DAMIEN MURPHY - Portfolio Blog

Kells - Aoibheann and Daithí

2012-01-03T11:22:00.000Z


Digital art - 13'' x 10''

Finally got to posting this piece that I did for a Christmas present for my older brother Gordon and his partner Denise. Didn't want to give away the surprise. A manipulated photo of Aoibheann (niece) and Daithí (nephew) in the the Celtic/Insular Illuminated style of the Book of Kells and the Lindisfarne Gospels.

It took me longer than I first anticipated. Here's me thinking that because I was going to use photoshop it would be a relatively quick enough job to do, but in reality it ended up taking me the guts of a year to complete. The above image is from the photoshop file while the gift itself was printed and transferred onto good quality art paper before it was float mounted and framed. The dimensions match that of the book of Kells 13 x 10 inches. It's unique in the way that I'm never doing another one :) but I thoroughly enjoyed doing it and also I learned some new transferring processes along the way.

Digital Painting - Snow landscape

2011-12-08T15:04:00.001Z

original size 4921 X 3508 pixels

close up @ 100%

This painting was done a while ago, and printed onto canvas. It was done in both Painter and Photoshop. I wanted to test how natural I could get the brush marks to look and this was the best result from all the tests that I did. It looked even more natural when printed onto canvas, giving it that canvas texture. The only thing missing was the thickness you get from traditional paint.

Fictional ad campaigns for cleat concepts

2011-11-06T18:15:00.000Z

Here are some personal concepts for cleats where also designed fictional company logos and brand logos to make mock ad campaigns. These are only some of the logo designs, I'll post the other logo designs later once I get around to putting them into a style guide. The plan was to use them in concepts for sports gear but I only got around to concepts of the cleats so far. I was planning to make gloves, helmets etc. basically American football gear as my past experience working on the Backbreaker franchise lent itself to this decision.
This is strictly personal work and not a reflection of the direction Naturalmotion Games is taking.

Rangdum Monastery, Ladakh

2011-07-10T18:57:00.002+01:00

Acrylic on canvas. 24"x20"

Please right click over the above image and 'Open Link in New Tab' to see the proper uploaded image rather than the compressed version made for the built-in viewer. Not happy about Blogger doing that.

Finally got this painting finished, well finished as far as I'm concerned :)
It's based on a photo by Olivier Föllmi (one of my favourite photographers) http://www.follmispirit.com/
I changed the backdrop for mountains in Nepal although the monastery is in Tibet, sshh! artistic license.
Painting it reminded me how much I hate using acrylics compared to oils. I'll have to bite the bullet and buy odourless oil paints if I'm going to continue painting in the house and not in a studio. But I'm pretty satisfied with the outcome though. Just need to finish it with an oil based varnish to help enrich the colours.

Tonal exercise

2011-03-13T15:50:00.001Z

I decide to revamp one of my old layouts with some dramatic lighting to give it that eerie look that was initially intended for it. It was more of a tonal exercise in visual storytelling.

Hunter S. Thompson - tonal sketch

2010-11-29T22:03:00.003Z

Acrylic on canvas
20" x 24"

Painting sketch

2010-11-29T20:41:00.002Z

I made this from some left over paint on the palette on a scrap of primed fabriano.

Acrylic on fabriano

Stadium concept

2010-11-28T18:26:00.001Z

Another stadium concept. This one was an early concept with european locations in mind for the game which we didn't use as it was decided that we should only use locations in the USA. I still quite liked the idea of this stadium where new areas where added over an ancient greek stadium juxtaposing the old and the new.

Backbreaker - some of the loading screens

2010-08-01T15:32:00.006+01:00

All images were taken from ingame screen shots and stylised in Photoshop

Backbreaker logos

2010-08-01T15:25:00.001+01:00

Here are some of the team logos from Backbreaker

Backbreaker concepts

2010-06-27T19:31:00.002+01:00

Some stadium concepts I did for Backbreaker on PS3/Xbox 360

Alien vs Predator 3 concepts

2010-03-06T19:26:00.002Z

These are concepts that I did for AVP3 in the two short months that I worked in Rebellion studios.

Lake Tahoe

2009-11-15T13:19:00.002Z

Lake Tahoe - oil on canvas 24" x 20"

Commission for a wedding gift. I found it really difficult to photograph this painting accurately, not helped by the fact that I coated it with a gloss varnish. This is close though I lost some of the richness of the paint and some of the mood, like any photo of an oil painting.

Castles

2008-09-18T19:29:00.005+01:00

Just a view quickish paintings (1 day each) of the castles to go with the earlier heraldry post. They were done to establish the main mood and lighting for each different castle and kingdom.

Banner painting

2008-08-11T18:04:00.003+01:00

Just though I may aswell post this old painting I did. As you see it was used for the banner of this site. I did it to play around with painter for the first time. I think it was painter 9, not sure on that one.

even more concept

2008-08-11T17:55:00.005+01:00

more concept work - flags and heraldry

2008-08-11T17:50:00.002+01:00

concepts and layouts

2008-08-11T17:43:00.003+01:00

Big City Dreams DS

2008-08-11T17:33:00.004+01:00

Here is some 3D work I did for Hello Kitty - Big City Dreams for the nintendo DS.

Shopping District (Environment)

Vehicle 1

Vehicle 2

Vehicle 3

Interior concept - Apartment lobby

Interior concept - happy sushi bar

Ford Offroad - 3D Model

2008-08-11T17:29:00.002+01:00

A model of a Solent aeroplane I did for Ford Offroad which sat on one of the tracks.

New Jungle Layout

2008-07-12T13:24:00.006+01:00

I've just finished this layout. It was inspired by the layouts of Armand Serrano. Worth checking out his blog. I've added it to my links menu.
Thinking about painting this up, hopefully if I get the time and a wacom tablet. A cintiq would be nice too.

Layout Studies

2008-07-12T10:18:00.003+01:00

Some of the studies I made before drawing any of the jungle layouts. I looked at Disney's Tarzan, the Jungle book, photo reference and other images I came across on the internet.

Art exhibition

2008-07-07T20:51:00.004+01:00

I was asked to produce some work in 3D for an art exhibition called ‘A New Dynamic’ by Central Artists Initiative of which I was a member of ( not sure if I still am a member, i'll have to check on that one? I decided to go with a bit of dark humour with this one. Eveything is made in 3d and then has some photoshop effects applied.
note to self: remove lens flare, what was I thinking?

Title in image (can't type that too easily)

While searching through old work

2008-07-07T20:39:00.009+01:00

While looking through old work I came across these paintings. Couldn't find any large images of these. My guess was I lost them when I had that harddrive failure way back. Damn!, lost a year a halfs work with that hard drive, including all the commission oil paintings I did (which I cant get again as they were sold off). But on the bright side at least I found these two images. Sorry they're so small.

Commuinion girl - 596 x 907mm - Oil on Canvas

Sea scape - 305 x 406 - Oil on Canvasboard

Sketches from a Notebook

2008-07-07T19:55:00.005+01:00

Some scans from a old sketchbook(about one year) that I never got round to filling. The top two images are concepts for a larger layout. Dont think i`ll get around to doing it anytime soon. The lower two were just for fun.

Jungle Temple 01

Jungle Temple 02

Village

World War 1_ghostly soldiers

Ford Landrover Racing Offroad

2008-06-28T17:37:00.008+01:00

High end renders done for Ford Racing Offroad PR and Marketing.
The background images were stitch panoramic photos from reference trips. The vehicles were resup versions of the ingame cars with parts from optimised CAD data. The cars were rendered in Max by another artist and then were colour adjusted and painted into the scene by myself.

print size (8193 x 2327 pixels)

Close up images of the vehicles

Zombie Poster

2008-06-28T16:04:00.004+01:00

Initial concept

High concept

Zombie Mood Concepts

2008-06-28T15:42:00.006+01:00

Some quick concepts to capture the mood for a project proposal

Old Layouts

2008-06-28T15:09:00.004+01:00

Came across some college day 12 field layouts, thought they were worth a post.

Ford Street Racing PR posters

2008-06-28T14:42:00.003+01:00

All images are rendered with photoshop-ed in game assests.

GT40

GT500 Shelby

Bronco

Falcon XR8

Truck Stop Concept

2008-06-28T14:29:00.005+01:00

Original size (3374 x 1542 pixels)

Foosball Concepts

2008-06-28T14:13:00.006+01:00

Some concepts for foosball figures.

More Ford Racing

2008-06-28T12:02:00.006+01:00

Here are a selection of the loading screens I did for the PSP release of Ford Street Racing L.A. Duel. There were 28 in total. (All renders were done using ingame assets with a little photoshop work)

Box Art

2008-06-28T11:17:00.018+01:00

Here are the box art covers I did for the Ford Racing titles that my studio developed.

Ford Street Racing L.A. Duel
(for European release)

Ford Bold Moves Street Racing
Unfortunately I don't have the full box art cover but this is the 3D render that was used on it.
(for US release)

Ford Racing Offroad

Here we have variations of the same title, all of which are published.
First on the far left we have the US release of the Wii platform which features the new Ford F150 2009 model to run in conjunction with the Ford unveiling in their showroom exhibition. While the second version has the previous 2008 F150 model for the PS2, PSP and PC platforms.
The third cover is the European release that encompasses all platforms editions featuring the Range Rover Sport.

CD Cover Design

2008-06-28T10:41:00.009+01:00

This is a CD cover designs I did for an Irish band called The Pure Product which got published for print. After being selected from numerous designs and variations.

Front cover

Back Cover