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CONCEPT ARTIST & ILLUSTRATOR

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2014 has been a pretty good year. While I’m not sitting in concept art position, this year has been full of improvement and great opportunities. Lets look at a comparison. There’s roughly three years of work between these two paintings.

Comparison

I’m still in a QA position, but I’m at a company that feels like its investing in me. There are a lot of people that have given me a chance to prove myself. A special shout out goes to Bart Tiongson who has given up some of his time to sit down with me and paint over some of my portfolio pieces. Bart hasn’t been the only one to help me with my work. Nate Stefan, Andrew Olson, Won Choi, and Chris Moffitt have all given up some of their time to talk to me about a career in art.

In some of my personal projects I was able to team up with my friend Fletcher to make some Dota 2 workshop items this year The items are still up for consideration, but the whole process was a really nice learning experience.

The Book of Life came out this year. If you haven’t seen it, it’s totally worth your time. Earlier this year Reel fx asked several Texas artists to contribute skulls to the background of the movie. I was one of the lucky artist to be associated with this wonderful movie. Somewhere in the background of that movie, you can the skull that I designed and painted.

After roughly a year of kicking the idea around, I finally started my personal project Life on Water. I have to develop an entire world, and belive me there is A LOT to do, but it’s something that keeps me interested on my road to being a better concept artist.

Here’s where I was able to help at work. Robot has recently started an email campaign to develop some of the lore of the Orcs Must Die universe. While not exactly part of the art team, I have been able to contribute some art to the Master Is Missing email campaign.

The year hasn’t been perfect but I’m really enjoying where I am and all the progress that I appear to be making. Here’s to even more work and experiences in the 2015 year!

Stargate 3.71-275

I’ve been drawing only little bit lately, but I have been drawing.  Work gets in the way a lot.  Good news:  I see a lot of progress in my work, bad news: I delete them afterwards and I’m starting to think that that may not be the best plan.  I’ll start saving things more often so that others can see what I have to offer.

New Personal goal:  Draw way more often.  If you see me, ask me what work I’ve done lately.  Seriously.  Do it.

A progress update on my latest big update.  I’ve started from the background and am working my way to the foreground, so I haven’t gotten a chance to work on the people in the front yet.  I used the burning car as a reference for the burning ship because I just couldn’t get the flames right.  I threw a rock at a can of beans as a reference for the bent up ship.  At this point I’d say I’m about halfway done, with what seems to be a good project so far.

As I said before, I’ve been working with the tremors series running in the background.  I love the series a lot, but I’ve always been a sucker for bad sci-fi movies.  I made this on a whim, just as a quick break and for some fun.

This is my latest big project.  I’ve been toying with the suit and helmet design for a little bit and am just now getting to the first steps of the digital copy.  I have high hopes for this one.  I’ve been watching a few tutorials about basic design principals for concept art, as well some photoshop tutorials.  You know, starting at the beginning again and working my way back up.

Have you ever seen Tremors?  I have the Attack Pack.  The one with all four movies.  I love those movies so much.

I recently had to the exit review for my painting degree.  It seems a lot more important than it actually is, although that doesn’t make it any less terrifying.  It doesn’t decide if you graduate or not, but the six heads of the painting department come in to look at your work and ask you to talk about it.  Keep in mind that these people are either successful artists or have been successful artists.  I did my best to fumble through talking about my work and I think I made it out just fine.

The work above is called Arrangement #7 and is oil on 1×1 panels and can be rearranged in multiple ways.  And of course that’s me next to it.  I’ll be in the senior show May 9th to the 12th at the Cora Stafford Gallery in Oak Street Hall in Denton, Texas.  Feel free to come see my piece as well as my colleague’s pieces.

This is some of the physical painting stuff I’ve been working on recently.  It’s almost like building a big puzzle.  Each 1 foot square tile is painted and then pieces with the rest of the other tiles and hung together.  I try to vary the colors, application process and thickness of the paint on each of them, so it doesn’t all end up looking the same.  This is the current configuration I have them in, but it may not be the final one since they are made to be moved around.

Also:  Yes, I do work in my living room.  You can see the couch in the top of the picture.

I was lucky enough to get to go to Europe with some friends last week.  Despite the complete lack of sleep and total havoc that it wreaked on my legs, it was by far the best vacation I’ve ever had.

Among my favorite things that we visited and saw, was the Louvre.  It’s one thing to see art on a screen, in a textbook or just talk about it in class, but to see it in person is mind altering.  I’ve always complained and sort of cursed myself for making my pieces so large (the largest being 8′ by 4′), but I’ll never complain about my works again after seeing the giant history paintings there.  40 feet long and 20 feet tall makes my biggest look like a newborn next to an elephant.  Just something about seeing the work that others have done before you and how much care they put into something can be really inspiring.

As of late, my work has been lacking in the effort and care areas.  Part of it might be the fact that it’s my last year in school and I’ve been feeling a bit burned out, but this trip to Louvre has been re-energizing.  I actually have the will to work on my pieces and portfolio.  Hopefully, this site will have a lot more work on it very soon.

These four are some of my physical paintings over the last couple school years.  The influence of video games is pretty apparent, but since the works the work has become a little more sophisticated (or at least I hope so).   The paintings became about  color and the building of forms using the vertical and horizontal strokes of paint. The important part about the paintings that don’t come out in the photos is the thickness of the paint.  These were the beginning of my latest, which I hope to post later on.