Apparently I can’t prescind from a subject matter, and after some interior struggle I thought “who cares”?
I’m being as loose as possible without falling into the temptation of planning complex scenes, I think, which is good enough for studying and practicing purposes. That is, this is as loose as I can be.

I have almost finished my freelance assignment, hopefully next time I’ll post some proper artwork.

by Paolo Puggioni

The awesome thing about myArmoury is the compare tool, where you can display pretty much every possible kind of sword ever made, sorted by kind and historical period. It’s a priceless resource if you need consistency within a given environment – a video game for example – where you seldom have a history consultant reviewing what you draw.
In the compare tool you can place the swords next to each other and have an immediate idea about their size and relative proportions, another priceless feature.

Even if the weapons are the part of the website that impressed me the most, the armours database is no less valuable.
The site also hosts a forum, with “discussions of reproduction and authentic historical arms and armour from various cultures and time periods”, a Makers and Manufacturers section and so on.

From a concept artist’s point of view, this is the link that everyone should save in their bookmarks.
The only thing I would ask of them is having sizes in centimeters. Come on guys.

by Paolo Puggioni

On the other hand, for a week or so I won’t be able to post anything other than my warm up sketches, I’m afraid.
So there you go.
Again, some of them are just scribbles, some others might be transformed into something.
Next week hopefully.

by Paolo Puggioni

I had some doubt as to why one should have more than one blog, then I spent a couple of minutes browsing random tumblr posts and I understood why.
First of all, it’s simple. Even simpler than Wordfast. So simple, in fact, that setting the whole thing up, selecting a kick-ass theme and uploading a bunch of images took me no more than half an hour.

People use Tumblr it’s a lot more casual than the average WordPress blog. Sometimes readers don’t have the time to read big walls of text (damn you, Internet low attention-span), and just want to look at some pretty pictures and move on with their life. Which is why many artists just keep Tumblr as a support blog, posting there just their artwork, most times even without comments.

Tumblr gives readers the chance to “like” a post or to share it, making it a bit more similar to Twitter or Pinterest. If the occasional passer-by would like to know more about you, they can still click on your images, be led to your primary blog and enjoy your rants.

So far I’m loving it, it’s really fast, easy and with a nice and friendly feeling. Just little things, like when you input your age it reads “39 years Young” (aww) and when someone follows you you’re notified “Someone is following you! Win!”.
I’m easy to please, I know, but I do appreciate this kind of details.

Anyway, I’m particularly happy about the theme I’ve been recommended (which by the way, is called Narnia and can be found on ThemeCloud).
It places all the images in the same page, and it rearranges them in a pleasant way without any need to bother about layout and stuff.
So, well, feel free to stop by and say hello:)

by Paolo Puggioni

Despite the lack of time, I can still manage to sneak in a few warm up sketches here and there, usually first thing in the morning.
It’s good practice, and in the long run it pays off in making your proper work faster. And hopefully slightly better.

by Paolo Puggioni

The plan was to spend a day at the armouries copying weapons and armours from life.
What we didn’t take into account was the throng of tourists competing with us for a spot in front of the coolest pieces, so we ended up just taking reference pictures and talking about how every specific detail could have fit into Runescape.

What never fails to amaze me is that no matter how crazy the designs you come up with for a game are, you always find that something crazier has already been done. Like, five centuries before.
For example, I’d never draw a blade as twisted as the one below because, well, how the hell is it supposed to work? Or be sheathed?
Yet, this was actually used.

The decoration on this elm is so tacky it would be perfect for the ego of a final Boss.

The size of the following armour is not a camera trick. This is the tallest armour ever built. The guy who used to wear it was 2.10 metres tall. His sword was WAY taller than me.

One other piece I loved is this dagger. Simple and elegant. Its design would also be perfect for a space ship now that I think of it.

And then the Middle Ages equivalent of today’s average Hummer drivers. This is what knights with small egos used to equip their armours with in order to counterbalance their – umm – deficiencies.

The other unmissable exhibit at the Tower of London is of course that of the Crown Jewels.
Unfortunately, for obvious reasons, pictures weren’t allowed inside. So you just have to believe my description of a diamond twice as big as an egg, or the solid gold wine tankard as big as a small bath tub.

All in all it was a nice and fruitful expedition, too bad we couldn’t manage to draw a single line.
The next training day it will be out in the Cambridge countryside, drawing landscapes from life.

And possibly cows.

by Paolo Puggioni

He’s responsible for the gritty “used future” look of the Star Wars universe, and his influence on the following generations is so huge that Science Fiction can’t prescind from his work.
His concepts were always so spot-on that Spielberg said “when words could not convey my ideas, I could always point to one of Ralph’s fabulous illustrations and say, ‘do it like this’.
As a matter of fact, it’s not difficult to tell how closely his drawings below were portrayed in some of the most iconic SW scenes.

Ralph passed away early this year. He had been retired for a while, so obviously his work is now being brought to new light by saddened fans and admirers, out of homage and respect.
I stumbled upon this thread on reddit that gathers most of his famous paintings.
I had some others on my Hard Drive, or in my favs folder.
Some others can be found on this website.

I’m pasting some of them here, whereas here and here you could find books with his complete collection.
Which, since I’m penniless as usual, are now saved in my wish list for happier times.

by Paolo Puggioni

So, I meant to make some experiments colouring the pencil sketch I did a few days ago,then I thought than any colour other than blues would have made it too “merry”. So well, I went with a pretty classic palette. I hope I made it badass enough.

Also, since after all those years I dared to open the Animation Window in Photoshop, I put together all the WIPs in a practical Gif.
It moves!

Thanks to fellow redditor Pit107 for the idea.

by Paolo Puggioni

Contrarily to what I thought I’ve been pretty consistent with it in the last few days, so much so that I’m almost running out of ideas.
However, I found out that using textured brushes – which creates lots of noise and unexpected results – helps finding shapes where apparently there aren’t. Shapes form directly on the canvas without going through the brain first, which is pretty amazing if you think about it.

Anyway, this is one of the pages of lunch-break thumbs I took home from work.
I have plenty more on my hard drive at Jagex, but this is all I managed to get hold of today.

Plenty of colours I’m not used to. Yellows and loud reds.
I like yellow, I wonder why I never use it.

by Paolo Puggioni