Annivesary Art.... AwwwWWwww

Well, I've officially been married for 3 years. WOO-HOO! What you see below is one of the anniversary presents I gave to my beautiful wife Valerie. Cue the "AwwwWWwws" No more mushy stuff... on to the art!!! I did this with a combination of techniques. Traditional watercolor, Pen and Ink, and painting in photoshop with my trusting Wacom pen tablet. I wanted to do this piece completely traditional but it came down to a couple things.

When you're painting someones likeness you have to be pretty dead on, a slip of the brush and suddenly your subject has a uni-brow and looks nothing like they're suppose to. You counter this by working big so you have more room for detail. But this means more time, and time was not on my side. Besides, digital painting is cheaper, faster, less messy, and you can simply zoom in for you're detail work. But like I said, I did do some of it traditional with the black lines being inked (of course) and the background being watercolor. You can't really make it out, but in my original wash you can see some cool "sparkles" that I achieved by throwing some salt on my watercolor wash. It's a cool trick to add some detail or texture to your piece. (because the salt absorbs the pigment) give it a try sometime. You can finally mix the culinary arts with your paintings! Also your painting becomes edible so even if the picture stinks at least it'll be delicious :)

Everybodys Gone Surfin....

I was recently challenged to do a design that was at least 75% illustrated. Now as a graphic Designer, that's quite a bit. But It turned out to be a fun project. The final result is more like 98% illustrated. The only things that weren't done from scratch was the text and the circle at the bottom. Even the text is really more of a placeholder as it is intended to be a template design that will be changed out down the line many times. This was a great project that helped push me out of my comfort zone and force me to throw out the "bag of tricks" and just do it the old fashioned way. It was nice to spend more time in front of the drawing board than the computer screen for a change. The only thing I would alter on this piece is the text. I'd like to do completely custom text. I'll get around to that one day... maybe. In the meantime, enjoy!

Microbursts Book Cover

Here is a project I just completed for a Christian book publisher. I'm now officially their "artist" and have many projects lined up with them this year including my first full blown Children's book. But for now, check out my first book cover for them. Its not really anything fancy but I think it works well. The main thing I'm proud of on this one is the illustration. I took a picture of my wife for reference and then tried to create an illustration that had some movement in it, not in the image per say, but in the actual line work and painting. The whole idea is about bursts of wind so I tried to carry over that theme to the painting. Check out the image below or view it on Amazon HERE.

Gears of War Propaganda Posters: UPDATED

UPDATE: Added some wallpapers of one of these images since I get asked for them alot. Enjoy :)

Today at the GDC conference Microsoft and Epic games announced the sequel to a little game that came out almost 2 years ago by the name of Gears of War. Well I was a big fan of the first and this announcment of Gears of War 2 got me thinking about some old propaganda posters I did for the first game. They became very popular on Epic Games forums and I ended up making wallpapers of them and sending them to a BUNCH of fans who wanted them. So here they are for you to enjoy now. I had a great time making these as I had wanted to do a "propaganda" style poster for quite some time. Maybe I'll do some more for Ggears 2 as we get closer to its November release. WOO-HOO!

Wallpapers

I WANT TO EAT YOUR BRAINS!

I'm a big fan of Zombie Movies, not sure why exactly. I'm not into blood and gore. I'm against canabalisim. And I'm all for smelling nice and being polite to others. So why then do I have such a fascination with them? My best guess is I like stories about surviving. (Or perhaps I'm just sick) So just for fun I took my interest and made a Zombie themed shirt design. You can check it out below and even buy one HERE if you feel so inclined. I really like a book written by the author Max Brooks (son of the hilarious Mel Brooks who brought us Spaceballs) It's called "The Zombie Survival Guide" It's a comical approach on how to survive the undead attacking. It's all illustrated in that horrible style you see in boy scout books and those emergency plane procedure guides. Thats the inspiration for this piece. I'd like to do more and actually make a line of "Zombie Survival 101" T-Shirts offering up different lessons for each shirt. I get a lot of compliments wherever I wear it. Apparently I'm not the only one into zombie movies. Well, enjoy, and feel free to strike back with those comments. And as a bonus I also included a quick sketch I did of myself as a zombie. Nothing great but still related to this post and fun to draw thanks to having to actually draw every layer of the human body.

Rotoscope Technique

For these illustrations I was asked to showcase people modeling apparel. But it was to be done in an artistic manner. (as opposed to some photos of people standing there) It was a challenge because I was going for a very realistic yet highly stylized look. If you've seen the Movie "A Scanner Darkly" or are at all familiar with the animation term of rotoscoping. Well then you know the look I wanted. I did some research online to find a tutorial on how this might be achieved. There are a lot out there but none that I would say is the definitive way of doing it. In the end I used a combination of techniques. Some borrowed, some made up. Starting with an inked line art version, and then using the photo as a basis for the colors. Throw in a bunch of hours in photoshop and what you see below are the results. Note that the beautiful girl in the white visor is my wife and the guy hiding in the hoodie trying to look cool is me. The rest belong to google's image search :) Enjoy!

Old School Art

So this is a piece I did a while back for my former employer Stuph Clothing. As a matter of fact I do a lot of work for them, and have done a lot for them in the past. Ergo..... this won't be the last post with art done for them. They're a great company with some amazing artists. They've also recouped pretty well after suffering the loss of such an amazing artist such as myself ;) Anyway, it was for one of their preprint T-Shirt lines which you can see here. The goal here was to achieve a trendy design that a teenage girl would want to wear. I tried the approach of actually painting the majority of the design as opposed to the usual photoshop or illustrator work. I wanted it to have a more natural free flowing feel. And to me that’s a style easier to pull off in the traditional way with paint and brushes. Designs all done in the computer can have a very synthetic and symmetrical feel. Every now and then it's nice to do something the old fashioned way and resist the urge to rely on the computers tool sets. Although I'm still reasonably happy with this piece, its an area I would like to explore further in the future.

The Project We Will Not Speak Of

I can't say much on this design other than it was designed for a big video game that's coming out on all systems in 2009 and this is one of the designs they are NOT using. (I designed over 70 variations) This project also pushed me into the realm of 3D. I've learned so much already about modeling, lighting, textures, etc. I can't wait to apply this new tool set to my work. The new doors this opens up are gonna be great! Ironically though this version was not done in 3D. But I did use a couple cool new photoshop techniques in it. Hope you all like it, don't forget to leave your feedback. It's always appreciated.

Bioshocked: UPDATED

UPDATE: New Wallpapers of art added due to popular demand, and an art deco inspired "ad" I did just for fun a while back. Enjoy :)

So back in the fall of 2007, 2K Games offered up a really great contest for fans of there then upcoming XBOX360/PC title Bioshock. I couldn't sleep one night and came across this contest at about 3 in the morning. I love video games and I love design. This was the perfect chance for me to get my foot in the door. I stayed up and what you see below is what I came up with. Nothing too fancy but I think it fits the artistic direction of the game. (rust, underwater, art deco, etc.) I always try to design for the audience, very rarely do I get to design for myself. In this case it worked. I won the contest and my art was embossed on to the Limited Edition version of the game. I was flown out to Boston for the launch party. They game me a couple copies of the game, some spending money, a stay in a luxurious hotel, and some other cool swag. I was interviewed by Joystiq and Game Pro. In the end however I got what I wanted, my foot in the door. Since then I've won a bid on another video game title that I can't talk about here. (NDA) and Bioshock has gone on to win many "Game of the Year" awards. Plus I get to show my name in the credits to people and grin like an idiot. I hope that this is just the beginning and I'll design logos and covers for many more games in the future. Besides, if I can get free copies of games that would save me a lot of money.

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I've been Terminated!

Fox.com recently hosted a contest for the popular Terminator Series that just began airing. It charged fans to design there own poster for the series using supplied high resolution photos. Unfortunately they shot themselves in the foot by restricting the entries from using any original art or photography. This was my third entry into a movie poster contest. The first two were for the movies Resident Evil and Silent Hill. I was disqualified from those too. But it doesn't matter cause I had a blast designing these, especially making the fire. You could only enter one but I just couldn't stop once I had established my theme. I went for the nostalgic feeling I got growing up with the Terminator movies. That flaming skull coming from the fire was pure genius! So here they are, my disqualified Sarah Conner Chronicles Posters! I'd rather create a piece I'm proud of and break the rules then win a contest with crappy art man! Stick it to the man!