When I was about 12 or 13 years old, I fell in love with Harry Harrison's "Deathworld" trilogy (since expanded to a quintology). The books deal with a planet, Pyrrus, where almost every single organism is seemingly evolved to kill people, and the people have evolved, studied and armed to survive there. It's just awesome. Lately, I've been yearning to get back into digital painting again and revisit my SF illustration roots after some years of working almost exclusively in traditional media, and it occurred to me that it would be a blast to concept out an entire (hypothetical) Deathworld movie.
The imagery is epic: man vs. giant carnivorous plant battles, volcanoes, rocket ships, deadly space-pilot women, huge attack-insects....all set in an early-sixties milieu with retro rocket-ships, cool old-school weaponry and planet-scale casinos. It's like James Bond on future-steroids.
Anyhow, this is an older image I did in homage to the series, depicting a species only mentioned in an aside as "fangbuds". This inaugurates a new series of weekly sketches to more fully develop the ideas from the book and try my hand at some of the epic imagery I've been thinking of, but which has been irrelevant to the more serene and intellectual landscapes and sculptures I've been working on in real-space. Here's to indulging my id to the fullest!
