Here are two recent artist proof cards I received from Wizards of the Coast. I haven’t done a whole lot of these, so I think I’m still kind of feeling my way around how the artwork needs to work with the game rules. Anyway they are fun to do, hopefully there will be more down the road. The original artwork can be seen in the COLOR WORKS section of the portfolio.

My “how-to” book is now available and in stock at the Bud Plant site. Click on the cover thumbnail to go to their page.

I wanted to revise the Mercy Thompson #2 cover illustration a bit. Something in the face in the previous version was bothering me a bit. Anyway, the original version is still in the gallery in case you want to compare.

Also, Dabel Brothers Publishing has issued a press release for this miniseries, along with a preview of the first eleven pages. You can check it out here.

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.

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.

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.

Another creature piece I did for Wizards of the Coast recently, for their online Dungeon magazine. This is from “Last Breaths.”

A piece recently completed for Wizards of the Coast, for their online Dungeon magazine (#152). This is actually an earlier version, but I like it better than the one the art director approved.

This is a piece for Wizards of the Coast online Dungeon mag. You can download the pdf here (requires registration): http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/duad/20071207