Beanie's Bed Hair

Just a quick sketch, trying to fathom Beanie's bird's-nest bed-hair. Laura has to brush this every day to keep it under control :D

Cthulhutech: Burning Horizons Cover

Cover to a forthcoming Cthulhutech RPG book called Burning Horizons ... it's a book that propels the overall metaplot of their universe. This is photoshop territory, with a little bit of vector art from illustrator. Doing a collage style doesn't always mesh well with me ... infact I find it downright confounding. But the challenge is always welcome!

Art Direction by Mike Vaillancourt. © WildFire LLC

Edit... Okay, I mispelled 'Horizons'... fix

Cyberpunk is dead... NOT!

 

I've just finished working on another cover and it took all my spare drawin' time so it's been all quiet over here on the blog. As usual I won't be able to show you that work for ages - it can potentially take up to a year to get published and in the meantime I look like I'm doing nothing :)  It's a funny feeling sitting on something you desperately want to show off. Here instead is a cyberpunk - part of a constant effort to loosen the hell up.

The Weird of the White Wolf II : Weirder Wolf

Edit: I couldn't resist: updated and less bader.

Quick warmup session tonight while I'm cooking some cover work behind the scenes. Here's Elric and Stormbringer, my favourite fantasy duo ... he's a feeble drug-taking albino prince-lord kinda emo guy, the sword's a soul drinking demon who's far far more evil then he'll ever be.  If you enjoy tripped out 60's fantasy try checking out some of Michael Moorcock's stories. I might try scribbling Jerry Cornelius next, but ... which one?

Scooby Doo and the Spooky Swamp Character Concepts

Scooby Doo and the Spooky Swamp has just been released on Wii, DS and PS2 (I know, PS2 ... who'd have thought?). Above are some of the more interesting character and enemy concepts created for the game. Once again had a lot of fun on this title ... love playing with those horror and villian stereotypes! You can check out the game site here. Below is a concept for the Mystery Inc clubhouse from the first game, dug up and dusted off for your amusement. This design was unused - I'll save it for my own tree house project then.
 

The Incubation Chamber

I'd completely forgotten about this illustration until I saw it used in a Cthulhutech promotion ... Thought I'd unearth and post for posterity. For the book, Mortal Remains.

Ancient Enemies - I (kind of) finally see the book!

Some nice fellow's taken a photo of Ancient Enemies, a book for the RPG Cthulhutech. This is the first time I've seen the actual book - in hardback with bookmark and all. Those guys at WildFire have a great sense of quality (due to their AD, Michael Vaillancourt I'd say). I'm really hoping to get a copy of this baby.

It's much older, but I was also finally sent a copy of the Shadowrun 4th Edition 20th Anniversary book (it's gotta have been out for well over a year). It's pretty cool too - I was glad to be a part of that considering me and the 'run go way backs.

Freeplay Independent Games Award!

I'm happy to hear this morning that my friend's game proposal project Exodus had won best concept art at the Freeplay Independent Game Festival on the weekend. Above are my contributions to the 'live painting' video he produced for the RTS style game - the paintings were layered in a way that they could parallax and have moving elements that gave them a really nice kick - there's a few elements missing from these stills like blowing capes, flags (on top of the pike in the top image) etc. As soon as I can link the final video I'll update the post.

Here's the Freeplay link to the award winners. Congratulations to Joe Tabor and the artists for an amazing job.
http://www.freeplay.net.au/2010/08/the-freeplay-awards-winners/

Trophy Goodness

Handyman of Science

Don't stand in the way of science!

Photoshop ... some nights work.

Sadie's Portraits

These are portraits drawn by my (almost) three year old daughter, Sadie ... top is Dad and bottom is Grandpa. I'm pretty amazed at the details she's picked up on, and with little coaching she's put everything where it should be (except perhaps for grandpa's moustach above his nose!). She's also a mean finger painter, and loves drawing on the wacom. I'm always stunned at how much energy simple and loose scribbles can have and I'm already being inspired by her :)

WIP - Nailed

Just doing my thing ... this is what's inhabiting my monitor. I'm really enjoying working in a painterly way at the moment ... feels like an old pair of shoes!

Lauralai v2.0

Thought it was time for a little rejuvenation of my wife's brand of kid's clothes: retro and classic dresses and things with funky material patterns. I thought I'd give her blog a once over too - I'll post when it's closer to done. Here's the new logo - if you're curious as to the look of the old version, check back in 2005 :)

Lucretia

Yes, definitely from the future!

Warming Up Again

Well it's been awhile ... I'm attempting to restart the creative engine after a long holiday OS. Just warming up here. Vroom vroom!

Edit: Hey, look at that signature ... seems this sketch is from the future.

The Innsmouth Look

There was something fishy about Professor Marsh of Innsmouth University...

Sleepy Beanie

Today's scribble ... Beanie with her bubba shortly before falling asleep (classic fingers in mouth pose).

Sadie & Sabine

Sabine is the evil one

Pirate Head v3

Here's the latest version of the mangey pirate... working on wrinkles is really my idea of a fun night. I finally found a brush that works for me which is simply the clay brush, it seems to be soft and works well with my process of slowly building up form. I still have a few things to do to finsh (the eyes being the obvious), but I'm going to move over to doing some really detailed texture maps. Adiós!

Pirate Head v2

Second session ... lots of fun. I'd like to get more detail, not quite convinced my PC can handle it (it's 4.5 million polys at the moment) ... going to use the HD sculpting tool to see if I can get the micro details in.

Pirate Head v1

A speed sculpt tonight ... needs another session. Wanted to play with proportion.

Dryad v7

Now with Vines.

Blight Thing

Here's a sneak peak at a concept paint for a friend's thingy.

EDIT: Updated

Dryad v6

Today's lesson: a six million poly mesh = bad on my PC. I really want those poly's tho to get some complex, deep bark on that skin - I may have to be content with a final product that's for mid-range viewing only. Next: wrapping vines around the limbs, and work out how to do the leaves, plus some refining sculpture.

Below, an initial test for bark-skin surface. Combo of some heavy application of negative gouging, cavity occulsion, and a nice bone material shader (not that I think this is working well...).

Dryad v5

Tonight's update, this time in bronze.

Dryad v4

Almost there ... now a final tidy up on the proportions and asymetical pass, and add a layer of smaller details (twigs, smaller branches,). Had three CTD's tonight ... I'm really pushing my PC as this thing is around 88k spheres ... time to upgrade, yup.

Dryad v3

Dryad v2

Alright, I think the skinning issue is sorted. More refining tonight - Zspheres on left and poly's on right.

Dryad v1

I've been crunching down on Zbrush as hard as possible over the last week, burning midnight oil and making sure my graphics pipeline is as smooth as disco. Although I'm down with the theory, I'm not as drilled as I'd like - too much managment and too little practicle. But after a few bumps I'm pretty easy with the Maya > Zbrush > Maya thing. But two things I'm not happy with; (re)topology (not snapping to the old mesh? C'mon!) and creating adaptive skins from Zsketchs - I just can't seem to get a simple, clean mesh outa them. I think you have to go all hi-res and subdivided straight off the bat to get anything like fingers to remain after skinning. If anyone has some advice, let me know. The image above is a quick Zsketch of my Dryad concept - I'll think I take this one as far as possible.

Mr Muscles: ZSpheres pt. II

More refining on the ZSphere sculpture - still lots of odd bumps and the hands and feet become mush on skinning, but it's coming along. I'm tempted to go to the poly sculpting stage but have to refrain as I'm trying to do most of the work in ZSpheres and want that as good as possible a foundation. The image on the far left is comprised of ZSpheres - the two on the right are skinned and smoothed (polys).

Dragon Age - Blood in Ferelden

Cover for Dragon Age, Blood in Ferelden RPG adventure book. Enjoy!
http://www.greenronin.com/dragon_age/blood_in_ferelden_developer_journal.php

ZSphere Madness

I've been experimenting with ZSphere sketching - a really handy way of constructing a model with a more painterly approach. This was about half a day of experimenting and getting my head around the process - lots of issues with the final geometry (left), but a really great starting mesh to commence sculpting detail. The two images to the right are of the actual Zspheres - with a little practice it should be relatively easy to paint down muscle banding real quick. A really handy feature is that you can build a basic skeleton rig underneath the exterior and some binding to move your model about - handing for moving arms out of the way as you're working.

Rendering Tangent

Trying here for a smoother rendering technique, while creating something for my girls to enjoy.

CryptoAnarchist

Speed Paint [ ps | painter | alchemy ] 2.5 hrs

Alchemy: Order from Chaos

It seems rare these days that something comes along and shakes you up as an artist, and presents brand new horizens that were formally out of reach. That's how I feel about Alchemy, an open source 'sketching' program designed by Andrew Jones of Massive Black. His whole motto for this application is 'order from chaos' - what you paint with is essentially random shapes, and, in the case of my first hastily scrawled image, it was using random vector typographics, warped beyond recognition.

This is a liberating tool. To give you an idea of its measure the programme has no undo. That's right - you don't need one here. Not in a place where there is no wrong. And besides, it's the 'chaos' that truely makes an image feel uncalculated, somewhat elemental and unfathomable. Andrew Jones has created an application that can inspire you, and works along the same lines as cloud gazing - the mind sees shapes in random forms, and often in ways that the logical mind struggles to reproduce.

I highly recommend this tool, and I think it's a revolution for digital artists!

From the Vault: Isaiah

tak tak tak

Britpop attack

WIP

Well ofcourse I've been busy! Sheesh! Just a snippet of a WIP creature (Dryad) for an embryonic game. The rest is under development and will probably never see the light of day if life keeps getting in the way.

Pike Master

Concept for a video game character, tba.