Dragon's Maze: Ral Zarek

Magic the Gathering's DRAGON'S MAZE challenged me to shed my phobia of drawing and painting cityscapes. It would be the key art for the set which raised the stakes even more. I did't want to take the easy way out on this important piece of art. So I dove in recklessly and attempted a bird's eye view of Ral's beloved city in almost every thumbnail. The idea was that the city is so dense that it feels like a labyrinth. I decided to use bridges and walkways to emphasize the maze-like feel. In my original sketch to the magic team, Ral is perched on top of a building adornment looking back at the viewer before he jumps off into the depths of the city.



The camera angle on Ral ended up being too extreme for all of the different ways the artwork would be applied to advertising and packaging. If he was separated from the background it would look awkward and out of place. I was asked to keep the background but change the perspective on Ral. In order to put Ral in a more traditional point of view it meant that I would have to lessen the high angle on city as well. It is not instantly obvious when you look at the final art, but if you look closely it is noticeable.

My revised scribble:



Here is the final art:

Sunhome Guildmage

Sunhome Guildmage is a magic card to be released with "Gatecrash." Here is a start to finish video of the artwork. If I remember correctly I had 2 photoshoots to do that day and one of the characters had a mustache. So why not shave off my beard and leave a nice cop 'stache right?

Sunhome Guildmage -- Start to Finish Video

Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord

Here is a painting created entirely in photoshop for Magic the Gathering's Return to Ravnica set.



Here is my original digital sketch. The approach I took with this piece began with a few thumbnails using light grey scribbling strokes. I spent some time experimenting with the different thumbnails by mirroring the images and laying them on top of themselves and each other at varying opacities hoping to see something in the tangle of lines. Once I started to see something in the mess, I blew it up to a higher resolution and used a thiner black brush on top of the low contrast thumbnail to bring forms out of the scribbles.

The resulting sketch was Jarad riding on top of an insect-like creature as if it is mobile throne. Unfortunately he was too relaxed looking. It just didn't fit the intended personality. He also need to be emaciated looking instead of the muscle bound Jarad I had here.



I captured the emaciated body type with this next sketch but I thought the pose was too close to the one Svetlin Velinov had already done for the character.


Here is the final direction. Time to paint.


The final artwork:

ImagineFX

If you come across the latest issue of ImagineFX magazine you'll find an interview with me inside. The issue also includes articles featuring James Gurney, Jean-Sebastien Rossbach, David Gaillet, Marta Nael and Francesco Lorenzetti. Check it out!

Here is the first two pages of the interview:


If you are not familiar with the magazine... "ImagineFX is a digital art magazine that features workshops and interviews with artists from the science fiction, fantasy, manga, anime, game and comic disciplines."

Flesh of the Zombie

Here is the fourth cover to the "Scream Street" series of books (french edition). The trio of friends are back to back surrounded by zombies. The advancing zombies presented a challenge. I didn't want to paint them in such a way that they would give the reader nightmares. These books are intended for a younger audience of probably nine years and up.

I sent in the color sketch below and it didn't seem to raise any red flags with the publisher. They just wanted me to make sure I wasn't showing any open fractures, brains or tendons etc. This sounded pretty reasonable to me. I was actually expecting to hear it was too scary and that I should tone it way down.



Though, the more I painted, the more I felt deep down that this was going to be too scary for the audience or at least for the parents who are buying the books for their kids. At this point I was far enough along where it made sense to just finish it up and send it in. I could always change the zombies later. The kids wouldn't need changing which was comforting since they were the focal point. As I expected the art director let me know that they were too scary and monstrous. They suggested something less realistic and closer to a cartoon style. The trouble was that I didn't want the zombies to look out of place next to the kids. The three kids aren't fully realistic but they are close. I would be treading a fine line.

TOO SCARY!


A little time was spent trying to tone down the scariness by lightening up the zombie expressions and adding a little more clothing. It wasn't enough. They still looked a little maniacal.

SLIGHTLY LESS SCARY


I decided to completely redo the two main zombies on the left and right side using softer features, a little more green color and dimwitted personalities. Since I was already making major changes I thought I would make a compositional change as well. I moved the foreground zombie head to the left side of the canvas so that it worked better with the vampire's cape and the bottom right foreground arm. This second round of edits did the trick.

NOT SCARY

Duel of the Planeswalkers Avatars

Not too long ago, I was asked to create a cycle of Planeswalker-esque avatars for the Duels of the Planeswalker 2013 video game. So one black, one white, one blue, one green, and one red. It was pretty open ended and I jumped at the chance to work on it.

I love the thought of intelligent sea beings so that was the direction I knew I'd have to take the blue avatar in. Why not come up with my own half crustacean, half fish merfolk? Here he is:




Aside from choosing from any of the existing races in the M:TG multiverse I was also free to come up with a new race. That is what I hoped to do with the white avatar. Maybe a race that lived their life high in the mountain tops, almost up in the clouds. I had the basic design of her rolling around in my head for awhile but I hadn't found a use for it yet. Here she is:

Yeva, Nature's Herald

Yeva was probably one of my top three favorite magic cards to paint in the last year. In my mind she is the leader of her clan. As a sign of solidarity she had her face scared starting at the corners of her eyes. It is as if her tear ducts had been carved out.

Designing the barding on the bear was a unique challenge I wasn't expecting. At first I tried to hang a lot of cloth from the animal as well covering much more of it's face with leather armor. The problem was that bears are just too cute and they are much more human-like than a horse is. It looked goofy and a little anthropomorphized. The ears were really killing me... Too much attention was being brought to those rounds fuzzy ears. I decided to back it off and go a simple a possible.