Council of Spiders for D&D

Hey all, its been a while! Here's a new cover I did for Dungeons and Dragons. I've been eager to show this one, thanks for looking!

Running Man redesign project

Recently at school we wrapped up our concept design project with Kemp Remillard. The project was to update the 80's action/sci-fi classic The Running Man for a new generation. It was a balance of keeping the spirit of the original movie while updating the futuristic aspects and squeezing in some pop-culture references.

The first task was to figure out the look of the protagonists, as all subsequent characters would have to visually relate to our heroes. 

After designing the heroes, we had a great line-up of baddies to design. It was important to make sure they were "cool", yet had the over-the-top look you'd expect of a game-show personality.

I had a few different ideas for Fireball, ranging from Serious Business to comical. Comical was a hit with the instructors, so my take on Fireball ended up looking like a certain popular rapper.

Buzzsaw was a great challenge because his motorcycle was such a big part of his persona. I had a blast designing his ride, and Kemp's techspertise was invaluable during the process.

And lastly Dynamo, I had fun with this one. It was so hard to take this guy seriously, as he was probably the most ridiculous of the bad guys in the movie. I hope I preserved that aspect.

As always, thanks for looking! I did all this at the Safehouse Atelier.

Sweet Tooth

One time I turned in a piece to a client with a strong hit of the color pink in it, and they asked me to change it because it wasn't appropriate for their audience. A very reasonable request, though with the unexpected side-effect of me wanting to use the color pink wherever I can in personal work now!

This is a revisit of an old idea. Who says I don't have a sense of humor?

A Year of Head-Paintings - 2011

Every Tuesday night we have portrait-painting class with Coro. Its a single 3-hour session with oil paint. What follows are most of the paintings I did in 2011.

I did some oil painting back in college, but when I started these paintings I literally hadn't touched a brush in years.

Cast drawing had an impact on these paintings early on, I kept trying to make them about form instead of just abstract arrangements of color and value... which runs counter to what I was taught through most of art school.

Its amazing how you can stare at a painting for hours and not see your mistakes. I've got a bad habit of exaggerating foreheads, as we can see in some of these.

Somewhere in here I started to occasionally get something I wasn't outright ashamed of. Definitely a step in the right direction, I think.

Its painful to have some of these online, but I feel like I've come a long way this year and thought that was worth sharing.

Thanks for looking, can't wait for the next time I can post a year's worth of paintings all at once.

Vampires vs. Werewolves, Pandora's Vase

I did these covers for Capstone Press last year. I only just noticed them on Capstone's site, I have no idea how long they've been public.

Below are some larger versions without the type.

Being children's books I definitely was pushing the cartoon aesthetic a little more than usual.

In the end I felt like I got some fun images, though like with any work under NDA, by the time I finally get to post it all I can do is think of what I would have done differently if I were doing the job right now. Thanks for looking, all!

Big Ol Monsters

You guys like monsters, right?

I was thinking of these as card illustrations, I wanted to have some fun with simple straightforward images.

Please excuse my compositional redundancy, I'll try harder to prove I'm not a one-trick-pony next time! I did these images at the Safehouse Atelier.

Cast Drawings

To be honest, I didn't know what to think about cast drawing before I started.

I soon found that a main goal of cast drawing is not just to render something immaculately, but to internalize the relationship between form and light. It's obvious in theory, but can be elusive in practice.

The impact on my personal work has been solid. Light and form are becoming more of a reflex. When I'm working from imagination I make confident decisions where a year ago I would have been confused.

I know many artists haven't given this a shot and don't see the point, but there are many artists who HAVE given this a shot and DO see the point. Don't knock it til ya try it, it could make a world of difference. ;)

I did these drawings at the Safehouse Atelier. Represent.

Safehouse Atelier & Massive Black concept project

So I've been hanging out at the Safehouse Atelier in San Francisco since January 2011, and now I've got a couple of things to share. 

If you're not familiar with Safehouse, it is the new incarnation of the old NextGen Conceptart Atelier, headed up by Carl Dobsky and some of the Massive Black guys. The NextGen Atelier produced artists like Mike Bierek, Whit Brachna, Nonie Nelson, Christian MacNevin ("Dirty C"), Karla Ortiz, and lots of others. The program has some street-cred in the industry, to say the least.

I came into the school while this project was already underway, it was headed up by Kemp Remillard and El Coro. We were to design assets and flesh out the world for a movie set 50 years in the future. We had to make it seem futuristic without going overboard (like I did on the robot sketches below!). This assignment is coming to a close, and soon we'll begin work on the next project!

I am building up art-momentum, and should soon be posting more frequently with freelance jobs and classwork. Thank you all for looking!