2D or otherwise!

Anyone who has read my section in “About Us” knows I have of late gained a massive interest in Warhammer 40k.  Thereby giving me +100 to my “King Dork” abilities.

Honestly, I didn’t even know much about it until “Space Marine,” which was my favorite game from last year.  Purists might scoff at my console-game entry into this vast universe, but, to quote James Rolfe: “To be a fan of anything, you have to be exposed to it first.”  Since discovering the incredibly deep and detailed world of the far future, I have read several novels, collected many art books, played through the Dawn of War series, watched the fun Ultramarines movie, and even started my own army (pics of my first painting attempts coming soon!).

Though I began my knowledge with the Ultramarines and read books about both Space Wolves and Grey Knights, it’s the Librarian-Knowledge-Centric Blood Ravens from Dawn of War that appealed the most to me.

I utilized this overwhelming interest to exercise more of my recently acquired, albeit limited, Illustrator skills.  While I’m still in the “look what I can do with polygons” phase using only the limited tools that come with Illustrator (the preloaded color options, shapes, etc), and creating objects and/or figures that just stand there, I was impressed with how much could be done using just what was learned in a few Google-found tutorials.  This has been a fun exercise in making something I’m interested in to try and learn to operate Illustrator and make using all the tools and functions second nature.  It was also an exercise in mass-production as I started with the basic marine and used parts from that piece to create the others.  I also created two artboards of “stuff,” weapons, insignia, and symbology that could be used over and over in various places to prevent having to re-create anything.

How impressed I’ll be with these early efforts next year only time will tell, but for now I give you my 2D squad of cartoon-style Blood Ravens!

These were fun creations and made for nice self-taught Illustrator tutorials.  They’re still 2D flat objects, but are pretty far from my first “magnifying glass” creation, even though they were created essentially using the same concepts.  Next I’m going to try some expressive orks and maybe more dynamic character art.  These were fun though and hopefully they’ll be enjoyed!