Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze!

So here it is! The next game by Retro Studios and the game I've been working on these past two years! Dixie is back, and so is David Wise (the original games composer)!!!!

Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze!



So far the reaction has been really great! We're super excited and can't wait for everyone to play the game. I've done so much work on this game that it is hard to call out anyone one piece, the same is true for other artists. In the trailer my main contribution is the snow level shown, but there are pieces in there from other artists as well. But the Temple stuff is all mine! :P

Here is the president of Retro Talking about the game:

And the producer from SPD group and Japan:

I am super proud of this game and it is to date the most passionate I've ever been about a game I've worked on! I really hope you all enjoy it!

Also... I got to meet Miyamoto-San at E3!!!!!

Substrata

Wow my last post was in March!? Well as usual things have been busy, but I've been fitting in time here and there to work on this Art Book project called Substrata. It's being organized by the amazing Paul Richards of Darksiders and Halo 4 fame (among other things)

So basically it's a no holds barred collection of art and one of the entries was concept I feel in love with by Max Gon

It's like a bad ass Pokemon evolution of a tree nut. Anyway here is my early progress of the first stage: KNOT NUT

Hey Wolf Moon...

don't cast your spell on me!

So this is from a few months back. Polycount had a Dota 2 contest to create an armor set for one of their characters. My buddy Sirio and I decided to take a crack at the Lycanthrope. However due to life and work I never got around to finishing the textures, but I figured I'd post what I had up here anyway.

These are Sirio's concepts, seriously the dude is a bad ass! Check out his stuff! Sirio Brozzi

Here are my models, the gray model is not mine. That is provided by the fine artists at Valve Software!

The contest brief called for two levels of detail

I started sculpting the detail....

And realized that the little details I was putting into it wouldn't read from a distance...

Thats about as far as I got before I had to stop. Maybe someday I'll finish this. :)

First born of HIS Lieutenants...

It's no secret that Legacy of Kain is on of my favorite game franchises. I have done two previous fan pieces for these games

Graveyard

Kain

So this time I decided to do Raziel, when he is still a vampire as seen in this (still) bad ass intro

I'm not entirely crazy about it, but it was a fun night's work.

I based the sculpt off of this concept.

The Districts of Dustrum

New stuff! I've been chipping away at this for the past two weeks or so. An artist I REALLY admire Nick Carver did this concept of cool cut away (I am a sucker for isometric cutaways!) and I felt compelled to model it out. I was planing to texture it but what can I say... I'm lazy. :)

Anyway check out Nicks blog, it's full of amazing stuff! This is the concept

Concept by Nick Carver

Here is my interpretation of it. I changed up some proportions and shapes based on spatial relationships and inconsistencies in the concept (basically the distance between buildings).

And some detail shots.

Get BRUTAL!

A quick note! Brutal Legend is now available on Steam! For a steal too, if you pre-order it you can get it for 14.99 plus the Multiplayer Beta! This is one of the games I am most proud to work on, so give it a go!

Brutal Legend on Steam


And if you're curious here is a link to the assets I contributed to the game!
Brutal Assets!

Mega

Wow! Five months without a post! There are a lot of reasons, buying a new house, work, my computer dying! But now I'm equiped with a bad ass machine and my first 2013 resolution is going back to the basics... of zbrush. I'm currently working my way through a hard surface modeling dvd. One of the exercises in it is using Dynamesh in Zbrush as a concepting tool. I probably took this further than is needed but I was having fun. I didn't have any idea what this would be when I started and somewhere along the way he started to look like Mega Man. I'm cool with that.

The Tower Arcana

Just a quick note, I started a new blog to exclusively track progress on my personal project "The Tower Arcana". Check it out if so inclined.

The Tower Arcana

I heard you like Exhibits

Wow, two posts in one day! It's been a very busy week for me art-wise! In addition to the kickstarter project I contributed to I also have two pieces of my art being shown and sold at local video game store Game Over Video Games. Game over rules. I've dug them since I found out about em' when I moved to Austin. They really are all about gamers and the gamer culture. Their stores not only sell EVERY SINGLE old game system and games, the also have tons of gaming related toys, shirts, and random stuff. Basically a gamers dream store.

I walked in one day and noticed some local art hung up behind the counter and asked about how to go about getting my art featured. I sent an email to the president of the stores and found out my timing couldn't be better! They were opening a new store that actually has a small gallery section! So here we are, today is the stores opening and I dropped off two pieces that I think look absolutely beautiful printed out on canvas!

I doubt anyone will buy them. I have them priced pretty expensively (it cost a lot to print them on giclee) but hell just having a new way to show my art is pretty fun, and if they don't sell I have my art to hang in my office at home. :)

I don't know if anyone who visits this blog lives in Austin Texas, but if you do please head down to the Game Over on South Lamar Blvd and take a look in person!

Awesome Robo!

Awesome Robo 

Awesome Robo is an awesome website founded by Sirio Brozzi and Rachael Garcia

Their kickstarter is in the final week and they've reached their goal but if they hit the 5k goal, two NEW rewards become available, and one of those rewards is a tee shirt I designed! So hey if you would, please fund with a few bucks and if you like the designs, fund with a few more and get yourself some sweet threads! Also please help spread the word! Thanks!

Awesome Robo Kickstarter



Powa!

Under the Influence

Thought it was time to update this thing. I like how it forces you to really think about what drives your creativity. If you follow the directions it also forces you to think about what is the biggest driving factors.

I have an offer in mind...

With my recent move (yay I'm a home owner!) work, and life in general I've had precious little time to work on any personal art. But with this weeks release of Darksiders 2 I just couldn't help myself and create some fan art. I've been a fan of Joe Mad since his days drawing X-Men and Battle Chasers just cemented it. I was SUPER bummed when his company Tri-Lunar closed without releasing their game Dragon Kind. So when Joe Mad and some other peeps started Vigil Games I was REALLY excited! They didn't disappoint with Darksiders, and so far the sequel looks to continue the awesomeness! Of course I got the special edition which comes with a rad mask that Death the main character in the game wears.

So during lunch on Yesterday I found myself wanting to open Zbrush and sculpt something for fun but I couldn't think of anything. I looked over and saw this bad ass mask and thought, hey why not!?

 I noodled on it a bit during lunch today and yesterday as well as a bit after work as well (my PC at home still isn't set up). Anyway I started with a simple sphere and used dyna-mesh and just kept going till I was happy.

And for shits I messed with the Lightcap material in Zbrush as well as some photoshop magic and did this :)

Expose 10 is almost here!

So as I mentioned in an earlier post, I am so excited, proud, and honored to have been included in the 10th anniversary edition of Expose! The amount of talent in this book is staggering and humbling, I am among giants! This is a huge step in my journey as an artist, but I must continue to push myself, learn all I can, and practice, practice, practice!!!!

Pre-orders for the book are now open so if you love cool art please check it out! This is their biggest edition yet so there is sure to be something in there for everyone!

Expose 10

One last thing...

...before I call it a night, I put this together real quick. Artists love their signatures, and I'm no different. So I used my guardian heroes skull and made this.

Putting it to bed

So I'm pretty bored of this piece. Without a concept or a clear direction to take it I just feel like now is a good time to call it done. I have no intention of texturing it, but it was pretty fun to just model without a concern for polycount, or anything else that rears it's head in game development. I have a few other personal projects in the pipe. I just need to pick one, maybe I'll start a poll!

It's been a while...

No new art these days, I've been super busy. Both at work and at home. So basically my wife and I decided to buy a house! Very exciting, but very stressful as well. Anyway we're moving in at the end of the month so I decided to create some art for our new home. We're going with a very industrial, apothecary kind of vibe so I thought this would work well. I basically just re-purposed the spine and skull from my Guardian Hero piece. The actual frames we're gonna use are from Ikea and pretty awesome as well.

Back to it

So with Diablo vanquished and no games I want to play until Darksiders 2 comes out, I figured I go back to my street scene and do some more modeling work on it. I'm just going to keep adding detail until I get bored or a cooler personal project grabs my attention.

Expose 10!

I just found out one of my pieces got accepted into Expose 10! I couldn't be more excited! The piece is this one found here, which was inspired by a random image of figurine I found in a Japanese artbook, I wish I knew the artist to give credit for the concept but I don't speak Japanese:

Waiting for the End of Time.

You can see some work in progress here:

Pelican Machine Head

I have to be honest I was a little worried about submitting a piece based on a concept not my own. BUT I've seen entries in Expose based off of IP not owned or created by the artist. I just hope no one faults me for submitting something that is essentially fan art.

For posterity

I tweeted this but I figured I'd post it up here cause I'm pretty flattered that Kotaku (one of the biggest game websites) did a story on the Sworcery AV Jam and one of my pieces was in their gallery. Out of the MANY pieces submitted I'm humbled that one of mine was shown.

Some Stylish Tributes to Sword & Sworcery


That's me! Allll the way at the bottom! ;P

JAM!

So for the past week I've been working on a piece for the awesome Sword & Sworcery AV Jam. For the uninitiated Sword & Sworcery is an amazing iphone/ipad and now pc game that should really be played by all.

Sword & Sworcery

So the creators of this game put out a call to arms so to speak for peoples to create artwork or music inspired by the game. Being the fan I am and in need of a personal project I opted in.

I decided to model out in 3d a specific screenshot of the game. Given the limited time frame I knew that I couldn't do things like fully texture it out and what not so I chose to stay minimalist (like the game itself).

This is the final piece I created.

Once submitted Craig Adams the creator of the game suggested that since it was 3d I could do more than one piece with the same assets. I figured, why not?

And finally the last one I did, which may be my favorite (or at least tied with the first)

All in all a super fun way to get creative! I really enjoyed this and HIGHLY recommend you check out all of the works collected on this tumblr site:

SworceryAVjam