Obviously her eyes are lidless and clouded over. Her spine is spiky and over accentuated. The headdress, crown, helmet thing is obviously very Geiger-eque.

But then the throne room is more fairy inspired, however lacking the gaiety one would expect of the Fae.  Which helps make it appear more off kilter.

One of the last things I did on this was  adding in the green glow. Prior to that her skin was too healthy looking, and I didn’t have a light source to give me anything else. I had already added the green in the tubes on her helmet, so I needed to add green elsewhere in the scene to help balance it out. The green glow solved both.

Compositionally I think the image is stunted and I am not happy with it from that standpoint, but maybe that helps it…  I was adding a supplicant to the left of the scene but then it just got too crowded, so I took it back out.

On to the next painting!

• Concept Art - Sketches from the Edge Concept Art Sketches from the Edge Concept Art is always pushing the edges. The edge of what? Well, honestly I m going to go with sanity. Your goal in doing concept art sketches, whether it be a creature or a building is to create something never before imagined. It......
• Laundry Alien Illustration Laundry Alien Illustration This is one of those illustrations that comes from absolutely nowhere and you think to yourself "What?" I know that I was thinking about what monsters are doing when they aren't destroying people and devouring buildings when I created the original concept sketch. It was originally......
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• Illustration - Goblin Joust Digital Painting Goblin Joust Illustration This illustration has a long history. It was originally started back in 1997. I created a fairly large concept sketch, about 22" x 34". The initial sketch was heavily influenced by the creature designs of Brian Froud in the movie Labyrinth. That original drawing took many......
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Tuskey here, is just a quick character concept that I did from one of my sketchbook pages. As is quite often the case, the sketch page is one that had a happy little accident of a character and not anything I had planned prior to sitting down with the blank page.

Of course him wearing a helmet and being all “full of tusks”, Tuskegee airman seems a little to “on the nose”.

Regardless, this is only the second “painting” I’ve created using my new Cintiq, and I feel I am getting the swing of it..

I’ve been looking through many of my sketch pages at all the various portraits I have created. In doing so, I have come to the conclusion that many of them should be used in a larger scene. Maybe one similar to the dogs playing poker. Might to be too cheesy, but that is kind of the point.

• Demon Head Concept Art Sketches [/caption] Page of Concept Art Sketches This page of concept art sketches is 2 well 3 takes on a demon head. I did not want to do the generic horns and fangs. So I decided to play with the theme a little bit. Creating a page of concept art sketches......
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• Concept Art - Hairlien Coiffure Sketch Hairlien Concept Art Sketch Another concept art sketch page from my nightly samurai sketch sessions, this time a "Dune" inspired alien with quite the impressive coiffure. I might play with this character a little more,redraw it and take into photoshop for a nice work up. It feels like this......
• Concept Art - Uncle Remus, Character Sketch Concept Art Character Sketches The main character in this concept art sketch book page is one I very much enjoy. After bringing him  into existence I now have a character that I want to use in a wide array of images. That is the joy of creating concept art,......

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Recently that has changed. I picked up a brand new Cintiq 21 UX a few weeks ago, well more specifically my company picked one up for me.

It has changed my way of working, for the better.

This creature concept is just an advanced doodle.  I started out using Alias Sketchbook, creating the grayscale of this image. I then moved to Adobe Photoshop to add color and “finish” the image.

The Cintiq eliminated the cognitive discontent of drawing on a table and seeing the results on the monitor. If I had known the increase in speed and the ease of use, I would have bought one years ago, it is worth it – even with the steep price tag.

• Concept Art - Hairlien Coiffure Sketch Hairlien Concept Art Sketch Another concept art sketch page from my nightly samurai sketch sessions, this time a "Dune" inspired alien with quite the impressive coiffure. I might play with this character a little more,redraw it and take into photoshop for a nice work up. It feels like this......
• Creature Design - Bio-luminescent Tunnel Digger Bio-Luminescent Tunnel Digger Creature Design ConceptArt.org runs several community competitions every week. My favorite is the creature design of the week competition. on the hundredth week they did the COW (Creature of the Week) 100 competition where artists had 1 month to create 100 creatures designs. We were given......
• Concept Art - Sketches from the Edge Concept Art Sketches from the Edge Concept Art is always pushing the edges. The edge of what? Well, honestly I m going to go with sanity. Your goal in doing concept art sketches, whether it be a creature or a building is to create something never before imagined. It......
• Creature Design - Slimy Cliff Jumper Creature Design of the Week One of my very early creature designs of the week entries for conceptart.org. This particular entry was for the topic "Slimy Cliff Jumper". Not a very good creature design, but it was one of the first I ever created so it was bound to......
• Illustration - Goblin Joust Digital Painting Goblin Joust Illustration This illustration has a long history. It was originally started back in 1997. I created a fairly large concept sketch, about 22" x 34". The initial sketch was heavily influenced by the creature designs of Brian Froud in the movie Labyrinth. That original drawing took many......

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I am fairly happy with how the tusk-tacular character turned out, combination of pencil, white colored pencil, white ink and recycled paper has a quite nice look…

• Demon Head Concept Art Sketches [/caption] Page of Concept Art Sketches This page of concept art sketches is 2 well 3 takes on a demon head. I did not want to do the generic horns and fangs. So I decided to play with the theme a little bit. Creating a page of concept art sketches......
• Concept Character - Tuskey Tuskey here, is just a quick character concept that I did from one of my sketchbook pages. As is quite often the case, the sketch page is one that had a happy little accident of a character and not anything I had planned prior to sitting down with the......
• Laundry Alien Illustration Laundry Alien Illustration This is one of those illustrations that comes from absolutely nowhere and you think to yourself "What?" I know that I was thinking about what monsters are doing when they aren't destroying people and devouring buildings when I created the original concept sketch. It was originally......
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Concept Art for the MMORPG Farland

MMO Concept Art

I have had the honor of being the Concept Artist for the brand new MMORPG, Farland. This is an independent project that is already starting to gain pretty good traction.

This is my first project as an actual concept artist for a game. However while working on this game I have had the opportunity to become the concept artist for 2 other games simultaneously. I will talk about them in another post with some examples of the work I have done for them, though none of the actual images they are using due to the secrecy surrounding those games in their prelaunch.

Farland Concept Art

Farland is meant to hearken back to the  traditional fantasy genre. The city I am currently depicting in these concepts, is the center of the human’s greatest kingdom. I have attempted to create a style that is very reminiscent of traditional fantasy, but that shows the strength of the kingdom, the grandeur of the city and yet is realistic in its form to serve the function intended.

The first image is the concept art for the city gates. What amazes me most when doing this little painting, was how much detail the 3d modelers would gather from the hints I have given them.

Concept Art for a Bridge in the Game Farland

I hope it is easy to recognize the similarity between the gate and this bridge concept. I tried to make it distinct as a structure, created during a different age, but follow the same design design language so that is is obviously from the same culture as the city gate. Where-as the gate is meant to both impress and intimidate visitors or would be attackers to the city, the bridge follows a more utilitarian focus. In my imagination this bridge is also a very strategic point. It acts as a bottle neck for both shipborne traffic as well as land based. If it was my kingdom to rule oceangoing ships would be forced to stop here and transfer cargo to smaller river going barges, and of course pay their tax for the privilege.

I am currently working on the Keep within the city. It will follow the same design cues as these two structures, but will obviously be more similar to the gate than the bridge. However, the Keep will need to be even more formidable and grand.

A Whole World of Concept Art

One of the great things regarding working on a game of this scope is the immense need of concepts. The developers are building an entire world, and every element of that world needs to be designed. These structures are quite fun to do, especially since I don’t consider that my strength. I feel I can offer far more on the design of creatures, demons, monsters and critters of the creepy and crawly persuasion. But that is what is making this project so enjoyable, every time I turn around there is yet another interesting thing that needs to be created from thin air. I am only worried that doing the concept art for a game like this will spoil me for every project in the future.

• Concept Art - Alien Tribesmen Concept Art - Creature Sketches Creating these concept art creature sketches is sometimes very rewarding. This page from my sketchbook is one of my favorites. One of those rare times when several of the characters portrayed are interesting and worth expanding upon. For whatever reason things were clicking well......
• Concept Art - Secret Agent Concept Art - Character Design A Character Design for a Concept Art .org contest... yes I did finish one. This is a very quick speed painting of an android special agent character I created for one of the ConceptArt.org Character of the Week contests. This image was created entirely......
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• Concept Art - Sketching Bonanza Concept Art Sketches Pages and pages of concept art sketches to which no single category defines. These are all from my samurai sketch sessions and as such they follow no rules or protocol, other than don't follow any rules... wait... As a rule I am showing every page no......
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Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogroves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought–
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling throuygh the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish buyt!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
He chortled in his joy

Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogroves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

The board moderators at Concept Art like to give creature design ideas that are obscure, or relatively, broad in the way they can be interpreted. This one fits the bill perfectly. The cadence and enunciation of the Frumious Bandersnatch itself are the only things from which to discern a creature description. That in itself is very liberating.

• Jousting Goblin Creature Design Sketch Goblin Creature Design This creature design is not too terribly original. I love the work of Brian Froud especially some of his work on Labyrinth. Consequently this particular sketch is based off of one of the characters from said movie. I created this drawing back in 1997 and it......
• Clearly Creatures Concept Art Sketches A page of concept art creature sketches. I don't like to leave space on the page in my sketchbooks. It also helps in the creative process to use existing shapes to let your mind fill in the voids. Some of my pages adhere to this filling the voids mentality more......
• Concept Art - Oddities of the Creature Persuasion Concept Art Creature Sketches This is a page of creature concept art sketches from my nightly sketch sessions. This page like many that came before it, contains a few creatures with no basis on reality. I have used these free drawing occasions to experimentation with ideas and to break......
• Creature Design - Cannibal Mother Sketch Creature Design of the Week Every once in a while I jump over to the conceptart.org site to check out the creature design of the week contest. Usually when I am in a bit of a funk, creatively speaking. The topic for the week was Cannibal Mother, and this......
• Creature Design - Kelpie the Water Dragon Sketch Kelpie Creature Design Sketch This creature design I imagine this as a tiny little dragon, similar in size to a seahorse, who hides amongst the kelp to hunt. It is another product of the samurai sketch sessions and a creature that I will likely do something with, at some......

Concept Art Sketches from the Edge

Concept Art is always pushing the edges. The edge of what? Well, honestly I m going to go with sanity. Your goal in doing concept art sketches, whether it be a creature or a building is to create something never before imagined. It doesn’t always work out that way, but that is ultimately the goal.

Often you find that you are influenced by those things you find beautiful or interesting. This helps define your personal style, but it can also lead you to copying, conscious or not, those things. I find myself going down that path often enough. The trick then is to move away from those influences, to look for new experiences.

The Role of Concept Art

So here is the basic conundrum of creating concept art, nothing truly unique, with no basis on reality will be believable, but nothing based entirely on observation will be unique. The role then is to create a believable world from both observation and imagination. Adding details that hint to the real, but not simply combining attributes of the real. Then you end up with an elephant with a giraffe neck, and that is not unique at all.

My goals for creating unique concept art are not based around any particular genre or theme. And I have a long way to go from these sketch sessions to anything presentable. In fact I don’t see them as part of the actual process at all, they are simply a warm up to get my brain and hand flowing. So in that sense they are part of the overall concept art process, just not the main track. At some point I will start doing the ConceptArt.org creature of the week, Character of the Week and Environment of the Week contests again. They will give me a define-able end goal. For now though I am just seeing how far I can push my imagination. The actual finished Concept Art is coming, in due course.

Concept Art Resources:

ConceptArt.org
TheGnomonWorkshop.com
CreatureSpot.com
My CA Sketchbook
My Concept Art Sketches here
I am creating more Concept Art sketches every day.

• Concept Art - Oddities of the Creature Persuasion Concept Art Creature Sketches This is a page of creature concept art sketches from my nightly sketch sessions. This page like many that came before it, contains a few creatures with no basis on reality. I have used these free drawing occasions to experimentation with ideas and to break......
• Concept Art - Creeptastic Creatures Concept Art Digital Sketches All three of these concept art character sketches came from my experimental sessions using Alias Sketchbook Pro. I am in love with the application, and cannot wait to try it with a Intuos Cintiq tablet. It has become my preferred method for sketching in general. I......
• Concept Art for the Farland MMORPG I hope it is easy to recognize the similarity between the gate and this bridge concept. I tried to make it distinct as a structure, created during a different age, but follow the same design design language so that is is obviously from the same culture as the city......
• Concept Art - Alien Tribesmen Concept Art - Creature Sketches Creating these concept art creature sketches is sometimes very rewarding. This page from my sketchbook is one of my favorites. One of those rare times when several of the characters portrayed are interesting and worth expanding upon. For whatever reason things were clicking well......
• Concept Art - Sketching Bonanza Concept Art Sketches Pages and pages of concept art sketches to which no single category defines. These are all from my samurai sketch sessions and as such they follow no rules or protocol, other than don't follow any rules... wait... As a rule I am showing every page no......

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Psychedelic Squirrels is a paintball comic strip I originally started back in 1994. It was an on again off again product for YEARS. But over those years, I lost most of the finished strips. Here and there I would come across many of the sketch pages, or even the inked frames, but never the final product.

I found my Old Paintball Comic Strip!

So, I was digging through my old archive disks (most are zip 100′s but a few are cd rom) and found a directory called Cold Coffee. This was good news, as my original comic strip was called Cold Coffee, and when I first started the Squirrels they went by the same name. Well, long story short, I found a stash of old Paintball Comic Strips.

I have taken to posting them at both The Funniez and my Paintball Gun blog.

Rather than breaking this up into a hundred separate posts I will drop a few here in order, but you can go to either of the other sites to see them as I release them.

• Creature Design and Monster Concept Sketches More Creature Design Sketches Rather than doing individual posts for each of these Creature Design sketch pages, I am putting them together in this one post. There are a couple fun characters/creatures on these 3 pages but nothing that warrants a revisit or further exploration. They will exist only......
• Multicampers Character Sheet I briefly did a comic strip based on a bunch of airsoft players called Multicampers. As with any comic or cartoon the first thing I try to do is a sheet with all of the main characters and any significant props. So this sheet has head-shots and a few poses......
• Several Pages of Toon Sketches On occasion I like to sit down and come up with cartoon characters, if nothing else it represents a nice change of pace. This change of pace often is a result of my complete lack of anything else working that night. This first page here represents a very simple style......
• Creature Design - 100 Creatures Creature Design of the Week 100 Here was my entry into the ConceptArt.org Creature Design of the Week (COW) 100.  I would love to revisit that competition with all the knowledge I have gained from my nightly sketch sessions, it is my opinion that my creature design skills have......
• Laundry Alien Illustration Laundry Alien Illustration This is one of those illustrations that comes from absolutely nowhere and you think to yourself "What?" I know that I was thinking about what monsters are doing when they aren't destroying people and devouring buildings when I created the original concept sketch. It was originally......

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Concept Art – Creature Design sketches

If you read my posts often you know I love to do Concept Art, specifically creature design. This page from my sketchbook is a Werewolf, tick, bat and cuddlefish… well not really.  This is another page from my nightly sketch sessions, and is the last of creatures that I will do for a while. I need to spend more time doing the same type of practice with hard objects rather than the squishy ones.

Professional Concept Art

I’m not there yet, but some day I would love to create concept art and get paid for it. Ever since I was a child watching the original Star Wars trilogy, I knew what I wanted to do. I have watched every making of, or behind the scenes video made for every sci fi movie I can find. In fact I often like them more than the movies themselves. There is something very compelling about creating Concept Art for a world completely pulled from imagination.

It would more than likely have to be contract or freelance work as I cannot move from my Portland Oregon location, and there are very few VFX or game companies in this town. There is of course LAIKA and a few others…

Concept Art on the Web

Concept Art Forums – The biggest community of Concept Artists online. I attended a big event they held up in Seattle and it was the most valuable instruction I ever attained in regards to creating art.

Concept Artist List – I want on this list, it will mean I have attained the quality of concept art that puts me in the elite. I know I am a ways away from that at this time, but it is my goal.

Massive Black – This studio is full of amazing concept artists, and they put on great events.

Steambot Studios – Another fantastic studio of Concept Artists.

Brom – Brom is more of a cover artist or illustrator, but it is Brom and he has to be on this list.

Derek Thompson – Love Derek’s work.

Concept Art Sketches from me

These are just a few of the lists and resources crowded with people who create concept art, and with whom I would like to work

• Concept Art - Uncle Remus, Character Sketch Concept Art Character Sketches The main character in this concept art sketch book page is one I very much enjoy. After bringing him  into existence I now have a character that I want to use in a wide array of images. That is the joy of creating concept art,......
• Clearly Creatures Concept Art Sketches A page of concept art creature sketches. I don't like to leave space on the page in my sketchbooks. It also helps in the creative process to use existing shapes to let your mind fill in the voids. Some of my pages adhere to this filling the voids mentality more......
• Concept Art for the Farland MMORPG I hope it is easy to recognize the similarity between the gate and this bridge concept. I tried to make it distinct as a structure, created during a different age, but follow the same design design language so that is is obviously from the same culture as the city......
• Concept Art - Sketching Bonanza Concept Art Sketches Pages and pages of concept art sketches to which no single category defines. These are all from my samurai sketch sessions and as such they follow no rules or protocol, other than don't follow any rules... wait... As a rule I am showing every page no......
• Creature Design - Cannibal Mother Sketch Creature Design of the Week Every once in a while I jump over to the conceptart.org site to check out the creature design of the week contest. Usually when I am in a bit of a funk, creatively speaking. The topic for the week was Cannibal Mother, and this......

• Unique gift ideas for the milestone birthdays in Shopping / Gifts    (submitted 2011-08-30) Some birthdays are truly extra special in more than one ways. And thus they should also be recognized in such manner to showcase its importance. These special birthdays are some like the 18th, 21st, 40th and the 50th birthdays. Some of these......
• Make Blogging Work for Your Business pt 2 Are you ready to make blogging work for your business? If you already know the benefits associated with corporate blogging, then the next step is to put these concepts to work by creating your own corporate blog and sharing your company with the world. This is part 2 in a......
• Discover How To Generate High Conversions Form Your Squeeze Page Internet marketing is mainly about making a profit by leveraging and utilizing the resources that you already have. One such asset, and probably the most important for any internet marketer, is your email list. If you are creating your list from nothing, then one of the first steps will be......
• The Top Three Money Boosting Internet Marketing Tips If you're looking out for Internet marketing tips that actually work, then you've reached the right place. These are three techniques that can really boost any online marketing venture. 300 Internet Marketers is one of those things where the total influence it has mainly rests on other considerations. So then......
• Gothic Art Antiques -> Decorative-Arts Gothic art refers to any art, whether it’s a painting, a sculpture, or some other medium, created from about the mid-12th century through the end of the 14th century. Art was still created over the next century that’s often called International Gothic, but this type of art......