Dunesteef Cover #2 - With Mars in his Hand - Robobee colour / shadow

Things have been busy with the boys lately - and I've just started work again today. However - I'm going to really try and keep doing art stuff, because it makes me happy to create this sort of stuff, and I forget that when I'm not doing it.

Here's the progress :

I'm not super happy with the body colouring just yet - but it's getting better. I do like the wings, particularly the faceted reflections, I think they're looking pretty good. I just finished the robobee's shadow on the apple - which was more tricky than you might imagine.
Next step might be to add some detail to the branch, as well as refine the body more and add reflections to the secondary wings.

Dunesteef Cover #2 - With Mars in his Hand - Mountain and ground detail

Progress for tonight - some detail / shading for the ground and mountains. The colour is provisional, and I'll probably vector in outlines and then fill with a darker shade of red.
I'm getting sick of that big white robo-bee in the middle now, so colouring that will probably be the next step.
My drawing soundtrack for tonight was mostly Amiee Mann and the Portal 2 soundtrack, will some of Norm Sherman's new album thrown in for good measure. I can't stop listening to 'Heartache Over Innsmouth'.

Dunesteef Cover #2 - With Mars in his Hand - Ground and sky

Spent a little time on this tonight after I made a banana loaf for morning tea with the relatives tomorrow :
Added the mountain range vectors, the sky gradient and the ground colour.

Dunesteef Cover #2 - With Mars in his Hand - Vectors, apple, branch, crop

Today I've had some free time, so I've been working on the cover some more.
As you can see I've added some colour / texture / shading to the apple, a base colour to the branch, masked out the colour from the robo-bee areas and cropped the whole image to a square shape. You'll also have noticed that I've outlined the image with vectors and changed the shape of the wings ( the ones in the sketch weren't very good ).

It's good to see some progress here !

Dunesteef Cover #2 - With Mars in his Hand - Initial Sketch

Okay - straight in with the second cover project. This is for the 'With Mars in his Hand' story. Most of the action happens on Mars in this one - with the main character trying to bring his dead / comatose / whatever wife back to life. There's a sort of Adam and Eve thing going on in this one - and an image that really struck me was of these mechanical bees pollenating a special Martian tree. So that's what I'm going for in my image. Here's the initial sketch :



First step will be to outline this properly with vectors. I don't know how much of that I'll get done tonight though - Lorenzo is supposed to be asleep, but he's wailing pitifully instead. I'll give him another five minutes and then get him up.

Sigh. No rest for the wicked.

Dunesteef cover #1 - Final Version

There. Done - at least the provisional version is anyway.
Time to get a version to the guys at the podcast and see what they think.
I'm pretty happy with it.