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.