Painting Blues and Portfolio Prep

I was recently at a rough spot with my work where I would find myself thinking "it's time to sit down and do some artwork"...and that's as far as I would get. There was one day where I spent a good 6 hours sitting in front of my computer, stylus in hand, scribbling random nothingness on a blank Photoshop canvas just getting more and more frustrated that I couldn't come up with anything I liked. I had no real direction in mind, no focus, and I felt like that was the biggest part holding me back. Most of the time, when I sit down to do a portfolio piece, I don't ever think about what I should do, I just hop right into working because I usually end up feeling like I'm just wasting time if my hand isn't drawing something. I decided to take a few days off to get out of my head and stop getting so anxious about not getting anything done and I decided I need to come up with a real work-plan in order to maximize my productivity.

After reading up some of the posts from Jon Schindehette's online Portfolio Building Class on ArtOrder, I took a serious look at my portfolio and tried to figure out what I need to do to start advancing in my career the way I want. I realized that I as much as I say that I want to work for Paizo and D&D, my portfolio doesn't really show that I want that at all. So I decided I'm going to make every piece I do for a while to be focused at the needs of Paizo and D&D.

Owlbear

The above image is the first piece I created with this new perspective in mind, and my attitude about working is getting better and I don't feel so lost anymore. I hope you enjoy the piece and can see where I'm trying to go with it. I'm already working on the next one and I hope to have it done soon so I can post it up. Thanks for stopping by.

My Zombie Playground concept: Crossing Guard

For anyone who doesn't know, Massive Black is working on a video game called Zombie Playground and it's based on an illustration done by my favorite Illustrator Jason Chan. I'm extremely excited for this game to come out and I wanted to create my own zombie for the game for fun.

After brainstorming some possible character ideas, I thought it would be cool to come up with a crossing guard zombie who used her trademark stop-sign as her weapon. Not only that, but when she needs backup she's got her whistle to summon the help of other nearby zombies. In order to beat her in battle you would have to figure out a way to snatch the whistle off of her so you can take her down one-on-one.

I had a lot of fun designing her and I'm going to try and come up with some other ideas for possible zombies, characters, and weapons. I haven't designed any weaponry in a long time so I'm most interested in tackling that next. Anyways, I hope you like the design and make sure to check out all of the official stuff for the game on the official Zombie Playground website. It's gonna be freakin' awesome.