Biographical Information
I’m David Battle, I’m an aspiring artist who shares a deep interest in Character Design, Concept Art, Game Design and Story Writing. I’m interested in a future in game design and making my own games.
Contact Information
Student Email: Dabattle@s.sfusd.edu
Phone #: (510)-806-5305
Personal Email: KelticJewelry@gmail.com
I’m David Battle, I’m an aspiring artist who shares a deep interest in Character Design, Concept Art, Game Design and Story Writing. I love leaning into designs with eldritch and unsettling themes that borrow ideas from the Lovecraftian mythos, Christian lore about heaven and hell, Victorian Era fashion and Medieval Era Armaments. I love exploring the human figure but with things that are subtly off like additional eyes or different limbs. I’m interested in a future in game design and making my own games.
Sun Goddess
I created this piece inpired by ancient engravings of ancient gods, taking the most influence in the side profiles of engravings and paintings in Ancient Egypt and pottery of Ancient Greece. What intially influenced me to make the character was an idea for a comic where the ancient sun goddess lives amongst strange characters like an Anthropomorphic Beetle and Sleep Paralysis Demon.
To best represent the sun I used warm colors, mainly focusing on using reds, yellows and oranges. I wanted to have flow in the picture and to show her elevated status as a god. I illustrated her in a sitting position, leaning forward and pointing downward, giving the pose movement and characteristics of superiority, but also curosity and leadership
Album Project
This was the product of a project where we had to produce collage with image editing software. I chose to make an album cover of a rendition of "St James Infirmary Blues" by The Devil Makes Three. The of tempo the song was a major inspiration to the chaos in the image and the lyrics and history behind the song inspiring the themes.
I showed the themes of death through the excessive amounts of skulls and ghostly transparent crows. To show the song's narrative of a man ravaged by disease at a barroom planning his funeral I included bottles of alcohol and floating viruses. In the corner is a jazz band on a hearse wagon as a direct reference to the song's lyrics. In the background is an image of Cab Calloway, another artist who's rendition of the song I enjoyed. And finally the central image, a ram-headed bottle offering a skull drink with wings made of revolvers. I chose a striking image like this to show an untrustworthy spirit (pun intended) or angel look like its offering salvation to the viewer, but instead offers alcohol.
Knight of Catarina
This piece takes influence from an artist I've had the misfortune of not catching the name of. The intial artwork was of a wounded knight 'flipping the bird' at a monstrous creature with a club. I loved this image so much I made it my profile picture on my social media accounts. Around the time I produced my rendition of the piece was when I had returned to the (in)famous "tough but fair" game of Dark Souls 3, after a long hiatus. I had taken a liking to a bumbling knight, who with your assistance you help defeat his former friend who has abandoned his duty.
I produced this piece to combine two of my favorite knights, the brash knight who flipped off a monstrosity and a bumbling onion knight seeking to but his friend to rest. To properly depict the armor I stuck with warm beige and brown. I referenced some images of the armor and this piece was soon born!
Screams in the Sea
This piece was inspired by an old project I had collaborated on. We were tasked to produce a video to describe Newton’s Three Laws of Motion. To inject some comedy into my section, the 3rd Law of Motion, I created a set of images showing a person slapping a table and the table returning the slap with such force it tears the slapper’s face off, leaving only a horrified skull. On my own time I recreated the image for fun, but as the piece progressed the more it looked like me. And to further abstract the piece I found this representation of me alone screaming in the middle of the sea. This piece came to represent to me my feelings of lacking an identity; alone, in pain, screaming to no one.
The piece uses warm colors in the foreground and colder colors in the background. In bright colors that deeply contrast with the setting rather than complement it are the screams, contrasting in color and dimension to the rest of the image.
The Ballerina
The Ballerina is a piece where I focused on motion. When I realized the strange oddities in the image, how things were slightly off, I was freestyling so I leaned into it, creating a grotesque yet beautiful and elegant dancer that was simultaneously in motion but also stiff.
I focused on a line of motion but also made her stiff by not fully following said line. She is bound and is forced to balance a large eye while one of her legs is chained. These elements help support the stiffness while the ballerina’s body creates motion.
Demon Concept Art
The Demon Concept Art was me developing this idea of a spunky demon who embodies chaos in her mismatched body.
I looked at images and read descriptions of demons and let my imagination run wild from there. I imagined her as a demon that lives among humans heralding chaos and watching it unfold as she indulges in earthly pleasures like junk food and soda.
Pan the Reveler
Pan was a character I imagined among others of a similar type, guardians of nature characterised by octopus-like eyes and mutated bodies.
I started with motion and the character was built from there. I developed the body to move with the line of action and decided to twist the body to further follow it, giving the creature tentacles on one half of its body and having twisted horns. I had given previous characters like Pan cloven hooves so it was a no brainer in my mind, speaking of which that's how the character got the name Pan. After seeing the cloven hoof, the twisted and chaotic horns and the wild motion of the body, no name fit better. I then gave him a wreath of olive branches and Pan was fully born.