Seasons....GREEtings?

Hey everyone, just wanted to send you all a happy holidays this season. I did a little holiday card after work this week to send out to my contacts. I might as well put it up on my blog too. So yeah, I'm heading back east to Michigan this holiday, very excited this year for some reason. I'll be around, maybe add another entry but I'm focusing on packing my bags and getting everything ready for next week or so. But I hope everyone has a good safe holiday and see you next year!

March of the Legion released

Hey guys. I'm fairly sure its safe to show this now. The card set came out last weekend and bad scans of the cards have been on the internet and eBay for a few weeks. So here are some cards I did in April/May 2007 for Upper Deck. Looking back at these I definitely feel I could have did a better job in quality. I've learned a lot since then thanks to freelance and studio experience, especially working on my current project at work. At any rate here they are, hope you enjoy. I've definitely learned from these pieces.

Update

Hey everyone. Just a quick update. I'm about to start my 4 day weekend but I thought I'd share some images from my desk at work and the things i engulf myself in daily. I recently picked up this badass artbook on Gil Elvgren the pin-up artist. That's his book in the corner of the photo. I also started collecting these little anime figures. No idea what its from, probably something i don't want know but I think they look pretty bad ass.










As for art, this is my latest. I had a really old sketch I did for a possible character design during the early pre-pro phase of the game h'm working on. Apparently the style wasn't suitable so I just kept it on my cork board for almost a half a year. I decided to paint it up last week.












Also, the day after Thanksgiving i think that ImagineFX magazine issue 24 comes out in the States if you are interested. Me and my Concept Director Miguel Lleras will be in the DVD gallery.

Garo Artbooks have arrived!

Just received my package of Garo art/design books straight from Japan. Man this stuff is nuts! One book details the characters armor designs and production sketches. The other deals with the Equip and Prop figures thats are insanely expensive and hard to find. It shows closeups of the toys and detail put into the figures. Also they have a guest artist that does "kit-bashing" and he creates these little scenes from the show but its incredibly detailed and amazing. I'm pretty happy to get these books!

Happy Belated Halloween

Rawr!

ImagineFX DVD

Hey guys, just wanted to post this up. It's a few screen shots of the DVD that comes with ImagineFX magazine issue 24. The one that Miguel and I are in. They've seem to have butchered my descriptions but that's cool I guess. I've got a bunch of paintings that I've been working on but never had time to finish, perhaps this weekend I will do just that.

PS- Thanks to Doug for letting check out his copy of the magazine. Subscribers get it once its available where bookstores will get it 2 months after the UK release. So thanks!

Published at last! Summer '07 recap and more!

Ok, well its been a long hard while over the summer. I hope everyone has been doing well. I've been busy doing cards for World of Warcraft Trading Card Game (which should be coming out in November in the "March of the Legion" set) and working at 7 Studios on our new original IP game. Very exciting hard work going towards there. I'll try and give the low down on things thats been happening...

I have great news for everyone, As some of you may know, my piece "Onuwen" will be shown in the prestigious new Ballistic Publishing art book Exotique 3 and now the webpage is up and running for people to preview the amazing art in this book. Check it out, theres a flash flip through preview. It's quite an honor to be amongst these gods of digital painting. Here's the link: http://www.ballisticpublishing.com/books/exotique_3/index.php

Second news, on October 23rd, the newest Imagine FX issue will be out in the UK and hopefully the US. My concept director Miguel Lleras and I will be featured in the DVD that comes along with that issue as FXpos'e digital artists. We'll have a gallery on the dvd and small interview with it. I haven't received my issue yet but I'm sure its going to be sweet. So look out for it at Borders or Barnes and Noble!

Thirdly, they've finally come out with Napoleon Dynamite screenshots for the Nintendo DS and PSP. Yes, I know, my company<3 movie games. http://kotaku.com/photogallery/NapoleonDynamite

That's all for now, here some speed paints i've been doing lately in Painter. I've come across a pretty awesome thing in Painter where you can adjust the pre-set brushes and make things work the way you want it. I've got so that I can make a circle brush act like photoshops but have the functionality of the oil brushes in painter without the crappy scratch marks. This in essence creates the ability to paint like photoshop but pick up surrounding colors just like real painting. This is also helped by putting the layer I'm working on to "pick up underlying color" which means that it will blend and pick up anything i have under that layer without affecting those layers. This was pretty awesome today as i was doing some of these paintings, it was like i was back in school actually applying paint and moving it around and blending colors on the fly to create new ones. Good times, I have to learn more about the inner workings of Painter.

Keita Amemiya is awesome!

I know its pretty late, around 3:30 am. But I was traversing the interweb and discovered the name of the guy i pretty much owe my teenage/adulthood to in terms of artistic inspiration.

Keita Amemiya was unknown to me but his work has etched itself in my artistic backlog since I've seen Kamen Rider and Zyu Rangers (Mighty Morphin Power Rangers in U.S.) He was the primary Director/art director on those shows. Later he would become the Character Designer on one of my favorite game series of all time Onimusha. Working on Onimusha 2, 3, and Dawn of Sorrows. Now his latest and greatest is a show instantly got hooked on and now i know why. Garo is perhaps one of the best Japanese Tokusatsu (Japanese live action special effects shows) that I have seen and the quality in his character/monster designs are top notch.

Here's some of his work in art/toy form from a Garo artbook, which i plan on getting once I save enough money.



I would love to one day be as prolithic as this character designer from Japan.

CCS Alumni Profile interview

Check it out, my first interview/profile! Done for my art schools Alumni section of their website. And here's something i been working on just a taste of whats to come.

http://www.ccscad.edu/alumni/alumniProfiles/entertainment/&profile=131

A Merking for a Day..on ImagineFX that is!

Just an update on my art. Apparently one of my pieces was showcased as the "Image of the Day" on the website ImagineFX.com . Thanks to Angie Lai who stumbled upon it!

It'll only be there for a day so I went ahead and took a screenshot.

some sketches

Fantastic Four 2 art online

Hi there everyone. I just found out I can now show my work I did for my company's game Fantastic Four Rise of the Silver Surfer for the Wii and Ps2, which just came out to stores. So I'll just put up some of the better pieces. For the most part, I did a lot of production work that is pretty down and dirty art for this project. A lot of sketches and things that the modelers needed the next day because the production schedule for a "movie game" is so tight.