Crow Hags

Trying to get back into the habit of illustration again, I'm going to try start with a new sketch every few weeks. Just for fun I'm going to spit out a few fantasy concepts that have been rattling around for a while.

When you hear a particularly nasty crow cawing, I just love the purity of the expression, even if it's the sound of something repugnant. One of our new neighbours calls across the street to her dog in what sounds to me like a similar sound, so why not bring both ideas together and create a cackling hag? For the sake of redesigning a classic fairytale trope, why not make three together? For variety I made their profiles exaggeratingly different.  I wanted every aspect of theirs to be gnarled, decaying, tangled, torn and messy.

The bottom left was the first iteration, I like the idea of semi-beast-like people who scrounge in the didrt for herbs and have tanlged branches in their hair. Each of them uses a shawl differently as an element of the elderly. There's something unsusual about an elderly person's nakedness, so I felt the partial clothing might emphasise that. Of the walking canes I had a last idea to make the heaviest roam ponderously on imporssibly tiny canes, feet dangling even.

More to come soon!

Flyerbay

I developed a set of branding guidelines for Flyerbay, a local web service in the works which filters many relevant promotional sales into an easy-to-use system.

Savage Priest of Rheorek

Inspiration can strike anytime, anywhere. I pride myself on my ability to be able to sit down, and with the right music, invoke its power on command. Many times though it feels like a spark from particular items. This was an idea inspired by the growling vocals of Psycroptic which reminded me of a rabid dog growling in tongues. But what's gnarlier than a snapping hound foaming at the mouth? Foaming at two mouths! Some kind of double-reflexive jaw spitting out curses could make for a pretty cool cultist.

Xotl, Inter-dimensional Sentient Hypercube

Another Pantheon of Fiends addition, Xotl is the corporeal manifestation of a piece of alien technology so hyperintelligent, it synthesized DNA to grow itself a biological body from it's cube form (Centre Chest). The idea was originally inspired from some kind of creature with only a brain for a head, overemphasizing the supporting tissues like the sternocleidomastoid to give it a unique silhouette for all that psychic brainpower. Its conception was found in bands like Fallujah and Rings of Saturn

Blood Suckers!

If I had all the time in the world, I would revisit every trope you can think of in storytelling, and challenge the conventions to try to re-envision it in a way you hadn't thought of before. I know it because it's the feeling I chase when I see something extraordinarily cool in a movie or game and think "damn that's clever, why didn't I think of that???" This is one such idea for a vampire as a withered husk, intending to gorge on blood like a mosquito. I'd really like to paint it up sometime, so show off the translucency of the heart bulging with blood, like the mosquito's thorax.

Endless Teeth

"Dont' let the bastards grind you down." This is a quick and dirty render of a creature I couldn't stop developing. I wanted to play with the idea of some kind of inexorable abomination that's all gnashing teeth at every angle. The pinkish appearance is meant to look kind of like he's made of gnobbly gums all over, and inflamed around the gnarly molars used as clubs. For extra effect, his inner torso should look like a fleshy tongue to savour his unlucky victims. Even with all the added accents, I can't help but feel it could use more character/details. Or maybe I've just been staring at it too long...Anyways, The whole idea was inspired by an album by "The Red Cord" called "Fed Through the Teeth Machine."

Pantheon of Fiends

Sample Album Cover

Full Illustration

The gods of metal are innumerably vast. This is first in a series exploring different character ideas based on the metal sub-genre that inspires it. I want to design each around a single word concept, summarized in the type of 'crown' interpretation each may have. AzerezA is inspired by Technical Death Metal, from bands like Origin, Psycroptic,  Beyond Creation, Fallujah and Gorod. A palindrome name, is representative of omniperception. He bears a crown of eyes, and peers into infinity using the Prism of the Faultless and Trisceptre. I wanted to push an imposing stature for one-who-knows-all-and-sees-all, so it took a bit of rework to try get it right after the first draft.

If you have the guts to see its inception, take a look HERE