A place Arcross Time

 A few posts back I mentioned that I was doing a series of black and white/ pen and ink style images for an anthology. Well it has been published and I must say the edition is gorgeous.Titled E Pluribus Undecim, it's a collection of  personal stories, grouped into three sections: Underground Stories from A City Not Somewhere Else, Confrontation with Mortality and the Cervantes Trinity. The stories jump through time, but most take place near here, in the Fort Vancouver area. This was a very different kind of project for me, not just because there was only the slightest hint at fantasy, or I was working face to face with the writer (most of my clients are from remote locations), but because of the personal aspect to these stories, revealing much about the writer and his loves and losses

It's Laundry day

One of my favorite ongoing projects to work on are the covers for  cubicle 7 games that are based around the Laundry novels by Charles Stross.  These are set in a strange sort of  alternative lovecraftian world. I love the strange mix of genres-- slimy tentacled creatures, computer geeks, spy and espionage, with the occasional Nazi thrown in for good measure. Also, I seldom get a chance to do humor and these covers give me a chance to show the lighter side of  horror

cover for 'The Mythos Dossiers"

cover for the "License to Summon"

cover for "Cultists Under the Bed"

 






















You can find my previous covers here, here and here and here.

Fly me to the moon

 The image to the left was done for Tyche Books premiere publication, Ride the Moon. Its an anthology of stories containing fantasy, dark fantasy, and science fiction stories.  It's chalk full of mythic tales, modern retellings, and beautiful weirdness about the moon and the creatures associated with it ( but no werewolves or vampires, cause aren't we just a little over done on werewolves and vampires?). The idea for the cover was to create a Maxfield Perish like piece recalling the romanticism of his images with a contemporary, almost self aware feel to it. A playful homage to his work.


Also if your fluent in Chinese, there's an interview with yours truly in China's Fantasy Art Magazine. These guys have interviewed the likes of Tim & Greg Hildrebrandt, Alex Horley, Ron Miller, Brom and lots of other fine folk and for some reason they have decided to interview me--guess they must be running out of artist or something. Anyway they have seen fit to put me on the cover and I am quite flattered by the whole thing.  Not sure if there will be an English translation or not, Ill keep you posted.  

Other then that I have been hard at work doing, among other things, two covers for cubicle 7 games Laundry sires, a cover for Kobold publishers new RPG supplement, Sailing Journey's, concepts for HMX Entertainment (very  hush, hush) and illustrating the cover and concepts for The Pillars of  Natura, the first book of the epic fantasy series The Realm Walkers Chronicles, by Aaron Lee and published by Orbit books.  I will be posting these and more in the upcoming few weeks. Stay tuned

Singing in the Rain

Good Morning

Well the Folks over at Wild Horses Productions have posted some of the art work I've done for their Movie Rain Balls.  So I figure it should be ok to show a few of my favorite from the series.

I've talked about it some below in previous post. It was quite a wild project. The Story of a Child Dying of cancer, a mothers surrealistic fantasy dreams, Gene Kelly and the Movie Singing in the Rain (yes that Gene Kelly), with the Chinese National Ballet thrown in. You can read more about it on their site. I love projects like this, that push me out of my comfort zone, that let my imagination run wild. There was a great feeling of collaboration as my ideas and input feed back into the story. There are to be another round of images soon. I am really looking forward to getting back into this strange world. 

Blood Ballet

fashion show

Playing catch up,,,,

 I Thought I would post some of the other stuff Ive been doing over the last several months Here we have and image done for Sacrosanct Games. Its the cover for "The Adventure Begins" a Choose your Fate book that keeps you on the edge of your seat.  Quite a fun little read. It was a bit difficult coming up with the concept for the image. Originally the idea was to have all the major adventure threads represented on the other side of the door, in one of those complex scenes I seem drawn to create. But it seemed too cluttered and the boy (and by proxy the viewer) seemed detached from the scene. So I simplified the concept and brought the action right to the threshold.

Why So Serious?

not sure why it is so hard to keep my blog updated,,,, In some cases there are NDA that keep me from sharing, sometimes I'm just too busy, other times its just plain old laziness. These days its because I have been very busy (ok, well maybe Ive been a bit lazy too). I just completed a series of 14 black and White Illustrations for the Anthology Memoir by Ben Tanosborn. These were quite different from much of my work, No fantasy, no zombies, no dragons or space ships. These were highly detailed pen and ink drawings illustrating very personal stories. I have also just completed the frist round of concept illustrations for the movie Rain Balls. Again this is so different from my past work. A surrealistic story of how a young boy brings harmony back into his mothers life, even while knowing intuitively that he will soon lose his battle against cancer. And I am right now doing concept pieces for a movie about bicycle racing. I will be share all of these soon as I get permission.  But in the mean time I here is a little project I found quite amusing to do. It is the poster for a short film called The Joker Chronicles--First Blood. A little genre mash up, that asks the question of what makes a villain, a villain. The poster was to mirror the original by Drew Struzan, which was great fun.

Noggle Stones

This is the cover for the next book in the young adult series The Noggle Stones, written by Wil Radcliffe. This cover is a departure for the series. In the past the cover art for the books, as well as the art for the games and comic books has been very cartoon like, but this time Wil wanted something different,. and that is where I came in  taking the previous established characters and giving them a more realistic look and feel.

Ain't No Grave

Been enjoying me some Johnny Cash lately and every time I hear his  'Ain't No Grave' I think what a kick ass song for the opening of some zombie flick and wonder why its never been used before.

While I don't make movies,  I do make zombie pictures. So I decided to make my own little scene to go along with the song.

I would strongly recommend you listen to Ain't No Grave to get the full impact of the image.

Pajama Party

yikes, have kind of let things slip here at the studio space. Way past time to do a little update as to what I've been up too. My only excuse is that I have been pretty busy. 

But that also means  I've got lots of stuff to share--a movie poster for Bohemian films, Front and back covers to the latest book in the Noggle Stone young adult series, A rpg adventure cover for Sacrosanct Games, and the cover for Kobold quarterly's World builder book (and I also did a nice little illustration of a clock work angel for them as well). But, lets start with this cover done for Moonstone Books Buckaroo Banzai comic series. They were on a tight deadline, so they gave me carte blanche to create an image and get it to them as soon as humanly possible. The image to the left is what I came up with. Its inspiration comes from an unlikely source. I am a big fan of  the art of J. C. Leyendecker (one of my all time favorite illustrators) and always loved the illustrations he had done the Arrow shirt ads. So cool the way the blacks disappear into the darkness. I wanted to do the same here, but I found that in the case of the ninjas I needed to cheat a little and have a few contour lines delineating their form or it just became too much of a confusing mess

Media exits stage left

I've been doing a ton of cover work lately and it has left me craving to work in a horizontal format. After a while the narrow aspect ratio and the need to leave space for the title text starts to make me feel a little claustrophobic. Doing the wrap around cover below wet my appetite, my desire for a little elbow room. I love doing images in a letter box format, there is something cinematic about it. In this case I was deliberately going for a very operatic, staged look to the image.

Medea was a was a big deal sorceress in the ancient world. She was the daughter of the King  of Colchis, and the granddaughter of Helios, the sun god.....and she killed a lot of people including her two sons by Jason (of Argonauts fame). Kind of an odd myth considering how so often in Greek mythology even the smallest slight was punished in to the most severe ways. Just read the stories of  Actaeon, Arachne, Sisyphus or Io. Yet Medea betrays her family, murders a couple of kings, stabs her children to death and lives a long unpunished life,,,go figure.

Its a cyber punk world,,,,,

I see that they have posted the cover for Technoir over at Cellar Games. Its a high-tech hard-boiled roleplaying game. The idea was that the immediate area around the viewer would be a run-down part of town-- the architecture looking  like it's from the 1940's to invoke the "noir" part of the title. In the background, towering skyscrapers  of lights and with hover cars that call out the "tech" or futuristic themes. The cover is my own little homage to the likes of  Bladrunner, Mobius, Enki Bilal and Neuromancer

Eon's Door

This was a fun project in large part because I enjoyed the book so much. It is a young adult fantasy novel by John McKenny. The world he creates and the narrative with which he describes it was so vivid that it was an illustrators dream. It was difficult to settle on an scene to illustrate for the cover. After batting around several scenes this is the one we finally settled on

Blackwood Hotel

cover

 So I have been given permission to share these images. this was a fun little project.  I was approach about doing a few concept for a TV pilot Produced by David Antoniuk and Eric Woolfe. Its a supernatural coming of age adventure series called the Blackwood Hotel. Sort of  "lost" meats "DeGrassi", or "Freaks and Geeks" meets "The X-Files". Its "The Wonder Years" by way of "Kolchak: The Nights Stalke". Its an uber cool quirky adventure horror show about growing up.

Gimlin Gang Hideaway

Attic Room

Blackwood Hotel Lobby

Uncle Ambrose

Man-Monkey

Gimlin Bell phone