Spent the last several days wrestling with my computer over a 64-bit operating system, wading through a buggy bog of bootcamp and busted disk drives. Looking back, I guess it was all worth it in the end... Photoshop does seem to run a tad bit smoother with the extra ram :)

Aloe bridge.
There it is, the last one in my seven-day desert paintscapade. Don't know why it took me so long, but I reckon this ended up at 7+ hrs. Oh well, it's good enough.

Now what do I paint?

Forgotten oasis.
So the main idea was that the prickly flora, when left starved of sunlight, would become all twisted and gnarled. Their reddish/purplish hue could be attributed to a darkening of their chlorophyll in an attempt to absorb as much light as possible.
Sort of overstepped my 4-hour limit with this one (ended up taking more than double that), mainly because of the myriad of layers to wrangle, but it was well worth it. Really pleased with the end result :)

Needle spires, a.k.a. desert suburbia.
Wrestled a lot with this one as regards to color and composition, but I feel it finally came together rather well. Time spent? Let's say about 5 hrs.

Into the Carapace.
A vast wasteland of black dunes as far as a man can see, the sea of glass-like shards taking on a deep blood-red in the bleak sunlight. The half-buried plates of obsidian are in constant shifting motion, presumably formed during some cataclysmic volcanic eruption. Named the Carapace by the superstitious natives who believe it to be the mass graveyard of some giant beetle beings long gone from this world.

About 4 hrs.

Drilling wells.
So here's number three, though I'm not quite sure how long this one took. It went through several iterations, none of which really worked for me, but I powered through it and ended up with this one, and a headache. Hoping for a better flow tomorrow.

Cacti forest.
So yeah, technically it's the 16th already... But ignore that, I'd say it was still made today. The 15th. Still on schedule! Anyway, this landed on about 4 hours as well.

Aloe dunes.

I got it in my head to try and use the remaining free time of summer vacations to do something actually useful.

So, for the next week or so I will do my best to finish a painting a day, doing my utmost to limit the time spent. I decided on a desert theme, and the cacti followed shortly after. This first one ended up taking about 4 hours.

My latest addition to the godmachine universe, the city of Igquma (Zulu for termite mound), rises above the immeasurable sprawl of its urban offspring, the streets and alleys separating the randomly constructed housing projects giving it the appearance of a dried-up and cracked riverbed. Rooftops are turned into parks and bazaars for the inhabitants, with walkways and bridges over the street canals for cars below. A container city, many of its kind are strewn across the continent, a reminder of the past Africa rising from poverty and facing the challenges of an increased BNP and booming population.

It's summer and I can't stop thinking of snowy wastelands, sparkling under the veils of the aurora borealis. Not that the summer months up til now could be called sweltering by any stretch of the word, let's face it, I live in Sweden, but nevertheless... Introducing the frozen wastes of Aurorea.

If there was anything I wanted to achieve with this world, and there might be yet more glimpses to come, it was to get rid of the stigma normally associated with polar regions, namely that they are nothing but icy deserts - nothing going on but endless stretches of ice and snow. After researching a bit I came across some amazing microscopical photos of ice crystals and snowflakes. Perfect. And so I started to experiment with scale and scope to reinvigorate this frozen desert with giant shale-like glaciers of hexagonal crystalline formations, ice flora like frostblossoms and some oriental mystical twists as well.

Corporate

Youth

High fashion

Back alley

My attempts at designing realistic, cohesive styles of clothing for the fashion scene of 2158 AD. Moderately inspired by renaissance fashion, but not to the point of costumy awkwardness, I hope.

Presidency military. Elite infantry called 'mirror men' because of their reflective body armor. The idea being that this would act as camouflage in combat situations, refracting the form of the soldier into prismatic shards of his/her environment. Not as high-tech as possible video and/or light bending solutions, but drastically tougher and less energy dependent.

Below, a standard issue handgun, the Wyvern W9. Fired through electrical impulses, the bullets lie stacked in line of one another ready to be fired. This introduces the possibility of individual bullets being fired, as well as a solid hexagon of seven bullets for more stopping power, or even the entire mag at once, creating a virtual lance of metal able to punch through thick armor plating.

Concept for a buried saucer model meant to be incorporated into Janaka's movie somewhen during these last throws of summer.

Godmachine ahoy!

Topmost, a vertigo-inducing view of the company house spires of the Presidency, where enterprise has turned into a family matter and the stock market... well, now it's personal. Businessmen dueling on the streets over affronts to the honor of their company/their house/their family, is no rare sight.

Africa, having finally climbed out of the pit of poverty, corruption and dictatorship haunting its past, now stands a last free haven of democracy and peace in between the two super powers of the Commonwealth(East) and the Presidency(West). The Capital of New Carthage blossoms, even replicating the fabled hanging gardens of Babylon in their euphoria, albeit with a modern twist.

Yet in the sprawling back alleys of the rising nation dwells a population of refugees, many of whom are buddhist monks driven away by prosecution and violence, into free Africa. But without the social structure to sustain them, the pious monks are unable to keep their position at the top of the social ladder. They must instead live in shacks on the street, homeless but for their friends and fellow monks. Soon enough, large enough concentrations have gathered, and shanty monasteries are erected as if on their own accord from the massive hives of corrugated steel, chanting resonating throughout the cramped alleyways of the metropolis.

Janaka had the splendid idea of engaging some of us in the class in a sort of competition. He's a massive Halo nerd, I don't think he'd deny it, and  as he had recently read the book Halo Cryptum, he set us up the task of translating some of the excerpts into an illustration. They might be rather long, but if you fancy reading them to make up your own mind about this monstrosity, you're welcome to do so.

Excerpt 1: "We stood before a broad cylinder capped with a shattered dome, blown up and out like a ragged crown. Part of the wall had collapsed, and we were able to enter the interior of the cylinder through that breach.
We picked through the rubble -what seemed to be both human and Precursor walls and thick containment structurs- until we came to a staircase rising to a circular walkway five meters wide, the far side about fifty meters away. This had appaently once served as a gallery designed to look down upon something contained below, within the core of the cylinder. The inner parapet consisted of angeled panes of transparent material, hazed and starred by impacts from some long-ago explosion. Little more than the walkway and the inner cylinder below were intact.
 Overhead, the shattered crown of the dome allowed the last blue daylight and a few unwinking stars to light our path. The Didact approched the inner parapet, his armour actually glowing at his inner turmoil -as if preparing to deflect major damage. This was what he must have looked like going into battle. . . .
 Below, half-hidden in the shadows, an inticately shaped mold filled most of the pit. The mold had once snugly encapsulated something about fifteen meters tall, ten or eleven meters broad and almost as thick -far too large to be any veriaty of human or any rate of Forerunner.
 The armour's ancilla made no comment, supplied no information.
 I thought I discerned what might have been cushions or braces for a number of long, multiply joined arms, ending in shackles or gloves designed to grip hands bigger than my own body. Hands with three thick digits and central clasping thumb . . . or claw.
 Two pairs. Four arms, four hand claws.
 Pushed up and asside, three meters wide, like a huge hat tossed on a table, was a restraining headpiece. A ridged conduit flowed down one side, presumably the back. Apperently, the head confined by that helmet had once trailed a thick sinuous, articulated tail. 
 A cage. A prison.
 Empty."

Excerpt 2: "The Didact's actual memories -parts of them- finally blossomed within me.

The arena was equiped with walkways- I saw vividly, from his point of view, the Didact exploring the walkway around the intact, sealed cylinder below. 
Ten thousand years ago.
The Didact walked alone around the dome-shaped cap, contemplating whether or not he should activate a human device . . . something small, designed for a human hand and fitting like a toy in his own palm: a way of communicating directly with the creature within the cell.
Something manufactured by humans . . . pushing through Precursor technology. How was that possible . . . ?
Many questions flashed through the Didact's mind, and with difficulty I separated them from my own. Was this actually a Precursor, as the humans had first believed? Or was it something manufactured by the Precursors -possibly a strange, distorted sibling to both Forerunner and (the Didact was reluctant to consider this) humans?
Precursor, sibling, or ancestor to . . . what?
The Didact manipulated the device. The cap over the cylinder became transparent to his eyes, and he saw what lay within.
The cell contained, in temporal suspension, a genuine monster: a large creature with an overall anatomy like a grossly misshapen human, though possessed of four upper limbs, two degenerate legs, and an almost indescribably ugly head -a head shaped remarcably like that of an ancient arthropod seeded long ago on a number of planets, presumably by the Precursors, and known to some as a europterid. A sea scorpion.
Oval, faceted, slanted eyes bumped up from the front of its low, flat "face". And from the rear of the head, a long, segmented tail descended the spine, ending in a wicked barb two meters in length."

At the top, some ideas for a Mayan/Conquistador/Cowboy hybrid in the guise of a Rain Herder, corralling storm clouds on the back of his giant stormbird, armed with a longgun of featherstone, light and electrically conductive, it is highly precious to these proud mountainfolk.

Below, a weaver revisit in the form of a loom master and his Woven golem protector, battling it out on the decrepid city streets. 

The concept, realized copper model and exploded sketch of my Mite LED city lightsource, meant to provide an exiting contrast to the greenery of parks before slowly becoming a part of it, as the copper goes verdigris.

A school project aimed at advertisement that we managed to turn into this fabulous transformation of the androgynous body sock into a quivering, unstoppable male force of athleticism. The Gilette Athlon (not in any way associated with the real Gilette brand mind you) - Be Unstoppable!

All of my visualizations of Janaka and Joar's imagined space opera dominated by an alien race referred to as Elephant. Crab is Elephant's willing slaves. Highly empathic creatures, they live to serve.

Zodiacs are a highly advanced race of what I saw as vulture-like aliens. So advanced in fact as to figure out a way to escape the constant battle of mortal life and transcend their consciousness into a state of pure energy. This however left their bodies to be governed by what remained of their lower, more primitive functions. They now prowl the stars like primitive avian zombies on huge AI-controlled ships, ceaselessly on the hunt for meat and other resources to consume.

The Magpie resides in the shadows, a water bear-inspired thief made up of a collection of huge differentiated cells. This introduces the possibility to slip through virtually any opening, as the Magpie can squeeze its body into a single strand of cellular membranes and plasma. The perfect thief.

The city vista with the giant lozenge hovering in the background presents a scene of equal parts bewilderment fear and amazement as humanity in the not-so-distant future is suddenly confronted with the fact that they're far from alone in the universe.

Again, my illustrations, Janaka's and Joar's imaginations.

Starting off the year 2011: more from the world of godmachine. Some far too generic cybernetic arms, followed by a ceramic military flare blade, and lastly a first attempt at creating the renaissance-inspired fashion of the world 2158 AD.

A new world, and with it new possibilities.

We were in the middle of an artsy lighting project at school and someone projected this amazing shadow of a pair of nylon stockings, backlit against the wall. I remember thinking that this must be what the weave of the universe looks like, the weave of space and time, what holds everything together.

From this brief thought sprung the five classes of an imagined mmo set in industrialist times, with loom masters weaving themselves powerful butler bodyguards out of  scraps of clothing, disgruntled tailors snipping away at the weave of the universe with twisted scissors, brides left at the altar shrouding themselves in the veil of the void and their ripped weddinggowns, kitchen knife in hand and out for revenge. The kindly seamstresses capable of sewing closed internal wounds and embroider the very air with power, shielded by the burly stacks of robe and metal staves of the vagabond guardians.

What I wouldn't give to see this be made into a real game.

My friend Emil approached me and, recognizing my agonizing creative dry spell, offered a small assignment: a desktop wallpaper inspired by some of the latest artwork from Blizzard, of which he liked the style.

I gave him two, thrilled as the inspiration came flooding back. Kick-started like a rusted chainsaw.

Quick concept of a school project done by me and my friend Janaka. Done for a competition set by the Italian ceramics brand d'Imola. We envisioned ceramic barnacles clinging to the walls of the city's less travelled alleys and streets which, come nighttime, would sprout anemonae optical fibres to entice people into changing their pedestrian routines and discover new sides of the city.

Sadly, I can't seem to find the upgraded versions of these, nor can I find the short movie of the model we made to showcase the effect in real life. They must still be hanging out in the school's database. Maybe I can find them there...

Improvised voodoo dolls and tribal dancing in a warehouse of future Africa. This is all tied in to a grand sci-fi vision currently brewing in my mind of the world in 2150, working title 'godmachine'. You will most definately see more of this world in the future.