Old School Warriors: Qin Dynasty Infantry.

We visit ancient China in this post. I've had an interest in the Qin Dynasty warriors for some time but had never really gone and did more reading up on it.




At the Asian Civilizations Museum here in Singapore, there's a Terra-Cotta Warrior exhibit. Since I have an interest in really old military things, I took the opportunity to head on down to see the Terra-cotta statues in real life. I got more than what I bargained for. The setup wasn't terribly impressive given the size of the space - but they had one of each type of soldier, from the General standing out front, to the kneeling crossbowman. So it looked like a good opportunity to learn more. And it was.







As I walked around, the whole concept of having references for your artwork being there in front of you is reinforced deeper in me. You simply cannot beat having the real thing in front of you. I could walk around and get a 360 view of what I could never get off the internet search. I could see the leftover red pigments on the lanyard reinforcing the flexible parts of the soldier's armour (they were brightly painted in ceremonial colors as noted by archeologists). I could make out they had different footwear, the Cavalrymen wore something drastically different from the infantry. I could even make out how their tunic underneath the armour was layered. Though they may not be very accurate, I could get a genuine idea how the lamellar plates were layered and where the stiff and flexible areas of the body armour were.







I was gonna reach out and touch them (like I did years ago with a genuine Van Gogh :D) but I can't really be sure if I won't get kicked out - there were several security personnel around at all times.





Also I read on a history buff forum. I believe it was the China History Forum that the Qin army did have shields, and they probably looked very similar to the Han shields that came later. The theory made sense, technology went backwards after the Qin Dynasty collapse, not forward. So there wasn't any reason to believe something used effectively by the mighty Qin army previously would be discarded so soon after the fall of the dynasty.



It was a pretty good exhibit for its scale. I also got to test out the new fountain pen I bought for sketching pretty thoroughly. The exhibit is only 5 bucks, plus its not likely I'll head on down to Shaanxi anytime soon to see the actual dig itself and see the warriors in the thousands, so this will have to do.....for now.

More information on the exhibit at the Asian Civilizations Museum can be found >>HERE<<

Old School Warriors

Couple of digital sketches for this update.

Medieval Saracen Warrior


One of my favourite units, the mercenary Landsknecht - this here is a Doppelsoldner in full armour.

That's all for this update. Not enough sleep....or caffeine.

Accuracy International AX 338

Self explanatory. Took a while but here it is.

Balearic Slingers - And Off To The Army

Balearic Slingers come from the Balearic Island chain off the coast of the Iberian Peninsular. After being absorbed into the Roman Empire, the Slingers were used as projectile troops in the Auxillaries.



More information on the Balearic Isles >>here<< Information on Sling can be found >>here<< **** Also, headed off to do my reserves training for a week. Yaaaayy conscription. **** update **** I'm back from my reserves training and here are a couple vids from Youtube of launching the sling in Balearic style. This guy davidmorningstar is pretty cool and has a channel on youtube >>here<<

Guns Collection 01

All the nice and candy glossed firearms I've illustrated - up till now.

German Shepherd Update

The whole world probably knows by now what went down in the wee hours of Abbottabad, Pakistan on May 7th 2011. If you don't.....then you might've been living in a cave (haha, get yourself upgraded coz even OBL lived in a decent house).

By now almost every nitty gritty detail that weren't classified has been let out on the wires. Even the classified ones were somewhat dissected and deciphered to some decent extent by real experts and armchair experts. There was even a dog in the raid!! The pooch was wearing one of these!

>>K9-Storm Intruder vest<<

Naturally we have to update our old German Shepherd K9 unit illustration.

New Firearms Illustration

Something new for Euro-Optic Ltd.

Banner


Full Body


And a new one still to be completed.

May Update. Its Been A Loooong 2 Months.

Busy 2 months. Nothing I can make public. But I'll leave with this sneak peek.

Not much more info >>here<<

New Art Direction

I've been told I should try something new. Something different.

So this is my new direction in art.




I think it looks pretty good. Quick too.

Limited Work This Month

I can't put up the stuff I'm working on. Wrapped in a new venture and there's really nothing to put up for now. Non-disclosure and all.

Here are some older work from 2009. This was created for Euro-Optic Ltd which is a firearms and optics retailer based out of North America.





In fact they were my very first client back in 09 when I started freelancing full time. Working with Alex on this series was a great experience - I can't say I've had a better client. Though I do still owe him a piece which I'm working on now....I'm hoping to wrap it up ASAP - I hope he's not getting impatient.

Hopefully there's more to show in April.

German Shepherd, K9 Progress.

Progress work on the German Shepherd/K9 piece. I've previously mentioned there's a full dog underneath that K9 vest and here it is.


Here is a close up of the head.

PMC Dude - With K9!!

Started work on the K9 German Shepherd today. Took a while to get the proportions right but I think this is pretty good for now.


There's a full dog underneath that K9 vest. It takes longer, but I usually prefer to work with a full body below whenever I want to overlap something. Also because this image is dual purpose, for the web-portfolio and for my collection of dog drawings.

Putting the 2 together:


I'm fairly happy with this update. These set of characters will be worked into the main web-portfolio interface at some point. There's an additional IRobot 510 Packbot to be added. Still in basic stages of line construction. At one point today I thought I lost the working file. Turns out its not in my usual working folders.

AKS-74U PMC Dude - Full Body

I've posted a half body version before and I'm using it now as part of my printed marketing material. But I needed a full body version for my web portfolio revamp. Its a year overdue and it seriously needs some updating. Almost done, just a bit more to go.


Some parts of the webbing was reworked so I'll need to paint those over. Changed the pants around a little bit but the artwork is generally the same.

Updating Some Old, In-Progress Artwork

There's a lull due to the holiday season here with the Chinese New Year celebrations. So I thought, I better dig up my older stuff and get them completed before moving back into the current stuff I'm working on.

This piece was last updated maybe 6 months back or more. To put it into context of how fast the world moves (or how slow I work depending on how you see it); When I started out doing this piece, I was looking at using the UCP camouflage for this guy's uniform. As of a few months back, the US Army in Afghanistan has swapped to the OCP - Operation Enduring Freedom Camouflage Pattern. Better known as MULTICAM.

(I checked, it was almost 9 months ago)

To get the details into the gun, I use Adobe Illustrator to path out the features in vector and try to separate out the overlapping areas. After the pathing is done, I can bring the vectors over onto Photoshop to paint digitally. With the pathing and overlapping areas planned, I can then use Photoshop layers to its fullest. This way I can make minor adjustments even after I've done the coloring for the weapon.


This is how it looks like pieced together.


I'm not looking at any real deadline for this. I'm currently concentrating on getting a Natural Science portfolio up to buff my capabilities and also on the lookout for incoming jobs so I'll see how it goes. Shouldn't be a problem.

On to something a bit fun. I got carried away while working on that Year of the Rabbit greeting card and just went nuts with the variety of guns. I just wanted to create one but ended up doing over a dozen and I'm adding new ones everyday. I intend to release them for free use soon - but not all at once. So here are a few to look at - I'll post the vector packs once I'm ready.

Year of the Rabbit

In a few more days, we'll enter a new Lunar Year and the Chinese will celebrate the year of the Rabbit in their Zodiac. Now, the animal zodiacs as followed by the Chinese were used more for their values than their iconic imagery. That's why there's also a Rat in there (being first among the 12 signs). Rabbits are supposed to be lively, fun loving, popular, good company and so on. I should know - my dad's a rabbit and he's got all of those virtues. But of course he can be a bit thick at times :D

So here's to a prosperous and fulfilling Year of the Rabbit. May good fortune be with you. Here's a little something inspired by Cat Shit One:


For those of you with a little more explosive tendencies....




Also some progress on the European-esque town where the battle will take place:


And a couple of the combatants on one side:




This is an ongoing thing. I'm not even sure I will even start this project. But hopefully I get some spare time to do things here and there.

First Post 2011

Here we go.

As per SOP - The smallest guy gets the biggest gun. This is the Machine Gunner. I haven't had the chance to add the A-Gunner sketch yet.



A couple of Armoured Vehicle concepts. A Troop Carrier and an armoured truck.




And finally....where it all takes place. This European-esque town is really an amalgamation of 3 river towns in Central France. It probably resembles Château-Thierry the most in terms of layout.


More details to come when I get the artwork done. Working on several things and so far its been a productive first week of the new year.