The Legend of the Warrior Ntome and the Evil Demon Five Heads

Once many years ago, Enzi, the greatest sorcerer in all of Africa, sought to gain immortality. To win it, he made a deal with the evil demon, Five Heads. Five Heads promised that if Enzi gave him his soul, he would never face the grave. When Enzi agreed, Five Heads sucked out his soul through his nostrils, which killed him instantly—but Five Heads kept his part of the deal, as he carries Enzi’s body with him, using it to channel the sorcerer’s powers. He never faced the grave.
Ntome- Name means Young Elephant. Ntome is the mightiest warrior in the village of Maasii, and he alone is sent to destroy the demon Five Heads, though he has no idea how to do it.

Sunyei- Name means Sand River. Ntome’s wife, and daughter of the sorcerer chief whom Five Heads devoured. She is wise and supportive of Ntome, but badly wants her father saved or if that is impossible, avenged. She is also the finest spear maker in the village, and possesses some magic of her own.

Buyu- Name means Calabash. A greedy alligator. His desire for wealth is incomparable. He's a pretty sly business man, black market dealer, and part time pirate (but it's mainly just a hobby). That's how he's such a smart dresser. This fellow lives in Africa, and his latest great idea is to steal the jewel in the sorcerer's eye socket from the Demon Five Heads and sell it on ebay.

Enzi- Name means Power. The most powerful sorcerer in all of Africa. Five Heads devoured him and now uses him as the source of his power. His magic is controlled by his crystal eye, which is still hanging in his skeletal head. He died with a look of absolute terror on his face, and you can still see it if you are unfortunate enough to get that close-- it almost seems as if he is still in some horrific torment...

Now, with Ninjas and Everyone Together!

Here is a picture of evreyone together! Huzzah!

Warrior and Princess

I've designed the Samburu Warrior's princess wife and a new background! Hooray!

Gator

Here is an alligator. He's a pretty sly business man, black market dealer, and part time pirate (but it's mainly just a hobby). This is also for Ryan's final. This fellow lives in Africa, and his latest great idea is to steal the jewel in the sorcerer's eye socket from the Demon Five Heads and sell it on ebay. That's how he's such a smart dresser.

Demon Five Heads, Revised Again

BWAHAHAHA!!! I am now pretty well satisfied with the Demon Five Heads. I had a revelation when I printed him and flipped him upside down and found him much more freaky. Now, instead of a tree sort of creature, he's halfway between a rotten tree stump and something pulled out of a tar pit that hides in caves and swings down from the ceiling a you! Also, I changed the background (Thanks Jon) and his gesture somewhat to give him a more vicious angle of motion.

Environment

This is for my final in Ryan's Character Design class. The assignment is a cast of 4 characters and one environment. (This is the environment.) Anyway, I was kind of trying to emulate the style of Samurai Jack. It was difficult because my setting is so much different. Most of SJ's environments are in hills and small, closed in environments. Here, I wanted to emphasize the massive size of the mountain in relation to everything else, and still use elements from Samurai Jack. Also, I've shown 4 of the many color palettes I tried. Of course, I started with a blue sky, but that was rightout from the beginning.

Hooray! Default Word Art Chrome!

Which do you prefer?

RENDERMAN MADNESS!!!

So, what's wrong with this picture? That's right, PART OF IT IS NOT REAL! What part is it? What part did I build in 3D? Can you tell? Yes, probably, if you keep looking. But I'm still pretty pleased with it.

Environment Painting

The top one is my final painted version of an environment I drew earlier. The rest were color concept sketches. Never really tried to do this before... Learned a lot. #1 thing learned: I need to learn a lot.

BATTLE! (but it's only a model)

This is a sketch of a battle between the Samburu Warrior and the Demon Five Heads. I tried here to show them both in a more dynamic pose. Five heads attacks with tendrils and heads up front while holding back and protecting the sorcerer's corpse, the source of his power. Perhaps if my paper had been wider I'd stretch out the comp even more...

Demon, Revised

All together, I was not satisfied with the demon Five Heads... Here's a revised version with a more unified design and looking a bit more sinister. I like this a lot better. Still open to suggestions.

The Demon Five Heads

Here he is... He ended up some sort of strangling tree monster with four heads. The fifth one is his victim's! BWA HA HA HA!!! As you can see, he has eaten the soul of his victim to take their powers and life force. Clearly.
Well, I'm not so sure about the background, and I'm open to design critiques... The faces were referenced from african masks.

Story

So, I'm going to do three more characters in this style, and an environment. Should be fun!

Not quite sure about the story details yet, but I know who the villain will be. He is the evil demon Five Heads, who was inspired (loosely) by an african legend of five headed serpent chief. I kind of departed from it a lot though. The Demon Five Heads is an evil spirit inhabiting the dead body of Africa's most powerful (Magician? Sorcerer? Warrior? King?). The demon had made a deal with the man that if he gave his soul to Five Heads, he would "never face the grave". When the man agreed to it, Five Heads immediately devoured his soul and entered the man's body. He died with a look of absolute horror on his face, which is still plastered on it today.

I'm trying to work out Five Heads' design. He started out as a voodoo doctor type guy with a necklace of shrunken heads and five living heads coming out from his shoulders. Then he became more of an amorphous blob with blobby heads sticking out, then he became more of a spider, then an octopus/tree blob. Now it's down to a walking corpse, bent over backwards with a look of horror on his dead, hanging face, and five demon heads protruding from his chest and controlling his limbs like a puppeteer. Hmm... We'll see.

African Warrior Design

I have to say, I'm pretty pleased with this design so far! It started out as an emulation excercise- I was trying to imitate the style of Samurai Jack. Then I started messing with colors and lines and stuff.

The character himself started out as a charicature of an african man I found online, then I started simplifying and exaggerating him a ton. Cool, eh? His costume is based on a Samburu warrior, but I've left out some things for simplicity. I may add them later.

Now, with Color!

But only one, in several values. Cheerio!

The Kiss

The theme here is "Pretty Ugly". Drew this for Joe's class. I'll throw in some value shortly. I was going for a Norman Rockwell type composition... But then, clearly not.

Robot again

I made some improvements to this image, and now I like it better.

One More Environment

The assignment was to do three. I have lots of other sketches that were pretty cool, too... I may post them. This one was based on Centre Park in my home town, Reading, PA. I massively altered some proportions and turned the trash cans into flaming altars! Neat, eh?Oh, I did work this one over a bit in Photoshop...

More Environment Design

Here's another environment design. By the way, these are all ink. Pretty much.

Environment Design

Also for Ryan's Character Design class. We also do environments. This is basically a bridge behind my apartment that I seriously altered in post.

Style Emulation - Hyung-tae Kim

I drew this for Ryan's Character Design class. The goal was to emulate the style of another artist. I chose Hyung-tae Kim because his style and subject matter was WAY off from my normal stuff. Also, it revealed to me that I need some more anatomy classes or something...