This piece was done for the re-release of the Cobra Sand Viper action figure a couple of years ago.  Like the Star Viper I will show my creative process.  Below are the prototype toy turn arounds that the AD at Hasbro sent.  Like all the the character art I created for them, the pose was completely up to me.

Hasbro Cobra Sand Viper Figure.

Once I got these great picts I posed and shot a ref pict of myself.  I tend to do this a lot for my work since it takes very little time and is cheaper than paying a model.  Since I wanted to make these images feel as real as i could, I didn’t want to guess at how the lighting falls across the figure.

Pose for Art.

Because I felt the pose was so close to what I wanted the end piece to look like, I didn’t spend a ton of time on the sketch.

Very Rough Sketch to Paint over.

Like all my digital paintings I put this line drawing on it’s own layer, set the opacity to around 20 and began roughing in my colors.  Below is the progress around 60% of completion.  As you can see, I spent most of my time on the helmet.  Because the entire headpiece is black, I used different textures/materials to make it pop.  Not quite as tough to figure out as the Star Viper, but still challenging.

Working Painting

Finally, I did the hands, rim lighting, background, gun and effects.  Here is the approved piece that was used on the box art for the figure.  Hope you like!  I will be posting many more of these soon!  The piece was done using Corel Painter 11 and my Intuos 4 tablet, with a little post in Photoshop CS4.

Click for Larger Image.

Finished Sand Viper Art. G.I. JOE®

©2011 Hasbro, Inc. Used with Permission