Uplift Universe - Image Entry: Matt Benya

Matt Benya is entered in the "Uplift Universe Challenge" update: View Challenge Page

Latest Update: Final Image: Final

Hey everybody,

It has been a while since I have taken part in one of the challenges. But when I saw the theme I couldn't resist.

Here is a really quick rough I did this morning to get the basic ideas down for what I plan to do. It is basically a multi-species family, who is destroyed due to civil unrest.

Matt :)

Matt, glad to see you in the challenges again
I hope you remember me (changed my alias)
My best wishes
Waiting for the further developments

Hey man, great to see you here! Of course I remember you! I was looking through the list of other entries and I didn't recognize one name. :P Thanks for stopping by! This is going to be a blast.

Matt

Greetings everyone,

Here are a couple of costume designs for the father figure in the image. Since he has a human child as his adopted son I wanted his form to be mostly humanoid in appearance. Also since the son is human I want the environment/climate to mirror ours (at least to some extent). So that thought also partially influenced some of the designs.

The ability to convey his emotion through his facial expression was very important to me when I was designing him. I went through several different body and head types before I came to the current design. Some of the other designed will be reused in the supporting characters.

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This is an amazing, if sad concept. I'm really looking forward to seeing how it will turn out. As for the father's outfit, my vote goes for either the dark blue suit, or the one with the striped red skirt.

Good luck for the challenge!

I liked the deer-brown colored diamond seamed, armored design but it demolishes the misery feeling and gives an impression as if he will possibly have his vengeance soon.

I suggest you to combine three of them. Topmost left -roman slave- is the main design. Add its neighbor's indigo trousers with that strange -mat- texture leggings. The chains and the gorget on the blue-yellow one is another feature must be added i think. What do you say?

Great design of the characters Matt !

Nekomouse: Thanks a lot for stopping in. When I read about the topic of the challenge the theme for the image just popped into my head. Yeah I like the dark blue one too and it is what I actually ended up putting the father in. I think it still looks contemporary enough to be believable. I had other plans for the character behind him but I really liked the way the green and gold one turned out so I put his friend in that.

KU2GUN: Hey Levent, thanks a lot for the input. You are right with the deer brown outfit. I think that anything with armor like elements would ruin the feel of the image. And I don't want the image to read wrong, it defiantly is about mourning not revenge. But hey I likes my armor and I just couldn't resist throwing some in. Maybe a background character could be wearing it around. I like the idea of mixing and matching some of the pieces. And the combination you talked about is really cool. In the end I decided on the bark blue suit with the leggings. I think I will leave the metal bits off of the father all together. And give them to his friend behind him. Thanks again man!

gpepper: Hey man thanks a lot! I am glad to see you in the challenge. I'll be looking forward to seeing your entry progress.

Thanks again everyone! Now it is time to upload some images before this thread stagnates any further. :P

Matt

Greetings everyone,

Here is a super quick concept of the friend that will be standing behind the father.

Here is the line art for the scene. The foreground characters were sketched in Photoshop. The background line art is done in Xara because I like doing it vector better. Additional bg characters are still coming.

And here are the colors for the fg characters and the palette that I am going for for the bg.

Matt :)