Christabella

In my development and growth as a concept artist it's of course necessary to be able to render environments. To be able to come up with believable spaces for characters to exist in wasn't really a focus of mine but the more I look into the importance and necessity for it the more I love it and the more I want to work at it. What's interest about my dive into environment design is that I'm more daring in my approach to the process, meaning I'm more willing to dive into photoshop without sketching anything out first, which is what I usually don't do. Instead I fire-up Photoshop and start painting shapes allowing accidents to happen. Below is Gothic environment that I came up with that is a blend of architectural design elements. The cathedral is influenced by a mix of french and italian design, the iron grid in the foreground is a design element found in Bordeaux airport in France and the narrative is inspired by Silent Hill of a lost traveler who unfortunately stumbles into the foggy mysterious town and quickly learns that the shadows are not always as they seem and that the only light needed to cast off the darkness is found in the refuge of the church.
If you haven't come across the Silent Hill game series then do yourself a favour and check out the movie HERE or check out the games HERE.

Lamin

Spill The Wine

The line art for "Spill The Wine", found in the pages of Apocrypha, is one of those images that's near and dear to my heart. If you're like me and you're the kind of artist who loves creating demonic characters who wear large heavy pieces of amour around the chest and shoulders, surrounded by large masses of wool with giant blood-rusted blades strapped to their arms, then you can imagine that I had a ton of fun with this image!
One of the challenges I faced in digitally painting this character was realizing that in order to create more depth in the background I had to remove the wings that I originally drew in the line art. This created some much needed negative space that I then used to display more of the demon dog. As a result of those design choices I think it makes for a much stronger piece.


Lamin

Alamptria: Red Moon Rising novel cover

Here is a novel cover that I completed for Alamptria: Red Moon Rising, by Canadian fantasy writer Richard A. Valicek.

From the beginning the writer knew that he wanted to have one of the female main characters shown with a sexy and threatening gaze with the male character shrouded in shadowy surroundings, so most of my thumbnails were slight variations on that idea.

The challenge of this image for me was working with a large central figure whose expression tells more of the story than anything else. When working with large compositional elements like this the smallest adjustment in the expression can completely change the tone of the piece. So as you can imagine most if not all of the my sketches focused on the expression in the eyes.

The image was sketched in pencil then scanned and coloured in Photoshop.


Lamin


Sketch,

Transitions Mini-Golf Championship

Recently the great people at Oddly Studios and myself had the amazing opportunity to build an online mini-golf game for Transitions Lenses, the eyeglasses lens company. We were given a month to complete the work so there wasn't much room for error. Thanks to the workflow structure established by Oddly director Tim Willison, the resulting game was beautifully executed on time and it was something that everyone was proud of especially Transitions Lenses. My role in the project was to come up with concept designs for the nine mini-golf courses working with Oddly's art director Sheharzad Arshad and The Marketing Store's Neil Cabana. You can take a look at the designs below as well as what the courses looked like after they went from drawings to working 3D models built in Maya and then given physics in the Unity game engine thanks to the hard work of Adam Sullovey. If you'd like to play the game you can give it a try using the following link,


Transitions Mini-Golf Championship



Take care,

Lamin



A few sketches,

Maya Models,

A few completed courses,

Concept Designs

Recently I was contacted by Gameloft to be considered for a 2D concept artist position. Unfortunately I lost out on the job but the test that I completed was interesting and helpful in my growth as an concept artist. It pushed me into doing some environmental work that I usually don't get into and as a result of that push I'm actually looking forward to trying out a few more environments on my own. In terms of character design I was pushed into relying on just the character and the costume design as the focal point without a background design because the test required no background elements. Below is the character design portion of the test that involved creating a sexy female pirate captain. The environmental portion of the test involved creating a 2D dark forest environment painted over top of a 3D wire-frame that was provided.


Lamin


Character design sketch,

Complete character design,

3D Wire-frame provided by Gameloft,

Completed environment design,

A Day at Laura Secord Secondary School!

Recently I was given the opportunity to visit Laura Secord Secondary School in St. Catherines Ontario where I was asked to conduct a lecture on illustration followed by a how-to session on digital painting and illustration. It was an amazing experience where I met a very talented and enthusiastic group of up and coming young artists under the very insightful guidance of their teachers Steve Azzopardi and Cathy Biro. A huge thanks goes out to Steve (Mr. Azzopardi) for inviting me out and allowing me to speak to the students and to Monica Small, Peter Romo and Bob Vandenbrink in helping to ensure that the day ran so smoothly! Click the link below to see photos from that fun filled day!


A Day At Laura Secord Secondary School Photos!



Thanks again for an awesome day guys!

Lamin

Dracaena 3-D Model by Jacey King

Recently I was contacted by a very talented digital animation student from Malaysia named Joshua Chin Yi King a.k.a Jacey King. He expressed interest in 3-D modelling one of my illustrations, "Dracaena", and I jumped at the opportunity for him to bring the design to life in a way that only a talented 3-D modeller like Jacey could. He kept me updated with very clear, clean and fascinating images of the modelling process and then to my pleasant surprise created an amazing trailer of "Dracaena" in action. Thank you very much Jacey for bringing my illustration to life and also thank you to Sony Computer Entertainment and especially Team ICO for creating the game "Shadow of the Colossus". A game with absolutely beautiful art direction which inspired both our works. Take a look at Jacey's incredible trailer!

"Dracaena" Creature 3D Modelling Reel by Jacey King from Jacey King on Vimeo.

You can find more of Jacey's fantastic work on,
Deviant Art


Thanks again Jacey!



"Dracaena" Concept Design by Lamin Martin

"Dracaena" 3-D Model by Jacey King

Jacey King 3-D Modelling Process