EOW 129: War Zone

Here's something I did for another Environment of the Week over at CA.  The topic was "War Zone".
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=176987
(As you can see, there were a lot of awesome entries!)

     Yes, I know the perspective is off.  I wanted to try out doing a composition without worrying about it this time, as I've been told that when I obey it too closely, my things are stiff looking.  And for something like a war zone, shouldn't everything be a little cockeyed to suggest distress?
     Anyway, the foreground tower implies a lower horizon line than the back (though I had been hoping the viewer would interpret the background as being on a lower plane, as I'd intended.  Guess I failed at that, as several critiquers pointed out; next time I'll have to find a happy medium.

Anyway, here's a backstory/explanation I came up for it:
My concept is not a war on an city, but instead a near-future economic war in which factories and chemical refineries are attacked. Sort of a war to sabotage the resources of the opposing side instead of directly going after civilians themselves.

Perhaps this could be an environmental war, where extremist environmentalists with a cleaner but more expensive technology resort to terroristic means by taking down major refineries in order to raise the price of their less eco-friendly competition so that their own methods are also cheaper by comparison.

So in this scene, the opposing side/eco warriors have set up rocket launchers on the upper scaffolds (that's what that gun thing is in the relative foreground) and are aiming at storage tanks.

Some earlier stuff I missed putting up

Wow, I didn't realize how long I'd gone without putting up anything, so I just remembered to put up the second Provantage cover I illustrated, which was actually finished at the end of October.  I only did the illustration, the graphic design was done by Mark Filipiac, the art director.

You can also see the site banner that went with it, here:  http://www.provantage.com/

Now, while I was doing this cover, my styles and concepts class had a "game concept" project, so I decided do make a game theme that would go along with my Provantage cover, so I came up with a concept centered around a "high tech" christmas.  I looked at old central and northern European architecture and how to make it futuristic.  It was really fun.  I'll post the story description later on, probably.

I enjoyed thinking about the designs so much that I might want to make this the theme of my project for illustrative drawing next semester.

Here are some of the initial designs for the game, which would be a PvP type of thing similar to TF2.  A couple were done on the Wacom Cintiq, most of the others were just rough sketchbook scans:


Storyboard for the cutscenes.

Here's Santa in his full get-up.  He made a deal with Uncle Sam that results in the Christmas faction having a LOT of fireworks-based weapons.

Santa could definitely use some refining.

New Figure Speedpaints from Life!

Here's some more.  I think they're all one-sessions (around 2 hrs.) or less.

I like these more narrative ones.

I came in late for this one and kinda rushed it.  Now the proportions are all wonky... :-(

This setup had really nice natural lighting.

An experiment with getting good directional texture in Photoshop.

I wish we'd had more time for this.

Decided to try this entirely in Painter.  It certainly took longer, but I do kind of like the more "impressionistic" look.


Again, yay for narrative poses!

Study with a draped figure + graffiti/rust texture = homeless guy illustration!

Our last thing in Figure Drawing class this semester.  Class was cut short at the end for critiques.
I really didn't do a good job capturing his likeness in this one, but I do like how the actual rendering came out.

My approach in Painter, a little looser than in Photoshop.

Some stuff from my new brown sketchbook!

I got my first toned paper sketchbook a couple of weeks ago.  I'm really liking it.  Since I've started to get used to drawing with colored pencil for advanced structural, I find it also works nicely on this brown paper.

Eden 2.0: Development - 52 Boards!

This is a project I worked on for Mr. Tardino's "Illustrative Drawing" class.  The original idea started out for an MMO game, though I would actually like to adapt it for a children's book.

This was the first time I really went after quantity over quality.  Most of the digital scenes in here aren't really well-developed.  I made this project more about finding many different possibilities and variations of stuff before committing to a big render... Ah, if only I had more time...

I also did a lot of the structural drawings for an open-ended assignment in advanced structural class.  (I did plenty of work for each class.  For example, we only needed 20 boards for Illustrative Drawing, but I did 52.)

And finally, it may seem paranoid, but since I have future plans for some of this stuff, I just want to say that all of the below is (c) Kirsten Zirngibl, Dec. 2009.  Not sure if typing that does anything for me, or if anyone besides me thinks any idea here would be worth taking, or if anyone even looks at my blog for that matter, but it's just that I've got detailed descriptions of stuff up here for the world to see and it makes me feel a little vulnerable...  I guess the risk is worth it for self-promotion...