Sunday, February 26, 2012

Minotaur


Wow, digging way back into my sketchbooks here... A minotaur. Can't remember much about this, but based on the date, I'd say it was drawn shortly after seeing the first theatrical Narnia film... Definitely one of my 'early' works, shortly after I got into art. Pencil, with ball-point overlay.

Saturday, February 18, 2012

Agabis--Initial Sketch


The Agabis... Undoubtedly the best work I've ever done. Also one of my first forays into digital painting. Just what is the Agabis? Look up. You see that bizarre winged creature at the top of the page? That is the Agabis. It is a creature, mechanical in nature, that I sadly have no backstory for. It is an image, wholly unconnected to any fictional world I have created. As I said, it is one of my earliest digital creations, and one that I am still working on. I occasionally doodle out other pictures, different versions, etc. I'm also still at work on a city-scape for it to dwell in that I am wholly satisfied with. Ah, well.
The Agabis started innocently enough. Following the release of the second Transformers film in 2007, I found myself drawing a lot of rather strange mechanical creatures very much in the style of Mr. Bay's behemoths. Sometime late in the year I was in church, drawing one such creature (Sadly, I can't remember which), when the man sitting behind me noticed my work and asked if I could design a tattoo for him: a bio-mechanical angel. I quickly roughed out the image above, with the intent of scanning it in, detailing it, and mirroring it for a final image. To simplify the story I did so, then proceeded to paint that sucker.
I intend to show many more derivations and permutations of the Agabis, including the computer line work and rough paints, but those will all have to wait for another time...

Darth Vader


This is the companion piece to my previous post featuring my Obi-Wan redesign; in fact, both were originally drawn on the same page. This design change falls a bit more into the story-changing category I alluded to in the last post: this is not merely a more armored Anakin Skywalker, this is an injured and partially cybernetic Darth Vader shortly before the climactic battle with Obi-Wan that robs him of his humanity and leaves him as the black-clad villian we all love to fear.


Again, just like Obi-Wan, the design made the jump to 3D.

Come to think of it, the figures may have actually come first, followed by the sketches; it's rather hard to remember...

Obi-Wan


One of my early inspirations in art (and narrative, and life in general) were the Star Wars films. They... moved me. As these films were such an important part of my life, I was profoundly displeased with the last two films in the series. Due to this, I spent a bit of time redesigning the series in my head, rehashing the story and redesigning some of the characters.
One of the characters was Obi-Wan Kenobi. I felt that, as a Jedi Master and a general in the Grand Army of the Republic, he should look more like a medieval warrior rather than a medieval priest. I drew up the sketch for this sometime in late 2006 (I think) and later scanned it in and colorized it in Photoshop.

I later took this design and launched it into the 3rd dimension by way of a rather basic custom action figure. More information can be found on the figure's entry in the link "Custom Figures by Hrothmeir" found in the links section on the left-hand side of this page.

Flannel


Hello, and welcome to the Art of Hez; I'm Hezekiah Bennetts. The purpose of this site is to provide a repository for my art, as well as some insight into the creations. Now, I will freely admit that I'm no great artist, but I hope that having this public record of my art will push me to better myself and improve further.

I'll be starting this blog with a personal favorite of mine, a 3D living room created with the program Blender. Made in early 2011 for a college video project, it was used as a chroma-keyed background in a faux kid's show. It is meant to evoke a flannelgraph, similar to the backgrounds found in shows such as "Blue's Clues."