Digital Painting - "Spybots"

As stated in my previous article, I've been doing the 'weekly' Imagine FX magazine forum competitions rather than the 'monthly' ones, which has encouraged me to speed up and improve my techniques. Instead of getting bogged down in extraneous detail, they have forced me to make sure I get maximum effect without spending hours over-working something.

This was created for the May 2011 weekly challenge entitled: "Tiny Robots"

The description was: "This week we go small as you are to design a set of tiny spybots used for covert information gathering."

An obvious route would've been mechanical insects, and such. Having already done a 'mechanical insect' acrylic painting before (see here), I had no desire to do the same thing again. I wanted to go a different route, and decided to do something more light hearted for kids. A group of spybot characters, each with their own individual skill set. The commander places traditional 'bugs' for listening in on people. One places camera devices, as well as being the team's lookout. Another acts as the team's transportation expert, capable of firing a grappling iron that enables them to reach difficult spots. While the final character is the 'hacker', who can tap into electronic devices such as computers, for secret files and communications.

Unfortunately I didn't get the colour version finished in time, so my entry was a tinted B&W version, but here's the final full colour picture.

Having gone the route of aiming the characters at kids, I chose to keep the adventurous and fun atmosphere, by making the final image look like a fictional poster for a new show or book.

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