Sketches from the Frontline

[LARF]

Second World never ended in 1944 after the failure of D-Day following the United States removal of its' troops to fight the Japan / Russian Axis following the invasion of Mexico in 1943. We carried on fighting a very bloody war until the early 1960's, when after many losses on all sides a truce was signed. The World was changed dramatically, and technology advanced exponentially over the war years. The British forces Technology Division, led by Prof. Barnes Wallace, created many devastating new weapons of war. In 1952 Comms Officer, Corporal Thomas "The Mike" Marrison was fighting with 'Monty' in the Western Desert with the 8th Armoured Division. An accomplished amateur artist Thomas spent most of his downtime illustrating the war, but his work never came to light until his Grandson discovered his sketch discs, on an old Bengine in the attic, after his death.

Drawn entirely on his digital bPad (Babbage Pad), Thomas's sketches of the machines of war that he served with have become an invaluable resource for historians. Over the next few months we will be restoring the sketches of his work from the old discs and reassembling the pixels into their original format.

Here is the first sketch, which we believe is the first Vehicle Thomas served on - a stripped down light-weight recon Walker, desertised called an FAW (Frontline Armoured Walker). The troops named it the Flunky Chicken due to it's jerky walking technique, and the fact it broke down (flunked) more time than it worked. It was fast - but trying to accurately fire a weapon whilst moving was impossible. The fact that the FAW had to stop in order to fire made it an easy target for the enemy. When it did work it was an impressive machine, armed to the teeth and perfectly built for the desert conditions.

We believe the figure in the sketch is Commander Liam Marshall, a much decorated soldier who lasted the war and served his Army career out as a Brigadier in the Great Battle of '62 where he led the British to victory against the Chinese in Burma, where his GMD (Giant Missile Droids) devastated swathes of jungle, and destroyed all the frontline Elephant Guns leaving a passage open for Infantry.

IMAGE: 2010/11/0001_FAW

[CrazyFoxMachine]

...simply amazing

[Zarjazzer]

Ay caramba!

[Cpt Rhodes]

Holy shit that's good.

Used to have an old PS2 game that dealt with a similar theme. Ring of red I think it was called.
Ring of red, seriously dodgy title though.

[SuperSurfer]

Nice one Larf. That looks like a real labour of love. It looks like it works.

[LARF]

Thanks guys, I'll post up some pre-lim stage by stage drawings and stuff tomorrow. Also restoring some more of Thomas's work for next week.

[BMB]

More!

Iron Storm was another game that had the war continue. Its been a few years but I think the jist was the Germans and Russians joined together and were pretty much kicking the crap out of everyone.

[LARF]

Taken from the 'Justification of expenses report Private T. Marrison 4th August 1954, application for £3.45 from HM Armed Forces for services rendered to General Taylor Bradford for Portrait, "In the Field - a study with the Heads of the Enemy."' - this is an extract of how Thomas makes his images:

OK here's a step by step taken from the remaining layers:

First rough sketch using a 5px brush tool, and then knocked back to a lighter opacity



Next is a tighter sketch overlaid on top of the first on a multiply layer and then knocked back, brush size is 3px



Final line art is applied really tightly using a 1px brush on another multiply layer, the brush I used for this was a less feathered brush and up close you can see the individual pixels.



Colour was applied in three layers, after I'd pulled all the three line layers together onto one multiply layer and duplicated the file so I can keep the integrity of the first three layers (just in case I foo-bared the colours), I use multiply layers for the colour and then alter the opacity of each one. I lay down a flat colour for the biege, then add another multiply layer of washed colour for the other coloured sections, then add two more multiply layers above these two for the depth of shade. After these two I added an opacity layer in white, then knocked it back, for the cockpit screens and lighter areas of the hull of the vehicle - the Commader's visor etc. I then duped the file, saved all the colour layers down and added a final bit of individual shadow detail. Here's the colour file without the line...



And here's the final file a bit bigger than the first one supplied.

[Cpt Rhodes]

Brilliant LARF!
I even like the colour layer without the line work. Looks less detailed but it works quite well on it's own.

Look forward to seeing more in the future.

[johnnystress]

Excellent!