New year new art!

Through most of my artistic journey, I've found I respond well to certain styles and motifs, as any artist does. But nothing has quite hit all my buttons as Dragon Age Inquisition's character tarot cards. They are messy, elegant, graphic, and full of arcane designs and icons. They are gorgeous. I don't usually do fan-art, but I was just so gobsmacked by it all that I've done a kind of fan-style piece.

If you haven't enjoyed the latest Dragon Age addition, here's a link to an imgur album with a decent collection of the images: http://imgur.com/a/nZQqC

I believe the artists responsible for the cards were: Matt Rhodes, Nick Thornborrow, Casper Konefal and Ramil Sunga. This seems a partial list but that's as far as my research has found.

In any case, here's my piece, about 10 hours over the course of three days I think?

As it is with most of my work, the impetus was a tabletop game that I've been setting up to play in. The DM asked the group of us players to google up some character art to use as tokens on roll20. I decided to use this opportunity to make my own character art of course. 

The iconography is pretty simplistic, he's a character very proud of his strength, there's elements calling out his weapon of choice and that he is a horse-rider. Specifically he is part of the Hellriders of the Forgotten Realms setting. 

I feel like I have to apologize for the gratuitous naked torso. I always make the mistake of shaping out the muscle forms with the intent to put armor over it all. But then I'm just so pleased with myself over an expertly painting torso that I can't make myself paint in some armor. I mean, the character is very proud of his body and its part of his characterization. Hm--yes, its all done in the name of characterization. 

Minotaur character

Forgot to update my blog with this new D&D character. A minotaur runepriest that I was playing in a campaign that failed after the first session. The character was fun to play while it lasted though. I would've done the ground sigils myself but sometimes I can be a bit lazy when I feel like I found the perfect element. I styled him as a buddhist auspicion who was on a quest to claim the eight symbols of auspiciousness.

Portrait and design resume layout

Forgot to upload this quick character portrait I did for an Ars Magica character I was playing. He's an italian magus who specializes in manipulating wood and plants. He has a necklace of talismans that are required to cast spells. 

For fun, I decided to make up a designed resume for myself, laying it out with some graphics to give it some pzazz. I'm worried that the whole fantasy theme is over-much but at least its consistent?

Goblin and some doodles

Another little D&D character sketch for a goblin witch, Thiess Uun. She is also a nanny to one of the other members, being usefully immortal. Who can ask for more than the comforting presence of an ageless caretaker?

Plus some bonus doodle-y-noodles, I rarely post these but I was in hangout with some creatives and some of it rubbed off on me. You can also see hints of another possible character I may be playing in a Starwars tabletop.

Baldur's Gate Enhanced Portrait

So, Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition just came out on Steam which I immediately grabbed for nostalgia's sake. Its still rather buggy and the networking isn't ideal currently (they plan on making it more netplay friendly). But nostalgia tends to be a powerful force when it comes to geekdom.

In any case, one of the things I loved about Baldur's Gate was that the resources in the game were fairly open, meaning I could drop in some files and I'd have some shnazzy custom portraits and voicesets to use. So of course, years later and a few professional gigs into my career I'm all about making my own portraits.

I probably could have used some stray model to do a portrait of but I was feeling egocentric at that moment and dug up a picture of myself instead; Which always causes its own problems as you have some sacred cows about your own appearance, at least I do anyway.

And of course I'm a mage.

Painting layout post

Maybe you'll recognize the face from the sketches I posted earlier. I was rather taken by the idea and I'm hoping to get a painting out of it in time for a gallery showing in a couple weeks. I'm nervous since its my first gallery show, even if its group. So many things that could change and struggling with what do change about it. But I like it so I'm putting it up for public perusal before I start on the physical piece.

It also doubles as a fun character portrait for my World of Darkness game, making a changeling... maybe a muse. 

More character things of friends!

I actually finished this soon after the last one I posted but I've been procrastinating on posting it. He said he likes to play gunmen and he likes pets. I forget why we ended up with a clockwork doggy.

Coming back!

Hi all, it seems I am again seeing a lot of time freed up in my employment schedule and that usually means my creative energies are finding some personal avenues to be funneled into. My last contract was actually some game design work which I found an amazing experience. I just really get into system design, numbers and how they correlate to experience. I've been doing balance and general design work for Vorp! a browser game hosted on kongregate. http://www.kongregate.com/games/ENDGamesLLC/vorp

Having explained that, I admittedly haven't been doing much arting which I'm keen to fix in the coming weeks. Going to start sending out messages to let people know I'm free for work and its pretty exciting to consider design work an avenue for me now that I feel much more confident about it. I doubt there's much need but I'm tackling that opportunity if it comes up.

Recently I've started doing a personal project of illustrating some friends as character (as I tend to do). Its a good way to ease back into some character illustration and trying to see where my art muscles are at. A friend also suggested this might be a good time to consider the world of fine art, which I'm hesitant to look into earnestly, I just don't know where I'd fit into that world of expression and self-direction. But we'll see, I'm meeting up with my friend, Veronica, who wants to show me around her gallery and maybe inspire me to become a member of Next Gallery. We'll see.

Enough distractions! Here's the first portrait of a series of characters based on some friends. My process is generally hunting them down and establish what sort of character they want, in this case my friend was interested in some sort of air-mage so this is my crack at it. Currently working on another portrait that includes a steampunk dog. Animals AND mechanics? Definitely some lackness of such in my skillset so I'm excited to see how that goes.

Mouseguard - Kedabra

He's so adorable! Playing in a Mouseguard campaign and he passed out an interesting blue-pencil template of mice and asked us to do a picture of our mice, who am I to refuse an art assignment?

New Character Art: Khurshel

I'm feeling pretty frustrated by the work I'm doing for SOE. I'm just struggling to find my mindset when doing some of the images; I can't find that one element in the image to drive me to finish it. I'm working with my main stay of finding repetitions of light and dark but I'm having a hard time finding suitable references for what I want to do.

Anyway, today, after a few hours of messing up one of the illustrations I decided to take a break and do an illustration for Khurshel, a D&D character I play. He's a beguiler/wizard/ultimate magus Illumian, but that's not he craziest thing about him! During character creation, the DM decides each character's magic items and he decided to give my character "The Suit". The suit is a magical tuxedo with a matching stovepipe hat...

Its very different from how I usually visualize my characters, but I ran with it (pictured right w/my bat familiar, Esma!). I'm very happy with the result... although... you could probably find the model reference by googling "tuxedo" within the first few pages. :S