Art Dump

This is what happens when I get overly ambitious with a piece and don't have the time to dedicate to finishing it. The topic was 'A Boy and His Dog'. The idea was for a friendly competition between the So Cal guys on conceptart.org (Art Center guys) and the Seattle crew. I was facing off against a friend of mine and wanted to one up him. Well, my schedule didn't allow me to dedicate the time to doing this one right and before I knew it the deadline was upon me and I had less than 6 1/2 hrs to finish pencils and paint on this thing. It wasn't going to happen so I did the next piece in 6 1/2 hrs to at least submit something for it. The judges liked my piece better.. in Daniels credit, he was cramming on his scholarship work and I was busy dealing with business stuff on my end as well.


Quick sketches last week lying in bed, recovering from surgery. These were mainly warm ups for Creature of the Week #45 over on conceptart.org. The concept title that we were given was 'Mover'. Yeah, pretty frigging vague eh? Well, I didn't want to be yet another walking city ala "Howls Moving Castle" so I was determined to do something a bit different and original. I was a bit hopped up on Vicodin doing these.. they looked alright at the time;)

The final sketch before color. You can see which thumbnail I decided to go with.

.. and the final. There's a bit of an homage to James Jean in the color palette and composition that you might not see. Yeah, I suck with paints so I have to resort to color picking from time to time. I got some votes and pretty solid comments from some well known artists over there so that in itself is victory in my book. I'm still learning this whole color thing.

Here's the story behind my concept in case you're interrested:
The Kaibutsu Ichuu Umi anchors itself to coral reefs looking like a small rock island. Swimmers, who can't resist the seemingly carefree fun, tend to fall for the trap. This Kaibutsu patiently waits for the swimmers to climb onto it's head and begin jumping into the water. Once the swimmers have started having their fun the Kaibutsu Umi uses it's tentacles to push the unsuspecting snack into it's large beak like mouth. The other swimmers will go in after their friends to try and find them only to suffer the same fate. The rock then disappears back into the water and moves to another location. Places that the monster has been rumored to be responsible for disappearing swimmers are all in the Pacific Rim.

Life drawing from a session at Art Not down in Seattle back in March.

A character design for the NEG Combat Soldier for the RPG CthulhuTech being published by Mongoose Press (done in January). I went real simple on the colors for design readability. Overall I think this was a successful design, I'm pretty proud of it.
Towards the end of the year you can expect a large dump of CthulhuTech concept art and illustrations when the book is at the presses and I don't have to worry about NDA's.
-Mike V

Well, I started this thing back in 2004, now I'm going to start updating it. I'll kick it off with the current creature of the week over on conceptart.org entitled 'Mover' Thank you James Jean for the color palette inspiration. The past week has been interresting as it started with me being operated on for an abdominal hernia and lypoma. Neither of these things are a huge deal but they're enough to cause discomfort and nice lump on my abdomen. My saving grace has been the Vicodin perscribed to me to dull the pain. On the plus side I've been able to draw a bit in between sleeping and popping vicodin. Rachael (my incredible wife) has been kind enough to take care of me this week and even set up my laptop with my wacom tablet in the bedroom so I don't have to leave bed to draw or surf the web. Well, that's pretty much all I've got for today, more updates to follow.

Christmas Eve 04

Another year gone by, another year CthulhuTech hasn't been released. I'd like to accept full responsibility for it's year long delay but I can't. Ah, the daily woes of of a moonlighting game designer. Working on the cover over the past few days has distracted me enough that I haven't wrapped Rachael's Christmas presents yet either. Once again why do now what you can put off until tomorrow right? I'll attempt to get together something for the general public to view so they can see just how much work has gone into this game to date. In the mean time I have to finish the cover pencils to pass of to Daniel. If you're not familiar with Daniel Hornes name I'm sure that you've seen his work. Just go into a Barnes and Noble and check out the Dragon Lance books... or you might remember the box art for Duke Nukem. Daniel's one of those artists that's established the fantasy art genre for what it is today, and I'm honored to be working with him at his request. Well, I've said enough for now. I have presents to wrap, and obstacles to leap.. miles to go before I sleep..
-Mike V