and stay away at least from this kind of iconography.
I figure a Lich wouldn’t care about his appearance, so I’m ok for his clothes to be the run down version of the precious garments they must have worn in their former life.
No other frills though, why would he care?
However, in some lores a Lich wears a phylactery, an item of his choosing which he imbued with his power to achieve immortality.

In the following sketches I just focused on the armature of the drawing. That is, the bunch of main lines upon which the drawing will be built. I went for the stick figure bottom left because I liked how the lines forming his garments end up framing his head, and the lines of his arms lead to it.
The other drawings seemed a bit too hunched to me, and conveyed less the idea of a powerful guy. At least less than a bottom-up POV.
Ok, I know these scribbles aren’t pretty and might make sense only to me, but what the hell.

by Paolo Puggioni