Procrastination - I am a bit swamped at the moment, which is usually when I start creating little sketches like this. But now it’s out of my system and maybe I can get back on track. Actually I think taking a few minutes out to do stuff like this once in a while is a good way to clear your mind out a bit, especially if you are on a fairly long term project as I am right now. Or I may just be trying to justify it.

I know I posted this painting already, but I wanted to show the work done on it by an artist named Matt Kaufenberg, who added the type and logos as shown below. I love this take on it, it really makes the image feel like it was taken from an old 70s/80s era Marvel Comic. More of his work can be found at his deviantART site and his blog.

Hi! Earlier this year I worked on this giant piece for Wizards of the Coast. It is the artwork for the new 4th edition Dungeon Master’s Screen. This piece is huge, over 40 inches in width (13200×2550 pixels). It was actually a lot of fun to work on, trying to figure out how to make that many characters inhabit the same space in a way that is not TOO contrived (you can be the judge of whether or not I succeeded in that). There were some interesting problems to deal with, such as where the folds hit and which panel would be used as the “cover” when placed on the store shelves. Also, towards the end of the process I had to incorporate a few extra inches on either end to accommodate some last minute dimension changes. This provided an opportunity to add a couple of creatures to each end. I talk a little more about the making of this piece in the forthcoming “100 Ways to Create Fantasy Figures” book.

hi everybody -

My book “100 Ways to Create Fantasy Figures” will be out in stores around end of October/beginning of November, and is available for pre-order at your favorite online booksellers. The basic approach for this book was to look at 100 different concepts/skills/things-to-think-about/etc. that you might run into as you’re designing and illustrating fantasy-based characters. The book grew out of some of the articles I had written for ImagineFX magazine, and in fact the publisher approached me after seeing some of them.

Anyway, a lot of the illustrations come from work done for Wizards of the Coast and a couple of other clients, and are used to illustrate the various points in the book. This isn’t a real hardcore art fundamentals book, as I kinda learned what I know by flailing along as best I could. What it does represent are some of the things I learned along the way, and the main issues and problems/solutions that I seemed to encounter most often as I worked.

If you’re at all interested in doing fantasy type illustration work, it might be a good resource to see the sort of things you’ll want to think about when putting together a portfolio. Or, you could also just point and laugh.

Here’s some photos of an advance copy that the publisher d00ds sent me. Please pardon the crapness of the photo quality.

hello! Here are some character illustrations from the gaming manual Star Wars - Threats of the Galaxy from Wizards of the Coast.

By the way, yes I did tweak the site design yet again. I can’t get away from the old yellow/gray color scheme, something about it really floats my boat.

Howdy world

These are images from the High Moon Studios “Vault” - (http://www.highmoonstudios.com/insiders/vault/index.php), some of the concept art I did while working on the just-released “Bourne Conspiracy” video game.

A quickie digital sketch from last night.

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.

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…)