Hairduel!

That's the title of my diptych for the upcoming "Vs." show I'm in! There's a bunch of great people in the show, and most of them are my friends/former coworkers from Big Huge Games & Firaxis! If you're around Baltimore COME AND SEE!

Here's the blurb:http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
BALTIMORE-BASED VIDEO GAME ARTISTS, COMIC BOOK ARTISTS, ILLUSTRATORS TACKLE VS. THEME IN EXHIBITION JUNE 5-JULY 31
Opening Reception Takes Place Friday, June 5 at The Windup Space in Station North 7-9 pm (located at 12 W. North Ave, Baltimore, MD 21202)
VS. BLOG HERE!

And here's my dueling hairdos:




There's so many ways to go with the theme of "Vs." and I was trying to think of an idea that wasn't necessarily action-oriented. In retrospect, I probably should have gone even crazier with the hair, but I was enchanted with the idea of drawing greasers. I'll also be selling a nice big framed print of my Naturalist there, since that goes with the theme too. :)

In other news, Sam & I are moving so it's been craaaazy around here...I have more stuff to share but it'll have to wait! Hope everyone's summer has started off well!

Less is More & Due Diligence

Hey guys, thanks for the congrats on Spectrum! In other awards news, I found out I got my Naturalist piece (you know, the one with the lady with a bunch of heads on the wall? Got into SOI and Spectrum too? I guess I did something particularly well in that one!) got into the American Illustration's online gallery TRIBUTE. Woo! Apparently they had A TON of entries this year. Anyway, I've got some new pieces to put up, in addition to those Carus illustrations I shared in the last post (I'll get back to those later).

So, here's my stuff in the April issue of Air Tran GO! magazine-- all about how to deal with people that owe you money! Persistence is key, as is showing you're not afraid to use some muscle (but only if needed)! I always love the spreads that the GO! designers come up with. :)


And the spot:


Here's my illustration for the May GO! magazine. This one is very appropriate for the economic times right now--it's about making due with less, in terms of supply and demand, and looking for neglected areas that have more demand than supply. Like beekeeping, apparently! This was an experiment using texture & some colors I don't usually utilize. (No red and teal?? what??)


aaand the spot:


KAPOW!
More later!
(and my root canal went great, hooray!)

Spectrum & Stuff!

So I found out what I got into Spectrum, and it is as follows:
THIS

AND THIS


Hooray! I couldn't be more happy that I got these two in, I was guessing that if I got picked, they'd probably pick one or the other, but it was a pleasant surprise that both got in! Congrats to everyone else who made it! I'm excited to see the final book in the fall when it comes out.

In other news, here's a taste of a recent assignment for Muse magazine that I was involved in. It was a multi-page story with varying sizes of illustrations about "The Invisible World". The end result of the magazine pages and the layout looks different than it does here, but I'm including the lo-res pages as an example of what I was working with. Here's the first!


Enjoy!
I'll be posting more later.

Also, if anyone knows a good dentist/endodontist in Baltimore, let me know! When I was back in Chicago this weekend I found out I had to have a root canal (great surprise!) because apparently there's been an infection in my tooth for several years now, left over from when I fractured my jaw/teeth in highschool from fainting. Never fall on your jaw. It's a gift that keeps on giving. I got the first part of the root canal done, but I still gotta get the rest taken care of...there's just something inherently creepy about getting your teeth drilled into. Brrrrrr!

BIG HUGE posts!

Well folks, Big Huge Games, the videogame company I worked at for 7ish months, was dropped from THQ a few weeks ago and it looked like they might have been toast. Fortunately they are not, and unfortunately they still had to let go of a lot of lovely people. While I was at BHG I mostly worked on a fun Animalcrossing/Zelda-ish game they were developing for the Wii. I also worked a tiny bit on the more realistic epic fantasy RPG they were also developing, and I'll put that work at the end of the post.

It's sad that both these games have been permanently shelved, but it does mean that I get to share some of the work I did. As you can see, a lot of it was idea-generating and not as polished as my illustration stuff, so it was an interesting adjustment for me. It also got me hooked on sketching on the computer.

So without further ado, here's a bunch of my concept work!
(all work copyright THQ, drawn by me!)














Two posters I drew up for the Wii game:


HI FIVE! Soda-can style.



Aaaand a few bits for the fantasy RPG (you can see the style is much different):




Thanks for lookin'! I will be posting some more illustrations soon!

And Now for Something Completely Different

Can you guess who this happy man is?



I certainly hope so, because it's supposed to be Cedric the Entertainer!
This was done for Los Angeles Confidential magazine, for an article that Ced wrote himself about his 4 favorite gadgets. The fantastic four are as follows: His Iphone, MagicEye cinema glasses for his ipod, a cool watch with a clear background (so anytime someone asks the time, he can say "It's skin o'clock"), and the Magic Bullet.

This is my second attempt at a portrait/caricature-- the first one being the hypnotic David Bowie I did for my fashion class' art show a year ago.



Things have changed. (although Bowie will remain eternal) Any caricature advice appreciated--this is still a very new thing for me!

Fantastic!

Long time no post, eh? I've been remiss in updating lately, but I've also been busy sending out postcards/emails and working on some new projects.

Big news is I've found out that I made it into Spectrum 16 along with my partner-in-crime Sam Bosma and my good buddy Jeremy Enecio (who won Gold in Unpublished!! As he should!)
Still not sure which piece(s) got in, but should be finding out soon!

For this update, I've got a sketch I drew in photoshop based off a vision I got. It wasn't really a vision in the sense of the epic sort of "I AM SEEING THE FUTURE!!" vision, but oftentimes when I'm laying in bed before I go to sleep, I get a stream of images in my head. Does that happen to any of you? Like, just random images? Sometimes they're ideas for fashion or clothing, or sometimes just random pictures, like a person's face lit in a particular way or, in this case, a crumbling wall with two portraits on it.
I couldn't fall asleep, so I decided to just sketch it out. I'm trying to play a little more with lighting than I normally do, and I was thinking about the economy and portents and all that sort of predicting-the-future type stuff.



Photoshop and wacom has officially replaced my sketchbook/pen as my preferred mode of drawing. I just think better when color and shape are involved, and erasing into things, versus just drawing line.

Here's a piece (also entirely photoshop-done) for PagePath Technologies' monthly newsletter-- it's about how their product makes it easier to sort and print receipts and generally keep things organized.



I like how it turned out. I've been trying to use colors in different ways than my usual brights & I've also been experimenting more with texture, though I don't think I've hit the nail on the head quite yet.
MORE UPDATES SOON!

Society of Illustrators

So these past 2-3 weeks I've been transformed into a work zombie, complete with uniform of day-to-night-sweats plus matching haggard appearance and an unquenchable thirst for brains. Or chai tea. I've been working on 12 illustrations for 3 different assignments, so I'll have a bounty of work to show in April! (Including such subjects as Debt collection, Cedric the Entertainer, and the Invisible World!)

In the meantime, I just wanted to say congrats to my fellow MICAns and friends from other schools who got into the Society of Illustrators Student show. To see everyone's great work you can check out http://soicompetitions.org/?section=institution_list. (however, I also think there was a lot of great work that didn't make in in..)
My piece "The Naturalist" made it:



And now, back to work! I'm also aiming to put up some new personal work soon, so keep yer eyes peeled!