Case Study | Brandon Liao
I’ve chosen this artist because I really like the way in which they mix both fantasy and sci-fi themes together. Their paintings seem to be a mix of both photos and painting, allowing them to create more realistic feeling images. I really like the clean lines within his images, especially on the characters allowing to push them out as a focus point.
The character designs by Brandon Liao are very interesting, as they mix the traditional fantasy style stereotypes, such as mage or warrior, with a sci-fi themes within their designs. I like the sharp clean cuts within the clothing using big shapes and clean line themes that could be considered more within the sci-fi theme. These clean cuts are then added too with smaller details such as patterns or metal decorations, pulling back into the realms of fantasy, where you would normally see intricate detailing on clothing and accessories.
One of my favourite pieces within his collection is his Wizard Monster Master, as this would traditionally be seen as a summoner class wielding a sort of staff or book. In this case Brandon Liao changed the traditional weapon into a table like object with a tablet pen, allowing the Wizard Monster Master to summon creatures via drawing them on the tablet. I really like this new interpretation of a summoner, it’s an updated design to keep up with technology within that world. The clothing still uses the shapes commonly associated of a traditional mage, such as the hat, while adding themes of the sci-fi world that these people live in through the metal and lights.
Brandon Liao has created characters for the game League of Legends, and through his portfolio and DeviantArt account you are able to see how he creates concept boards. The line art is sketchy but also has darker lines over to create cleaner lines and a nicer line weight. This is something I want to push for within my own concept work and be able to create quickly at the same time. The rendered versions of his League of Legends work seems to look like clay or a model like image. The render style really shows off what each material is while also not being too realistic; this is different from his personal work on the sci-fi world. This could be because this style is faster to produce than the more realistic style of rendering like within his personal work. There are also the placements of some of his sketches within each concept piece, allowing us to see what some of the ideas that were being worked through were up to the final design. Placing some of the initial ideas on my final concept piece is something that I will be keeping in mind while creating pieces in the future as it allows others to see part of the process that I work through to create the final concept.
Brandon Liao places bright colours sparingly within his personal work, using them to highlight specific areas around the bodies, such as a head piece or chest piece. Using bright saturated colours in this way really helps pull the attention to these key areas of the designs. The rest of the concept is kept within a grayscale range of colours, pushing these bright saturated colours out even more. I want to try this concept idea for the next character concepts that I create, as it will assist me in creating more interesting designs as you cannot rely on colour to accentuate the different areas of the design out.
Brandon Liao also has many environment designs featured within his galleries, again mixing painting and photos together to create some very awesome images. He created some very nice lighting setups that greatly helped sell the images, especially an image that shows a lively marketplace. This standard of environment work is where I want to be heading, having the ability to create convincing environment concepts that feel alive rather than still. The mixture of photo and painting can be seen strongly within some of the sci-fi city paintings, where the cities are made up from many different photo images manipulated into place and then painted over. This look really works well for the sci-fi genre, as it brings in that feeling of large technological cities inhabited with a large population without having to paint every single component.
Overall I think Brandon Liao’s concept work is refreshing to see, and opened up my mind to mixing subjects that normally are split to create new and interesting design ideas. I will keep in mind all the principles, methods and ideas that I have learned from looking into his work for my future concepts and keep working towards the quality of designs that he is able to create. Onward to designing!
