Xavier Garcia / Concept and 3D Artist

Tales of Indigo, WIP

2012-02-01T07:51:00.000-08:00

Making a collaboration with Ashley Riot, this is fanart of her comic book “Indigo”, which you can learn about here :)

Sara, character development 01

2012-01-30T07:11:00.000-08:00

Early concepts for Sara. She hasn't changed a whole lot as I had a clear idea from the beginning, so these were used more to dictate the style the book would have.

Link redesign sketch

2012-01-27T04:37:00.000-08:00

I feel like there's some good ideas here, so I want to go back and finish this up sometime. Its one of those "what if Link was actually carrying all these items" concept.

Summer Warrior

2012-01-25T07:31:00.000-08:00

Here is the finished design from that previous WIP post. Initially this was to be a concept for my wife to model and texture in 3D, but then the move to NY happened and I never got around to finishing it.

For my next concept I’m gonna hit some machinery and sci-fi. Seems like the medieval category is well covered.

Marco!

2012-01-23T09:20:00.000-08:00

Here is the main character for "Lucha Town", a delivery boy by the name of Marco. His family just moved in from out of town, so he is discovering everything about his new surroundings along with the reader.

I'll be coloring this up soon. His design is mostly final, but I might be changing a few things.

Squall Lionheart

2012-01-20T08:24:00.000-08:00

Here’s a toast to the original RPG emo kid. Final Fantasy VIII has plenty of flaws, but I personally really enjoyed the character development that squall went through and how his struggles were always about his psyche.

Final Fantasy characters tend to be about “am I strong enough to save the World” Squall never had that issue brought up, he was a badass through the entire game and his skills were never in question … rather the issue was whether he would be able to save himself from his own sense of loneliness.

People on the subway

2012-01-18T07:10:00.000-08:00

These are tricky since I'm on the subway, standing up, keeping my balance, with a brush pen and these fuckers MOVE.

Always good to look back at unfinished work

2012-01-16T14:25:00.000-08:00

click image for original size

Found this design from last year, I was working on it before the move to NY and completely forgot to finish it! Not quite done yet, but here is a work in progress.

Oh and happy MLK day to those that care :)

Cloud Strife

2012-01-13T08:15:00.001-08:00

Not my favorite Final Fantasy character (hello, Final Fantasy VII cast!) but I gotta say, that's a badass name.

C list characters need love too

2012-01-11T11:51:00.000-08:00

Some quick character sketches while taking small breaks at work. Messing with extreme and improper perspective is always fun. These characters arent too important to the narrative as of today, but you never know, I need more villains.

More like Mixed Martial Ass-kicking

2012-01-09T07:39:00.000-08:00

It's time to get serious about my book project, so I'm making some final character art ... starting with the female lead, Sara. She practices Mixed Martial Arts (MMA)

As you can tell, shes kind of in a perpetual bad mood. It’s not one of those “nobody believes in me because I’m a girl” situations, those are lame! (looking at you, "Brave") It’s more like she has a lot to prove and she considers herself an outsider because of the fighting style she picked.

Also, I'm moving blog updates to Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays instead of every day of the week. Its probably better to have a set schedule and have slightly more meaty posts. Hopefully that helps with blog traffic :)

They called it Lucha Town

2012-01-06T06:57:00.000-08:00

Working on a promo image for the book, best way to garnish attention is by making awesome art ... so lets try and see if that works.

Lets try to make awesome art, is what I mean.

Shaolin dancing? Fighting? Who knows

2012-01-05T07:32:00.000-08:00

Hey look, slightly more substantial art!

One of my favorite things about designing characters is mixing and matching slightly unusual things. My book has a young white girl with tats who does MMA, a black teen chick Shaolin fighter, a fat Jamaican boxer boy. Nothing super out there but just slight twists on what you’d expect. You’ll still have the usual at times (Latino Lucha fighters! They’re so awesome) but the ones that buck the trend will get the most page time.

Brush Pen warmup

2012-01-04T06:49:00.000-08:00

I think I'm in love with brush pens. It makes sketching a much funner experience.

If you're looking for a good one, I'd recommend this one.

Environment Explorations

2012-01-03T07:26:00.000-08:00

The benefit of designing environments for a comic book instead of a game is that you can get away with coming up with stuff as you go. Obviously you want consistency, but in games you have to think about game design, gameplay cameras objectives ... in a book I need to come up with an environment that helps me tell a story, and that's a nice change of pace.

Last post of 2011

2011-12-30T10:40:00.000-08:00

Because I ain't doin' aaaanything tomorrow! Just a quick warmup Photoshop sketc, not referenced.

2011 was an excellent year. Had two jobs that I enjoy a great deal, moved to a really nice apartment, learned my way around NY, adopted a dog, bought a sweet ass TV and most importantly, had a blast sharing all that with my wife and loved ones.

Bring on the End of the World, it'll be overrated.

200 posts! Lets celebrate with some Cancelled Game art

2011-12-29T07:59:00.000-08:00

During my last few months at EA, I was lucky to be part of the 3DS projects a good year before the system launched. It was a pretty exciting time because anytime there's new hardware there's a good deal of secrecy and hype. You always want to be involved because having software being part of a launch lineup is a huge opportunity in this business.

Why is that?

Well, because the competition is virtually non existent.

Anyways, with that in mind, EA got us to start on a new MySims game (that's a story for later), and late ron we started on a new IP that went through many names. It was a Gardening Sim that was half Pokemon Snap, half Viva Pinata.

It was originally conceived as "Bloom", announced at TGS as "My Garden", then renamed "Gardens" for some reason and then cancelled once it was finished for no good reason.

No bitterness here! None at all! ;)

Here is some concept work I did for the game.

Here's the announcement video, hosted by the wondrous Phil Katz :)

National dubious perspective day

2011-12-28T07:49:00.000-08:00

By the way, this project does take place in these things that take most of the space called "environments"

My Grandpa can kick your ass

2011-12-27T07:13:00.000-08:00

Si se puede!

Everybody loves Kung-Fu girls, and fighting

2011-12-23T08:27:00.000-08:00

Making an African American a Kung-Fu apprentice isn't the most original idea in the world, but I think I can make it relevant.

Boxer with an iPad

2011-12-22T05:51:00.000-08:00

Minor character, all things considered.

About to open a can of whoop ass

2011-12-21T09:12:00.000-08:00

Not quite ready to spill the beans on the project, but here's a sketch of the female lead

Someting New ...

2011-12-20T09:02:00.000-08:00

Going to start posting bits and pieces of a dream project. Here's a first look at silhouette studies of the main character.

Character Design Class: A Song of Ice and Fire

2011-12-16T13:37:00.000-08:00

Click for original size

This will be the last post regarding the Character Design Class (there are two more assignments that were done, but I doubt I'll be posting them). This one is probably my favorite of the bunch, Sandor Clegane (also known as "The Hound")

I'm no stranger to the books (they have become my favorite piece of literature) and if you have followed this blog for the last year, you might recall I even did a series of concepts based on the series already (click for parts 1, 2 and 3)

This design was a challenge because the show had already given me a good visual example of what to visualize. initially I wanted to emulate Akihiko Yoshida's concept pieces for Tactics Ogre but nothing good was coming out of that, once I started trying out bigger, more cartoony shapes did I start getting somewhere (the bottom right design being a good example of that)

The Hound is a broken character. Shunned by his bigger, stronger brother (who also is responsible for burning his face) Hes your typical brute with something to prove and he might have a heart of gold hidden waaay deep inside. The book portrays him as a huge figure who also moves with incredible ease and wears simple armor, except for the Dog shaped helmet.

Concept wise, I always recommend to tell a story, I also always want to find compelling characters that are "not" beautiful, so this was a good chance to try those theories. As a kid I was always scared of Dobermans, so I wanted to give him that design appearance (exemplified mostly in his helmet shape and color palette) I wanted him to look, barbaric, dangerous and mobile. It would have been more successful with a silhouette that was more sleek, but i wanted to keep him looking like a large human being, so I might have failed in that respect. There's also some details that might distract for the overall design (such as the elbow pad) but I think it was successful.

Coloring wise, I wanted to experiment and followed Adam Fords method. It was a quick 2 hour job.

Again I want to thank Rick for the class. It put me in a good mindset to try something new every week and I think that, thanks to the assignments, it totally happened. Each homework displays a different style and it was a lot of fun to have 30 minute discussions dissecting every detail, story forms and shapes. A lot of times we take these things for granted, but as an artist always remember that everything matters. If something is out there, make sure there is a reason why. That's your job as a concept artist, to convey information without words.

Like yesterday,visit Rick Lacy's blog here, and his twitter

Bergen Street Comics is also easily found Online.

Character Design Class: Pirate

2011-12-15T13:29:00.000-08:00

Click for original size

Another assignment for the Character Design Class (this was actually the final project). We had to either pick a famous pirate from history or make up our own character, I chose the former and, more precisely: Jacquotte Delahaye

She was a Pirate in the 17th Century. Her claim to fame was that at one point she faked her own death, hid as a man and later came back as "Back from the Dead Red" What made her an interesting character in the visual sense was her half Haitian, half French heritage, so I could play with two different fashion sensibilities that ended up with a pirate that's a little different to what we're used to.

There's also the transformation that this girl goes though. The way I pictured it, she was a young gung-ho chick (top right) that got trapped in a really bad situation, maybe she got brutally maimed and scarred like in the image in the top left, so when she decided to fake being a man she made sure to bring attention to what was visually wrong with her.

A great way to disguise a character is misdirection. She can hide her gender in plain sight because what everyone notices is that her arm is all fucked up and I replaced the usual fake mustache with a bull ring to cover her lips.

Later, she comes back with a vengeance and I tried to bring all the elements back together as one. shes more refined (has a gun attached to her maimed arm and a much nicer leg peg), plays the "back from the dead angle" with the skulls dangling and her crazy face and looks at both Haitian heritages (the sword, the sash and poncho) and French ones (the hat, jacket, boots, etc) Shes older, wiser and ready to lead a crew.

Remember you can visit Rick Lacy's blog here, and hes on the twitters also :)

Bergen Street Comics is no stranger to social media as well.