Fantasy Scroll Magazine Issue #5
Page 13
For environments I start with small color thumbnails. Sometimes I skip the sketching phase and go directly to painting. I often use photos for reference, and sometimes I use them as a base of the image, utilizing the color palette. I experiment with a lot of custom brushes here—not that much for characters. At the end I introduce some photo textures for a more realistic feel. I like using SketchUp as well for some more complicated architecture images.
This is my basic workflow when I do client work. When I do my own stuff, I tend to experiment a lot and sometimes I just improvise.
Your work is very fantasy-driven. What drives you to that subject?
I just love fantasy. I like Sci-Fi too but, I just prefer fantasy more. I love dragons, demons, big hulking barbarians and sexy female wizards. I love fantasy books, movies and games. Some of my favorite books are: Raymond Fiest's Riftwar saga series, J.R.R Martin's Song of Fire and Ice, Warcraft novels. Movies: Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, Willow, Legend, How to Train Your Dragon, and more. Games: Legacy of Kain series, Warcraft games, Diablo, Dragon Age, Elder Scrolls, Heroes of M&M, Forgotten Realms Games, and many, many other fantasy and non-fantasy titles.
If there was one piece of advice you could give other beginning artists, what would that be?
To the beginning artists I want to tell: practice a lot. You must devote your time to learning the fundamentals first. I know it's tempting to try to paint that epic landscape piece already, or that shiny armored knight with a flaming sword and a fierce dragon behind him. But before that you need to have patience and motivation to learn the fundamentals. Composition, lighting, color, perspective, anatomy, etc.
And motivation is one of the things of paramount importance. Sometimes there are moments when artists just want to quit and give up because certain things are not working out, because we keep failing in painting something right, or because there are some other problems in our life. Remember, you are doing this for fun in the first place, so just take a break, clean up your head, or even start working on something else. Then get back to it and push again and do it. Because nothing is impossible. Even if you have to start from scratch, you can do it.
I live in very poor country and 5 years ago I never imagined that I can actually work as a concept artist and make a living from it. I had very unhealthy way of life and when I decided to try and change that by working out, eating clean, I saw results right away. So I just decided to use the same dedication and push and develop my art skills even more. And here I am. Few years later I work with something that I love, something I hadn't imagined possible.
Be patient, and work hard.
This coming from me feels rather strange because I'm so far away from being a complete professional, and I have so much more to learn. But I will!
We selected one of your pieces for the cover of our magazine. Tell us a few words about how that piece came to be.
This is a personal piece I did for fun a while back. You can say it's a portfolio image where I show my anatomy knowledge. Looking at it now, it has some problems but that's normal. I have improved a bit since then, but the piece actually worked its purpose because I had few job offers thanks to that image.
Where can we find you on the web?
I'm most active on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/todor.hristov.50
Other pages:
DeviantArt - http://draken4o.deviantart.com/
Artstation - http://www.artstation.com/artist/Draken4o
Drawcrowd - http://drawcrowd.com/drakennp00f6
As I mentioned I am working for Web Development Company in Norway, and we are developing few game projects where I'm the concept artist and illustrator. Most of my works are owned by them and are currently under NDA. Hopefully in the near future I will be able to show some of them. So in the galleries above you can see my personal work, stuff I did for fun, for practice, and a few contest entries as well.
Book Review: Echopraxia (Peter Watts)
Julie Novakova
Echopraxia
by Peter Watts
Tor Books (August 26, 2014)
Maybe worship. Maybe disinfect. The Bicameral Order's approach to God is somewhat unusual - but that might be the least unusual thing about this organically linked hive mind. Daniel Brüks, a baseline field biologist, doesn't feel quite capable of understanding them - or rather it? But he gets caught in a plot that's much bigger than him and involves the Bicamerals, vampires, zombies and aliens. Sound absurd? If so, I'll take a guess that Echopraxia is your first encounter with work by Peter Watts. However, it likely won't be your last once you start reading - at least if you like well-developed, original SF.
Echopraxia is the sequel to Blindsight, Watts's Hugo-nominated novel published in 2006. It's not necessary to read Blindsight before reading Echopraxia but I would recommend it. Many of the events and characters in the current novel can be viewed in a different and more illuminating light, and may seem more complex than at first sight without knowledge of Blindsight.
I cannot avoid starting the review with a comparison between those novels: Blindsight hooked me in within the first pages, the first sentences actually, and didn't even for a moment loose grip afterwards. Where Blindsight started with a perfectly built dark, thick atmosphere, Echopraxia begins with more action, opening up with an exciting prologue that provokes many questions for those who had read Blindsight. It then moves to introduce the main character, Daniel Brüks before shifting to a longer exposition after bringing him together with the Bicamerals and ultimately aboard a ship, Crown of Thorns.
The reader is shown how the Bicams work and meets other crucial characters, but for a while it seemed to me too much like a prolonged introduction, even though there was a lot of good action. However, this feeling dissipated as the voyage of the Crown of Thorns continued on her way through the gravity well to the Icarus Array, a device which powers a significant part of human civilization.
Later, as we get to the Icarus Array, things move faster and are more gripping. We encounter a fascinating entity and witness an event that might be considered first contact since most of humanity hadn't learned about Theseus's discoveries in Blindsight (Theseus is a ship introduced in Blindsight). From that moment on, the pace doesn't slow down and the questions don't cease. The more you read on, the more you suspect that in the world in which the characters live, things fall apart, to quote Yeats (also quoted in Echopraxia, for a good reason). But there is a kind of sad beauty in it, as there is in the fight against it. In the end: silent awe.
Nonetheless, Echopraxia didn't reach Blindsight's qualities for me. It is worth mentioning that Blindsight is one of my very favorite SF novels and a hard one for any book to compare with. It would be highly unfair to make this comparison if Echopraxia wasn't its sequel. However, Echopraxia is also a very different story in many aspects and I expect some readers to like it even more than Blindsight.
Because of its not-exactly-baseline protagonist, Blindsight had a very distinct and enthralling voice. Siri Keeton was an observer, and brilliant at it. Seen through his eyes and filtered through his unique mind, we got to know Theseus's bleeding edge crew intimately and from unusual angles. I really cared for each of the characters (yes, even the vampire Sarasti).
I didn't have such an easy time with Echopraxia's characters, viewed primarily from Brüks's perspective, which might be the reason why the book didn't hook me in as instantly as Blindsight. Moreover, good old baseline Brüks is somewhat confused about the things happening around him for most of the time, plotted by the opaque Bicameral mind and taken on faith by other characters. As a consequence, the reader can sometimes feel in the dark, too. Brüks is also a rather passive main character at the beginning, which makes perfect sense but might contribute to my difficulty getting drawn into the story. It's true that Siri Keeton had by the definition of his profession a largely passive role, too, but it didn't feel like that at all; his unique voice made up for it by orders of magnitude.
Peter Watts showed in his newest
novel that "faith-based hard SF" is not an oxymoron and can result in an original, captivating, intricately built story. I'm especially curious how it's going to be perceived throughout different parts of the world. For someone who isn't a lifetime atheist from a largely atheistic country, it might have even more strength and deeper nuances than for me. Nevertheless, though it was not as enthralling and mind-blowing for me as Blindsight, I enjoyed Echopraxia very much and certainly had a lot to ponder about after reading it. I can well recommend it to anyone who likes original plots and hard SF full of interesting thoughts.
© Julie Novakova
Links:
Movie Review: Rigor Mortis (Juno Mak)
Mark Leeper
CAPSULE: A victory of visual images over plotting, this is Hong Kong director Juno Mak's premier film and a tribute to Hong Kong horror films from the 1980s. An actor rents a room in a supremely ugly concrete apartment block. His plan is to commit suicide, but the supernatural world is not through with him. This is a film for the eye and not for the mind. The plot is minimal but the visual effects have been lavished on this film enough to smother the plot. Rating: +1 (-4 to +4) or 6/10
There was a time when a special effects movie would be written one way. It would start our with a story and then say, "At this point the monster is born." That part would be given to the visual effects staff and they would create the effect. Later it might say, "At this point the monster is hit by a steam shovel." And the effects people would be given that image to create for the film. Of course, some of Ray Harryhausen's films would have the set of effects he wanted to create worked into the story. But the story would not have to be greatly modified and the plot of the film would still be paramount and the effects would have to follow it.
Rigor Mortis feels like it was not created that way and I suspect it was not. I think how it was made was that the effects people started by creating a collection of disturbing, violent, kinetic, and bloody images, as horrifying as they could manage. And they do show a great deal of imagination. The images were then sorted so that the strongest ones would be toward the end of the film. Then a story was written to tie the images together is a very loose plot. What does not quite fit the plot might be explained, but even that is not really necessary. The viewer leaves the theater with not a good feel for the story they just saw, but with hopefully indelible memories of the images.
Siu Ho wanted to be a movie star, but after a short career he finds himself out of luck and ready to give up on this life for the next one. He is also giving up on his wife and his young son. With only pocket change he rents a room in a surprisingly ugly apartment block. What it does have is a ceiling fixture from which he hangs a rope, and from the rope he hangs himself. But there are strange supernatural forces in the building and they have other plans for Siu Ho. They do not want to let him die so soon. They have other plans for him. Siu Ho gets to know the other tenants who have consigned themselves to living in this hellishly ugly concrete building which houses demonic ghosts--bloody and violent. The violent visuals have gallons of splashing blood and surreal imagination. It is hard for a Westerner not steeped in Asian supernatural tradition to know if the rules that the characters are following are real folklore or are mythology created ad hoc. They are more distraction from the plot than they are enhancements of it.
This film is a tribute to the 1980s series called "Mr. Vampire" in the West. Many of the actors from that series are used again here. Creatures are called "vampires" here also, though they are not vampires at all but Chinese hopping ghosts. This is a film that is constantly fiddling with the camera. It does enhance the weirdness of scenes artificially, but we are given images with the camera corkscrewing or looks up at characters from ankle level, all for no apparent reason. They just seem to want to upset the viewer.
Rigor Mortis is visceral but not intelligent. This is the kind of film for which you turn off your mind and let the scenery overwhelm you. And it will without benefit of drugs. I rate Rigor Mortis a +1 on the -4 to +4 scale or 6/10. It was released June 6, 2014, on Amazon and Xbox.
© 2014 by Mark Leeper
Film Credits: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2771800/combined
Originally appeared on: http://leepers.us/rig_mort.htm
Official Trailer: http://youtu.be/opBwIkiGtFA
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