As I suspected the environment stuff took a bit of time, it is not a strength, definitely something to work on a lot more. Here's the stuff I have done so far.

First thing was a study from a photo, I chose something with a human structure set against nature so it had some challenge with perspective but wasn't too hard. Biggest thing I've struggled with is picking the right colours, not got a great eye for it, I made a brush for the trees in the far distance that kind of works but I think there's better options probably. Perspective is also a bit wanged but it works mostly imo. Other thing I've struggled with for the environment work I've done is the time it takes, I think I'm slow in general when it comes to drawing (mostly because I split my attention because staying focused on just one thing for long periods of time is hard but also just cos I'm slow) but these seem to take much longer than normal. It might just feel that way though as I don't enjoy environment work as much.

Photo:

Study:

Next thing was the environment that could be from my personal project. I saw that the 3D software block out would be infinitely helpful in all manner of future things I want to do but I cannot express in words how much I disliked the experience of trying to use Zbrush in the Term where that was a thing. So I decided to try Blender and it honestly was so much simpler and functional (from a UX perspective at least) I was relieved. I did the Blender Guru Donut course on YouTube, very easy to follow and familiarised me with all the basic features that I'd need for my purposes, would recommend it if you too, despise ZBrush and want an alternative (that also costs nothing).
So here's the end result of that class, Donuts:

That's much tinier than I expected (blender doesn't do gif files so I had to use a converter which seems to have miniaturized it). Oh well, you get the idea.

Now I was feeling like I could actually make use of the software to block out an environment I did some very rough sketch work to figure out what shapes I would need.

Housing types:

Housing_concept sketches.png3840x2160 2.36 MB

Honestly probably should have spent longer on these but I must have done it towards the end of the day and just said fuck it. Next thing I needed was some vegetation, did a bunch of different silhouettes and painted over them, liked a lot of them, didn't end up using all of them though.

plants.png3840x2160 2.11 MB

Next I did the block out in Blender, played around with a few different things, probably did too much in with materials but I was enjoying playing with all the new toys so it is what it is:

Decided the red rock texture was too much so I removed it and worked off this instead. Adjusted a few other things too like the sand texture and the rock platform the town was built on.

So working off that I added a bunch of stuff. Don't love how it came out in the end and definitely lost interest at the final hurdles and just rushed it over the line to be done. All that being said however, this is easily the best environmental piece I've done that's not just a forest or a field or something. If I was starting again I'd probably choose some different shapes, cones weren't a great choice but I was initially thinking tents and then pivoted to a sort of molded clay house sort of thing. Would probably also choose a different view for the camera, something a bit more interesting that could lend itself to a more engaging scene but whats done is done, overall I'm happy I learnt a lot from the process and can do far more interesting and cool stuff in the future thanks to the effort I put in with this.

Final Piece:

Onto the next thing in the new year, think its the second personal project stuff which is good. Hoping I'll have finished all the classes before march but that might be a bit of a stretch

I've decided to completely restart the personal project stuff to use a story I'm more interested in. The one I made up specifically for the course was fine but if I'm going to put this much work into something I'd rather it was something I have plans for so I decided to use the project to work on what can either become part of an Animation Bible or the basic concepting work for a comic for a story I want to do.

Broad strokes is that world consumed by a massive storm causing an Ice Age, only place humanity can survive is a city that sits on the edge of a rift to Hell. Rift to hell means lots of monsters roaming about so mages have made a safe little bubble at the centre of the city but there's not enough room for everyone and the story is about the people on the outside of that bubble. Gives me the opportunity to do characters and weird horrible monsters which are the main things I like to draw.

The last few weeks I've done 4 character concepts for central characters (3 from one group and a bad guy) and also I used the Matte Painting class to try make rough concept for the world but I'm not too happy with how it came out. Much harder than I thought it would be (and I didn't think it would be easy) but it combines two things I don't love, environment painting and using photoshop functions that aren't just the brushes. Its a weird one because I can see its use and its a very cool skill that I'd like to develop however it also seems like the exact skill that AI Image Generators were created to replace. Either way I'd like to keep working on it a bit but its not much of a priority for me atm.

Matte Painting

I started to do a bit of detailing work on the buildings but I just lost interest, I painted the character roughly in about 20 mins and called it done after that. I didn't think more detail on the buildings was going add much, it was going to take for ever and I'd already spent much longer on it than I really wanted to too. Not really interested in a realistic style for the project stuff and in terms of what the city actually looks like, I'm just gonna build it as a greybox thing in Blender I reckon. That way if I want to figure out angles and perspective for shots or anything I can just zoom in and screenshot, plus will allow me to keep some consistency in the skyline. That's for later though, for now I'm just focused on characters and to a lesser extent props

Characters:
Main group I've focused on the last few weeks are the monster hunters in the world.

I'm probably going to adjust something on the right hand drawing, don't know if its because of the angle but there's something off between the two views that I need to adjust but I've not quite figured it out yet.

Kade Concept.png3840x2160 1.3 MB

Happier with this one, more consistent.

Amelie Concept.png3840x2160 1.41 MB

This guy is supposed to be massive, doesn't quite come across without other characters for context but still.

Ruben.png3840x2160 1.8 MB

Beau Grandier (Killer).png3840x2160 1.5 MB

Last one is my bad guy. The Hunter characters are responsible for taking down monsters and killers in the city, this guy is running around using monsters to kill people somehow. The Masks to the right he uses to hide who he is and be a bit scarier. I will probably change his colour scheme and outfit at some point but I was more interested in figuring out the Masks. Happy with all them except maybe the snake one, might need a bit of additional work.

Next few weeks I'm probably going to work on a few different monsters, I'm basing them mostly on medieval demon descriptions and stuff from things like the Key of Solomon and the dictionnaire infernal. Some of them are very blatantly Christianity demonising other cultures gods (and in some places people) so I'm going to avoid those and mix in some that I make up myself. Did a rough one a little while ago, I'll probably adjust it to be a little more monstrous when I redo it though cos its not quite as freaky as I'd like it to be.

Not sure what the purple stuff is suppose to be, forgot I put it in there tbh, but yeah, that's the only monster I have put any work into so far. It was actually drawing this that made up my mind to ditch the other story as I had more fun drawing this than I had with any of the stuff from the other version of the project because I knew what I wanted to do with it and where it fit in.

Did a piece based off some of those characters and the monster, also designed a few other monsters but I'm not happy with those so I'm restarting them kind of. I started with the background on this one first just to try a different work flow as the background stuff is the stuff I enjoy the least. Not sure it worked for me so I might need to try something different. The piece its self didn't really come out how I wanted it too, was aiming originally for kid of a wide shot that showed an abandoned office space in a crumbling sky scraper with the monster visible in the sky in the background and a character noticing and just sort of in that half surprised half preparing to leap into action pose. Really struggled to make the view point seem wide enough, initially because I was trying to show the side walls to the room, which just made it feel like a small box, took those out and it helped but I still think it was too zoomed in for what I wanted so I pivoted a bit and made it an action shot with two characters. Made some changes to the monster design, don't think they were the right choice as I think the original was a bit freakier so I'll think about adjusting that in the future. Also think I want to adjust the character designs a bit on the main characters, I was originally going for a uniform for them all to wear but I think I need to make them a bit more individualistic, so they have similar design feature but maybe different colour schemes and patterns. Was worth doing this but I think I'll end up redoing it to some extent later. I tried a different layout with it more zoomed in, kind of worked but was playing with it too late to really make a difference, also tried adding in some extra arms on the monster, which I liked in that they made it more creepy looking but I don't think they really work, certainly not anatomically. This is the 3 versions I have:
Extra arms version:

Malphas Fight extra arms.jpg5765x2647 1.66 MB

Wide Shot version

Malphas Fight.jpg5765x2647 1.64 MB

zoomed shot version:

Malphas Fight close.jpg5765x2647 1.71 MB

This is another monster I was working on, knocked these out pretty quick so they're kind of rough, story calls for a few different life stages of it so I've got four versions with increasing size. Smallest would be sort of anywhere from normal spider size to a large rat, second sort of cat sized to large dog, third would be something in the range of waist high to human sized and the last one would be in the realms of a bus or a train. Need to change the colour scheme, bit too bright for what I'm going for and also I don't like the final one, I think the 3rd version is the scariest and I need them to get scarier the bigger they get, the 4th one is just a bit goofy looking imo and over all they're just a bit too cartoony, I draw in a very comic/cartoony style but these are the wrong side of the line for what I'm going for and I think that's partially the colour scheme and a consequence of trying to do it quicker.

Arachsis juvenille.png3840x2160 2.47 MB

So yeah thats what I've been doing the last couple of weeks.