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

Tamiyo, the Moon Sage

New Planeswalker! Tamiyo, the Moon Sage taking down multiple inquisitive notes at one time. Tamiyo had to feel both like a noble scholar and an explorer. I edited her garb a few times to let a bit more of the explorer in. Originally, she had more of a restrictive wrap. I will get together some of the concept art I created for her in one of my next posts.

Duel Decks - Venser

Here is the other half of Venser vs. Koth. I hadn't posted his finished art yet. Underneath the finished art is a link to a video following the artwork from start to finish. The environment and most of his pose were laid out pretty quickly in this one. What took me a while was figuring out how to get his arms and magic effect to work within the constraints of Planeswalker art. Since these characters get cut out of their background pretty often, it made an all encompassing magic effect awkward. I toyed around with having his hood up as well.

Follow the link below for hi-res start to finish video of Venser:

Venser, the Sojourner -Duel Decks-

Ral Zarek

This is Ral Zarek, a new Magic the Gathering character I was given the pleasure to design. I had fun attempting to give him a young and cocky swagger.

Duel Decks - Venser vs. Koth

Here is an unused sketch of Venser the Sojourner. The idea was that he was zipping in from a teleportation.