Pirate101 has launched!

Hey there everyone! Seems like yesterday I just started at Kingsisle Entertainment but finally Pirate101 has gone live this week for 1-week head start players and will be available free-to-play for everyone on October 15th. I'm super excited to show a sample of what I've been up to this summer. Congrats to the entire team and for more awesomesauce please check out the rest of the Kingsisle concept teams work:
Dave Greco, Billy George, Nik Overdiek, Phu Giang, Clint Young.

Some illustrations used for quest story lines...

Shark Mount!

Here's some Mooshu player armor designs...

Ship FX concepts and Background art

New EM2 Art

Hey there everyone! Stichkingdom and Xbox360achievements is showing some new Epic Mickey 2 art I did for the Wasteland version of Frontierland. Here are the concepts they released on their own websites. The team did an amazing job of matching the game lighting to the concept!

http://www.stitchkingdom.com/disney-epic-mickey-2-power-characters-featurette-frontierland-screenshots-concept-art-21794/ 

http://www.xbox360achievements.org/news/news-12554-Epic-Mickey-2-Trailer-Discusses-the-Power-of-Character.html

Life update and more art!

Hey everyone, a lot has happened since my last post. Good and some not so good but things are great. I just started new gig at Kingsisle Entertainment as Senior Concept Artist working on games like Pirate101 and Wizard101. Fun stuff!

Lately I've been really enjoying my time at our Sketchnight group here in Austin and using the Instagram app to get my sketches out there and finding a really great community of sketch artist and fans. Here's a sample of sketches done. 

And lastly, here's some screen grabs from the previously released behind the scenes video of Epic Mickey 2 with concepts I painted up with the help of great 3d artist and concept team. The game looks amazing and I can't wait to see it ship. Great job and best of luck to the team at Junction Point. 

New Epic Mickey 2 trailer! More concept art!

Hey everyone. Here's a new behind the scenes trailer for Disney Epic Mickey 2 showcasing a lot of our teams concept art. Great job guys!

Sketch Night! Season 1 Episode 1

It's like Baywatch Nights but with more sketching...

Hey guys! So I've been going to a local sketch night with coworkers and other game industry peeps here in Austin for a few months. I've met a ton of new awesome talent, its pretty amazing and fun. Just chilling out, chatting, drawing, drinking the coffee stuff. Here is some of the better stuff so far. More to come!

The Hunger- Pulp Art!

Hey everyone, I recently entered a Pulp Art challenge on The Artorder website. I'm an avid geek of that type of illustration (any sort of vintage american illustrations actually) and I think my piece turned out well. I did some polish this weekend and submitted it to Veronika Kotlajic's Gallery Provocateur in Chicago who is doing call for submissions for their Pulp Art tribute show coming up in the summer. Here is my final and the progression from thumbnail sketch to final polish. Enjoy!

Epic Mickey 2 announced!

Hello everyone! Today is an awesome day. I can finally say what I'm working on. Disney Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two! Here is the first trailer.

Happy 2012 and new art!

     Happy new year to everyone! This year is looking to be very awesome. The new game I'm working on should be announcing pretty soon, I'll let you know when it does because i'm excited about it myself.

    
     Lets start off with a painting I worked on last month. Yep I did art during the holiday! This was really fun to do. I've had this idea in my sketchbook for a long time coming about my Project Henshin series. Yes I know it's very Marko Djurdjević inspired. Big fan of his work. This was certainly challenging and ambitious and I ran into few snags and frustrations but kept at it and learned a bit about composition, lighting, edging and what does and doesn't work well for print media.
     
    Next up, I think I'm gonna try the Pulp Art challenge over at ArtOrder blog. I'm really excited about that one. Till next time friends!

Happy Holidays 2011

     Hey everyone, just wishing you all a happy holiday. It's been one of those life changing years again and I've been pretty busy with work. I got a quick chance to do this years card and from then on I've gotten back my art mojo it seems. I've got a work in progress piece for Project Henshin right now, I'm really digging it. It's a very Marko Djurdjevic and ambitious. Challenging in a good way. I will post my WIP soon or maybe wait and work on it during my holiday break.

Epic Update 5 months late *Echo Echo*

Good day to you. Wait that's a WoW npc saying isn't it? Anyways, it's certaily time for a blog update don't you think? Bunch of news. New job, new state? Whaaa?

Yep, I moved to Austin, Texas in May and started my new concept gig at Junction Point/Disney Interactive Studios. Really sad to leave Los Angeles and my friends but people do weird things when single, unemployed and running low on savings... So yes, I've met tons of radtastic talented people here, bbq is yum, and rent is...not like Los Angeles! Hoping to experience more adventures here for a while, I hope. 

Oh art stuff right, I draw. Some old things that I never put up, some new sketches. Hoping to paint more but work has been quite busy.  I've been doing a lot of sketching in my moleskin and at work on worky NDA stuff. My line art has certainly improved, maybe one day I'll post them but for now all I got is digital.

Some Henshin work

 Hey everyone! Exciting and hectic(but good) things are happening but I'll talk about that when I sign some papers :) For now here are some pieces I was working on while job hunting. I plan to do more key frame painting samples for Project Henshin and character/enemy designs catered for a more animated cartoon style which I think works well for the project.

Some more zbrush

Going through some interviews and art tests since my last post. Also getting back into some zbrush and watching the tutorials again. Hopefully I get farther than I did last time and learn how to start with a sphere with higher polys or start with a zsphere model for bigger things than a head? Did I even say that right? Bare with me, zbrush noob art incoming...

Evil Picard?

Paint over of a rough 3d sketch. Wanted to see if that would work and it did its job, i'm getting the hang of using it as a sketchup tool for certain things. Just another tool to get things done right?

Environment sketches

Just a quick update with some environment sketches I did last week. The job hunt continues and I just updated my carbonmade site with a ton of new work, too much to show on this blog type.

First post 2011. Txt fighter backgrounds

Happy Holidays and yearly roundup art

     Hello again and happy holidays everyone! Some of you guys may have received this postcard but for the rest of you guys here you go. If you follow WotC Art Director Jon Schindehette's twitter or art blog Art Order, He recently posted my postcard and was inspired to put up a holiday art challenge for his readers. Awesome Jon, glad you liked the card. I had fun making it! 

     I just finished up an art test with a company so wish me luck with that. In the meanwhile, i found some unfinished images from 2010 that I most definitely will get back to finishing since I have all this unemployed free time. Project Henshin may return in full force since I'll be needing new portfolio pieces. Oh and there's an environment concept I did for another art test way back in spring, which I didn't get but here it is anyways.

     And last but surely not least, Txt Fighter, an iphone/ipod/ipad project I worked on with Jason Hazelroth and a bunch of other talented guys is coming out this week. Please check it out. I did the background environment art. 

And here we are again

Haha, now did I say I got a job? Well I just got laid off from Killspace. Times are tough I guess. I don't want to get too into it but I LOVED my time there working with some of the best guys I've ever known. We created a team that worked so well together without bullshit, it was amazing.
 The fight ahead of me isn't if or when I'll find a new gig but rather it's keeping myself pumped and inspired to jobhunt. I promise I wont lose steam like I did 2 years ago and fall into a funk.

Best wishes to everyone
-Kev

New job, cintiq and freelance game cover!

Hey everyone, sorry for the long delay in posts. Been a crazy long 2 months since trying to learn Zbrush and finally getting a cintiq at home. After a year and a half since the layoff, I've finally found a new gig at Killspace Entertainment as Senior Concept Artist (lead?). The projects are awesome and the peeps are great. This is going to be a blast. Thank you to everyone who stuck with and supported me during some very dark days after the layoff and struggling through this economy. You guys are the best.

As for freelance, I did a box cover illustration for an Ubisoft title "Voodoo Dice" via Jeff Zugale and Famous Frames. Heres the illustration and the trailer they did with my art. 

 

First dabbles in Zbrush

Hello everyone, hope you all are doing great! OK, don't laugh. I've decided to start teaching myself Zbrush(well with help of some training dvds) I haven't gotten so far into the dvd yet, just introductions to some basics, I'll work along side whenever they introduce something new. So far this is my first model/tool or whatever they call it, only like 3 hours in. Just from a sphere, no zspheres or bone armatures yet though. It's um...a Martian Manhunter/Piccolo/Spock person?