From the archives

Today we have some recently declassified concepts for a project from the good folks at Villian LLC.

Character design for games is always a tricky affair because there's a balance between tech and aesthetics that must always be watched. This becomes even more pronounced when the game is for the iPhone. Fortunately, with a strong AD, as they have in Tim Nice, it's possible to find a middle ground between being shackled by poly counts and joint limitations, and the crazy machinations of the concept artist ( what if we put rocketpacks on their feet and they could jump all over the place??)

some human trooper armor

and some crazy aliens

the tech restrictions really hit the alien designs more because all of the interesting things that would set them apart required more resources..so Tim chose to emphasize the surface material, since the shaders were the one thing that the engine was fairly forgiving in. A bit of that process can be found below:

personally, I'd have gone in a different direction with the heads, but in the end I think we got some pretty interesting designs out of it.

Branching Out

Home at last

So, the last week of February I had the opportunity to teach at a lovely little school called The Animation Workshop, located in a neat little town in Denmark. To say that the atmosphere here is inspiring would be the understatement of the year. The senior class is working on several short film projects which I got to advise on, and let me tell you, these guys really know their onions.

Student studio space, which will prepare them well for the chaos of industry life

some very cool maquette work going on

very cool town that I got to wander around in

some members of the Væsen team

A couple of crazy swedes who somehow wandered onto the premises

All in all, a fantastic experience and a fantastic school...I look forward to returning.

check our their work here!

You say you want a revolution....

well you know, we all want to change the world...

Down Time means

doing whatever stupid ideas come to mind

Social Networking

Exploring the social landscape and broadening one's network, before it was cool.

First post of the year and in a long time due to some long overdue down time. The idea of strangers in a strange land seems appealing to me at the moment as I'll be one myself in short order.

Hopefully more to come soon!

Freelancer's Guide, Part 3: The Caged Bird

The world of the freelance artist is alot of hurry up and wait, not unlike being at the front of a line to receive a punch in the mouth.

The interesting thing is that you never know when you're going to suddenly have a small gap of time where you've got nothing to do. You may have 3 projects going simulataneously, but there will be one day when one art director is out sick and can't give you any feedback, one is in hawaii for the week, and one is just a jerk who can't be bothered to answer your emails for days at a time. And just like that. you'll have a half a day on your hands.

You may be paralyzed by this new found free time, just as a caged bird won't immediately fly out of an open cage..you've both forgotten how to be free. At some point during the last 6 months of drawing zombie pirate robots, all those thoughts of doing a nice landscape painting or learning some new media have gone from your mind. So, the lesson for today is: do not waste these precious moments. They are sparkling jewels in otherwise muddy sludge of your schedule. Do some personal work...read some tutorials...figure out what on earth the high pass filter is for in photoshop and why anyone would want to use it. But regardless, do something.

 In that spirit, here's a rough study for what will hopefully become a polished matte at some point when my schedule opens up. one of the areas which I'm sorely lacking in is matte painting, so with any luck, that'll be my area of focus in the coming year.

On another note, for anyone that remembers this guy:

He's found his way into the latest edition of Exotique, from Ballistic Publishing. This is kind of odd considering these books are generally full of sexy robots and all, but go figure. Monstro, you've hit the big time!

really?

Ok so for the last 2 years I've been hearing how great Transformers was from pretty much everyone.. I refused to see it on principle, but when it was on TV recently, against my better judgement, I decided to watch. This represents my viewing experience fairly accurately:

After having lived through this supernaturally stupid cinematic experience, I would like to make the following request: if you saw, and enjoyed watching this movie, please raise your hand. Now, use that hand to slap yourself across the face repeatedly until you no longer have the urge to give your money to Micheal Bay.


thank you.

Into the Vault part 2

Nothing too earth shattering today...just an old commission that seemed worth posting..

Happy PYKtWD everyone

another Maddox commissioned piece from the archives