carbon filler

CARBON UPDATE 20|11|14

My Carbon project has been expanding in my mind from a coherent collection of human-future conceptual design into a coherent collection of stories and characters, a place for all the scenarios, worlds, and IP ideas I've been thinking about for years. It's getting epic, and I'm pretty excited! 

It's going to take some planning though, and the kickstarter side of things will too. I want to do things right and make something special, so basically the kickstarter will go live when it's ready, which may take a while. But it will be worth it! Not to mention I have some other projects that need some serious time, and a shit load of awesome freelance work too.

In the mean time I'll keep everyone posted with how it's going, and post some artwork from time to time. A big thanks to those that have gotten in touch to say hello and support the project, cheers!

The piece above is something I sketched one morning last year before doing a live demo. I decided it would be too hard to paint in a couple hours, and did a crappy photochop for the audience instead, but at least I've had a chance since to render it up. It's what I would consider filler material in the book, so I though it would be more worth posting as an update instead of keeping it exclusive for the book. The exclusive Carbon work will be much more involved, interesting, and unique!

These images were fun though, and are all painted, no photos. Except for elements in the background of the top one. And the case in the bottom one. But that's pretty much it I swear!

The general idea with this guy is I wanted to draw a robot with a big gun, something a human soldier couldn't wield without it being mounted to a vehicle. It's just a bit of fun, and I like the way you can draw a robot holding a gun, then use the gun on it's own in another image. Two birds with one air burst grenade!

These images will also feature in the next installment of the 'Nuthin But Mech' books, which is shaping up to be the best yet. Be sure to pick up a copy when it's out. Cheers!

Carbon Future

Hey! Just a quick update to let everyone know that big things are happening with Carbon, and I'll have some exciting stuff to share real soon. I've been having a lot of fun thinking and planning about where I can take this project, and the scope of the thing just keeps getting bigger and bigger. I've also been very busy with a lot of really awesome freelance work as well, on a variety of super rad and super secret projects. All this means that the Carbon kickstarter won't be happening just yet, but good things take time right! Keep an eye out for more news and details soon, cheers!

CARBON

Introducing Carbon, the first full length book showcasing my personal ideas around science fiction art and design. This is a project I'm very excited about, a chance to delve deep and develop the various worlds and concepts that are the result of a life long passion for nature, science, technology, and futuristic science fiction ideas.

These images are explorations I have been working on to develop the design and art direction of the book. It's been a lot of fun to work with concepts springing from the Carbon name. Carbon is the workhorse element of nature, it forms the strongest bonds and is the basis for life as we know it in the universe. Carbon nanotubes and graphene take their hexagonal molecular structure and hold great promise for artificial muscle, advanced building materials, powerful motors, faster computing, and so much more.

Carbon will contain a wealth of exclusive artwork, design, and descriptive text breakdowns, including in depth development of several personal projects that I wish to evolve into short film and video game concepts. In this sense Carbon forms the first step towards turning these dreams into reality.

I'm looking forward to exploring the graphic design of the book, and want to create a bold and exciting product that will be much more than just a collection of art and ideas.

I'm also looking forward to exploring ideas in environment design and story telling, realms I rarely get to delve into with my regular conceptual design work.

I have a heap of artwork for Carbon already, but this is just the start and familiar to anyone who knows my work. The book will allow me the opportunity to really push myself and create fresh new work, to go crazy and expand on some of the more involved ideas I've been thinking about for years. I have a massive pile of sketches ready to be fleshed out, some real exciting stuff!

The kick starter campaign will have to wait till I get back from a trip to the US for Comicon (more on that later), so keep an eye out, it should be something special! Cheers!

CARBON

Introducing

 C A R B O N
Science fiction art and design by Aaron Beck

More info coming real soon!

WWM B

 

A different option for the player-character War machine. Don't look him in the lens.

worldwarmachine.com

A Work In Progress

I don't really do this normally, but here's an early WIP of one of the pieces I'm working on for my future book project. I gotta reserve some exclusive art so that people will buy it instead of just saving the art from the internet right? So while this is all I can show here, rest assured that the book will have heaps of new stuff! And not just 'military robot with gun' designs either, not that there's anything wrong with them right?!


Look out for the kickstarter video and campaign for the book around July! I got big plans for this book, gonna be epic! And it's just the first step towards some much bigger projects in the future, the first few of which are already in the works!

Worldly War Machinery

Here's some more artwork from World War Machine. First up a higher res version of the initial design for the player character, the quintessential War Machine. I had a lot of fun working on this friendly chap!

And here are a bunch of quick conceptual sketches for a variety of enemy units. My thinking with these was to push the anatomically inspired biomechanical feel of the War Machine into something more twisted and deformed. The various shattered AI remnants of humanity are at perpetual war with themselves, and create these machines to wage their battles. Attack types and methods of movement and combat are drawn from the broken and disjointed totality of human knowledge that's contained in the AIs, from militaristic science to the animal kingdom. Robot zombies if you will!

Check out the Square Enix Collective War Machine page and put in a vote!

War Machine!

Here's one of the fun freelance jobs I've been working on lately, meet the War Machine! This is the initial design for the player character for 'World War Machine', a game in early pre-production, be sure to check out the pitch page.

The basic idea is that after a future cataclysm there is perpetual war between the shattered remnants of humanity, in the form of these war machines. I wanted to explore this idea through robotics design that has a biomechanical feel, and shows hints of the lost humanity that created them. Milled metal forms take on bone and cellular structural forms, ribbon cables connecting componentry mimic nerves and vascular systems. Kind of like an anatomically inspired skinned robot. Lots of fun to develop! Big thanks to Jeff and the team at Tuque Games for letting me try something different! I'll post some more images from this project soon.

2014

2014 is looking to be a very exciting year for me, I got big plans! There's a book project and a kickstarter campaign to fund it, to be unleashed mid year or so. This is very exciting as it will be a big step towards further developing my own personal projects, of which I have many! My car project should be finished this year, that's going to be a lot of work, but the end result should be more than worth it! I also have a bunch of great freelance design jobs on, and more coming (as well as work with Weta of course), I'll be showing some of the work from one of them real soon, it's fun stuff! So 2014 will be a very busy and action packed year, watch this space! Cheers!