Short notice: Attending the Contagion: Outbreak convention in Omaha, Nebraska.

Forgive the late notice but my brother Philip and I will be attending the Contagion: Outbreak convention in Omaha, Nebraska June 10th to the 12th.  If you're in the area, please stop on by and say hi and commission a sketch, buy some sketchbooks or prints if you'd like.  It looks to be shaping up to be a fun con with many sci-fi media actors and authors with comic book artists as well.  So join us in giving this convention a great welcome!

ADVENTURE COMICS #526 is on sale now!

Just in time for Free Comic Book Day, although it's not one of the free comic books being given away, is a published Legion of Superheroes story written by Paul Levitz, penciled by me, and inked by my brother, Philip.  It's been over 10 years since I've drawn XS and it was fun dipping my toe back into the pool of Legion characters.  Granted, I'm not totally in sync with the reestablished Legion, due to some wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff, but diving back in I was glad to draw Night Girl and her bouffant.  Will we see XS in the new Flashpoint storyline?  I'm crossing my fingers.  Here are the pencils for the issue and please go out on Free Comic Book Day, May 7th, to your local comic shop and support them.

The mosaic was produced on the computer and dropped in after Phil finished the inks.

Story took place in a monastery at Lake Tana in Africa.

Night Girl was suppose to look a little older.

hmm should've had a blur note on XS bouncing up and down.

Crack in the earth from previous story in Adventure Comics.  What could it be?

Really fun pages for me and the colorist was suppose to make the shadow translucent in the final book.  Aw well.  The colorist did an awesome job with the FX in the bottom panel.

Awesomely fun page to draw.  Panel 1 is a little tribute to Wings of Honneamise anime.  Got to tech up the cosmic treadmill a bit as well.

Yeah!  Full mosaic!  What could it mean?  I don't know!  Really!

Oh and if you dug the story please let Brian Cunningham know.  Cheers!

Free Comic Book Day Sketchcards

Free Comic Book Day is coming up on Saturday, May 7th, 2011 and if you stop on by there will be a blind pick of sketchcards for a donation to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.  Here are most of the cards I did for the event, so if you see something you like and are in the area, please drop on by Westfield Comics West Side location in Madison, WI and take a chance.  I and a bunch of other talented artists will be showing off our work at both locations as well, so bring family and friends and join us!

For more information on the event:  Click Here

Wacky Fun With X-Men Gals

Messing around with some X-Men designs for some of the ladies.  Was trying out a new "animated" style.

SKETCHGAMES 3.0 is on it's way to print.

Full Color Cover

Hi Amber

Gal Eating Fries? In Space???  Wha?

One of the 7 full color pages in the book

Some work work from long ago...

Here are some sample images from the new sketchbook.  It's 48 pages with 7 of those in color and a full color cover measuring 7 by 10.  It's got gals.  Lots of gals.  Video Game Gals, Space Gals, Asia Gals, Fantasy Gals, Mech Gals, Jungle Gals and some other stuff I used to do for work to round it out.  I plan on having it for  C2E2 in Chicago next month, so look for me there and pick yourself up a copy. 

X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE Game Concept Art Part 1: Characters and Alkali Lake

Traveling back in time now and looking at the X-Men Origins: Wolverine Uncaged Edition.  It's a game where, despite being a movie adaptation, is the closest to the look and feel of being Wolverine.  Seriously, the guy has an indestructible skeleton and claws that can slice through anything.  So imagine what that would do to a human body and, oh yeah, we went there.  So rent, buy a copy, used or new, it doesn't matter to me anymore more, but check it out.  Oh, you can watch him heal damage from skeleton, to muscle, to skin as well.

I was on this game for the duration of production.  There were the earliest concepting stages where you were allowed to just be creative with almost no restrictions.  We explored what we could do with the character and places he would go.  What would make cool environments to fight in? What kind of baddies could possibly stand a chance against an enemy you can't possibly kill, etc...

In part one of this post, I have some character and Alkali Lake environment drawings.  This is where the Weapon X Project was located in the movies.  You guys know me, I'm more of an environment guy, not so much character for games, but it was nice to stretch my style a little bit here and get it to be a little more realistic compared to my comic book approach to things.  The environment drawings posted here are just a small amount against the hundreds that were created by me and other concept artists.  Especially Alkali Lake.  This went through several changes in the game design and many ideas were just not used, due to time, or complication, but they would've been epic to see in the game.

This is the game where I actually began to change to working totally digitally on the Cintiq.  I just couldn't draw on the Wacom tablet since there was the disconnect with my hand on the tablet and the cursor on the screen.  The Cintiq removed that disconnect and so I was able to create a bit faster and clearer by dropping tones in under the drawing.  Looking back on some of these, I could've probably been a little cleaner...

Enjoy!

Flamethrower dude to burn the skin off of Wolvie.

Might have gotten a little Halo-y on these.

Energy gauntlets to pack a punch.

Roughs and my final submission for the Cloaking soldier.

Trying some color variations.

Some of my roughs for the Grappler in the Jungle.

Action and vista concept for Alkali Lake

Vista and layout concept looking down on a base.  Some architectural concepts.

Architectural details for windows and columns

Yeah! Crates and ho hum objects, but someone's gotta do it and I'm all to happy to do it.  Is that wrong?

SINGULARITY CONCEPT ART

Here's a huge art dump for Raven Software's Singularity. I came onto the project for the last year and a half of it's production, so the look and feel was pretty well established, but still allowed for creative freedom in terms of layout, architectural details, and some props.

This is a small sample of the amount of work I've done on the project, but illustrates many things concept artists should be thinking about when working on a game.

The Village








Barisov's Tower


Start Station (abandoned concept)

This was a bit of a bummer for me when the idea to start you out in something like an abandoned LOST Dharma station, and while exploring you come across a control center that has a recording dedicating the station and you would realize you're in an alternate world. The world is over thrown by the USSR and science has taken a great leap based upon research of E-99.





Research Labs


Props and Graphics








Storyboarding: I provided storyboards for many of the projects I worked on. Coming from comics, it seemed like a natural fit and I really enjoyed telling the story of our games and helping breath life into the characters.

Ending

Storyboarding: Katya Ending


Storyboarding: Alternate EndingStoryboarding: The following scenes were originally planned to be third person shots and include many sequences that were cut due to time and streamlining of the story.

Uber-TMD the Dam
Talk with Barisov
Feeder Boss Base Entry: This sequence was drawn much tighter to provide an example on how clear we can make these boards. The boards took much longer to draw and the monster was drawn by Vinod Rams.