Favourite Digital Artist - Dianae

I found Dianae on Deviantart.com a few years ago. I think that it is her work that really made me want to take up digital painting. She is by far my favourite non-famous digital artist.

This is the first painting by her that I found. I could not believe that something could be digital and be so incredibly beautiful, detailed and realistic. If you look at this image very closely, you can see small details like pores in the skin. She has done a very good tutorial on this painting that takes you through the process.

I love the look of the glitter in her eye makeup, the pearls, glass beads, gold etc.

I absolutely love the colours in this image - the way that the character contrasts with the background. It is incredibly weird - she must have an amazing imagination. I absolutely love her painting style. She blends everything so well and uses textures very well too.

I love the texture of the girl's skin in this image - like her skin is scaly or cracked. The facial expressions here are also so amazing. She is really good at creating emotion-driven narratives in her work.

Again, I absolutely love this image's use of colours and textures.

She also does absolutely amazing character designs. She has a very good knowledge of colour use.

Again, here you can see the brilliant use of a colour palette.

I absolutely love the way the hair has been done in this image - it really helps to create an environment in what is otherwise mostly black/shadow. It tells the viewer that the characters are under water.

I love how she uses contrasting colours to create powerful, vibrant images such as this one.

It is my aim to one day hopefully be able to paint like this. I love how she is able to explore with human characters in such subtle ways that they still remain humanly beautiful.

God of War

God of War is probably the closest thing to the kind of game I'd be interested in doing art for - a game based on ancient Greek mythology. In my case, I'd like to work on a game based on Viking/Norse mythology. It'd be awesome to experiment with the Gods!

God of war has some absolutely amazing character designs - especially in terms of Greek deities.

I like how a lot of the character creations have been done in black and white - this gives you a good idea of things such as light, shadows, value etc.

Some of these paintings are incredibly detailed.

Playing around with something that is mythological really allows you to manipulate humanoid forms and make them a little crazy. It is always interesting to see different people's takes on characters like Zeus and Medusa, who have existed for centuries.

I like how in this image you can see a full-body character design to get the overall feel of the character and then there are more designs of other details around it - in this case, character heads. It gives the viewer a quick look at how different characters can be made very quickly, without having to redraw the entire character over and over.

This is a colour painting of the main character in the game. You can really see what difference colour makes here to these images.

Of course, things like armour look a lot better in colour - helps you to distinguish between different kinds of materials.

These kinds of digital paintings seem like early screenshots for the game. They establish the environment/scene/characters/mood/gameplay style and much more. It is amazing to see early paintings like this actually become interactive games.

Some of the other character designs really explore colour, which is very powerful and important when creating a mood. Red is a very provocative colour that could mean a lot of different things - all which immediately give the viewer an understanding of the personality of the character. For example, red could mean anger, hell, danger, death - or it could (but most likely not in this case) mean love, passion etc.

As mentioned before, it is always interesting to see how different people see characters like Zeus, who have existed for centuries. The problem here is that there are many generally accepted conventions - e.g. white hair, white beard, robes etc. It's hard to break away from these conventions - this is a major concern of mine with my own work.

However, in other cases, such as this character design of Medusa, most conventions have been broken. It is design like this that really makes me passionate about design.

This is one of my favourite characters in the game - Gaia - the Greek personification of the Earth. This character really creates an absolutely incredible environment and also defines the scale of the game - when you see your character on Gaia, it seems like she is a whole gigantic world by herself - then you realise the world that SHE is only a small part of and - wow. Amazing.

This beautiful image also gives you some idea of what I mean by the scale of the game.

I love how so many character explorations can be so emotive, rough. This digital painting seems so much like a real life painting. One thing that I always used to think "real" painting achieved better than digital painting is the motion of the artist's arm - a very good way for the artist to release emotion onto a canvas with their movement.

This paining reminds me of this and i wonder whether the artist had the same sense of release when making this image.

Fallout 3

Fallout 3 is my all time favourite game. I realise I say this a lot... but yeah. This is it. It's the perfect game. Seriously! The collectors edition came with the most beautiful art book - here are some scans from it. As you can immediately see, the art book has its own style that works perfectly with the games radio-active kind of messed up past/futuristic theme.

Each page of the book is cluttered with drawings and sketches and paintings - full of information and perspectives and explorations.

The creatures in this game were amazing. They were so detailed and full of energy.

I love how so many of the creatures have been mutated - are mutated variations of animals - e.g. cows with two heads, octopus/man etc.

The devices and technology in this game were also amazing. Sort of 50's but also futuristic.

here you can see how much effort went into the designs of the "Pip-Boy" - a device that characters wear that give them information, act as a radio, show you maps, missions, your inventory...

Here are some beautiful and mind-blowingly detailed digital paintings of a few of the environments in the game, which is set in Washington DC.

These paintings look like actual photographs - it is amazing to think that artists can create such detailed images on the computer.

It is interesting to see the 'effects' of a nuclear bomb on a popular real-life city like Washington DC. I think that this has been done really well by the artists and designers working on the game to create a world that seems able to really exist here if something like this was to happen.

Fable 2

Fable 2 was one of my favourite games when it came out. At first glance, this game seems to have almost everything - it was set in somewhat medieval times, has more than once choice of combat... wow. This game was again disappointing in a lot of ways, but one thing it always promised was beautiful visuals.

It is always amazing for me to think that games with immersive, massive, interactive worlds all come from drawings such as this. This is the base of so much more.

It is my goal to hopefully one day be able to draw like this without reference.

The character designs are quite standard - front and back views of a character in a relatively loosely painted style.

With this image and the one below it, it is interesting to see what a difference a simple background can make to an image - even one as specific as a character design.

Also interesting to see how much attention is paid to small details, such as the hats that townsfolk wear.

The environment designs of this game are also amazing and include so many different kinds of areas - seas, rivers, forests, snow-capped areas, towns, messed up hellish areas and much more.