Get 'im!Click for the whole image.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Monday, February 2, 2009
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
KHHAAAANNNNNNN
Khan Atillas, scumbag gunslinger, wearing stolen clothes.This will hopefully be my last lone character for a while, I'm going to try and work on some more involved compositions and environments.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Saita
Here's another character...She's kinda a tall image, so I put a cropped and zoomed version in, to show the details.
Update, 12-28-08
Well, well, well, it would appear that this image has, inexplicably, ruffled someone's feathers, and has generated my very first piece of hate mail! I've always been jealous of people who got hate mail, and eagerly anticipated the day when I could start my own collection, and that day has finally arrived.
I awoke to find this in my in box this morning:
---
"Why the Hel do you have your characters black? Take a close look in the 40k books, manuals, etc...blacks are mostly absent from the genre.
Are you trying to assuage your guilt complex or something?
You can roll your eyes and spam the racist button. It's not going to work here. I'm not advocating whites are superior. I would be equally
aghast if I saw whites in a Japanese Medieval game.
You can also claim there are no races except for humanity in the 41st century. I would direct you to the official GW art and tell you you're wrong.
You might ask why I care?
I care because it's annoying. Trying for force something that does not fit into the genre is disturbing.
Do you have have a things for black people something? If you're black, that would make sense. I highly doubt you are."
---
Now, being the man that I am, I didn't even make fun of him for spelling "Hell" wrong.
Here is my response. I'm excited to get into my first real hate mail war. I've always wanted one of my own.
So, here is my response *****EDIT!!!! 11-24-09 I just got an e-mail from Sebastian! He actually did NOT write this e-mail, his step son did, using his e-mail address and name. Like a punk! I'm leaving the name in here as a place holder, but keep in mind that this e-mail was written by an IMPOSTER!******:
----
Hey there Sebastian,
My name is Robin, and I have to say your e-mail was fairly upsetting on a lot of levels.
First of all, let me explain something. There are a lot of ways to offer constructive criticism of someones artwork. There are ways of interacting with humans that one generally abides by in the spirit of friendly discourse. Your e-mail came across as incredibly hostile and inflammatory. My first response was "F**k you, douche bag".
Now, there is really no way for you ask me what you asked me and not sound racist, even if you aren't. But, assuming you aren't, lets find another way for you to ask me the same questions without sounding like a raging teenager who is too into Nietzsche, and thinks that means he has to be an asshole to everyone, to prove that he is superior, that he's right about everything, and that he knows the most about whatever it is that is up for discussion.
For instance: "Hey there, Ripper, my name is Sebastian, I found your artwork on ______. Overall, I think it's pretty cool/alright/I'm not really a fan, but I have a couple questions.
One, I was wondering what led you to decide on making your character black? I've looked at quite a bit of background materiel and I can't really find any precedent for it, so I was wondering if was a conscious decision on your part, or if you just thought it was going to look cool. If you are black yourself, I apologize, however, in this hobby, the odds are you're not.
Do you have more examples of black characters in the official backgrounds? I'd be interested to see them, as it's kind of something I've noticed before. I hold pretty strictly to the published GW background, so I tend to notice when people deviate from it. I hope this doesn't come across as offensive to either your artwork or to your sensibilities, but I just thought I would pop in and ask you.
Thanks,
Sebastian"
There. That e-mail, coming from a total stranger from who knows where, I may respond to without immediately feeling like I needed to defend myself against an attacker. You mention that I'm probably not black, and you're right. I'm going to go out there and say that if you saw someone you didn't know, out of the blue, and saw their artwork and you didn't like it, you probably wouldn't get up in their faces about it. In fact, if you said these things to me in person, I would DEFINITELY say "F**k you, douche bag!"
In fact, I'm going to go one step further and say that if someone came up to you in person who you didn't know, and started ranting in raving in your face about something you did which had no effect on their lives at all, your response would either be "F**k you, douche bag!", or you'd be terrified of this crazy person who just approached you on the street, because, really, who knows what kind of diseases they have.
Thanks to the time dilation of the internet and the fact that I could walk away and make some tea before responding to you, I was able to formulate a coherent rebuttal instead of a reactionary spewing of curses, or simply putting you in the spam folder.
Put simply, you're wrong.
The Catachan codex has several examples of black guardsmen, and much of the Salamanders materiel previous to the current edition of the Marine codex (which made them jet black with red eyes), also frequently included black skinned marines. Also, coming from his most recent blog post, Dan Abnett writes: "I mention this as an oddity because other characters have left indelible visual impressions in my mind: Gaunt, obviously, Rawne, Larkin, Corbec, Tona Criid, Varl, Ban Daur, Hark etc. Several of you were spot on when you suggested that the Roane Deepers are ANZACs, and the Vitrians are, indeed, black." On top of that, the Tallarns are frequently depcited as being of Middle Eastern descent, and the White Scars are very clearly Mongolians.
Now, admittedly, the vast majority of the artwork is white dudes. Normally, I only see women if they are eldar or sisters of battle. But, according to all the background, that's wrong. It's really all about artistic choice. Most of the artists that work for GW are white males, so they are invariably going to lean towards depicting white males. It's not because they're racist or because they think that there's no black women in the 40k universe, it's just what they know and what they're good at.
I chose to make that character a black woman for two reasons: A) I wanted to play a character in our current Dark Heresy campaign that no one else was playing, and something that I've never played before, and B) I wanted to make an illustration of a black woman because I haven't done that very many times and wanted to add a little bit of variation to my toolbox. If you look at my galleries, you can see that I, too, have fallen into the trap of depicting mostly white dudes. I find women more difficult to properly portray and it is another step harder for me to accurately portray other races without resorting to straight skin tone to do the work for me.
On an intellectual level, why would you think that there are no other skin tones in 40K? When people live in a certain climate for generation after generation, and they inter-marry and the gene pool becomes less varied, they're going to look different from people on a completely different planet who live in a completely different environment. The population of night worlds are described as being incredibly pale, why wouldn't the populations of desert worlds be incredibly tan?
Even if, IF, the Emperor exterminated every other race on Earth that wasn't white during the Unification Wars, he would still need to then erradicate every single human who displayed different pigmentation on the INFINITE number of Imperial worlds during the Great Crusade. That sounds like a tall order. You'd think we would have heard about that at some point.
I don't really know why it's as upsetting to you as it seems to be. You sound like the people who try to argue that Jesus, Mary, and Josef were all white as the day is long, or that dinosaurs never existed, or that the holocaust never happened. You sound like a crazy person.
Chill out, friend, you'll be a lot happier.
Sincerely,
Robin
I will continue to update if he ever gets back to me.
And thank you to Dan Abnett for his most recent blog post, which vindicates me completely.
Update, 12-28-08
Well, well, well, it would appear that this image has, inexplicably, ruffled someone's feathers, and has generated my very first piece of hate mail! I've always been jealous of people who got hate mail, and eagerly anticipated the day when I could start my own collection, and that day has finally arrived.
I awoke to find this in my in box this morning:
---
"Why the Hel do you have your characters black? Take a close look in the 40k books, manuals, etc...blacks are mostly absent from the genre.
Are you trying to assuage your guilt complex or something?
You can roll your eyes and spam the racist button. It's not going to work here. I'm not advocating whites are superior. I would be equally
aghast if I saw whites in a Japanese Medieval game.
You can also claim there are no races except for humanity in the 41st century. I would direct you to the official GW art and tell you you're wrong.
You might ask why I care?
I care because it's annoying. Trying for force something that does not fit into the genre is disturbing.
Do you have have a things for black people something? If you're black, that would make sense. I highly doubt you are."
---
Now, being the man that I am, I didn't even make fun of him for spelling "Hell" wrong.
Here is my response. I'm excited to get into my first real hate mail war. I've always wanted one of my own.
So, here is my response *****EDIT!!!! 11-24-09 I just got an e-mail from Sebastian! He actually did NOT write this e-mail, his step son did, using his e-mail address and name. Like a punk! I'm leaving the name in here as a place holder, but keep in mind that this e-mail was written by an IMPOSTER!******:
----
Hey there Sebastian,
My name is Robin, and I have to say your e-mail was fairly upsetting on a lot of levels.
First of all, let me explain something. There are a lot of ways to offer constructive criticism of someones artwork. There are ways of interacting with humans that one generally abides by in the spirit of friendly discourse. Your e-mail came across as incredibly hostile and inflammatory. My first response was "F**k you, douche bag".
Now, there is really no way for you ask me what you asked me and not sound racist, even if you aren't. But, assuming you aren't, lets find another way for you to ask me the same questions without sounding like a raging teenager who is too into Nietzsche, and thinks that means he has to be an asshole to everyone, to prove that he is superior, that he's right about everything, and that he knows the most about whatever it is that is up for discussion.
For instance: "Hey there, Ripper, my name is Sebastian, I found your artwork on ______. Overall, I think it's pretty cool/alright/I'm not really a fan, but I have a couple questions.
One, I was wondering what led you to decide on making your character black? I've looked at quite a bit of background materiel and I can't really find any precedent for it, so I was wondering if was a conscious decision on your part, or if you just thought it was going to look cool. If you are black yourself, I apologize, however, in this hobby, the odds are you're not.
Do you have more examples of black characters in the official backgrounds? I'd be interested to see them, as it's kind of something I've noticed before. I hold pretty strictly to the published GW background, so I tend to notice when people deviate from it. I hope this doesn't come across as offensive to either your artwork or to your sensibilities, but I just thought I would pop in and ask you.
Thanks,
Sebastian"
There. That e-mail, coming from a total stranger from who knows where, I may respond to without immediately feeling like I needed to defend myself against an attacker. You mention that I'm probably not black, and you're right. I'm going to go out there and say that if you saw someone you didn't know, out of the blue, and saw their artwork and you didn't like it, you probably wouldn't get up in their faces about it. In fact, if you said these things to me in person, I would DEFINITELY say "F**k you, douche bag!"
In fact, I'm going to go one step further and say that if someone came up to you in person who you didn't know, and started ranting in raving in your face about something you did which had no effect on their lives at all, your response would either be "F**k you, douche bag!", or you'd be terrified of this crazy person who just approached you on the street, because, really, who knows what kind of diseases they have.
Thanks to the time dilation of the internet and the fact that I could walk away and make some tea before responding to you, I was able to formulate a coherent rebuttal instead of a reactionary spewing of curses, or simply putting you in the spam folder.
Put simply, you're wrong.
The Catachan codex has several examples of black guardsmen, and much of the Salamanders materiel previous to the current edition of the Marine codex (which made them jet black with red eyes), also frequently included black skinned marines. Also, coming from his most recent blog post, Dan Abnett writes: "I mention this as an oddity because other characters have left indelible visual impressions in my mind: Gaunt, obviously, Rawne, Larkin, Corbec, Tona Criid, Varl, Ban Daur, Hark etc. Several of you were spot on when you suggested that the Roane Deepers are ANZACs, and the Vitrians are, indeed, black." On top of that, the Tallarns are frequently depcited as being of Middle Eastern descent, and the White Scars are very clearly Mongolians.
Now, admittedly, the vast majority of the artwork is white dudes. Normally, I only see women if they are eldar or sisters of battle. But, according to all the background, that's wrong. It's really all about artistic choice. Most of the artists that work for GW are white males, so they are invariably going to lean towards depicting white males. It's not because they're racist or because they think that there's no black women in the 40k universe, it's just what they know and what they're good at.
I chose to make that character a black woman for two reasons: A) I wanted to play a character in our current Dark Heresy campaign that no one else was playing, and something that I've never played before, and B) I wanted to make an illustration of a black woman because I haven't done that very many times and wanted to add a little bit of variation to my toolbox. If you look at my galleries, you can see that I, too, have fallen into the trap of depicting mostly white dudes. I find women more difficult to properly portray and it is another step harder for me to accurately portray other races without resorting to straight skin tone to do the work for me.
On an intellectual level, why would you think that there are no other skin tones in 40K? When people live in a certain climate for generation after generation, and they inter-marry and the gene pool becomes less varied, they're going to look different from people on a completely different planet who live in a completely different environment. The population of night worlds are described as being incredibly pale, why wouldn't the populations of desert worlds be incredibly tan?
Even if, IF, the Emperor exterminated every other race on Earth that wasn't white during the Unification Wars, he would still need to then erradicate every single human who displayed different pigmentation on the INFINITE number of Imperial worlds during the Great Crusade. That sounds like a tall order. You'd think we would have heard about that at some point.
I don't really know why it's as upsetting to you as it seems to be. You sound like the people who try to argue that Jesus, Mary, and Josef were all white as the day is long, or that dinosaurs never existed, or that the holocaust never happened. You sound like a crazy person.
Chill out, friend, you'll be a lot happier.
Sincerely,
Robin
I will continue to update if he ever gets back to me.
And thank you to Dan Abnett for his most recent blog post, which vindicates me completely.
Finished Character
Ok, so here's the Kabuki Samurai Badguy type guy that I did earlier, but now with color. I reworked the colors a LOT of times before I liked them.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Put some Frank in your tank.
Tim Bradstreet is no longer doing Punisher covers. That's a damn shame, I reckon. I have to say that Tim Bradstreet and Frank Miller are probably the two artists who most influenced the way I approach light/shadow/inking. So here is homage to Tim...I think Franky boy misses him.
Friday, September 12, 2008
Deviant gallery
Scope the link in the right margin, suckas.
If you're using google reader:
http://rippermcguirl.deviantart.com/gallery/
If you're using google reader:
http://rippermcguirl.deviantart.com/gallery/
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