William Thorup

Illustrator, Motion Graphics Designer, Animator, and VFX Artist

Category: Illustration

INKTOBER 2015 | Finished

Here we go. Time to give it a try. Inktober. I have been wanting to do this for the last few years, after my friend Michael Buhler first introduced me to the event. Be sure to check out his blog, as he is currently inking away as well. I think I final have myself worked up enough to carry through the end of the month.

Goals

I think that the only way I am going to see this through is if I set a few goals to help generate ideas, but keep it basic to avoid being too ridged. I want to keep it fun as well. For the sake of keeping my blog clean as well, I will be posting everything in this post, and I will also be sharing out to the Facebook Draw Night group, Google+, Deviant Art and to my Instagram.

Goal #1 is to produce 10 larger, 11×17 vertical illustrations, for my top 10 video games. I won’t list that here now, don’t want to spoil the surprises to come.

Goal #2 is 21 other small scale pieces. This can include inked sketches, smaller, and quicker to finish.

Quick Link List

A list of what is done, and linked for quick navigation.

11×17 Fanart Illustrations

Day 4 – Transistor
Day 11 – Phantom Dust
Day 16 – Tempest 2000
Day 17 – Journey
Day 18 – Adventure of Link
Day 19 – Shadow of the Colossus
Day 21 – Ocarina of Time
Day 29 – Link’s Awakening
Day 30 – Final Fantasy VII
Day 31 – Street Fighter 2010

Other Inks

Day 1 – “Play the Beast”
Day 2 – “Another Bullet”
Day 3 – “On the Throne”
Day 5 – “Gate Keeper”
Day 6 – “Forgotten Trophies”
Day 7 – “Fighter”
Day 8 – “Push the Button”
Day 9 – “Just a Few Notes”
Day 10 – “Distilled”
Day 12 – “Potential Baller”

…
Day 13 – “Navigator”
Day 14 – “Hybrid CI”
Day 15 – “Checkers”
Day 20 – “Ambassador”
Day 22 – “Lighter”
Day 23 – “From the Depths”
Day 24 – “Suzzie”
Day 25 – “Time to Fly”
Day 26 – “Unwavering”
Day 27 – “Mouse Thief”
Day 28 – “Minmei”

Weekly Time Lapse Video

Week 1 Time Lapse

Week 2 Time Lapse

Week 3 Time Lapse

Day 1

Play the Beast

Day 2

Another Bullet

Day 3

On the Throne

Day 4

Transistor

Day 5

Gate Keeper

Day 6

Forgotten Trophies

Day 7

Fighter

Inktober – Week 1 – Time Lapse

Day 8

Push the Button

Day 9

Just a Few Notes

Day 10

Distilled

Day 11

Phantom Dust

Day 12

Potential Baller

Day 13

Navigator

Day 14

Hybrid CI

Inktober – Week 2 – Time Lapse

Day 15

Checkers

Day 16

Tempest 2000

Day 17

Journey

Day 18

Adventure of Link

Day 19

Shadow of the Colossus

Day 20

Ambassador

Day 21

Ocarina of Time

Inktober – Week 3 – Time Lapse

Day 22

Lighter

Day 23

From the Depths

Day 24

Suzzies

Day 25

Time to Fly

Day 26

Unwavering

Day 27

Mouse Thief

Day 28

Minmei

Day 29

Link’s Awakening

Day 30

Final Fantasy VII

Day 31

Street Fighter 2010

October 2, 2015
Atari Jaguar | Flappy McFur | Box Art Illustration

This one has been a long time coming. I have always intended to update the original box art, done in Inkscape, with a nicer looking illustration. I just thought I would have gotten to it sooner.

I keeping with the overall design of the original box art, I maintained the perspective, composition, and other key elements of the original, with only a few changes. The biggest change, and naturally the most obvious is that it isn’t vector art anymore. To compensate for the lack of scalability, I doubled my usual working resolution in Krita. I usually work at an A4-300dpi (2430x3508px). This time I basically doubled that resolution (4400x6218px), to help future proof the piece, in case we wish to do posters or banners.

The other obvious change was the inclusion of the second character in our game, Cutter, McFur’s lovely companion turned human. Currently, Cutter’s part in the game is purely aesthetic, but there are plans in having her be a larger part in all the flapping the player will be doing. Something like dropping bonus coins or removing pipes for McFur every once in a while.

Now compared to the first and second illustrations done for this game, I decided to take the rough colored pencil and crayon look further, and I really liked the final result. I used two pastel brushes primarily, but I also used a couple of pencil and standard brushes when I needed a bit more detail in places. I am not worried about reworking the previous illustrations, because I feel they feel great for what they are, but finishing this piece makes me feel like doing one or two more new illustrations following this pattern. We’ll see.

Enjoy the time lapse video I put together, a few close ups of detail, and have fun commenting on the differences between the old and new box art. I am also thinking about doing an extended cut of the time lapse that is about an hour long, so those of you who like to see more of my process in detail, you may have the opportunity soon.

August 10, 2015
Battle Recovery | Pastels and Contrast

I have been drawing/painting allot, I swear. Just haven’t been finishing much. I start on a piece, and before I know it, I have moved onto another one, and another one, and anot…… You get the idea.

So, I thought I would post something I did manage to finish up (Sorry, forgot to hit the record button, no time lapse this time around). This was a little concept born out of a sketch session, and, because I liked how the composition and concept were coming together, I decided to push it further.

A soldier, after the battle, brought back into her assigned quarters for healing. The robots remove the worn armor, as others tend to the wounds occurred in battle. I imagined a world where children would grow up in relative isolation, bred by a computer to oversee the conquering of worlds. Kept separate from the general population, and all for the progression of man. She is one of the many victims of a human-less world, created by humans.

A sad story, but I found it very inspiring while working through this. Because of the dark, and messy nature of the situation I chose to use a pastel brush in Krita to maintain a rough texture throughout the drawing process. That along with one of the default fill patterns to add a roughness to the whole image.

The whole image took about 3-4 hours, and is quite different from anything else I have done in the past.

July 6, 2015
Time Keeper | Outcast Odyssey Master Card Challange

5/5/2015 – Update – The “Time Keeper” time lapse video was featured along with many other talented artists on Krita’s 2015 Kickstarter campaign. Awesome!

Unfortunately I spotted this little challenge a bit too late on Google+. I decided to take a crack at it anyways to see what I would come up with, and to produce some more content for the YouTube Channel.

You can see the list of entries that made it on time here, and there is some very very impressive work on there. I am pretty sure I didn’t have much of a chance even if I did start and then submit in time, but it always fun to see what others come up with, and varying skill levels involved.

Love and Hate

This piece for me had a very love hate relation ship. I like the composition, I hated the composition, I like the colors, I hated the colors. This doesn’t happen to me very often, and usually if a painting/drawing isn’t working for me, I scrap it, or it just doesn’t ever make it to the public. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe it is the worst thing I have ever produced, I just feel indifferent about the final image. I believe it was a combination of elements which I will now attempt to distill here in hopes to avoid this in future situations.

Composition

There were some repetitive elements that I wanted to make sure were included. The most obvious one was circles. From the staff to the clocks and watches, to the background rocks of the cave, this was implemented from the start of the painting, and all seemed very clear in my mind before I started. But throughout the entire process it felt like it wasn’t quite working. Besides changing the entire theme of the image, I never figured out how to make myself feel better about this. Maybe it wasn’t enough to tie the image together with the story I was trying to tell.

Story

This one started out simple. A magic user, maybe a witch or sorceress, capable of manipulate time locally to kill her opponents, or bring them back from the dead as her servants. This is one of the elements that I feel was communicated well enough. The man in the foreground to the right could have been used a bit more to show her power to defeat, but decided to remove emphisis from that section of the painting because I felt it hindered where I wanted the viewers eyes to go.

Color

I am starting to feel that I just need to start out with color from now on. After working on the grey scale image for so long, I found myself getting too attached to it, finding it hard to move on into the coloring stage. The next painting I do, there may be some rough grey scale work, but I am going to make sure that I push into color far earlier than this one. For those who are interested, I used and online pallet generator to get my colors.

Close Ups

Again, overall I feel that this piece isn’t bad, but there are just a few unknowns that bug me about it, and some things in my processes that need to be changed.

February 9, 2015
Atari Jaguar | Mcfur and Friend 2

Went on a vacation to California, and had allot of time to do some thumbnails for a variety of things. I got a few together for Flappy McFur as well, and I am planning on taking those thumbs to finished pieces.

Not much different with this one. I approached it in a similar fashion as the first McFur and Friend. I really like the playful look of colored pencils. I wanted to do a similar background as the first one, with pipes and everything, but I was having a difficult time getting the composition to work. So, my inner designer kicked in and decided to simplify it. Taking a more abstract approach to the background, I decided just to show a sliver of the McFur’s world, as the focus should be mostly on McFur and his friend. Because I still wanted the pipes in there as well, I did a simple stencil shape of a pipe, and used that to balance the composition a bit. I really like the stencil idea, and I will probably be using it in the future illustrations.

This is a new step in my artistic progress. As this is the first time that I have planned out a series of illustrations for a project, and carried it out. I wish to do at least a couple more illustrations for this project, to round out this series. It has been an awesome experience, planning out design elements, colors, a bit of character design. There are a couple other personal projects that I will eventually approach and hope to approach in a similar manner.

December 28, 2014
Atari Jaguar | McFur and Friend 1

So, during my long hiatus from posting, many projects, many new pieces of art, have been brought into existence, through the sacrifice of time. By myself and others. Unfortunately, this includes the time that is spent putting together videos and posting on my blog. If you are consistent to my blog, or my YouTube Channel, thank you, and sorry for not being more consistent. But enough of the excuses, lets get on to the good stuff.

This time around more Jaguar projects, and this will be the first of a few posts. As you already know, my brother and I are involved in homebrew development for the Atari Jaguar. One of the projects we are working on is a Flappy Bird clone called Flappy McFur. There is more information on the project page, if your interested. In a nutshell, we are about halfway through development, and I am in the process of getting some art together for packaging and inserts, while my brother closes in on our end goals for the game. This is the first piece of official artwork for Flappy McFur.

Before I get started though, just a thank you to everyone in the Thor Media office for feedback on the piece. It is always great to get feedback on my work, when I am too blind to see the mistakes.

Because of the light nature of the game, certain design choices for maintaining a consistency across the artwork became apparent. First, match the saturation of game. Simple enough, yellows, greens, and reds are saturated, while everything else not so much (I guess that leaves my blues…) Which medium to use was a simple choice for me as well, colored pencils. I love working in colored pencil, probably the first medium I truly dove into and experimented with. Because of it’s affinity to the the look of crayons, but still maintaining the ability to create the detail I want in my drawings, I feel that it will match the mood of the game well. Also, Krita simulates pencils pretty darn well, and it feels almost as good as the real thing.

With these few design choices, I believe the next 3 or 4 pieces will maintain a consistent feel.

Speaking of the next pieces. I want to go with a cute and sometimes funny theme for each. Where McFur and his friend are in a playful mood. We might be incorporating McFur’s friend in the game some how. I like her design so far, but it may need a few tweaks for the game. I am hoping to put together a small comic for the game manual as well, but we we’ll see what happens there. Stay nearby, I will have a few more of theses over the next few weeks.

October 19, 2014
Loaded | Illustration

I have been meaning to write about this one for a while. I put this one together about a month ago, and it has been posted in my portfolio and other galleries. No time lapse video, but I was able to put together a small snapshot video with the different revisions I had saved. Also, before we continue, I have to thank Michael Buhler for his input on color, lighting, anatomy, and proportions.

There were a few things I wanted to focus on for this one. First, color was priority. I wanted to keep my color pallet very specific. At first, I was trying to go for something a bit more abstract, overall blue line art with pinks and reds. I was struggling to get it to work, so, I decided to revert to something a bit more comfortable, and realistic. And, I decided to focus on the overall message I wish to portray in the piece, making sure that the composition, pose, lighting and color, all tell the story well.

From a skill building perspective, I focused on rendering various materials. There is the bubble, obviously, but also the rock, clothing, hair, and skin were focused on to create the subtle differences each material has. While still maintaining my current style, I believe that I pulled this off fairly well, but there is still room for improvement.

As for the story I was trying to tell. I wanted to make a something political, focused on China’s booming economy, and how every bubble eventually pops. The characters on the left basically say that, and the characters on the right hand side of the piece are a Chinese idiom for someone who is loaded. The use a bubble gum not only covers the idea of a bubble growing, and establish anticipation with the inevitable pop, but gum tends to be something that is sweet and enjoyable. All good things must come to an end, right? The girl is dressed in very casual, and somewhat immodest clothing, to represent the adoption of many western trends. But as things are with transitions like this, she still holds on to whats familiar in traditional Chinese culture, shown by her gripping the lion towering over her.

July 15, 2014
Wendigo of Terror | Illustration/Concept Art

Here is another piece for your eyes, a treat. You may be thinking to yourself that this isn’t the kind of work I usually do. You would be right in thinking that, this is definitely off the beaten path for me, and here is why.

We have been in some minor communication with someone who works at Arrowstorm Entertainment. A movie studio here in Northern Utah that focuses on fantasy and science fiction films. This person asked if I could put together a concept piece for a possible B horror film monster. A Wendigo creature that originates from the Great Lakes area of the United States, and is usually centered around myths that deal with the, pseudo, adverse effects of cannibalism. The content isn’t my favorite, but the job paid good, and it gave me a change to stretch out of my usual bubble.

I did quite a few thumbnails for this piece (20+) and actually did three complete paintings, before we found what the client liked most. The process was very enlightening, and had allot of momentum. Really, the momentum is what made this painting fun. The client was in constant communication with me, and gave feedback when I needed it.

Overall, I spent too much time on the painting though. I was trying to keep my total work hours under 6, but ended up going over 9. This was for a few reasons. First, and foremost, when I was first presented the job, I should have asked a bit more about the production and where it was currently at. This leads to the second problem. The project had hardly been refined, and the story, background, and other details about the creature, where watery. This is why so much time was put into thumbs and other paintings.

I should have stepped back, asked the client to refine their ideas a bit more, and then approach the painting after a bit more forethought was applied.

I am happy with the end result, and the client was as well. I hope to have a bit more work with them in the future, and hopefully work on some of their movie posters and other concept work.

July 9, 2014
For Liberty | Illustration and Time Lapse

A small gift to the men and women who serve for the cause of our liberties, rights, and freedoms. I also would like to thank all those around the world who fight for these causes, whether you fight for the United States or not. Every human being deserves these blessings in their lives, and today, we remember the price that must sometimes be paid for those blessings.

This painting took about 4 hours to complete. The entire painting was done in Krita.

I focused on the color pallet for this painting. I wanted something a bit abstract, but not so abstract as to distract the viewer of the story being told. I wanted a sad and somber tone to the image, so, I stuck to cool colors. Primarily blue, greens, and grays. Red and white were my highlight colors. Then, I controlled my satruation in specific areas, in order to bring focus to the parts of the painting I wanted the viewer to see first. I feel overall the composition is good, maybe a bit crowded, but still attractive.

July 4, 2014
“Look What I Found” – Illustration

I have been painting allot lately. Unfortunately, most of it I am not able to post on my personal blog or portfolio yet. I am involved in comic book project for someone else, and I am doing concept work for some films for Thor Media. So, at the the end of the day, I am all “drawn” out, and looking forward to dinner and an episode of Star Trek. But, I have been recording most of my work, so, hopefully that work will transfer into time lapse videos for everyone to watch and enjoy in later posts.

With that being said, I am working on personal projects when I have the time, especially Jaguar stuff. And that is focus of today’s post.

This piece is a concept piece for an opponent in the Reversi game project called “Intellection”. In story mode, the main character will face off in a game of Reversi against all the gods in the current lore of the story. The lore consists of gods that are personifications of the different aspects of time. (i.e. past, present, future, eternity, etc…). I won’t spoil the story too much, but the primary goal of the main player is to return time to a normal state, by beating the gods in the game of Reversi. Sounds a bit better than an average game of Reversi right?

When I am not drawing for work, I am working on game design documents and assets for our Atari Jaguar games. I really enjoy thinking about a game and its various functions. From game play, style, length, world, music, and characters. There is so much to consider when creating a game with a narrative, not including all the technical stuff, and it really is a challenge.

We have 4 working projects (read more at http://bitjag.com/ out developer page). At this point I have two of the shorter games 75% fleshed out on paper. There will obviously be changes to certain details, but the documents give us a great starting point, and a fall back, if we don’t wish to explore possibilities and just get things done.

March 30, 2014