Vehicle Concept Art 1

Posted by Adam Weber on Tuesday, 19 May, 2009 at 3:13 pm

Glen had a lot of fun with four straight weeks of ego stroking, so I thought I would keep him on his toes a bit by posting some of the work that I’ve been doing.

One of the main artistic goals in Hackberry Hollow is to have intricately detailed environments, but because we want to keep a strict production schedule we needed to come up with an effective workflow that would save us time without sacrificing quality. When we started doing concept art we realized very quickly that we were spending more time tweaking the underlying drawings than we were actually painting, and with three skilled modelers on our team it quickly became apparent that creating relatively detailed backgrounds complete with lighting would allow us to streamline production without sacrificing the nice painted look that we like.

Glen already revealed this part of our process, but what he posted so far has been experiments with the concept of using 3D mock-ups. Thus far we are very pleased with the results, so I set out to make one of the actual set pieces that will be used to create the final art in the comic. Seeing what we could do with quick 3D mock-ups for our concept art, imagine if you will what could be done with this:

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These images are raw renders without any painting on them whatsoever.

I decided to unveil the work in progress of this ship a bit early. Many of the props are not yet inserted and the interior is still incomplete, but I think the direction is clear. More images of this ship will be posted as it gets closer to completion, but for now, here are a few more shots from the main deck.

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Could you imagine drawing this hundreds of times from many angles throughout the course of the comic?

When complete, the ship will feature a fully detailed interior from stem to stern, much of which is already in place. So this ship is more of a complete set than just a vehicle. I very much look forward to taking you on a tour of the pirate ship, one of the more prominent locations in Hackberry Hollow

The world of Hackberry Hollow is a very diverse place, diverse enough to include some very eccentric pirates with a stolen pirate-themed day cruiser retrofitted to include—among other things—a large crane on the main deck.

3 Comments to Vehicle Concept Art 1

  1. avatar

    Liessa says:

    May 19th, 2009 at 11:43 pm

    Wow, Adam! You really did a great job on this since the last time I saw it. I can’t wait to see everything once it is completed!

  2. avatar

    Erica says:

    May 26th, 2009 at 1:58 pm

    Wow, you guys have accomplished a lot since I’ve been gone. I especially loved the video of Glen’s work. As usual, fantastic work and congratulations. Could you post a tentative production schedule?

  3. avatar

    Adam Weber says:

    May 26th, 2009 at 2:23 pm

    Hey Erica!

    We are using Hackberry Hollow as an effort to push the quality of our work in every regard, from writing to art style and execution to the presentation. For that reason, the official answer is that it will be done when it’s done, however long that takes to get it perfect.

    If I were to take a guess, I would say sometime late fall towards the end of the year. Keep in mind that nothing is complete in our eyes until it can no longer be improved upon (concept art notwithstanding) so this could be pushed back.

    When we have an official release date there will be a big announcement. Also, it’s Tuesday, so keep an eye out for another post later today.

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