Musket Knight designs

After my first attempt at establishing this game idea through environment concept art I decided that it would be best to start the project with characters. I came to this conclusion because I knew it would be a game filled with different characters and creatures so concepting these characters and then building the world around them would allow me to create a more in depth idea that connects.

I'm still keeping with the idea that knights have guns but I've limited it to older fire arms such as muskets. The reason for this is that when the time gap is too large it becomes jarring and just confusing. I also discovered that soldiers in ww1 would still wear armour but have guns so any battle scenes I paint could become confusing. I feel this is what happened with my previous concepts for this project.

having my characters use weaponry such as a Musket will make the game a bit more skillful in my opinion. These types of guns take longer to load so the player is encouraged to not waist a shot and wait for the perfect opportunity for example when enemy characters use mook chivalry in their game play that allow the player to take more time in landing their shot. In the meantime the player can use their secondary melee weapon to defend themselves and attack for slower damage. I wanted to keep weapons such as swords in the game because I think it always more exciting being able to get up close to the enemy in games and just hitting them.

When painting these concepts I painted both up at the same time and jumped between the two so that I could still use the same method as the split canvas technique that allows me to work more efficiently. I finished both characters then started working on a cropped version (both at the same time) that displayed the character with a helmet as well. Lately with my work I'm wanting to demonstrate that I now know the difference between concept art an illustration as I think that too often in the past I've slipped into illustration instead. Because of this I want my designs to show purpose and variety/options.

Eventually with this project I will go into environment/ landscape paintings again but with these ones I want to keep in mind that it's concept art and show a purpose to the painting and not just paint a pretty landscape. It will have to establish something or be a key moment in the game.