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Commission prices, terms and more details found on my VGen!

[wyrmsfornerves]

Commission prices, terms and more details found on my VGen!

[wyrmsfornerves]

A piece I did for The Oddly Pedestrian Life of Christopher Chaos promo zine!

[wyrmsfornerves]

Commission are open!!

(I desperately need to make ad graphics for them but until then!)

You can check out them here on Vgen!

Available commission are:

Custom Monster Designs - starting at $350

Custom Character/Adoptable Designs - starting at $125

Full-body Character Illustrations (also available in a Surprise Me! Style for a discount) - starting at $80 and $70 respectively

[wyrmsfornerves]

Less than 24 hours to go!!!

Hi! I don't usually talk much on here, but I wanted to share this! For the past three or four years I've been working on these graphic novels called The Roman Stars with writer Ivan Brandon!

What is The Roman Stars? It's a grand space opera about the life of Julius Caesar! And we are currently LIVE on Kickstarter

So if you like graphic novels, space epics, and/or Roman History, I would greatly appreciate it if you all would check our book out!

[wyrmsfornerves]

Dionysus sketch with some weird looking leopards

[wyrmsfornerves]

I'm looking at some of my art and coming to the distinct conclusion that its probably really obvious I adored Majora's Mask as a very small child

[wyrmsfornerves]

RE the monster inspiration.. one of my favorites of all time is "Torment of the Worgen" from WoW :' )

I did this.  I don't remember doing it, but it cannot be otherwise. I have committed sins in my life before.  I even killed a man once who didn't deserve it.  But this is different. I am changed. These murders were not my choice.  A beast lives inside of me. I will be hunted and shunned.  I need to hide.  Run.  Bury the bodies. I start to walk outside when I realize what truly bothers me. I feel no guilt.

I know it's 95% werewolf flavored, but I still like it a lot for monsters in general

Oooooo very nice thank you for the inspo!!!

[wyrmsfornerves]

just found your account, holy shit your art is AWESOME

Thank you!!!

[wyrmsfornerves]

Hi! Younger artist here, I just saw your post with all those super cool monster designs and I took a quick stroll through your blog, and I was wondering if you had any specific inspirations for those designs or where you get inspo for character designs in general? Or perhaps some tidbits on how you learned how to make wild designs like that?

Sorry if this is a bit of a big ask, I just think it's really cool and I was curious!

Hello! Thank you for your question and apologies for taking so long to answer, I just got really excited and wanted to be thorough! 

My biggest piece of advice is research and develop a visual library of reference material! Your visual library is like a mental database of everything you’ve ever seen in your life, and this is what you can pull from to design concepts. 

There are a couple ways to start this as a practice: 

Notice what you see! It can be a chair, a sunset, a shoe, the light on a tree, but if you see something you think is beautiful or interesting, mentally make a note of it!

Document what you like! With computers and cameras this is a lot easier to do nowadays, but if you see something interesting to you, document it. You can draw it, or take/save a photo to folder. 

Organize it! I highly recommend coming up with a system for referencing back to find things, either through image tags or folders or even a manual filing system. 

Pay attention to your personal preferences and experiences. Try to think about what draws you to certain visual elements, identifying them can lead you to more things you like. Also pay attention to what you don’t like and why, it doesn’t necessarily need to be bad or amoral, we all have personal tastes. 

Get out of your comfort zone! I recommend trying to see something you’ve never seen before often. Find a new artist, a new genre, research a new type of design movement, go to a new place, etc. 

Try to find context for your research! For example, If you really love a specific era of fashion, research that time period and the way historical context informs it. Context can be really important, especially if you are working with references new to you!

Important Note 01: You don’t want to copy or rip-off these things. In my experience the best way to avoid that is to have a lot of reference points for any project and embrace your authentic personal interests, experiences, and identity. 

Important Note 02: Like any research, be conscious of primary person vs secondary sources! One is not better than another necessarily, but I find I work my best with a  mix of both. I like to start with primary sources and then move to secondary sources, Ie: looking at authentic suits of armor before moving to contemporary armor concept art. You don’t have to do this, it’s just something I find helpful. 

Important Note 03: While mostly I’m referring to visual references, audio, music, and writing are also super helpful!

Ok now, how do you curate all that for a project. For those monster illustrations I wanted to explore how color can be horrific. Keywords: Color & Horror. So I start looking through references for things that have the effect I want color wise, vivid and maximalist, and things that I find scary or horrifying. Here are some of the things I knew about or discovered during the research process that had the vibe I wanted. 

Notable Influences 

Color and Design 

Peruvian & Guatemalan Textiles and Traditional Clothing 

Spanish Traditional/Folk Clothing 

Sammezzano Castle, Italy

Nasir al-Mulk Mosque, Iran

Russian Traditional/Folk Costumes 

Fonthill Castle, Pennsylvania

Zhangye National Geopark

Nick Cave - sculpture artist

Lousie Zhang

Magnhild Kennedy - “Damselfrau”

Horror

Catacomb Saints

Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo

Japanese Yokai

Greek & Roman Mythology

Mandrills & Monkeys

Charles Fréger’s Photographs of  European Pagan Costuming

Avant Garde Fashion

Alexander McQueen

Vedas by  Nicolas Alan Cope and Dustin Edward Arnold 

Stephen Jones - Hats

Mummies

Reliquaries

Marina González Eme

Lorenzo Nanni

H.R Giger

Intersections of Color & Horror

Microscopic Imagery

Moths, Beetles & Shrimp

Suspiria (1977)

AJ Fosik

Hungry | Johannes J. Jaruraak

Once you’ve gathered these references in one place (like a moodboard, folder,  or Pinterest board) It’s time to pay attention to wear aesthetics intersect, what patterns are coming up, what proportions of color, what textures reoccur, what elements of clothing reoccur, etc.. What relationship do different images have with each other, what emotional effect do they create. 

Now that you’ve studied up, it’s time to sketch, try and create things that feel similar to the work you are looking at but not copy it, instead try mixing things together. Experiment! Let your personal style and preferences sink in! Interpret what you’ve learned!

From there, it’s more of a design process, how to use proportion, light, anatomy, perspective, form, repetition, etc, to create the desired effect. Then you refine and refine.

For new or different projects you repeat the process, maybe you use similar points of reference, maybe you go a completely different direction. 

Anyway that was long, but I hope it was helpful!

[wyrmsfornerves]

very old concept I had for Aphrodite I'd love to revisit some day - inspired by Cycladic sculptures

[wyrmsfornerves]

Probably going to lean heavily into the body-horror angle for these, fair warning!

[wyrmsfornerves]

A while ago I had an idea for a zine in tribute to old creepypasta characters - here are some drawings from that project

[wyrmsfornerves]

strawberries & mocha bunny girl

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A little preview for my washi tape design with The Washi Station!

🤡🎪🍦

If you are a food-loving stationery nerd keep your eye out for their upcoming collection! There are a lot of amazing designs!

[wyrmsfornerves]

Commission Waitlist OPEN on Vgen!

I typed a big long thing out for this and then my browser crashed so, I'll keep it short. I'm offering personal commissions through VGen!

Available commission types are:

Custom Character/Adoptable Designs

Full-body Character Illustrations (also available Skeb style)

Custom Monster Designs

More info and samples here!