OUCH (WARNING: GORE! 18+)

(Sorry, Liu Kang! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!)

This is sort of a tribute/love letter (with doodle!) to game franchises such as Mortal Kombat and God of War. No matter where you stand on the idea of violence in games, you have to hand to developers like Netherrealm Studios and the GoW team at Sony Santa Monica for being able to come up with such creative executions and making games that aren't just violent, but fun!

I remember finding a copy of Mortal Kombat 3 tucked away behind a cabinet that my parents hid from me, as it was my Christmas gift for the year. My brother and I played that game after dinner every day for months! I also remember my mother dressing me up as Scorpion for Halloween when I was in 6th grade and crying when my brother wrinkled up a sketch I did of Scorpion. My dear late grandmother was so sweet and tried to iron the wrinkles away from the drawing. Haha!

God of War is just epic and visceral. It's probably one of the most visually-influential franchises of the past ten years that has affected my art.

Props to both developers for the creative pieces of work they've been pushing out! Can't wait to see what's next for both teams!

Trip 2

I wanted to add a bit more brightness to the sky and darken the foreground a bit more. So here's a quick revision!

Trip

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody! Here's another quick update. It started off as a speedy I did at work, but I took it home and gave it a bit more love. Slightly inspired by Uncharted 3 (I haven't gotten to the desert level, yet, but I've seen it a bunch of times in the trailers).

Ore Guardian

A creature I did for Kingdoms of Camelot.

Welcome

Here’s a speedy I started during my lunch break and finished at home. I’d say it took about 3 hours. Maybe a bit more. It always feels great being able to start and finish an image within a day!

Lots of Camelot

Here’s some work I’ve done for Kabam/Kingdoms of Camelot that have gone public recently.
All the artwork in this post is property of Kabam! :]

Update!

A freelance piece I finally got around to wrapping up.

And a mech piece I’ve been sitting on for the past few months. It’s still early, but I wanted to share a WIP. Hopefully I’ll be able to find some time to finish this one up. <3 Mechs!

BLAST

A speedy/demo warm up I did for my co-workers at Kabam!

RE-ENTRY (News, news, art)

Good grief. It’s been three months since my last post. Time really flies by when you’re...super busy. Really, though, a lot has happened in the past few months. Here’s a quick rundown.


So this is what I was working on at Sledgehammer Games. No, it wasn’t Dead Space 3, Call of Duty: Civil Warfare, or Call of Duty: Isaac Clarke like some of my nerdy friends hypothesized. :p I’m really excited to finally see some of the media come out for this game! It was a really fun project to be a part of and I can’t wait to play it! It’s only been about two months since my departure from SHG and I am really impressed with how much more prettier the game’s looking (it was already quite the looker before I left). I’m hoping we’ll be getting some more media from SHG and IW next week at E3!

Back in March, I made the decision to join Kabam in Redwood City. Kabam’s been great so far! It’s probably the biggest change I’ve gone through professionally. It marks the first time I’ve worked on a social game and it’s also the first time I’m working on a game set in a fantasy world. It’s also a really big company (especially since it’s only a few years old), which is quite a big change-up for me. But I’m having a fun time and learning quite a bit from the talented art teams! I’m looking forward to sharing some work soon!


In other news, some of my more recent work can be found in two new publications. One of my pieces will be published in “Spectrum 18” later this year and some select pieces can be seen in CFSL Ink’s “Gorilla Artbook, Vol.1” (it’s the first art book for the crazy monkeys who post at Gorilla Artfare).

Some more news. You might be wondering why my logo’s different all of a sudden. Well I recently discovered (via Gray Gary) that my logo is nearly identical to the symbol used by a Greek Neo-Fascist political organization. So I kind of wanted to distance myself from that, since…it’s not me. Haha! But I also wanted to use this opportunity to rebrand myself. The new logo follows the same format as the old. My initials combined together into one shape. But this time I wanted it to be less rigid and to have a bit of a color to it. I’m pretty happy with how this one turned out. Now I’ve got a napkin full of chicken-scratched failures that I need to throw out.

Art-wise, I only have one thing to share today. Hopefully I’ll have more to share soon (I’ve got a lot of work-in-progress pieces sitting in my hard-drive waiting to be worked on!). This was a fun poster illustration I did for my friend, Emma Coat’s upcoming film, “HORiZON”. I really wish I had more time to spend on it. It’s a fun little world that Emma’s created!

Sorolla Study

I did this for a group assignment between me and a few concept comrades of mine. I kinda rushed it. :[

The original: http://artcom.com/Museums/nv/af/Chrysler%20Museum%20of%20Art%20Sorolla.jpg

Eventually you’ll my buddies’ Sorolla studies here:
http://studswithbrushes.blogspot.com/

Clouds

Here’s something I just doodled out over the weekend. Hoping I can squeeze out one more painting before I head back to work tomorrow!

Looking For Trouble 2

I went back and re-tooled the image a bit more. It’s a bit cleaner and more colorful. *shrug*

Looking for Trouble

Very quick speedpainting from last night. It’s hard to paint once your vision’s getting blurry. I should try doing this closer to the evening rather than the morning!

Patoot Stylings–Colors

Really quick color job on the sketch from the previous post. No real clean up or anything.

Patoot Stylings

I thought I’d try doing some super-deformed (SD) people. Speaking of which, I hope that one day there’ll be a new Viewtiful Joe game! Maybe him being in Marvel VS Capcom 3 will help boost his popularity and Capcom will soon decide to work on a new V.Joe game!

Work in Progress “RUN”

Here’s a tightly cropped snippet of what I’m working on at home. Nothing’s really lit, yet. I’ve just been working on the expressions and gestures (I’m sure I’ll still be tweaking these sorts of things until the end). Oh, and character next to the guy won’t be gaussian blur’d once the image is done (haha)

Pickup

I wanted to take a quick break from the stuff I’ve been working on and do a bit of a fun piece. I think most people who see my work don’t think of me as a “creature” guy, but I love mucking around with creatures! Anyways, hope you guys enjoy the tiny update.