thespaceinvader.co.uk artwork

Phoenix Rising; January 2006

This is a picture I drew for my girlfriend Jo, as a Valentines/birthday present in 2006. As you can see, I'm something of a hopeless romantic.

It used a number of new techniques, some of which I'm very pleased with. The fires were made with GIMP's iWarp filter, and a special gradient I found from a tutorial. In the background, the stars were made with a custom brush of my own design, and I rather liked the scenery. It's simple, with implicit rather than explicit detail. This is a technique I really want to work on.

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Dwarf Sentinel; February 2009

This is one of the best portraits I have created for the game. I was particularly pleased with the face, and with the armour colouring. I feel that I captured the stocky strength of the Dwarf well. The image was created entirely with the GIMP, using a reference photograph of myself for anatomy guidance, and much googling for inspiration on the armour designs.

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You Can't Take the Sky From Me; December 2005

The lyrics from the theme tune to Firefly, written by Joss Whedon and performed by Sonny Rhodes, inspired this piece, in which I wanted to capture an air of freedom at almost any cost.

This piece has one of my favourite poses. I felt right from drawing it that it was very dynamic and fluid, and really portrayed the idea I wanted it to. The anatomy came out very well, as did most of the colouring. I wasn't pleased with parts of the background, especially the sea, however. The initial sketch was done in pencil, the image was then inked and coloured using the GIMP.

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Drake Burner; August 2010

This image was created for the Battle for Wesnoth. It is a portrait intended to be shown on screen when the unit it represents is speaking, to give a better impression than the sprite of what the unit looks like. It represents the Drake Burner. The armour is ceramic over a leather frame for the greatest possible protection with minimal weight, an idea which I came up with to account for the fact that a large flying creature could still wear armour.

I was pleased with how this image evetually came out, but it took an awful lot of work. The fire effect, in particular, and its attendant lighting, were the subject of a lot of revision and redrafting. The image was created entirely using the GIMP, with a reference picture of myself for anatomy guidance. I studied various images of terracotta to inform the portrayal of the ceramic.

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Water Serpent; February 2009

This was the first unit which I created and animated entirely by myself. It was also my first original sprite submission to the Battle for Wesnoth. It depicts the river-dwelling Water Serpent. One of my long term projects is to develop the fauna of Irdya, the world in which the game is set, including a group of lizards with a single pair of limbs, including the Nagas, Sea Serpent, and the Dracoatl units from my add-on.

I was extremely pleased with this unit when I completed it. The animation is fluid and effective. However, looking back there are areas in which it could be improved. In particular, I've recently been alerted to the problems of banding and stair-stepping, and at some point I will come back and re-shade this unit to remove those issues. I created the animation using the GIMP.

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Drake Arbiter; July 2009

This unit is the Drake Arbiter. In collaboration with Jetrel, the Battle for Wesnoth's Art Director, and neoriceisgood, another of the project artists, I spent summer 2009 working on animations for this faction. This was one of the units I was most pleased with. The base frame was created by neoriceisgood.

I animated this unit using the GIMP. I was pleased with the little details of the animation, such as the kinematics of the tail and halberd banner. Large animations like this one are my favourites in the game.

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Mudcrawler; September 2010

This is a very recent unit created for the Battle for Wesnoth. It the Mudcrawler. It's not the most pleasant unit to look at, but even animated globs of mud need some attention. I made it to replace a very old-style sprite with minimal animations. The new version is much better animated, and I intend to complete the set of animations in the near future.

Technically I am very pleased with how this came out. I've been able to create fluid, believable animations, and to avoid some of the higher-level technical issues which affect earlier work. I'm looking forward to completing the animation set with movement and a standing animation cycle.

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The Meridian League; January - May 2010

This is a faction from my Wesnoth add-on entitled the Battle for Meridia. The thumbnail depicts the Legionary unit, whilst the full view shows the whole unit tree for the Meridian League faction. The Dwarves of the Meridian League inhabit a broad swathe of territory in a continent to the south of the nation of Wesnoth. They're inspired heavily by Ancient Roman and Greek culture, with a few other elements, notable pirates and medieval cannons.

Technically, there are quite a few issues with this first pass at the artwork for the faction. But the whole era is under development. I'm currently waiting for a final faction to be added from another developer before I can continue with the project.

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One Track Mind; August 2007

I had this design in mind for many years before I finally created it. It's intended for use on a t-shirt.

I like the potential for flexibility and modularity in this design. It was intended to appear alongside an image chosen by the wearer, but would work equally well alone, or displayed with the three elements adjacent to one another, or diagonal. I have been tempted in the past to have t-shirts printed in this design, or to come up with a few more and create a cafepress store, but thus far I've found other things to occupy my time.

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Colony Subship, Defender Class; November 2006

This is an illustration I created to accompany a short piece of my creative writing. The Defender class ship would keep its parent colony ship safe from debris, asteroids etc, and would also be used to clear a space for it to land. The main part of the ship would be docked, and the pilot module would detach and land separately, able to be used in other models of ship, to save resources and space.

This image was created entirley using the GIMP. I also created a 3D representation of this design in Blender, one of the few works I've created with that program. 3D is something I'd like to learn to work with, but I found Blender unintuitive, so I have focussed on other programs and techniques.

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Hardley Runners Exbury 10k logo; January 2009

I created this logo for my father's running club, which was organising a 10 kilometre run at Exbury Gardens in Hampshire. The gardens are famous for their rhodedendrons, so I used a reference image of that flower to develop this logo. I also created the text for the logo, using letters from the club logo where possible, and drawing them from scratch where they were unavailable.

I created the Hardley Runners' website which my father manages. The design was intended to be as simple and easy to manage as possible.

This image was created entirely using the GIMP.

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Longparish Kidz Zone logo; August 2006

In 2006 I created a number of variations on this logo for the youth group in the village where I grew up. I aimed to bring in elements of the countryside and the river which run through the village. Other versions of the logo also included representations of various activities done by the group, but this simpler version was their, and my, preference.

This image was created entirely using the GIMP.

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digital art, graphic design, sprites and animations

I've been interested in art since my youth, when I enjoyed painting with my grandfather. It took a back seat during school, because I found that the lessons were less about learning the skills and knowledge required to be a good artist, and more about expressing creativity; doing specific kinds of art, most of which weren't of particular interest; or art history. I took up art as a pastime in 2004, and have been mostly self-taught since then. I work almost exclusively using the GNU Image Manipulation Program.

Click on the images on this page to display full views of them. In some cases these will be animated.

Digital drawing and painting

Most of my work has been digital drawing, painting and airbrushing. Above are four of my favourite pieces. The first two are early pieces, the latter two are dialogue portraits produced for the Battle for Wesnoth. I enjoy working in this style, and am pleased to see continuing improvement in my skill level compared with earlier work.

Sprites and animations

Sprites and animations are a relatively new addition to my repertoire, and an area in which I am still progressing. I relish the challenge of a technique which is often more akin to sculpture than traditional artwork. Building an image from individual pixels is a tremendously interesting process. Understanding kinematics and lighting is hugely important. The first three images are from the Battle for Wesnoth. The second image was created by an artist called neoriceisgood, I created animations for it. The last is from my multiplayer add-on, entitled the Battle for Meridia.

Graphic design

The crisp lines and simple nature of graphic design appeal to me. The first two images shown here are personal projects. The latter two are work done voluntarily for local organisations.