Weekly Design #4 - Gas

I think out of all of the designs so far, this one was the most difficult.  Mostly because I wanted to make it look as gaseous and fluid as possible, while still having a good mix of color and depth.  I think the end result turned out fairly well, although I am sure some tweaking will be needed.  This design was also heavily influenced on Jupiter, as I think it is visually one of the most interesting gas giants in our solar system.

So here is design number 4.  Gas.

Change For This Week...

The post for this upcoming friday is supposed to be water, but I have decided to change the theme instead to a gas planet as it is something different.  Just a heads up to anyone interested.  :D

Weekly Design #3 - Earth

So its a few days late, but here is the third weekly design.  The thing I wanted to portray in this design is a world that is visibly interesting and had lots of greenery.  I used our planet as a base, and tried to push the color so that it was vibrant, while still looked like it could be 'real'.

I hope you like Earth.

Weekly Design #2 - Ice

For the second weekly design post, I thought it would be interesting to contrast a hot fiery planet with an ice covered one.

One of the things I wanted to do with the design was to make the planet feel very cold and ice covered.  At first I wasn't sure how I would go about doing this beyond what colors I wanted to use, but I found some really abstract ice images and based the basic design off of those.  From there it was just a matter of adding detail, color, and character while also trying to make the image to seem believable.

So here is Ice.

Weekly Design #1 - Fire

Here is the first post for the weekly design project.  As the theme for January is Planets I decided to use the  basic underlying themes of Fire, Ice, Earth, and Water as the basis for each post.

For the first post, Fire, I wanted to create a planet that visually represented what I would imagine of a planet engulfed in fire, lava, or a combination of the two.  Since the planet would visually be on fire, I wanted to show that it would look and feel hot and bright.  I also wanted to show that it would be semi lit on the dark side of the planet, as well as trying to show that there would be clouds and smoke in the atmosphere.

So here is Fire.

To make a planet...

As this weeks upcoming post will be the first in the Planet category, I wanted to post two tutorials that helped me tremendously when I first started playing around with this stuff several years ago.  They are two excellent tutorials by the renowned artist Greg Martin.  I have loved his work for a while and it was a real treat when I stumbled on these.

So here they are.

Planets
http://gallery.artofgregmartin.com/tuts_arts/making_a_planet.html

Star fields
http://gallery.artofgregmartin.com/tuts_arts/making_a_star_field.html

Enjoy, and check back on Friday for the first design post.

January Weekly Design Theme - Planets

To kick off my weekly design initiative, I wanted to start with something fun.  Ever since I was young I have been fascinated by outer space (something that was most likely fueled by watching Star Wars over and over again).  One of the most fascinating things about space movies and drawings are the many exotic planets that are depicted.  Because of this, the theme for January is planets and other planetary bodies.

Check back on the 8th for the first completed design!

A New Beginning...

In conjunction with the upcoming launch of my new website, jryanhamilton.com, I have decided to 'remodel' my old blog and use it as an extension of the new site.  In addition to being a place where I post my thoughts and ramblings on a variety of topics, each month I am going to do weekly designs based on a different topic.

Stay tuned for more information in the future!