Happy Holidays, from Video Game Gal Amber and Friends!

Digital inks and color from a rough I did in my sketchbook.

I will try and be more diligent in posting art in the future.

In the meantime, have a wonderful new year!

You Asked For It! Volume 2 coming to San Diego! (hopefully)

San Diego Comic Con 2013 is just around the corner and I hope to have the new sketchbook ready by then.  It's the second volume collecting commissions that people have asked for from the years 2005 and 2006.  Some from conventions and some from online requests.  I was thinking of have a mix of material from all over the years, but it started getting too hard for me to track so I decided to pick up where the first volume ended back in 2004.  With this in mind I can start getting  a new book out a bit faster than the Sketchgames.

The new book comes in at 60 black and white pages with a full color cover and is 7 by 10 inches to match the Sketchgames size.  Stop on by if you're at SDCC or you can order it from my shop once I put up a description for it!  Most likely after the show, but I should still have plenty left.

IT'S FREE COMIC BOOK DAY!!!

Get out to your local comic book store and get some of the great free comics that are being given away and if you're in the Madison, WI area, today, Saturday, May the Fourth Be With You Day as well, drop by Westfield Comics where creative types will be showing what we do in comics and video games, me included!  There will also be several sketchcards you can blind pick for a kind donation to benefit the Hero Initiative, which helps comic artists who have given their all for the industry we love and could use a little help.  I'm donating 30 cards and will be doing sketchcard requests for a larger donation.  Here's what you have a chance to pick from me, when you get there!

DEFIANCE CONCEPT ART (PART 2)

The concept art of DEFIANCE continues...  I have to give props to the environment guys at Human Head and Trion Worlds for making these levels look spectacular in all their destroyed glory.  It's always a challenge to cram as much in and still manage to make it work for an MMO.

Here are two more maps we worked on.  What started out as a Corporate Park, became something like a shipping/warehouse kinda area and Scrapworks, a scrap yard that was taken over by an alien mercenary faction and then a mechanical sentience.  Followed up by a smaller multiplayer map Observatory.

Overview with building drawovers.

Building under construction and destroyed parking ramp.

More building drawovers with a fun jump ramp you can do on your ATV.

Solving the barrier wall designers placed.  Always challenging when given an area with random structure and then having to figure out what something realistically could be.

Start areas for the multiplayer sides.

Getting more painting on!

Adding to the lore of the area with a series of conveyer tracks you could follow throughout the level.

More painting!

Small multiplayer map showing the rough from Trion then the drawover overview.

mmmm.... destruction

Figuring out what rooms could be.

DEFIANCE MMO CONCEPT ART (PART 1)

With the release of Trion World's MMO Shooter Defiance coming out today, I can finally reveal some of the concept work I have been producing while contracting at Human Head Studios for the past 9 months.  It's set in the future 15 years after a cataclysmic event terraformed the Earth.  Well,
check out the trailer for yourself, play the game, and check out the SyFy Channel's show starting April 15th, 2013!

So here's the concept for the escape pod you see in the trailer.

This was nice to have stuff we worked on appear right off the bat when you start the game.

I think after you land you find General Grant's Command where I got to design a couple models for the cinematic.

Holographic displays

 Here's some of the first areas we worked on.  It's called 101 Keys.  Lots of industrial look taken over by mutant Raiders.  The Raider look was already established, so we had to dress up the areas and make sure it was consistent.

You can see Raiders aren't nice guys.

Here are some more cinematic locations where you encounter key characters who dole out missions and fill you in on the the world, making it a much richer experience.

Top Notch is in a really cool structure that you access via a winding bridge.  I didn't design the outside, but concepted the inside.

Progress page.  Top: What I start out with.  Middle:  Drawover  Bottom: If time allows or requested, I'll do color.

Headland's Transit

Cooper's Iron Demon Ranch

Well, that's all for the time being.  I'll try and get more posted soon!

Happy New Year! It's The End Of The World.

At least in this Video Game Gal homage to the Road Warrior it is.  This is a piece I drew while waiting to get my car serviced.