Ken Capelli

Teef’s evolution.

“Q“‘s sketch development. Prior to these stages shown here, “Q” went through a bunch of old-school tracing-paper overlay refinements before being scanned in for digital iteration and coloring.

Some of the first thumbnails for Killa Beez, starting with the original silhouette of a squat, stocky bee (upper left) who became Teef, with the musculature given solely to Massiv for silhouette differentiation.

For the heck of it, here’s three images uploaded as a tumblr filmstrip. I just like seeing them fade into each other :-)

The pencil sketch for the color image.

Now that I look at it, the right foreleg could have had more of an action bend to it, and the left side arms and legs should have come forward a bit more (for a clearer and more dynamic shape… like, the left foreleg could be extended forward, grabbing).

Anwyn 2, high-res. I cheesed it with a very art-nouveau look not only out of a preference for the style, but also one of speed (it’s much easier/ faster to go decorative than realistic).

Anwyn 1, high-res

Maal, high-res.

More illustrations from the same RPG sourcebook gig. Only a couple hours for each piece. I went with less linework on some of these to speed things up, opting for more solid shapes and smushing around of tone.

Illustrations done for a RPG supplement. Deadline was tight, pay was low, and I only had a couple of hours to do each one over a cross-country roadtrip, but I liked what I whipped out well enough.

Lady of The Lake, for Armed And Dangerous. I looked at a lot of Waterhouse during these sketches.

Main character Clash for a game titled MINDF*CK, which eventually morphed into dystopian giant-robot action game Slave Zero. The project was pre-Matrix by a few years; I was bringing SKIN TWO and SECRET style fetishwear to the costume art direction (and was doing wedge heels quite a few years before they came back into vogue). There’s a whole sketchbook of great visual development that accompanies this character and I had a lot of fun developing this fucked-up, bad-ass mercenary chick. Her proportions in the model sheet are off (head is small, arms short); I corrected in the 3D model.

It took a lot of back and forth to get the jointed 3D model looking right… consoles and PC’s weren’t powerful enough yet to handle single-skinned, skeletally driven meshes with any performance back then (in those pre-3dFX days), so 3D characters were built like action figures with rigid, jointed segments. They were low-poly, so you had to rely on Gouraud shading to hide the boxiness/ faceting of the models. Animation was applied directly to the mesh segments.

Of particular importance was how Clash looked from behind in a 3rd-person perspective, the primary view of the game and character. Basically, her ass had to look great (my razor). In under 500 polygons. I wish I had screenshots of her in action from the prototype, it was satisfying watching her run.

Just some quick goofy Photoshop sketches from a while ago, done idly while chatting.