“Soar.” Digital Illustration. (c) 2014 Michael J. Barnes.
I present to you my latest piece that I have named Soar. This fantasy illustration depicts the successful flight of a man soaring through the sky in a wooden DaVinci-esque flying machine. A bit of a departure from my previous creatures and aliens. After my last work, I decided to scour through webpages, books and other publications to inspire me for my next illustration when I came upon DaVinci’s flying machine blueprint.
My intent here was to depict the flying machine, somewhat modernized for the Victoria Era, hence the clothing I drew onto the pilot. I know this is not an original idea, but this is my take on the whole “early” flight idea.
This flying machine and character in this illustration was sculpted in ZBrush and final production was completed in Photoshop.
This illustration, a well as my other illustrations, can be viewed in my Illustration Portfolio.
“Evening Stroll.” Digital Illustration. (c) 2014 Michael J. Barnes.
This is the second illustration for my series of “Candid Shots from around the Galaxy” (still just a working title). Here we see Eleanor and Edgar taking a casual stroll through the streets of their home town.
Both of the characters and their clothing were sculpted in ZBrush. The background image was created in SketchUp, then imported into Bryce for rendering. The final composite was produced in Photoshop.
his image Evening Stroll is the second illustration of the series and was inspired from a photo by photographer Daniel Arnold.
“Edgar.” (c) 2014 Michael J. Barnes.
“Edgar” here is my latest character sculpt. He’s another alien set to appear in an upcoming illustration. Created in ZBrush and composite produced in Photoshop.
“Eleanor.” Digital Character. (c) 2014 Michael J. Barnes.
So, this is Eleanor. My latest alien creation, just an average middle-age female. Eleanor will be a feature character in an upcoming illustration.
This character was digitally sculpted in ZBrsh, with the composite produced in Photoshop.
Wally and Beth. Digital Illustration (c) 2014 Michael J. Barnes. Click on picture to view larger image.
I was recently sent a link on Twitter for a photographer that specialized in taking candid photos on his smart phone. Apparently this link let to the photographers Instagram page where he had a vast collection of his work. I browsed through his work — which is, for the most part, very good — and became inspired. This inspiration had led me to create a set of illustration of Candid Shots from Around the Galaxy (this is just a working title, suggestion for a better title would be appreciated).
With this in mind, I have searched through many “candid” shots I’ve found and I will work up illustrations of humans and aliens doing “everyday” things.
This image Wally and Beth is the first illustration of the series and was inspired from a photo by photographer Daniel Arnold. The characters were created in ZBrush (as I have demonstrated in previous posts – Meet Wally and Sculpting Session: Female Alien Head) with the composite produced in Photoshop.
I hope you like it.
I am in the process of creating an illustration that includes two alien characters – “Wally,” who is displayed in the previous post, a male alien character. And a female alien who is featured in this video.
Sculpted in ZBrush, I begin with a pre-sculpted female human skull that I created. I like to begin by shaping the skull, then adding the major muscles, then fleshing her out, until I completed the final textured head (shown below). This sculpting session took about an hour. I decided to name this character “Beth.”
I envisioned these characters to be humanoid, with a very close resemblance to humans, but not quite. Wally and Beth, which is the working title of my in-progress illustration, needed characters to fit this description. I’m hoping to have the new illustration completed by early next week.
“Beth.” Digital Illustation. (c) 2014 Michael J. Barnes.