The Creative Blog of Tony Maligno

Early Ninja Comic Pages

2021-08-31T07:12:00.001-07:00

Some Gun Designs

2013-07-05T07:50:00.001-07:00

Here are some gun concepts. The red ones are based loosely off the old N64 game Perfect Dark. They had great gun designs.

The others are all photoshopped images of guns that I want to touch up and do some paint over. I love the idea that a gun would have two shooting areas, a double decker if you would.

2013-02-28T20:24:00.002-08:00

2013-02-26T16:18:00.002-08:00

Update of my dragon rider character. Still want to refine the border edges and lighten up her hair.

2013-02-26T16:03:00.002-08:00

Two new sketches of very different things.

Late night sketch

2013-01-21T02:27:00.004-08:00

Shaolin special forces scout

2012-12-02T23:18:00.001-08:00

This is a new work in progress. I did the initial drawing 6 year and decided to pick it back up an finish it finally. About a month ago I did an initial color pass for the guy, the dragon and the rocks they're sitting on. Tonight I started deailing in the background and doing some basic lighting. Still a lot to do and I'll post another progress shot sometime soon. This time around I'm keeping the black outlines and allowing it to feel more like a cartoon or comic and going less for the "painted" feel.

2012-12-02T22:19:00.002-08:00

Battle Robot Progress

Almost there...still need to spend a few more hours fine tuning some areas and details but its coming along nicely so far. The one on the bottom was the initial sketch that I did a rough color pass on. The one on the top is the more refined photoshop painting.

2012-12-02T22:19:00.000-08:00

This is the final stage of the King Lenois picture. I could take it further and keep messing with details, but I think that this is the best point to stop at. Its probably the best photoshop painting I've ever done ( sigh, thats pathetic. I'll get better soon I swear!) and yet I still feel like I could do better. It just sucks how long it takes to do a nice piece. I think this is around 15 hours of time? I'd love to see what I could do with 40.

King Leonis in the Mist Shrouded Sea of Rocks

2012-11-11T13:13:00.002-08:00

This is a sketch I did about a year ago and I've been wanting to flesh it out in a digital painting for some time. I finally started working on it during my commute to and from work using my nifty ASUS e-slate 2100 tablet pc. The top image shows the process from sketch to blocked out colors used for quick selecting and the regions so I can more efficiently paint detail in. The bottom image is my current progress on it. Its still got quite a bit left to go but its nice to see it coming along. Still not entirely sure about the color scheme for the armor, I felt so compelled to make it an 80's style of fantasy armor much like something from zelda or another rpg form the 80's.

2012-07-24T21:45:00.001-07:00

I'm starting to work on my old Project Iron Jack again. My friend Matt Laurence is going to help take a crack at the writing and hopefully we can tag team this project into existence.I'm going to start focusing more on the development of some concrete costume designs and visual targets. These are two roughs and I'll be posting more of the refined art as it progresses

2012-06-20T23:51:00.000-07:00

2012-04-30T22:44:00.002-07:00

Goblin Progress

2012-02-28T21:36:00.001-08:00

This is the first of multiple monsters that I'll be working on for Redcoat games, a small start up out of Orlando Florida. I will be making some costume variations off of the base model so we can have up to 4 variations for the game. The assets will be pre-rendered and a sprite sheet will be made of their animations.

Goblin concept

2012-02-01T22:36:00.000-08:00

This is a concept for a goblin character for a rpg that will be on xbox live hopefully sometime this year. I'll be modelling it this weekend in maya. The silhouettes were an exploration for various monster types and I'll be working on the small one first and working my way up the list.

Concept for dueling game character

2012-01-29T00:21:00.000-08:00

This weekend I'll be doing a fleshed out dueling game concept. Basic challenge is to develop a fully fleshed out character for a dueling game where you can customize your fighter with a main weapon, armour,clothing and body customization for your character. I need to also develop concept art for a sample level. It will need to be in 3D so my poly count matters alot and so do things like animation and sounds because it will all be done as a flash 3d game played in a browser ( so there will be size limitation to files and possible low bandwidth computers playing them).

I went the route of a anime inspired western version fantasy action theme. I also decided that since we want the game to appeal to men mainly (60%) but women as well (40%) that the perfect candidate for a concept setting that would be equally appealing to both genders would be sexy women fighters, that way the males get to play as a sexy warrior and the women would be able to play as a strong female hero which is always fun.

This is the final version I have for the character design. It shows samples of how the character could be customized in color, clothing style, armor and weapon type. Below are variations of the weapon style that a player could learn as they level up. Each weapon type will have short range, medium and long range variations. The longer double sided weapons allow for multiple attacks and increase defense ability. The great swords do more damage since their blades are larger and heavier.

Chang Sung - Warlord with Power armor

2012-01-24T12:51:00.000-08:00

Yet another of the characters in my head. This warlord develops high tech power armor in medieval china and totally takes over with his supreme military might. This drawing shows a progression from his traditional garb and armor to his power armor. The power armor is powered by the souls of his slain enemies which he harvests in the containers that stick out of the power pack. His shoulder pads act as a shield and can detach and hover around him blocking incoming melee attacks.

Sword concept art

2012-01-24T12:47:00.000-08:00

I'm completely obsessed with swords and I often sketch them. These I sarted to paint in photoshop to flesh them out more. The top line is generated from the original idea of the bottom right sword. I like the idea of a brand of sword that would have been made back in medieval times. Something where a makers style would be know at first glance and there would be a series in the same family sharing similar qualities like the handle and spiked guard. The bottom row is also full of swords that have a second handle for leverage so they can block swords more easily and break them if caught in the complex hand guard.

Talanar WIP

2012-01-24T12:43:00.000-08:00

This is another work in progress of Talanar a dragon born paladin. Only about 30% done with the coloring.

Kung Fu guys concepts

2012-01-24T12:42:00.000-08:00

These are both fairly quick concepts that I did for some characters in a larger world I'm working on that is old school kung fu styled. It ties into the narrative of the Chang Sung Character I have. These guys are both Mercernary Generals that are working for the bad guy of the story. The first Guy Chien Po Lai is a sword master and Fei Tung is a master of the snake fist. Each of these were based on quick sketches and then roughly colored in photoshop. Quick concepts to get the ideas out and to be fleshed out later.

Page from Stray Dogs Comic

2012-01-24T11:28:00.000-08:00

This is a progress page from my comic Stray dogs. It's set in medievil Japan and focuses on the political intrigue surrounding the royal court and the political struggles of samurai and has lots of ninjas as main characters. More of this work can be seen in my website under the projects tab www.tonymaligno.com/projects

Battle suit

2012-01-24T11:01:00.000-08:00

I occasionally get in a fixation to work on tech armors and develop their logic for how they work. This one has a built in power core on the back that feeds energy to the enlarged left arms energy shield. It has a war blade that is made of mono filament blades that are capable of cutting through most composite ceramic armors. They are capable of brief space exposure as they are used to board space ships for melee assaults.

Two wizards trapped in one magical twisted body hooray!

2012-01-24T10:58:00.000-08:00

A dark magic spell combines the two wizards into a monster

This was an idea I had one evening while sketching. A great war wages on and the good side is loosing. The good Wizard Allstaff realizes that the dark wizard Kalazar is too powerful and will win the war and enslave the entire kingdom. Allstaff decides to use a forbidden dark magic spell and traps them both in one twistd body that they must share. By day Allstaff has control and walks upright with full memory of what he did and has use of his magic. By night Kalazar has control of the body but his memory has been erased and he is instead only able to act on instinct. Allstaff tries to hide himself before he goes to sleep at night so that when Kalazar awakens and has control of the body is confused and lost. Allstaff is trying to search for a way to forever trapp Kalazar in the body while he wishes to escape. I haven't figured out how it will end....probably dramatically tragic.

Rough Pencils for exoskeletons

2012-01-24T10:52:00.000-08:00

These are some quick sketchbook renders of some different approaches to exoskeletons some of which are worn others you climb into. I like the one with the lady in the cockpit and might try to flesh it out further in the near future.

Traditional Drawing/ Life drawing

2012-01-24T10:36:00.000-08:00

These are some samples of my traditional charcoal and pencil drawings. I haven't done nearly as much of this as I would like in the last few years but I did get a chance to do a few sessions while I was at Google. I brought in a live model so my team could keep their life drawing skills fresh.