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.

Doodle

A little doodle from last night. My character Pargo carrying her pal through the muck, sword in hand. Her sword hand is infected, but not worry... That amoebic thing clinging to her arm is working it out of her system.

Resurrection (End of Nations)

I have been working on a bunch of character designs for a game called End of Nations. The artwork has been functioning as both character concept art and well as final illustrations for marketing. They will probably be used in-game as well in some way. As usual I have an idea of how I want a character to look in my head but I don't have access to any models that look anything like it. Oh well. Actually this photoshoot went surprisingly well. As a result it was painted pretty fast in comparison to the others. The model's face might not have matched that closely but he had more muscle definition and a darker skin tone than myself which was really helpful. When it comes to faces, a lot of the time I feel like I am sculpting. Slowly pushing features around until I get the desired result. I try to remind myself to avoid getting into a trial and error mode though. That can drain a lot of time. The model happened to have a military background so he had the exact style of pants and boots that this character was going to be wearing. That was a bonus I wasn't expecting.

Tamiyo Concept Art and Video

Here is the concept art I had mentioned for Tamiyo, the Moon Sage. When I sit down to illustrate a brand new character I usually take some time to design the character in this fashion. I find that laying out ideas for the costuming on a neutral and symmetrical pose very helpful. I am able to ignore a lot of the nagging problems that present themselves in a composed illustration. If I commit to a composition early on and then design the character around that intended composition and environment, there is more of a risk that design choices I make only work well in that pose. When the character has to be illustrated again, the design deficiencies become apparent. When working on the concepts I do keep in the back of my mind how the costuming might most likely be oriented and posed in the final illustration. This way the the interesting points of the costume can be emphasized. Since this an important character in the Magic universe the costume has to work from multiple angles. It isn't the only illustration she will appear in (at least hopefully). Tamiyo's design came together pretty quickly. Here are 3 iterations she went through. The changes were relatively minor. I have also posted a start to finish video for the illustration. I flip the canvas a lot when I work. I usually take that out of the videos but I left it in for this one. I hope no ones gets nauseous watching it.

Tamiyo, the Moon Sage -- Start to Finish Video