Chaosforge Forum

DoomRL => Discussion => Topic started by: Xander Morhaime on August 29, 2009, 13:08

Title: Illustrations of Doom
Post by: Xander Morhaime on August 29, 2009, 13:08
A brief history lesson first:

Some time ago, Fantasy Flight Games released a boardgame version of Doom. Among other things, this game allowed for special abilities for the Marine players to beef them up a bit before their inevitable death (seriously, we've never won a game as long as we've played.) This of course gave rise to certain "classes" of Marines, specializing for example in laying down suppressing fire with rifles or chainguns, taking hits or busting Hell Knights' faces in with their bare fists.

Enter my imagination.

I got the idea to illustrate some of these classes in action. After asking for volunteers to be pictured on another forum, I set about the task, and completed, if memory serves, 10 images all told. Some better, some worse... eh.

Point of the story: this being a Doom-oriented board, was wondering if there'd be any objection to me showing those off here as well. The catch, though... well, I used furry characters (anthropomorphic/humanoid animals) rather than humans. It's just how I work. So if someone's allergic to a marine with a fox's head or raptors with chainsaws, just say it and I'll speak no more of this matter.

Discuss?
Title: Re: Illustrations of Doom
Post by: Generic on August 29, 2009, 13:31
Quote from: Xander Morhaime on August 29, 2009, 13:08
or raptors with chainsaws
(http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/2149/qwantzchainsaw.png)
:P
Title: Re: Illustrations of Doom
Post by: Dervis on August 29, 2009, 15:13
:P
Title: Re: Illustrations of Doom
Post by: Frankosity on August 29, 2009, 15:32
oh hell no
Title: Re: Illustrations of Doom
Post by: Vestin on August 29, 2009, 20:10
(http://lh4.ggpht.com/_5p5W_e_FNGA/SpnffkT48qI/AAAAAAAABzY/A-KVU-wC4Fk/FF.png)
Title: Re: Illustrations of Doom
Post by: Xander Morhaime on August 29, 2009, 20:13
I'll take that as a "No" then. Fair enough.
Title: Re: Illustrations of Doom
Post by: Vestin on August 29, 2009, 21:43
Quote from: Xander Morhaime on August 29, 2009, 20:13
I'll take that as a "No" then. Fair enough.
Nah - I guess we're simply trying to be funny ;).

Then again - you kinda set yourself up by getting into detail about the utter badassness of it all... and then, all of a sudden, mentioning that it was all furry. While I know that it's possible to draw mean furries, you have to admit that they mostly come to mind as cute and cuddly; definitely not marine material.

That said, as long as they're nicely drawn, I'd be curious to see them...
Title: Re: Illustrations of Doom
Post by: Aki on August 29, 2009, 23:04
Spoiler that anthro shit if you do post it. Anthro is Baaaaaaaaaaaad for you mayn, Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad.
Title: Re: Illustrations of Doom
Post by: Xander Morhaime on August 30, 2009, 08:21
Quote from: Vestin on August 29, 2009, 21:43
While I know that it's possible to draw mean furries, you have to admit that they mostly come to mind as cute and cuddly; definitely not marine material.

That said, as long as they're nicely drawn, I'd be curious to see them...

They seem less cute dressed in combat armour and pointing a pair of plasma rifles your way...
Anyways... I'm not a professional artist by any stretch, but I'm past drawing just stick figures too. Just don't set your expectations too high. :P

I'll post the first few as soon as I've got them hosted on a suitable photobucket or other.
Title: Re: Illustrations of Doom
Post by: Vestin on August 30, 2009, 08:36
Quote from: Xander Morhaime on August 30, 2009, 08:21
I'll post the first few as soon as I've got them hosted on a suitable photobucket or other.
How about deviantART ;) ?
Title: Re: Illustrations of Doom
Post by: Kornel Kisielewicz on August 30, 2009, 09:04
Xander, post some of your samples anyway, ChaosForge needs artists!
Title: Re: Illustrations of Doom
Post by: Floyd on August 30, 2009, 13:25
Aye, post them anyway. I want to see them too, furry or no furry.
Title: Re: Illustrations of Doom
Post by: Xander Morhaime on August 30, 2009, 15:02
(DA? I'd rather floss with barbed wire, to tell the truth.)

A'ight, well... you asked for it, then. Posted in roughly the same order as they were made. Should be work safe for the most part, but just to be on the safe side, /spoiler'd for your comfort.

First up, the "Sarge" class. Yelling at your team-mates to motivate them and kicking ten kinds of crap out of anything that gets too close, with bare hands if necessary.
You generally don't argue with people who shove imps' heads into monitors on a daily basis.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Scouts weave past enemies and make a run for whatever seems the best place at the moment. And firepower is all well and nice, but sometimes you just have to know when to run like hell.
Such as when you've used up all your ammo save one grenade on that demon and there's zombies closing in.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Medics, oddly enough, don't see much use in the game. I guess medkits just work better, even if their availability is somewhat... limited.
It could just be because the medbays where they keep the healing supplies are almost always crawling with zombies, though.
And you can never really tell if that corpse is an honest corpse, or a zombie just waiting to munch on you...
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Some guys have skills. Others just get lucky and manage to get a hold on the BFG before anyone else.
But then, with something like that in your hands, you don't need much else in the way of skills.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

One shot, one kill... oh, if only the demons really did go down that easy.
And you hardly ever see the distances where your marksmanship can really shine.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

There's times for skulking about, and then there's times to just let loose with all the high-powered weapons at hand.
Now don't you wish you could use other weapons than just pistols in pairs?
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

"Some people think they can outsmart me... Maybe. Maybe. *snf* I've yet to meet one who can outsmart bullet."
Ahh, the gunner class. My favourite. An infinite supply of bullets, and all you need to be happy is a chaingun.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

There's the marines who kick in the door and charge in, weapons blazing. Then there's the stalker, crawling through ventways, coming up behind enemies, and...
SNEAK ATTACK!
...now don't you wish you could do something like that to arch-viles?
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Raptor. Chainsaw. 'Nuff said.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Title: Re: Illustrations of Doom
Post by: Kornel Kisielewicz on August 30, 2009, 15:31
The shapes are really nice... but the COLORING??? Looks like some artist drew black and white shapes and gave them to color to a slightly talented child :>

No seriously -- gimme a sketch version of that and I'll color it for you :>

Apart from that -- cool! Gives me ideas for DoomRL classes :>
Title: Re: Illustrations of Doom
Post by: Xander Morhaime on August 30, 2009, 15:36
I did warn not to set expectations too high.

The materials at my disposal are good for some things, not so good for others...

Sketches, now... I ought to have a few of them still kicking around, if you really want to take a shot at it.
Title: Re: Illustrations of Doom
Post by: Frankosity on August 30, 2009, 16:34
aaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-
Title: Re: Illustrations of Doom
Post by: Xander Morhaime on August 30, 2009, 16:38
Oh, come off it, they're not *THAT* bad.
Title: Re: Illustrations of Doom
Post by: Dervis on August 30, 2009, 16:42
Well, I'm not much of a furry fan but i can say you've got some creativity and an eye for detail.
The crayons make the drawings too heavy and the texture isn't exactly pleasing. I don't know what other materials you can draw with, but if you're only starting try getting 'oil pastel' aka 'wax oil crayon', they'll be more difficult to use but a lot more fun (and not expensive).

P.S. - If you want more specific critics, I can turn evil mode on.
P.S. 2 - Your age?
Title: Re: Illustrations of Doom
Post by: Xander Morhaime on August 30, 2009, 16:55
In my defence, while what little art education I received covered getting the shapes right pretty well, it said bugger all about using colouring methods that actually scanned well. Oil paints do not lend themselves to an A4 format. So I'm learning this as I go...

@PS. Eh, sure, go evil. I'll just take any frustrations out on my player group if I have to.
@PS2 24
Title: Re: Illustrations of Doom
Post by: Dervis on August 30, 2009, 18:37
Sarge - Keep the focus on the important subjects. Accomplish this by using less detail and weaker colours on background stuff. The 3 tubes coming out of the TV thing are ruining the drawing for example. The background would be much better without such a strong red. Small mistakes in proportions (hands for example).

Scout - You need to learn basic perspective. Also the demon on the ground looks like it's made out of cloth: use color to give shapes to objects rather than an uniform colour and pencil tracing to set a difference. Zombie left arm. Far away zombie should be smaller unless it's a 8ft zombie.

Medic - Again terrible use of perspective, noticeable whenever you have to draw anything with parallel lines. You made a mistake with the armour / legs and it just makes the whole drawing look strange. I liked what you did on the floor / background on this one. Still you didn't need so much detail on the top wall.

BFG - Argh... So much color. Torso seems too broad again. Weapon looks like it's made of plastic except the small donut.

Marksman - Skeletons are really hard to draw, I know. It is okish to be honest. Severe flaws in perspective again. Again ARGH... color, eyes bleeding. Main character looks ok (except it's furry of course :P).

Badass - Well, he could have looked badass if not for the drastically disproportionate arms (and the fur of course). Color treatment has to be uniform throughout the drawing, otherwise leaves you with some places looking really well (eyes, gunfire, torso sides) but crap overall.

Chaingun dude - This one looks ok if we forget the choice of colours and the fact that the chaingun looks like a plastic toy (and the fur). Dead imps look really cool. Errors in perspective but not too bad.

SNEAK Attack - I really like the 'furry' on this one, well proportionate and looking to have a goal. The Vile has way too little detail considering he's on the center up-close. I expected to see little details like tendons, Imperfections, ketchup stains at this distance.

Raptor - Same as before, although the demon looks better than the Vile. You have a problem making weapons look badass but that's probably because you have trouble making stuff look like metal rather than plastic (using yellow doesn't help either).
Title: Re: Illustrations of Doom
Post by: Xander Morhaime on August 30, 2009, 19:03
You know, when you called it "evil mode," I kind of expected something more... scathing, I suppose.

All valid points, really, and I won't argue with most. Though with the pictures themselves are a bit... aged, being done between November 07 and April 08. So I'd like to think I've progressed at least a little bit since then.

As far as the plastic look goes... well, inspired by Doom 3, and it all looks plastic there. :P But, yeah... metal's a pain to colour well.
Title: Re: Illustrations of Doom
Post by: Kornel Kisielewicz on August 30, 2009, 19:16
I think that the shapes in the pictures don't get enough credit because of the horrible crayon coloring. I took a 5 minute break, and dropped the first one into photoshop.

Sure, the automatic conversion looses proper accents, and would benefit from handwork, but for just throwing a filter or two I still think it's a big step forward compared to the crayoness of the original.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

( if anyone wonders, those are two basic artistic filters in PS3 blended with a strong inversed photocopy filter using intesify color blending to accent the edges ).

Edit: And I must say, now I really enjoy this pic -- only with a pain about the badly done left arm -- makes me want to bring back that old sketch of DoomGirl I once drawn :)
Title: Re: Illustrations of Doom
Post by: Dervis on August 31, 2009, 05:14
Quote from: Xander Morhaime on August 30, 2009, 19:03
You know, when you called it "evil mode," I kind of expected something more... scathing, I suppose.

All valid points, really, and I won't argue with most. Though with the pictures themselves are a bit... aged, being done between November 07 and April 08. So I'd like to think I've progressed at least a little bit since then.

As far as the plastic look goes... well, inspired by Doom 3, and it all looks plastic there. :P But, yeah... metal's a pain to colour well.

I wouldn't just throw around criticism without being minimally constructive, otherwise I would just be being mean.

Metal isn't that hard to color, just use darker colors and really increase on the contrast, leave a trail of white/lighter color.
Title: Re: Illustrations of Doom
Post by: Melon on August 31, 2009, 05:40
Quote from: Xander Morhaime on August 30, 2009, 15:36
I did warn not to set expectations too high.

The materials at my disposal are good for some things, not so good for others...

Sketches, now... I ought to have a few of them still kicking around, if you really want to take a shot at it.

Xander, ideas are OK, but:
Get some book about the anathomy, it will help you draw a lot of stuff. Zombies for example have really, really unnatural arms (or to be more precise, location of the elbow). Sometimes you loose the perspective, that cat walking down the corridor really looks like he is 10 feet tall or that cat hanging from the ceiling trying to cut the troath open of a daemon.

Anyway, go in that direction, I cannot draw anything myself. Well, maybe the diagrams but that's all [; Just as I said, the ideas are cool.

Could you draw, but a human this time? For example our brave Doom Marine, lurking behind the corner, holding his gun in one hand and holding his other hand on the cut stomach?
Title: Re: Illustrations of Doom
Post by: Xander Morhaime on August 31, 2009, 08:46
Quote from: Melon on August 31, 2009, 05:40
Could you draw, but a human this time? For example our brave Doom Marine, lurking behind the corner, holding his gun in one hand and holding his other hand on the cut stomach?

I have other projects to work on at the moment. Maybe sometime in the future.