Rangewood Ospreys On Approach

From Black Phoenix’s first flashback sequence: Rangewood’s Ospreys approach the crashed eyphor ship at Salt Lake City in response to an alarm at the scientific facility around it, owned by Olympus International. Aboard are private military contractors assigned to the Rangewood Rapid Reaction Force (Triple-R), tasked with crisis response.

Cooper

Oh, really? Another picture of Cooper. Well, yeah. The tattoos were one of those random inspiration things. I thought her back looked too bare, er, uh, plain or something. And they actually turned out pretty nice.

Another Cooper Portrait

I don’t know why portraits of Cooper have proven the most difficult to do. I guess trying to capture that tough girl essence without overloading delicate feminine features or, conversely, making her too masculine, is a touch balance to achieve . . . I still have some people saying “he” on close-ups of her face, and it drives me nuts.

I really dislike animated gifs in websites. They make a page schizophrenic and unappealing to look at.

>Tirahi Sketches

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Moving into some creature design, so I figured I’d start with the next part of my Directed Themes class. These are Tirahi, originally inspired by the Kilrathi of Wing Commander over at least a decade ago. They’ve evolved quite a lot from my original inspiration, and I’ve read and studied other cat-like species, or “felinoids”, like the Kzinti. I used a guide from Brynn Metheny on combining human and animal features I read in Corel Painter magazine. I decided to go with front and side views, and this was a lot more fun than I thought it would be, especially since I’ve had these guys in my head for years and now I’m starting to see them. Kind of like visiting an old friend.

Some of the changes I’ve made were a significantly reduced skull ridge. This’ll result in a smaller masseter muscle, which results in a lower bite force than compared to a lion or tiger. Evolution and genetic have seen their teeth get sharper to equalize this disadvantage. I had to decrease the skull ridge to accommodate a larger brain that is equal to a human’s in cognitive thought and reasoning. Other than that, I kept them pretty feline. You’ll also notice the growth sutures around the skull are angular, a result of genetic engineering to take evolution’s process and make it more precise.

>Rangewood Triple-R

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Cooper in her PMC (mercenary) gear as part of the Rangewood Rapid Reaction Force, responding to the incident at the Salt Lake Facility. This is actually the second part of a three part series of pieces detailing Rangewood’s arrival at the SLF built around the alien crash site. In the first piece you’ll actually see the behemoth, so stay tuned. I finished up this one first because it’s for a school project.

>Osprey Exfil

>Rangewood Osprey heading out of the LZ after delivering the PMC’s to the Salt Lake Facility, built around the alien crash site. This is the vehicle for the second piece in the three piece series I’m doing for my book Black Phoenix.

>Osprey En Route

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One of the Rangewood PMC’s Ospreys in flight around the alien crash site in Salt Lake City. Part of a much bigger project.

>Cowgrrrl

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Finishing up this whole Cowgirl thing. I was actually more excited about coloring and finishing these character sketchings than the actual piece. I think they look better too. I plan to sell these separately as prints as soon as I can find a place that suits my needs. And I gotta do something with the wanted poster on the right, but prob can’t considering the way the rest of the piece is set up. And might do more work on that wall.

>Osprey in Progress

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A mercenary MV-22 in progress for a big three piece project. Time for another busy weekend.