Dungeon Magazine - Some Wererats

I just saw that the recent Dungeon Magazine issue #217 has been released. Here's a painting I did for the article a couple months ago. The story helps give flavor to a Dungeons and Dragons scenario that takes place in the Undercellar. An interconnected network of dreary rooms below the city filled with all manner of nasty things. My task was to show a couple of wererats up to something....probably no good.

Charcoal sketch with some digital touches.

 8"x17.5" Oil on illustration board

Badru and the Beanstalk Final

A while back I had posted my sketch for the first piece in a series i'm working on for part of my MFA thesis. The setting is "jack and the beanstalk," with an orientalist twist. I'm still figuring out the logistics of this project and how I want the whole thing to work, but for now i'm just working through some of the initial images in the story. So here's the final for the first one.

12x22.5 Oil on masonite

If you're going to be at Spectrum Live this weekend you can also see the painting in person, as well as many other originals, sketches, and prints that I'll have with me.

Skull Soldiers

My, how time flies when you're busy! 

Between school and general freelance work i've been running like a madman these past couple of months. Luckily, in all of the lack of time to post anything here, lots of things have become available for me to finally show you. So hopefully i'll have time to get those things up more regularly for you.

First off, back in the fall of last year I started working with mobile gaming company Cygames, creating art for a card game called Rage of Bahamut. Though I think my work only appears in the Japanese version so far. It's a free app, so check it out if you want.

Similar to work I have done in the past for the Legend of the Cryptids game, the idea is that the player starts with a basic version of each character. Then by combining versions of the same card, the character is upgraded to an advanced version. With Bahamut however, the character can upgrade four times. So four illustrations are needed. 

My character was a basic skull soldier called Hell Lord Skeleton in-game. As far as i'm concerned if I can get a skull or skeleton in an image, it can't get any better. But it can! They wanted a skeleton leading an army of skeletons! And they are all being controlled by some kind of necromancer. So the idea was to start with a normal version that didn't have too many frills and very basic armor for stage 1. With each additional stage the armor gets more detailed and there's a few more guys in the background. In the final stage, he should be the ultimate skull soldier! Well needless to say, these were a whole lot of fun to do. Here's how they progressed:

All of them are 10"x12" Oil on illustration board.

Princess of the Underworld Advanced

Last week I shared a new painting I had done for the app game Legend of the Cryptids. This week I'm sharing the second "advanced" version of the Princess of the Underworld. 

 In this version the princess went from being a more sympathetic non-threatening character to more powerful and intimidating. Her beloved skull from the "normal" version is also now incorporated into her staff, and she's brought all of hell to the fight. I definitely had a great time working on this one.

12"x16" Oil on illustration board

I'd also like to thank the AD, Misako, she was really a joy to work with. I think some American companies could take a cue from the Japanese. They really treat artists with respect and professionalism. 

Princess of the Underworld

It seems strange that lately I've been doing more and more work, and yet, I have less and less that I can share with you. 

Well, I guess something is better than nothing. 
I've just been informed that I can share some art I did for digital "card game" app, Legend of the Cryptids. Creating card art for a digital app game is somewhat of a new a thing lately, with quite a few similar games popping up over the past year or two. The idea of the game is that you collect various character cards through "quests" where you pit your characters against the computers, and earn rewards by defeating various levels of monsters and bosses. Now the interesting part for me as an artist is that each card is able to be evolved by combining two of the same character. Thus, it requires two pieces of art that start as a "normal" version of a character and somehow upgrade into an awesomer "advanced" version once it is evolved. I'll talk a little more about the evolution process in my next post.

But for now, lets talk about the "normal" version. Princess of the Underworld is her card name, but instead of having her be all dark and evil (which is probably where I would've went) they wanted her to be a bit more sympathetic. So outside of that, they didn't give much in the way of scene or character design direction, which was nice for a change. Anyway, here's what she ended up looking like.

12"x16" Oil on panel, digital additions

Next up, I'll share how she evolved in the "advanced" version. 

Paizo: Inner Sea Bestiary

Well, it's been forever since I've updated the blog here. Between freelance projects, school, Illuxcon, and holiday travels i've not had a spare moment to write anything up lately. Not to mention all the things i've done that are still under wraps, but! at long last I have some new things I can share with all of you. 
This past year I've had the pleasure of working with Paizo on some of their characters. I like doing characters because they're fun, and I get to focus on just the figure. It's a breath of fresh air not having to think about a background sometimes. Andrew Vallas was the AD for this project and he was a joy to work with. Check out the Inner Sea Bestiary here. All of these  are painted in oils on illustration board.

Lashunta- She's a sorceress who's race is know best for their tiny antennae on the forehead.

Noqual Golem- When I painted this, he was supposed to be made of glass, but I think in the book he's now made of metal. I still like to think of him as glass.

 Lorthact- Ex duke of hell. Painting dudes with hooves is always fun.

 Ghoran- Now, this was was a weird one. A race of people made out of plants who's face is surrounded by a cowl and made up of colored flower petals. Her stomach also needed to have patterning and coloration of a watermelon and a sort of orifice for a belly button. 

 Petrified Maiden- A female fighter turned to stone...at least on the outside. 

 Nightripper- And last but not least, this guy is my favorite of the bunch. A perfect combination of weird, creepy, and awesome. Nothing like a blood soaked jackal-legged albino demon to get the party started.

All images © Paizo Publishing 2012

Dragon 415: The Ghost Caravan

Hello everyone, it's been a while since i've posted on here...but what else is new? Things have been busy as usual around here. I've got quite a few things waiting in the wings that I can hopefully show soon. My girlfriend and I also took a little vacation to Norway two weeks ago. Maybe I'll get a post in about that in the coming days, but for now here's a new one I did not too long ago for an article in this month's Dragon Magazine. The article tells of a mysterious caravan that has been sighted on many occasions, and is believed to be ghosts, but is actually just a bunch of smugglers who travel in secrecy for the king.

8x18" Oil on illustration board

General V

Here's something a little different I did not too long ago for Scholastic. An evil British general burning the White House in 1814. The gnarly scar was definitely my favorite part.

10x15" Oil on illustration board

Duel Masters: Onigunso, Hammer of Anger

Earlier this year I got an email from art director Dawn Murin over at Wizards of the Coast. She was looking for artists to create work for the japanese card game Duel Masters. I had heard of the game before but never really knew much about it. Especially since it was a game played mostly by japanese boys between the ages of 10-14, and the art was completely different from my typical style. But for this project, she was trying something new, and that was to try and incorporate a more "western" realistic art style into the Duel Masters brand. In hopes to make it stand out a bit more from the other Japanese card games. So I said "sure!" and thus began my journey.

For this guy the description was as follows:

He's an alien humanoid that is about 14 feet tall, chubby rather than muscular like he never lost his baby fat, and dimwitted. Instead of hands, he has giant steampunk-esque mechanical ball maces, and he's covered in glowing tribal/alien tattoos.

Now having researched some previous art for Duel Masters, I realized that everything was pretty over the top and crazy. Most things just didn't make sense. I needed to make him pretty big and weird and aggressive, while maintaining my usual painting style. 

Here's a few of my thumbnails, as I did a lot...They're pretty much just the the big dude flailing about in different directions since the game is about in-your-face monsters fighting each other:

©Wizards of the Coast

©Wizards of the Coast

©Wizards of the Coast

©Wizards of the Coast

©Wizards of the Coast

©Wizards of the Coast

©Wizards of the Coast

So we decided to go with thumbnail #6, and off I went to take various akward photos of myself and build little ball maces out of sculpey to help with lighting on them. Also, as a last minute addition, the publisher decided that this character is controlled by a summoner. Luckily there was a good empty space on the left where I could sneak him in:

©Wizards of the Coast

I've been doing most of my final drawings in charcoal for a while now, but lately I'm also doing quite a bit in photoshop to help set up the lighting and add some extra details. It saves me time in the long run.

Gladly, the sketch only required a couple tiny changes and It was off to the finish. Being designated as a "fire" card type helped me to determine the red colors for his skin in this one, but a bit of tweaking in my photoshop color study helped me to settle on the blues for the secondary color.

©Wizards of the Coast
13"x15.25" Oil on board

And here's how the final card turned out:

A big thanks to Dawn for this one because I had a lot of fun pushing my own boundaries with this guy.

New Image for Dragon 411

Here's another new one I did for Dragon magazine not too long ago. The gnoll guy was pretty fun to paint. These tall narrow layouts can be a bit tricky, but I also find them a fun challenge to play with composition and cropping.

10"x22" Oil on illustration board