Overgrowth fan art spotlight - Emir0

In the last year, artists have created many brilliant works of art inspired by Overgrowth, so we have been highlighting our favorites here on the blog. So far we have shown you works by ^_^ and Gauss and today I would like to share some stylized character portraits that Emir0 (aka M3nace) posted on page 19 of the fan art thread. Click on any of the banners to see the full picture!

I had a chance to ask Emir0 about the process behind creating these pieces and here's what he said:

"First off my tools are Photoshop CS4 and a Wacom bamboo 1 tablet (of which I just started using.... Kinda - it's complicated). I hadn't really been drawing much, back when I created my first piece of Overgrowth fan art (the bear). But that was until I spotted Overgrowth on ModDB, which got me really excited, so I checked out some of the awesome concept art by Aubrey. Aubrey's concept art really caught my eye and I studied most of his Lugaru and Overgrowth pieces closely until I saw the blog post tutorials about how Aubrey creates his concept art.

At that point I hadn't used my Wacom that much only a couple times. But I said to myself "I might not be that good at using my Wacom, but hell let me give it a try". And at that point I already had an idea: Overgrowth didn't have any bears yet and I really like bears. So I started using my Wacom and I used about 3 days working a couple of hours a day using Aubrey's formula and it turned out great!

After a lot of positive feedback on the bear, I started on a polar bear. When doing the polar bear I thought of how you guys have implemented one or more cultures to certain races. So no new races in Overgrowth without a culture fitting them. Unlike you guys (giving the races cultures based on their place in the ecosystem) I thought of where the animals come from. So bears and polar bears reminds me of America and Northern Europe. It was my plan to have the polar bear be a viking and the grizzly bear should be a native American, but then I decided to give them a little twist and switch cultures. The polar bear became a native American hunter/tracker and the grizzly became a viking from the cold north.

After hearing that there would be no bears in Overgrowth I took on the awesomest race there was in Overgrowth (imo) rats! Anyways for the polar bear and the rat I used a bit different technique. Instead of starting with a full scale shading I only shaded it a little bit, then I colored and then I shaded it. I sketched all three of my works on a piece of paper before I started using my Wacom. When working with them in Photoshop I tend to flip the pictures horizontally a couple of times so that I can see if the proportions are right.

As of now there is only one thing left to say: thank you Wolfire, you have all inspired me to keep on drawing, writing and... playing video-games. And it is all thanks to you that I'm now using my Wacom."

Thank you Emir0. We really appreciate you sharing your art with us. Keep it up! For more of his work, check out his deviantart page! I'm very curious about the story behind the massive blood trail the polar bear is following. Do you guys think one of Emir0's bears could take on a wolf?