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

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-