Photoshop Elements tutorial

A few years ago, I was approached by 3dtotal to do a beginners tutorial for Photoshop Elements. I chose to paint a simple sci-fi scene, explaining my usual work process in text, accompanied by  images. It contains all sorts of useful information for beginner digital artists or anyone who's interested in digital art in general. Tools, composition, colours and more are all covered in a simple and understandable way. You can see a preview of the book here:
https://shop.3dtotal.com/beginner-s-guide-to-digital-painting-in-photoshop-elements.html#t1

Game of Thrones season VI concept art

Hi there, I just wanted to post some of my season VI concepts that I did last year for the show. As always, it has been a blast and many thanks to all the team members who are such amazing people to work with. Thank you all.

Watercolors

The digital media is great and I love it. For concept art and design I think it's perfect. You can get quick and good results which suit the film and gaming industry really well. But then besides all this, there is also You. You and your personal art. And for my personal work I always leaned towards the traditional media. Until I eventually switched completely to it. Mainly watercolours, acrylics and oils. Working on paper or on canvas, feeling the actual brush, having to mix your colours, think ahead and carefully plan your approach - nothing beats these, in my opinion. And nothings gets more personal than these. It's like reading a book. Once you finish a painting, you have this piece which is unique to you and you'll always remember how much you worked to get that perfect brush stroke or that value balance that you wanted so bad. When I became a concept artist, 10 years ago, concept art was everything for me. It was the only thing I did. But in time, I felt the need to work more and more on my own ideas. At first I did this digitally and it was great, but...there was always something missing. I just didn't "feel it". Didn't have that satisfaction once I finished a piece. It always ended up being forgotten on my hard drive somewhere. Now I'm at the point where I just cannot paint any personal work digitally anymore. Digital painting became totally synonymous with professional work. And I found that other digital artists from my generation feel the same way. So I find this interesting and wanted to share it with whoever ends up reading this. I'll also post some of my watercolours that I like. I hope you enjoy them. Thanks.

Diana Pantea - jewellery design

Beautiful contemporary jewellery design at https://dianapanteajewellery.wordpress.com

Game of Thrones - season V concept art

Hi all, here are just a few of my concepts, done for season V. You'll find more on my website at www.killborngraphics.com I hope you'll enjoy. Thanks!

Game of Thrones work

Hi everyone,

since Game of Thrones season 5 has aired a couple of weeks ago, I'm posting some of the work I did for season 4. You can find a lot more on my website. It's also a good excuse to update this old blog. Soon I'll be allowed to show some season 5 work as well so I'll keep this updated. Thanks!

Killzone: Shadow Fall and Ryse: Son of Rome

Hello, today's a happy day for me because I can finally show you some of the concepts that I did for Killzone: Shadow Fall and Ryse: Son of Rome! I will only post a few on my blog but you can find all of them on my website at www.killborngraphics.com

Acrylic sketches

It's been a very long time since I painted traditionally. So now that I had some free time on my hands, I bought some acrylic paints and gave it a shot. Also, I was just reading H.P. Lovecrafts' Necronomicon so that was my perfect inspiration source. After I read his short story called Dagon, I immediately got inspired and started sketching.

Here are my first two attempts. Acrylics on paper.

My New Website!

Hey everybody,

after many years of waiting, I can finally post some of my work done for Killzone: Shadow Fall and Ryse: Son of Rome. You can check them out on my new website at www.killborngraphics.com

I hope you like them!

Cheers.

Game of Thrones - a dream job come true

Hello dear readers, I noticed that I keep on posting stories of my life without the actual "documents" to back them up. Well, once all the projects that I worked on, are going to be released to the public, I will be able to post quite a few new works of mine. I'm really waiting for that moment, believe me.

After finishing with Killzone 4, I was lucky enough to be invited by my close friends from Karakter to work with them on the Game of Thrones series. So end of June 2013, I packed my bags and moved to Belfast, Ireland where one of my lives best experiences started. I was hired as a concept artist to work on characters and environments for Game of Thrones, season 4. Being able to work for one of the worlds most acclaimed TV shows seemed unreal. I was nervous. I had to live up to everyones expectations. But that feeling of fear didn't last for long. The people I worked with in the studio made sure I got a warm welcome and made me feel part of the team from day one. And of course, the work was just pure awesomeness. Having worked in the game industry until now, I faced some new and exciting challenges in film. It was a much needed change as well.

Working closely with Tobias Mannewitz, the art director from Karakter and Joseph Bauer, our VFX Supervisor, we brought to life some of the most iconic characters and locations you will see in season 4. And hopefully, you will like them just as much as we do. This is how much I can tell you right now. After season 4 airs, maybe I'll be able to show you some of the work we did. So more on that later.

Also, with this occasion, I would like to send special thanks to Tobias Mannewitz, Henrik Bolle, Joe Bauer, Steve Kullback, Adam Chazen, Paul Russo, Jeff Shaper, James Burr, Rebecca Carron and everyone else from the crew. Thanks for everything. You guys are awesome! I hope to see you all soon.

Signing out,

Simon Robert.

And another new beginning!

Well yes, another beginning.

And this time after working at Guerrilla Games for the last 1.5 years of my life. Working for Killzone Shadow Fall was absolutely amazing in any way imaginable.

I was at Guerrilla Games studio in Amsterdam every month, for two, sometimes three weeks in a row working as a freelance concept artist, mainly focusing on vehicle and robot design, environment design and even some character design. Guerrilla Games is one of the most professional game studios I ever worked in. It`s full of passionate and talented people who love games and by judging their previous products, I guess it's pretty obvious. I never felt like I was part of a business like I did in some previous game companies. It sometimes felt unreal. Doing what I love and get paid for it. A perfect symbiosis between passion and living. I feel really lucky.

Every day.

What set Killzone Shadow Fall apart from the previous games I worked on before, was the amount of research and detail that went into every design. Everything had to be functional and grounded in the Killzone world. And almost everything in the Killzone world is grounded in the real world. I`m sure if someone was to build one of those ships in real life, it would probably fly. Hydraulics, suspensions, armor usage, tech-integration, etc. all these were a daily concern next to visual design. In other words, making something just look cool, was not enough. And I`m glad that was the case because I learned so much during that time that no design school in the world could ever surpass that.

I want to thank all the great guys and galls that I worked with and I hope we`ll work together again one day.

Now I`m taking a short time off, enjoying some free time with my girlfriend and our crazy Cat.

But the near future looks promising already. So that`s good. I know I haven`t posted any new work for a very long time. That`s because I was really busy. Not a single personal piece in years. But that`s gonna change soon, I hope. Once Killzone is out, I will post some of the stuff I did for it.

But until then, I will just enjoy this summer!

Signing out.
Simon Robert

A new beginning!

A new beginning indeed!

I recently left the games corporation world and decided to go on my own.
So I`m officially a freelancer, now!
It`s an interesting feeling after working for companies all these past years.
But so far, so good.
So yeah, I take commissions now.
If you are interested in any kind of concept art or illustration art, drop me a line and I`ll gladly get back to you.

Thank you and Happy Holidays, everyone!

Quick action Sketch

This is a more than a year old sketch but I still like it so I shared it with everyone.
There a war going on and a small patrol group is being chased by a gigantic robot.
And...that`s the whole story of it :D

Thank you!

Tank Girl

Asteroid Mine

This was a great way to experiment with my new custom brushes and trying to mimic photographic textures. It turned out not to be so photographic, but more stylized :P

Thanks

Alien sketch

Ok, I have no Idea what to say about this guy...

Predator design sketches

So yeah, I am obsessed by this creature!!! Stan Winston, I LOVE YOU!

Played around with the Predator design, trying a more mechanized approach :)

Cheers

Some older designs

These guys were painted like 2 years ago and just recently stumbled upon them. Normally I wouldn't like them anymore, specially after 2 years, but these are an exception, I guess.
So I wanted to share them with you guys.

Thanks!

Style play

So one day, David, a friend of mine had this idea of a futuristic world and we both sat down and started painting. After a day, this came to life.
This was my approach and I had loads of fun painting it. Thank David for inspiring me ;)

Thanks for watching. I hope you like it.

Cheers

Crack

Hey!

It's been a while since I did anything as detailed as this painting so it was about time. Had loads of fun doing it. I hope you enjoy it :)

Thanks for visiting :)

Cheers