Hello everyone.
I figure I should drop in a much needed update and posting regarding what we’ve been up to, one word… BUSY. We’ve been working on various things, all pretty much freelance, and it has been eating up a lot of time. I seem to have snagged Jeff a very sizable writing gig with an RPG (pen & paper) company that he’s been having a ball with as it’s sort of a blast from our past, so to speak. I won’t get into details yet other than to say it’s underway and looks to be pretty involved. He’s loving every minute of it and I imagine soon we’ll chime in with more details so stay tuned. It also seems myself and Mark Dudley will be doing art for this project as well. Currently I’m doing some freelance illustration and colors works, including a Children’s book. I’m also squeezing in work on Theos when I can and some collaborations with talented artists on Deviant art so with this posting I want to showcase some work by one of these artists, a talented conceptual artist and brilliant mecha designer, from Sweden, named Karl Östlund, those of you folks on the net might know him by the handle Genocidalpenguin (I have to say I love that). His work has appeared in various places including 4chan so some of you might have run across him, if you haven’t to check out his works just head to his gallery though the handy-dany penguin hyperlinks ;)
When I began the Vulne Pro Deviant gallery I really had no other purpose than to get the work out there in another venue and possibly make some new friends in the world of illustration. As I continued to post I saw fairly quickly that it would be a good place to test response to Theos concepts and possibly work with other artists. Thus far it’s been a fantastic place to post and gauge some feedback for the work. Mark sent me a link to a little gallery by an artist named genocidalpenguin and I was immediately floored by the creativity and unique work he was doing in mecha concepts (don’t let all this mecha talk fool you though, Karl is adept are illustrating all kinds of things believe me) it was both familiar and utterly his own look. I saw hints of Nagano, Kobayashi, etc but regardless the designs he does are all him and they rock.
I knew I wanted to collaborate on something with him and eventually I ended up contacting him, somewhat through another talented artist daemoria (I plan to feature him in a future posting as well. A link to his gallery is on the left side along with Karl's, DO check his work out). I offered to color one of Karl’s impressive mecha the Zidharta (also below) for a comic he has planed and from there we’ve been collaborating since. If schedules are good I offered to do colors for his comic once it reaches that stage.
Within the comments from The Deviant posting of the Anemos FOIL I had mentioned I eventually planned to have other artists doing FOIL and Sendai concepts for Theos Ke Polemos and Karl offered to contribute some work, I certainly couldn’t refuse so below I have also included the first FOIL design he’s created and it’s a beautiful beast. I’ve seen two more designs in progress and what is completed so far is frankly stunning to say the least so with that I say to folks frequenting Vulne Pro.com look forward to more impressive works from him and more works from us in the studio. It’s gonna be another busy year but we wouldn’t have it any other way; we have some wild stuff planned.
Also, note: for higher resolution images of the works posted in this blog just hop on Vulne Pro’s and Karl’s Deviant galleries. The images posted here are low-res and really impair the quality of what the original work looks like. Another point of note is ANYONE can post in this blog in the comments section, you don't have to be a registered blogger to do so so feel more than free.
Till next time take care folks. Cheers!
4 comments:
eeeyow, all painfully wicked . . .
i'd be interested to here some sci &/or pseudo-sci explaining/justifying all the pointy fingers & toes though . . .
they SEEM like they'd be smashed to bits in the course of battle one . . .
i like pointy but i love background . . . for instance: does any of this stuff ever get "modified" by old aces before they'll field these monsters?
& how heavy are they?
opps/opps: "hear" not 'here' . . .
http://www.defensetech.org/archives/002147.html
Sorry for not getting to these questions sooner, it’s been pretty busy of late. Well seeing as how I didn’t design the mecha in question, Genocidalpenguin did, I can only comment on what I know from discussions and my own observations.
Clearly aesthetics are a defining theme in GP’s designs and there’s certainly a suspension of disbelief aspect to functionality. His take on them was they’re from and alternate reality timeline Earth, sometime after the WWII period, where somehow the development of such machines occurs. He told me he imagined they would be rather clumsy and difficult to maintain and operate and would be prone to much of the same design flaws that occurred in many of the machines developed haphazardly and quickly during WWII. In fact, as I imagine you probably know, many weapons in the war were prone to malfunction and design flaws. I must say I found that interesting as most conceptual designers don’t take this into account, it’s something I consider a lot as well, it just makes sense. Not every design is flawless out of the gate in real world applications so what you’re seeing is part his intentional design flaws added in the art and also his aesthetic leanings defining the direction of the look. But yes I think it’s more or less a mixture of fantasy and some thoughtfulness in the execution of the designs, they certainly are striking.
I imagine the pilots do indeed modify their machines and I had that in mind when I painted them. In fact there will be quite a few more CG colors to come, GP and I are working on several things. Not sure how heavy they are but I think this will allow a basic idea of potentially how heavy they would be http://www.deviantart.com/view/28761257/
Glad you dig em, I was pretty wowed by his work when I first saw it and it’s quite cool he’s onboard doing works on some of these projects, his FOILs so far are simply ace (there’s a deco one that’s quite crazy, unfinished as yet).
I don’t know if my answers are as adequate as he could but hopefully it shed a little light.
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