DRAG HUNTER

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COLE EASTBURN
I like the idea of ancient beings, battles, monsters, and legends. Concept artist Cole Eastburn demonstrates the importance of natural affinity
ole Eastburn has an interesting take on the strange worlds and characters he depicts. Most of my ideas and creations are inspired by the past, he says. Even in my futuristic stuff, I like a sense of ancient wonder, something that has stood the test of time. These venerable beings and structures have purpose: Usually being killed by some bad-ass soldier-looking guys. But not always. Coles work takes a historical or mythological point and extrapolates from it and thanks to the chaotic nature of imagination, this process quickly finds us looking into uncharted territory.

USE YOUR IMAGINATION

Oddly, for a man whose life drawing displays obvious ability, Cole chooses not to work from life. As far as reference goes, he says, I dont like to use it. As with many in the concept art world, Cole chooses his own imagination over the real thing but crucially he acknowledges that: Everything comes from reference. Either you know the subject or you dont. So although the concept artist hasnt got time for life models, you need to develop an understanding

TROOPER

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COLE EASTBURN
from life. He gives an example of how this works in practice. If I were to do a Roman soldier design, Id look at several pictures of armour and designs, study those, and then move on to my concept. Thats all the reference he uses: I dont like the whole just take a picture and copy it as my painting thing, because you dont learn that much from doing that. Coles approach is a demanding one: it requires building up an internal copy of the world from which you draw inspiration. Id rather know why the armour has a bolt there, than just slapping it on there, he says. That way, next time Im working on another character, I know his armour would need a bolt so that piece pivots and whatnot. Theres a steep and potentially neverending learning curve involved, but the dividend is the freedom to let your structural approach as opposed to a purely prosaic composition, one that would naturally favour free-flowing ideas. This is borne out by the fact that Cole enjoys working concepts up from shapes that hes discovered. If I dont have anything in mind, and I just want to create something, I use the whole inkblot method of painting, he says. Cole finds this process cool and very exciting and when its done its done: theres no goal set out in advance, its a process of evolution.

BOOKSTORE TRAINING
The source of this freestyle approach is intriguing. One possible answer, Cole suggests, is that he was never traditionally trained. He did dip his toe in at the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, but unfortunately, this wasnt a good

I dont like the whole just take a picture and copy it as my painting thing, because you dont learn that much from doing that.
imagination run wild. Its a matter of really studying your references and knowing the whys, explains Cole. Until then the gaps in your knowledge will be filled by research and enforced creativity. experience. It was horrible, so I dropped out much to my dismay of my parents and girlfriend and got a job at a small game company in South Florida. Training meant going to bookstores every day after work and studying there. I did a lot of life drawing while I was there too, says Cole. But there was a priority: I wanted to learn digital first because its faster and its usually what the industry calls for. Traditional materials have much to offer, though. I love traditional, and I love digital, he says. Although all my painting is done digitally, I use traditional to do my studies, character design sketches and life drawing. One need not exist at the expense of the other: Both have their place. Digital fits the concept world better because its flexible in ways that

ROLL WITH IT
New images can occur in a number of different ways for Cole, and his approach to a new production takes account of this: When it comes to design and composition, I like to let things roll. And giving intuition a free hand can lead to startling results. Cole doesnt work entirely without structure, though. For example, when it comes to lighting, I feel like you have to plan that out because it determines a lot of things in the painting, such as form, mood and where the viewers eye will flow. Its a

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AVATAR: THE GAME PLAYER

Learning the collaboratory art of anime adaptation on the job
Nickelodeons Avatar: The Last Airbender has established itself as an anime favourite, so when Cole got involved in turning this cult series into a playable game he was both thrilled and chilled by the prospect. I was in charge of character design, environmental design and creature design, he recalls, and we had just three months to make the entire game. The pressure was on, but when is it not in the world of game development? I expected the ludicrous deadlines I had to meet, says Cole. Things had to get done, so I spent many nights sleeping in the office. The project was a valuable learning experience for Cole. I liked the creative meetings that the art director and I would have, he recalls. Getting familiar with the process of creative collaboration, coming up with new designs and moods for locations, was all valuable experience.

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GRAVE KNIGHT

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PROJECT MARBLE FUSION

Concept artist as team player

Its fun as hell when a group of artists get together and just brainstorm ideas and concepts, says Cole of his latest assignment for Stratogon Entertainment. The name of the game is Marble Fusion, its a puzzler and Cole has been producing a number of background scenes, which he describes as mostly realistic, but with a hint of fantasy. Because my main focus has always been anatomy and character design, working on landscapes was quite challenging for me. My favourite part of the project is working with another talented artist and friend, Karla Ortiz, he continues. We provide each other with a positive criticism feedback loop and I think our work has came out three times better.

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COLE EASTBURN
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ORC

JUMP STARTING YOUR IMAGINATION

Create an alien demon straight from your imagination: Cole Eastburn explains how

traditional materials just cannot match, Cole says. If an art director walks in and says: I want that to be blue, and that to be smaller, you just have to do some Lasso and some colour adjustment and youre done. What makes traditional irreplaceable is its proximity to nature: Theres such a raw chaos that happens with texture, and colour thats just amazing to look at. Getting to know and understand this relationship is essential for any artist, digital or not.

ALWAYS LEARNING
Growing up in South Florida, Cole had a couple of important moments courtesy of Blizzard Entertainment: Ever since I saw the booklets for Warcraft 2 and Starcraft, I have wanted to do concept art, he enthuses. The importance of this cannot be overlooked as Cole and others in his position develop and progress: its their work that will be inspiring another generation. This, it turns out, is the ultimate goal for Cole: I just want to continue to learn, and teach others what I can. Those Starcraft moments have stayed with him and influence him today. My biggest dream is to work next to Samwise and the talented art team at Blizzard, creating quality artwork all day, learning everything I can, teaching whatever I can, and quoting movies! Thats quite an ambition. In the shorter term, Id love to have my art on a magic card one day. And even more directly, Cole would like some permanence. My plan is to submit to every company I can, get a job creating awesome art with a creative team of people where I can learn, teach, and grow as an artist.

PROFILE
Cole Vincent Eastburn
AGE: 25 COUNTRY: US CLIENT LIST: xx xxx xx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxx xxx xxx xxx,xxxx xxx,x xxxxxx xxx ,xxxxxx xxxx,xxxxxx www.eastburnart.com Coles had a passion for drawing and art since childhood. After graduating, he studied at the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale. For the last two years he has been working as a graphic artist in the video games industry.

< TOM HAS EMAILED COLE ABOUT CLIENT LIST

or this workshop Im going to create an alien demon thing. Not the most original thing on the planet I know, but popular and fun. And if you can do it really well, you should be making a beeline towards work in the gaming industry! There was no pre-planning involved when I created this picture. I just did some random strokes using a custom brush Id created and made a basic silhouette, then let my mind take over from there. In the following workshop Im going to go over what I think

DVD files
You can get all the files you need to complete Coles workshop by visiting our website at www.imaginefx.com and clicking on the downloads link.

about when creating custom brushes to start from. Ill also explain my process for when I actually start to render out whatever my imagination is seeing in the random blobs on the canvas. For the most part this is a really great exercise to do in the morning to get you warmed up for a hard days painting. And is just a lot of fun to do. You can take these things to whatever stage you want, tight or loose, doesnt matter. Theres really no way to go wrong when youre starting one of these things. So go nuts!

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Now I just lay down a couple of strokes and see if my mind can find anything it likes. I came up with this hunched-over guy in huge armour, standing on some ruins that hes just conquered. I usually start out pretty dark, and like to start pulling out forms using light. Here, I pick a top, slightly left light source.

Hunting inspiration

Details
Time to add details. Whenever I have a design element that repeats itself, I create a brush for it, as I do here for the spine. I keep the Brush menu open to adjust the angle of the brush to nail the direction on some of the other objects. I also overlay a picture of a cityscape on to the ground plane to get some fast texture down there.

A human would have difficulty twisting his body into this shape, so I make my warrior an alien. I break my object into planes, so anything facing the sky gets more light than anything else. Always try to think of things as simply as you can.

Alien form

I grab a rough metallic texture for the aliens body, desaturate the texture and drop it over the character with the layer to Overlay, lowering the Opacity. I grab a couple other custom brushes to quickly drop in some details such as panel lines.

Textures

I decide not to detail the background, so I grab a custom brush and just lay in a simple background that the character pops out from. I add some lighter values around the darker side of the face to up the contrast there and draw the eye to that position.

Background

I start blocking in the major forms, painting in arms and other major masses. I dont like the feel of the pose on the left, so I start a new layer and make something a little more dynamic. I add another 800 pixels to the bottom of the canvas so I can block in the legs, and do that using the same method as before, starting dark and just adding light to add form to the shapes.

Blocking it out

First, I make a custom brush using this image of a rocky cliff. I bring the Saturation down to 0, and make the image black and white. I do a quick Lasso in a random pattern around the rock image, copy that and paste it into a new document. Then I go to Define Brush Preset and grab my brush. I usually adjust the spacing about halfway across and set the Angle Jitter way up. This gives us a lot of random strokes that make some really great shapes.

Brush up

The figure looks too bland, so I replace his legs with mechanical spider legs. Also, since his back is a big mechanical harness, its good to have another piece of machine on his body tying that in. I also add a horizon line and start thinking of a scene to place this character into.

Lovely legs

I create a colour layer on top of the others and fill it with it a cool blue. Then I grab a random brush, set it to Colour, open up Colour Dynamic and set Hue Jitter to five per cent. This helps to come up with some nice random colour while you paint, and a little bit of foreground background jitter will sample the background colour a little, keeping everything harmonious. Try to stay a little bit desaturated at first and then work up your saturated colours where you want the eye to go. I switch to Painter to add the finishing touches.

Colour time

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