More Shaintar character art

This was an interesting fellow to create. Hobgoblins in Shaintar are an fallen, mutated version of the basic Orc player race, not the more common D&D species of the same name. But I wanted to play on the traditional interpretations and really find the middle ground while keeping it scary and dangerous looking.

Shaintar character art

From the Shaintar: Legends Arise player's guide book, this is one of my favorite pieces I created for the book. A Troll in Shaintar is a twisted, monstrous tank. And that is just the kind of thing I can really enjoy drawing.

Shadow Spiral

The final piece from my NPC Codex set of art, is a Gnome Wizard Shadowdancer. The pink streak in the hair was also in the basic description, and certainly gives him a unique flair. The staff was my own design, as is the rest of the armor and gear. He is one of the more unusual characters I created for the book, but it's hard to go wrong with a Shadowdancer character, no matter where his other interests may lie, just having an excuse to do dark leather armor and a fluid, high action pose is enough to give him some great personality, and throw in some unique gear, and you have one interesting little fellow.

Dragon Age: The World of Thedas Volume 1 review

Dragon Age is a pretty big name in video game rpgs these days. I've never had a chance to work for Bioware, but I've been a fan of their games since Baldur's Gate. They did some great work with the Forgotten Realms setting, and when they started doing original properties, it turned out they had an incredible talent for world building themselves.

This book is as true a testament to that fact as you will find. It is a world guide, a visual encyclopedia and an art book all wrapped up in one beautiful package. Showcasing a great variety of the concept art that went into the games creation, it has an impressive collection of creature designs, and landscape art which illustrate the world of Thedas in all it's gritty detail.

The cultures, the people of the world and its history are all packed in to it's 182 pages with exhaustive complexity, and of course, accompanying art of the high standard which Bioware is known for.

The wonderful chapter openers and religious illustrations are of particular note, as they have a believably medieval, and graphic symbolism that gives the world a unique yet relatable flavor all its own. But the main feature of the book is its environment and character art. Done by many artists in many styles, it achieves a great variety in approach, but all directed with such a singular vision. This is one book that shows the kind of large scale planning and detail required to produce an original franchise and the visual bible they are often built around.

The featured artists contributing to this book include:
Joy Ang
Marc Holmes
Ben Huen
Fran Gaulin
Jae Keum
Sung Kim
Ville-Valtter
Kinnunen
Steve Klit
Casper Konefal
Matt Rhodes
Tom Rhodes
Ramil Sunga
Nick Thornborrow

 

Gundra firescale

Another one from the NPC Codex, and yet another male dwarf sorcerer! Of course, this one is a little different. He's a little more built for combat then even Hardek Hammerspell. Full scale armor, Dragon aspect (hence the claws and scaled hands) and he even breaths fire on occasion. or has some seriously colorful halitosis.

This is probably the easiest out of the NPC Codex set of images, for some reason he just came together pretty easily, from the design in the sketch, to the color in the final, it was just an easy character for me to visualize, and that translated into a fun piece of art to create. He's also my personal favorite of the bunch.

 

Hardek Hammerspell

Yet another one from the NPC codex, this guy is a Dwarf Sorcerer. It's always interesting to do costume design for a dwarven magic user. All the flowing robes and potions usually associated with the class just doesn't work quite as neatly with the gruff, stoic personality of dwarves.

So I made him a bit more martial and capable then your average sorcerer, and equally ready for either some serious book reading, or some serious barbecuing. Is he kind of burning off his own eyebrows here? obviously not. It's magic fire after all. And besides, its not like those suckers couldn't use a little trimming anyway.

 

Shaintar Cleric

The fourth and last of the Archetypes, this is the Shaintar Cleric.
Again, I wanted to step away from the classic, and rather then go for the meek, robed holy man with a book and a smile, I went with more of a battle priest, but also a woman, and a Joan of Arc vibe.
She stands in front of a an old church in the center of town, contemplating some mystery of her faith. Or possibly she just smells somthing awful, its hard to say.

Shaintar Mage

Here is number three from my Shaintar Archetypes.
This time around we have the spellcaster, wielding a staff in a defensive posture as she is about to cast a spell. I wanted to get away from the classics here, and rather then show the old tired Gandalf clone, I made the character into a young woman, stern and capable, and standing in front of a university of arcane teachings. The building is almost church like in structure, to show the reverence its halls contain for ancient knowledge.

Shaintar Fighter

This is the second of my Shaintar character archetypes series, and features the fighter. He's a little world weary, which is reinforcing the more realistic angle I was trying for with this project. After all, after years of roaming around the world as a mercenary, killing and marching, marching and killing, life is a brutal place for a professional soldier. I also gave him a rather mixed assortment of gear and clothing, to show that he has travelled far and mixed and matched available armor.

 

Shaintar Rogue

As part of the Shaintar project, I created four separate images for each iconic rpg class. The Rogue, Fighter, Cleric, and Mage. They were all a lot of fun to conceive, and I tried to do something different for each of the backgrounds, putting the characters in an environment that seemed to reinforce their chosen profession.
This is the image for the Rogue, which shows him silently crossing a river at night by boat, to avoid any night sentries. The knife hes holding is a little on the hammy side (is he going to jump out of the boat and backstab a fish?) but it seemed like the easiest way to show his nefarious intent.

Downfall character designs

 

These are a few of the cocnepts that I came up with for the original funding campaign, that have since made their way into the story of the first book.

Elindria the enchantress

This is another one from the NPC Codex. The only girl in the bunch, she is an Elf Sorceress.

She is probably the most arch typical of the characters I did for the book, which is why I wanted to show her as a bit more rugged and less whimsical. For example, I even gave her pants and a sword! but in the end, I couldn't resist the urge to give her a cartoonishly large bust. I guess I can only do so much before my years of training in traditionalist fantasy art take over.

 

Also, the color use on this one was a bigger challenge then usual. As with all my Paizo character work, I try to use Wayne Reynolds Iconic characters as a kind of springboard for style, and visual brand, as there are few games in the genre so defined by one artists specific look as Pathfinder. But in this case, one of the basic iconics done by Wayne is a female sorceress, so I wanted to make this one as distinct as possible, but still include some subtle cues to make her similar. Which sounds completely contradictory right? well, therein lies the challenge. So I made her a lot more rugged where Wayne's character was more womanly (AKA, less clothing) and I gave her blues and greens, where the iconic sorceress is dressed in an orange-red color.

 

Downfall promotional pieces

a couple of Downfall promotional pieces done in a more cover art style. Probably going into the book as chapter cover art.

Darkstar

Another character from the NPC Codex, this one is a Halfling Rogue Shadowdancer. This guy was a fun design, cool helmet, duel swords, dark grey outfit, but it's always a tricky balance when doing a character in dark colored armor, as to how dark everything gets before you start to lose details. So I tend to keep my color range pretty conservative, painting in pretty much all the detail anyway, in more of a medium range, and then darkening things down afterwards so I lose as little detail as possible.  

 

Diablo III: Book of Cain Review

Published by Insight Editions in December of 2011, this obviously isn't a new product. It isn't even technically an art book, it's really more of a promotional product for Diablo III, that just happens to contain a lot of art. And what art it is. A collection of modern masters, plying their trade in pencil rather then paint, and done on a parchment colored paper, with textured edges for that extra feel of aging, and impeccable graphic work and layout, this is a rich history book for a world from a video game franchise, oozing flavor from every page. But with a presentation and art of this caliber, it is so much more impressive then just a video game book, and deserves recognition alongside some of finest collectors art books today.

Contributing artists include:
Brom
James Gurney
Mark Gibbons
John Howe
Joseph Lacroix
Alan Lee
Victor Lee
Iain McCaig
Petar Meseldzija
Jean-Baptiste Monge
Adrian Smith

It can be found on amazon here and I can't recomend it highly enough to anyone who appreciates pencil based fantasy art, or anything at all in the dark fantasy genre of art, this is one hell of an art book (see what I did there? Hah!)

Downfall graphic novel world design

I really enjoy the gritty atmosphere this kind of world allows, and rendering the ruins of cities and cracked and broken details has been a ton of fun. We're drawing a lot of inspiration for this setting from the classics of the genre, but I'm getting to design everything from the ground up within the style that we've set for the book. It's the kind of production work I've done a few times, but never for this kind of world or in this kind of illustration style, so its been a real journey of discovery.

Brother Night

 This was one of the characters I was assigned for the NPC Codex, a Pathfinder roleplaying game book. The book itself was a pretty mammoth undertaking (for Paizo anyway, not me, I only had to do 6 characters for it), and the huge number of characters included is impressive, but the quality of the art in the book is even more outstanding. Not every image is perfect mind you, but overall, it sets a high standard for a book with hundreds of full body character images. It's like a bestiary for NPC's, and not somthing I've seen on this scale before.

Also, it was a cool project to be a part of, because the characters were all unique, interesting, and unusual. So often fantasy art is a matter of creating a variation on a well worn archetype, and these characters are definitely not archetypes. I will be posting my work for this book over the oming days here, and first off is the orc shadow dancer bard assassin. I'm not sure what the official classes ended up in the final product by the way, I'm just listing the character backgrounds as they were given to me, so you can identify why I drew them as I did. They may have changed throughout production to something else entirely, this orc may be published as, say, a duel knife wielding janitor in the final printed book.

 

Downfall graphic novel promo issue

Before launching our kickstarter for the Downfall project last year, we put together a little 10 page promo issue to test the waters and really show people the comic we wanted to make, albeit in a very small slice of the world. But it was enough fun to create and such a departure from my usual work, that I thought I would put it on here and talk a bit about the process.

 

The first page was easy. I'm an illustrator after all, and doing a full page, establishing shot is the kind of thing I've been doing for years. So this was the first piece I worked on, and easily the fastest from start to completion. I knew it needed to really encompass the world and its themes, but still read easily. So this is where I decided to do the classic post apocalyptic wasteland, broken buildings and scattered signs of a civilization long gone.

The second page was a little trickier, as I had to show the character close up, and set the scene, and show the alien in just a few panels. The alien by the way was a fun creature to design, and I will be getting to draw them quite a few more times throughout the rest of the story.

The Skillful Huntsman review

Published in 2005 by Design Studio Press, this book is an interesting experiment in art book publishing. For 14 weeks an instructor at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Scott Robertson, gave his students a project to create original designs and concepts for a world based around a Brothers Grimm story, namely, the Skillful Huntsman. This book is the collection of art that came from that project.

The actual Brothers Grimm fable is not very long, this book actually begins with the original story, and it only takes up a two page spread from start to finish. The remainder of the 160 pages are filled to the brim with an excellent collection of concepts for characters, props, environments, and everything in between.
This book is an excellent education in variety, and the core principles of concept design, and is one of the best published resources for anyone looking at a career in entertainment concept art. It's also just plain fun art, with wild experimental ideas from cover to cover, and a great resource for any artist.

The artists featured include:
Khang Le
Mike Yamada
Felix Yoon

Every one of them has since gone on to a pretty sterling career in video games and movies. These are gifted, world class artists at the very beginning of their careers, showing the kind of work they produced when they were still students themselves. As far as educational and career beneficial art books go, this is one of the best available.

Personal work, Peril

This one took me quite a while to finish. Yes, its super simple, but sometimes its the simple ones that take the longest. You see, my personal work is an exercise in creative development of an image in the most organic way possible. Yes, I do sketches and thumbnails beforehand to find the basic shapes that inspire an image, but I rarely stick to them as I do with my professional work. These images are about putting down the basic pieces, and then finding my way to the finish line by trying new things, and there is never a set amount of time for that kind of process. Sometimes its easy and everything falls into place on the first try, and sometimes I feel like I'm chasing a rabbit in the woods, I keep adding elements, taking them away, trying something totally different, playing with different colors, even flipping the image in different directions or changing the sizes of the elements I like to see if they fit into the whole image better a different way. It's always a unique wall to climb, and always an experiment in creativity. This one went through many different versions, and I even thought it was finished a couple times, but I just wasn't quite happy until now.