Sage Brush Creations

I was going through old sketchbooks and I found this one I'm honestly surprised hasn't disintegrated.

It was this little colored pencil drawing from middle school or high school on a stray piece of notebook paper -- the thing even had math work (that likely never got turned in) on the back.

ARTIST'S COMMENT

A collection of concept sketches that await the day I put together their finished illustration. But for now they are just some neat creatures I'm fond of.

INFORMATION

CATEGORY: Fantasy/ Concept Art SOFTWARE/TOOLS: .........Initial Sketch -- Pencil & Ink .........Digital Composite -- Clip Studio Paint

Moments in time are visited by an unknown force that alters lives and changes the flow of destiny. In the distant future humans have tried harnessing that power and new lives that go with it. But the hubris of man is known to be its own consequence. A band of non-humans escapes their bleak world into the modern past and bring the power they hold within with them, spinning fate anew.

For the sake of imagining Catseye has a sort of similar vibe to it as Cyber Six mixed with Tenchi Muyo and Code Lyoko.

It is very much meant to feel like a Saturday morning cartoon adventure story.

Its a story that's been waiting to be manifested since I was 12. Scraps of it are written and drawn in sketchbooks and on old schoolwork pages.

Its based around an idea I started playing around with when I was in my animation class in college.

The primary colors that tend to appear are a sort of dark tealy color, a murky pink, deep violet, and a pale lilac color with warmer colors mostly only appearing as accent colors.

I did find it interesting that true greens rarely ever get used in my paintings.

From its inception I had the idea that I wanted to go back and play with the slimelettes some more.

I knew I wanted to try a style shift for them in some way but retain their core elements of just being an adorable chaotic mess. So I went in search of reference and inspiration.

I ended up choosing a few inspirations to get the right vibe. Mostly kind of surreal of something that doesn't exist but feels like it could invade reality a bit.

[References/Inspiration]

[I'm not sure what the origin or artist for Little Dragon Man is(if that's even the actual title of the piece)]

Not much to say about starting off it really was just a floating sphere that I added shadows and lines to. I made the oozing effect with a couple layers of a liquefy brush to give it some form. As I was working I decided I wanted the vibe that it wasn't just dripping but that its ooze was sort of flowing.

I got in the zone a bit and made the risky move of not saving between steps ...oops. Mostly I just repeated what I had done with the head with each section of the body.

After this I went off the rails a bit and was playing with gradient filters and found a really nice looking warm scene as a result. So I made a separate version of what I had intended with the warmer color palate and added some blurring and camera effects.

Sadly the computer gods conspired against me and non of my painting programs would do the proper depth of field and lens flair effects that I wanted so I had to go in and paint those by hand.

Digital painting done in Clip Studio Paint, based on the slimelette in one of my older drawings

This wasn't quite what I had planned but I got sidetracked and fell in love with it so I wanted to finish it as its own version.

The technology gods were conspiring against me on this one. None of my painting programs wanted to do the camera effects without crashing on me. So the depth of field, some of the lens flare and the lighting vignette all had to be Jerry-rigged a bit and painted in by hand in some places

All in all I'm rather pleased with how it turned out in spite of the technical problems.

Shading, coloring, and effects done in Clip Studio Paint

Original Sketch: [Here].