'The Mistress' Thumbnail set 1

Here are a few initial thumbnail concepts, I’m not sure if I like a much chunkier and compact boat like concept 1 and 6 or if I like the longer design like in 2 and 3. One part of the designs I particularly like is having the control room at the rear of the ship instead of the centre or at the front, this leaves more room for cranes, the bathysphere and other equipment. I’m finding it a little difficult to say I like one design at the moment as I’m having trouble trying to visualise the whole ship in 3d space and how it will function and what goes where, also the scale of things. Next ill either do some more thumbnails or jump straight into 3d and block out some quick parts, such as different ships bases, the crane etc and make a few different ships using the mood board and these thumbnails as inspiration, this way I can quickly bash different parts together or remove and change components to come up with the design I like the most in 3d space making it easy to visualise the final design.

'The Mistress' Referances

I’m now moving onto designing the boat that is in the scene called 'The Mistress'. In the book I get the idea that the book isn’t a pristine fancy boat but more something that serves purely to collect trove (Treasure) from the bottom of the ocean. It does this by lowering a large metal cylinder called a Bathysphere using a crane to the ocean floor where deep sea divers can go and find trove. The boat is also heavily equipped with cannons which I can image rotate 360 degrees on the boats deck for full manoeuvrability to face the dragon when it comes into the story. Here are the references I have gathered to try and inspire my designs and come up with some thumbnails ready to create a basic 3d model to paint over. I mostly looked at war steamboats and large oil boats; I also looked at cranes and other various images that would help me in my process.

Maskelyne final design

Here's how far Ive got with the back view, think i need to shrink it down a little looks a bit big. Going to move on now though once i have some time ill come back to it if needed.

Maskelyne final (wip 4)

Urhhhh getting there! this is basically the finished character concept now, just working on the back perspective view, then maybe some final tweaks depending if I'm happy with the character in a few days. I can finally move on and design some more stuff for the scene then!

Dragon design final

Spent some more time on the dragon design, calling it finished for now, pretty happy with how it turned out. Need to move on now and start designing Maskelyne's boat looking forward to it.
Next blog post should be of some image references and hopefully some thumbnail ideas for the boat, im also going back and trying to finish of the Maskelyne character design.

Dragon design final (wip2)

Here's the progress i got with the dragon today after working through different ideas. I intend to do a back perspective view as well to accompany this concept so you can imagine the dragon almost in 3d. Pretty happy with how its looking at the moment, with the large claws and thick looking head makes the dragon look really strong and powerful. The concept is basically done i think... although ill have a rest on it now until tomorrow and ill see if there's anything i think could be changed or improved.

Dragon design final (wip1)

Here is the start of the final dragon design, just a quick sketch for now taking ideas from different concepts i created. I will now start painting and adding in detail, overall im pretty happy with the pose, although quite simple it looks powerfull.