francis tsai - portfolio and blog

From the (on hold) space opera graphic novel project.

A quickie digital sketch from last night.

I picked up issue 10 of MCP yesterday, which I do because seeing my comic book work is still enough of a novelty for me that I don’t just wait for my comp copies to show up in the mail. The cool part about working on this story is that the writer Marc Guggenheim manages to have a lot of appearances from different Marvel characters, such as the Thing - pretty fun to draw! Anyway I am done working on this particular story and am now back on covers for the time being. (Well, that and the normal workload of video game design and other illustration work. I just finished up the last bits of revisions on the Fantasy Characters art book, and am now starting on a second book project with the same publisher.)

Here’s a recent illustration for Wizards of the Coast, from their “Keep on the Shadowfell” online dealio. I’ve been experimenting a bit with a more line-art intensive style on some of the recent stuff for them. I think there are instances where it works, and others where a more painterly approach is more appropriate.

I will say that it’s trickier doing line art directly into Photoshop than it is with pencil and paper.

OK, one more shot of this and then I will move on to something else. Just experimenting with overlaying different renderings - a hidden line render from SketchUp multiplied over a GI render from Podium, and then a paper texture layer on top. Oh and also a copy of the hidden line render with a bit of Gaussian blur.

I’ve been playing around with a SketchUp rendering plug-in called Podium. This is a design for a simple space craft, with a few renders taken from Podium and tweaked in Photoshop.

Still a work in progress at this point…

Here is some cover art work I did recently for Devil’s Due publishing, which is now up on their August solicitations page. The editor asked for a piece reminiscent of the Hammer vampire films from the 60s/70s. (70s? Not sure…)

As you can see I am in the process of revamping teamgt.com. One thing I have been wanting to do for a long time is integrate my blogspot material and the old teamgt.com site into a single entity. There will probably be some glitches for a while, so thanks for your patience.

This is some cover art for the new issue of ImagineFX magazine. I was asked to create some artwork paying homage to the movie Blade Runner and to the design work of Syd Mead. I also put together a step-by-step walkthrough along with the original layered Photoshop file on the included DVD. In case you’re wondering about the curious composition and blank spaces, they are the areas that will be covered or obscured by text and logos on the magazine cover.

I wish I had had a little more time to put into it, but I had about a week’s time in which I was also trying to knock down a few other deadlines. Woulda coulda shoulda.

Anyway I hope you like it!

Hi there

As the title says I am not actually dead, as my last post date of February might have you believe. I have been doing a lot of work for the regular cast of clients, and most of it I can’t show until later.

I do have something I wanted to mention - I’ve been working on this project for over a year now, and it will be available later this year, in October. It’s a sort of how-to book on designing and illustrating fantasy characters. The publisher,

David & Charles, saw some of the material I had been contributing to ImagineFX magazine and they contacted me about putting together a book. This is the first of a set of books.

It is available for pre-order now on the amazon.com site here.