acid wash

one of my goals is to destroy your senses. yes, all six of them.

...

and finally...






ps - the creepy bag ladies below are the graea, similar to the fates. you might remember them as "the stygian witches" (a made-up name) in "clash of the titans.

more more wonder woman...2

because i could only upload so much at once...

more more wonder woman...

it is now public:
http://www.newsarama.com/comics/030919-Wednesday-Comics.html

also, i had THOUGHT that i posted these before, but it looks like i didn't. which is why i'm not allowed to do brain surgery anymore. various development designs for wonder woman, some of which are VERY different from the final look. also, the story changed very radically from it's first inception, so i'm afraid all of the paradise island/ amazon history junk is out. (the series was originally mooted to be 52 issues, when it was downsized to 12, some inevitable trimming resulted.)

more wonder woman...

color tests

just some VERY rough color tests
for my upcoming wonder woman
story. the editor really likes my
st michel thumbnails (below), so
i'm working in that general vein.

also, since the stories take place
in a sort of dream-haze, i wanted
dreamlike colors.

i'll post some final art next week...




ps - the japanese lake is for story 2,
the city (gotham plaza, to be exact)
is from story 1

st michel

not exactly something new, but playing with the overall feel i want for a children's story. don't think i posted the wolf here before, but i did on my forum, so sorry for the repeat. ditto for the thumbs, but i like to keep certain things together. and of course, only two people actually visit my forum (which is my fault), so it's new for someone, right? right?




as always, click pics for larger versions

MERRY XMAS!

hi all!

to the three people who actually
read this, have a merry christmas!

blue redux part deux

more refined version of the face and other details. i'd like the final to feel like lithographs posters from the french belle epoch. right now, i have even less free time than usual, but this is always fun to come back to. i like the flavor of the colors, but not entirely sold on them...

slightly less-older friends

kalidah, monsters from "oz". i drew them up a while ago, but once again i returned to color them as portfolio pieces...
i really do love coloring up more of my work!

old friends

did these for the toybiz HP pitch a million years ago... always liked them, so i colored them up for my games portfolio. my record of zero responses from any game or animation studio remains intact. yay!

jinno

all done

sneaky peek

howdy!

it's funny how interesting things can look out of context. i'm often in the middle of moving layers or playing with levels on a file and i do something that is wrong and unusable, but still pretty. things that are never seen by anyone looking at the final art. so here are some bits from a digital painting that i like on their own...

yay me!

this is part of a bigger picture, but it's also
a bit from my civilization thing blah blah...



ALSO, i don't think the details have been made
public yet, but i have some exciting news! yay!
i will be working on a comic for DC, along the
lines of "batman: black and white" and "52". as
soon as it's okay, i will blab all.

yay! again.

hulk smash!

i THINK it is finished...

something munchier

for "oz". i painted several houses separately, now i'm doing the bkg. one trick with the oz scenes is that they obviously have to be vibrant, but i don't want them looking too candy-coated, especially since it will be hard enough to overcome the "cutesy" stigma of the movie.
something else i want to show is that oz is very much lived in. for example, the munchkins have been ruled by a wicked witch for years, and assuming their definition of "wicked witch" is more or less the same as mine, their lands must be in pretty roughe shape. so i wanted a balance between jewel-like beauty and a certain sense of neglect. the tinman's shack provides a similar opportunity, as does the logo on his jacket. these have little visual flourishes that both show how exotic oz is, and how comfortable its denizens have made themselves.

more later!

ps - each quarter of oz is associated with a certain race and color (and witch). hence, the eastern witch rules the munchkins in their blue houses, etc. oddly enough, the civilization in "the bones of kyres" has a cardinal-compass cosmology which is similar.

eustace the happy fun-time killbot

military mecha, for the imaginary civilization thingie:



being a nerd, i've actually put ridiculously huge amounts of time into working out structural and functional junk, trying to redesign the wheel, i suppose. in my foolish youth, i would just design whatever looked cool; unfortunately, over the years i've become obsessed with trying to think beyond that, into the core needs and functions of machines i design. (or more precisely, first i try to think of what RESULTS would be best called for in a given situation, then work backwards towards the basic design that could achieve those results, then what sort of technology would be necessary to make the design workable.) which is why it has such scrawny and uncool bug legs, for example. fortunately, i don't have the energy to type it all out, which means you don't have to waste your time reading it!

because i'm all about you.




ps - no, it's name is not "eustace". that was a trick.

repaint

howdy!

in recent cleanups, i've found lots of old (and bad) art, including this hot little number. a painting for my college thesis, for some reason i made the cranium super-small. weird. anyway, this is a character from that world thingie. i used a photo of myself as the model, because i couldn't afford to pay anyone, and i can look at myself for reference anytime i want. (so you'd think i would know what my own, shiny-domed cranium would look like... sigh.)



anyway, the basic colors, especially for the face, were nice, but i never liked the background or costume. so i slapped a little color over the face, a quick (45min) bit of relaxation. i love to paint, i wish i had more time...



(i wasn't trying to make the new one look particularly like me, and i can assure you that i am much fatter, uglier, and balder than either pic.)

minno samrin

more of the same... quick color sketch; idea for main page of kyres site, lettering that reflects (one of the various) "authentic" font style. also example of advertising/label art, for one of the essays. the creature is a minno samrin, a sort of spirit that sucks up negative energy and blows out good luck. (hence the coins he is also carrying.) this is what happens when your computer is taking forever to backup real "work" files. well, backup is done, back to my job!

empress blue redux

below i posted an art-nouveauish pic of "number one glory girl empress blue". i mentioned that this was a revised version of an older piece (which was itself based on sketches from college) i did for a drawingboard.org auction. here is the older version, with type inserted:



holy crap! digging up that image, i accidentally found this one, from my college thesis. yikes! in my defense, with both of these i was trying to suggest an art style different from modern illustration, but still... they are pretty terrible. that is why some of my newer pieces (like the new blue post below) have all the content, iconography, subject matter etc of the older work, but in a more familiar illustrative style.

it's depressing how bad both my painting and photoshop skills were. yeesh.



let the mockery begin!