Warhammer 40,000: Dark Angels Land Raider

A Warhammer 40,000 Dark Angels "Land Raider" matte painting for www.sabertoothgames.com which is an arm of the Games Workshop family. It is destined to be a collectible game card in the "Dark Millenium" Warhammer 40,000 game.

It's finally done. It was an interesting ride painting this. I suffered through a terrible flu early on in the process, then I had some surgery (very minor, skin only :P) which was distracting. But here it is. Through the process, I was suddenly asked to change it from the initial Space Wolves to Dark Angels. Then when it was nearing completion (or so I thought) it turns out a misunderstanding made me paint the wrong type of Land Raider design. I suppose it was fair to say the painting was no more than half done at the time. And thus I had to get back into it and redo most things. However, under some guidance from the amazing art director, the composition of the image became a lot more interesting. Ruins, rubble, Land Speeders (yes, they can actually fly more than 3 meters over the ground in some situations).

The ground and the sky incorporate parts from real photos, thus this is classified as a 'matte' painting. Everything else is completely hand painted in Photoshop 7, however. With all the repaints, it probably took upwards 16-17 hours to do. Blah eh? I want to get that number way down for future ones.

If anything, I think the angle is rather bland. So 'typical'. I'm going to try and be creative in the future.

I hope it brings you a deep sense of gothical warfare watching it.

Please do visit my real art homepage, with several more artworks!
http://mikkow.deviantart.com