The Art of Denis Loubet

By Type:

• Cover Art
• Concept Art
• Interior Illustrations
• Animations
• Promotional
• 3D Graphics

By Company:

• Art I've done for myself
• DrawMyCharacter
• Origin Systems Inc.
• Steve Jackson Games
• Portalarium
• Daylight Productions
• Illusion Machines
• PixelMine Games
• Midnight Studios
• Genesis LPMud

• Wacom Graphics Tablets
  I got a Cintiq last year, and I haven't looked back since!
• Corel Painter 2015
  I use this program to create the raw art. Its imitation of traditional media is uncanny. I do my sketches and painting directly on the Cintiq.
• Adobe Photoshop CC
  I use this to finish my art. It's the best for color balancing, titling, and layering effects. The monthly fee helps you avoid the initial investment required by an outright purchase.
• AzPainter2 and AzDrawing
  Barely translated from the Japanese, these two small art programs pack a major punch, especially when you consider they're free! I've used AzPainter2 for inking because it has a line smoothing tool that helps prevent line wobble. That's something neither Painter nor Photoshop have.
• Sculptris
  Speaking of free, Sculptris is an awesome 3D modeling package that handles very much like clay.
• ZBrush 4R6
  What can I say, the ZRemesher feature alone is worth the price of admission in this amazing 3D software.
• 3D Studio Max
  My go-to software for 3D modeling, texturing, rigging, animating, and rendering.

I did these for Microprose while I worked at Illusion Machines. They were a crude first-pass to be used as a springboard for further development, but unfortuneately there never was any further development. The delay of milestone payments, coupled with a lack of our Next Project, forced Illusion Machines to go belly-up. This was sad, because the development cycle of the current project, Dawn of War was the healthiest I had experienced in a long time. Basically, I judge the health of a development cycle by how fast new content gets implimented. Dawn of War was demonstrating new features on a daily basis and incorporating new art assets in a matter of hours. This is opposed to what it was like at Origin Systems when I left, where months would go by on a game with no sense of progress. The development of Dawn of War possessed a vitality I had missed since the early days at Origin.

One of the big features that is never expressed in descriptions of the game is that the terrain was completely editable by the characters in the game. You could have your cavemen dig a trench and it would fill with water if it was low enough. You could make a plot of land an island by digging to separate it from the mainland. It was pretty freakin' cool. And the programmers figured out how to have the 2D sprite figures walk into the water, and have the water level move up their bodies like they were 3D. They had volumetric glow and smoke effects that were years ahead of their time. It is a shame that game never saw the light of day.