Buccaneer Bravado

I saw a few great images by Don Flores and wanted to draw something along his style. Here's what came out... a little Buccaneer Bravado.

Family Game Night: The Game Show

Last year Wahoo Studios contracted me to develop and animate for Family Game Night: The Game Show a multi-console video game. The studio put a lot of trust in me letting me take first crack at developing it. I ended up doing all of the target art for development for each game. Here's the first concept I did for ScrabbleFlash.


All a concepts had to reflect the Family Game Night TV show on the HUB Network that features a variety of Hasbro games in a larger than life setting. Since the game was targeted to feature Xbox Kinect gameplay, I worked closely with our designers and programmers to get interface to work for both controllers and Kinect.

Connect 4 was my favorite game in terms of the Kinect gameplay.

Shawn Boyles and I did work on character design for Mr. Potato Head. I had so much fun working with his drawings and doing some design of my own for each game. These were the concepts I helped design that made  it through approval. For the record, nobody can as much draw personality into a potato as Shawn; a shame we can't show those here.

There are several versions of the concepts that got released online. If you google any of the games- Sorry Sliders, Connect 4, Scrabble Flash, Yahtzee Bowling, or BopIt one itteration or another pops up.I'll post about the other games soon.

All artwork copyright belongs to Electronic Arts.

Caricature of Shawn Boyles

This past week we had an art challenge at work to caricature a coworker. I was assigned to one of my great friends, concept artist Shawn Boyles. He is one of the great creatives I know; his sketchbooking explorations are prolific! Shawn's love with his work shows in every beastie, beauty, bug, and accessories he creates.

He's got huge appeal embedded in every line that makes me jealous every time he draws, and he draws a lot!

My apologies for having been so long absent. I'll be giving you an visual update on work done in the last year.Since my last post, I joined Wahoo /NinjaBee Studios and have been developing and animating games. I'm finishing my 3rd title and working on my 4th currently. It has been great in so many ways.

We had a little character design workshop at work from Shawn. This is what I came up with... just trying to have some fun.

A handful of bad bikers for Road Rage - character concepts

Here is a page of character designs from my sketch book. I sketched these guys a couple months ago and finally got around to painting them this week. It's a television series concept that follows a biker gangs on their road escapades. Of course each gang is full of steroid pumped stereotypes. Any favorites or suggestions for improving the gang?

Character Design with Chris Oatley

Aloha, this week I had a blast recording a podcast episode with DTS artist Chris Oatley of Chris Oatley's Artcast. If you haven't checked out his show... shame on you, . We talked shop about continuing artistic development, networking strategies for the entertainment industry, and character development technique. I'm constantly learning from the great talents everywhere, here are some things I picked up recently. Feel free to leave your own criticisms and suggestions.

I started developing some sketches for a Sci-Fi concept. Chris took one look and sent me to a great resource The Skillfull Huntsman, the book that takes a Grimm Bros Fairytale through early concept development as if it were a real production. Here's my first sketch (1.25hrs) and some areas that instantly stood out for improvement after picking up the book.

I wanted to try some of the exercises mentioned in the book. Here are a couple of the principles The Skillfull Huntsman put forward:

Compare Apples to Apples-Using the same basic pose and create various designs varing scale, pattern, positive and negative space, etc. Here are a two of mine using one pose.
A good silhouette holds endless possibilities-After I was satisfied with the outline of a character, I try to see the different possibilities within the one form. By imagining a different place, time, gender, technology, etc. I came up with these two drastically different characters, each one has a different story & personality. What character do you see?

Did you know Luke Skywalker started out as a girl in Ralph McQuarrie's drawings and evolved into the character we know today. The initial design process is to mine the creative depths of an concept; establish a strong appropriate silhouette and build from there. Avoid jumping to the details like I did in my first drawing.

Check out these great character designers- Awesome forms. Joe Olson, Nicolas Marlet (Kungfu Panda), and Peter de Seve
More to come as I explore this world and other projects.