Futuristic Violence & Fancy Suits Promotional Art

Nightmarish villains with superhuman enhancements

An all-seeing social network that tracks our every move
Mysterious Smooth-talking power players who lurk behind the scenes
A young girl from the trailer park
and
Her very smelly cat

I recently did some promotional art for David Wong's latest novel titled "Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits". It's a stand-alone story (not part of the John Dies at the End series) that I'd give you a synopsis for but why read that when you can read the FIRST SEVEN CHAPTERS FOR FREE instead!?

It's a really fun read that had me laughing out loud very often. If you like ridiculous humor and suspense-filled action, go ahead and do yourself the favor of ordering the book, I highly recommend it! Now with that, please enjoy the promotional material I made for the book, they'll give you an extra slice of what's in store.

CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE THE BOOK!

A Night of Ice & Fire

"A Night of Ice & Fire"

A few weeks back I was contacted by Zack Luye, one of the hosts of the Game of Owns podcast, asking me if I could illustrate a promotional poster for their upcoming Game of Thrones event: "A Night of Ice and Fire". 

It'll be a live-event happening on October 9th at the Hard Rock Cafe in Times Square New York City as part of New York Comic Con's Super Week. It'll be hosted by Rave of Thrones' Kristian Nairn (Hodor on Game of Thrones) and the 3 hosts of Game of Owns, Zack Luye, Eric Scull, and Micah Tannenbaum. If you'll be in NYC for NYCC and you're a fan of Game of Thrones enjoy an awesome evening amongst like-minded folk by clicking the following link to order your ticket now!

Purchase your ticket to A Night of Ice & Fire HERE!

Hodor (Kristian Nairn) laying down some fresh beats

I've been an avid listener of the podcast for over 2 years now and I've written in from time to time when they send out their "call for owns" asking listeners to share their favorite "own-worthy" moments of the most recent episodes / chapters of Game of Thrones / A Song of Ice & Fire. Turns out it's a good idea to have a link to your website at the footer of all your emails because Zack happened to go to my site, see my work, and liked what he saw enough to ask me to paint their poster.

The GoO crew keepin it chill on the dance floor (Eric, Zack, Micah, left to right)

It was a really fun project and Zack offered some great input. This was truly a joint effort to make the final image come to life and I'm extremely pleased with the outcome. This was also my first freelance assignment where I designed text to go along with the image, and I gotta say I'm really happy with the end result which Zack helped steer me towards.

Winter isn't the only thing coming to New York City

Hope you like the poster! And check out the Game of Owns podcast, it's a really great show if you're a big Game of Thrones fan like myself. Thanks for reading!

The Temptation of Majora - Process Shots

Here's all the steps that led up to the final illustration for The Temptation of Majora. Don't forget that if you're interested in buying a print of this piece you can get one by clicking HERE.

Skull Kid Study

Just trying to play with color, lighting, and mood. Trying to get the juices flowing and get into the spirit.

Majora Redesigns

1 - Rough greyscale sketch

2 - Tight drawing

3 - Flat colors, creating silhouettes

4 - starting to render the form of Majora

5 - more rendering forms, moving onto skull kid

6 - lighting skull kid with the mask as a light source

7 - Painting over Majora's forms to add patterning

8 - adding in details, fixing anatomy

9 - first pass on background

10 - I didn't like Skull kid's hat so I redid it, added tendrils from Majora

11 - refining hat shape, pushing tendril back in space

12 - Enhancing lighting, render, render

13 - adding hair, enhancing glow

14 - adjusting background to enhance the focus + add interest, add back-lighting

15 - enhance secondary lighting

16 - adjust trees (felt weird) enhance rim-lighting

17 - foreground rendering

18 - adjusting values, adding glows to help focal points

19 - Calming down my colors + adjustment layers and final touches

BONUS: Alternate sketch idea, Link Vs. Majora

Thanks for making it all the way to the end! If you have any questions for me feel free to email me at mrburns928@aol.com and I'll get back to you as soon as I can!

The Temptation of Majora

There's been a lot of buzz about Majora's Mask lately with the remastered game coming out on the 3DS. I pre-ordered the game (had to get the gold cartridge) when it first came out back in 2000. And it was one of those games that really stuck with me thanks to it's dark and unsettling atmosphere, some great new gameplay features, and some really cool designs.

"Do you want to play with me?"

The mask itself is very iconic and striking, and what it transforms into later in the game is pretty bizarre. Here are the 3 stages of the mask...

Majora's Mask

Majora's Incarnation

Majora's Wrath

While each stage of Majora has some really cool and unsettling elements to it, I always felt like the Incarnation stage was a bit too goofy, and that the Wrath stage was a bit too hard to see what was going on, and the pyramids on his shoulders feel out of place.

Majora redesign

So I decided to try and reinterpret the final form of Majora, taking cues from the designs that are already in place, but trying to make something that I thought might fit better. My main concern was, if the mask was created in Majora's image, then you should be able to see details in the creature form that became more subtle in the Mask itself. Instead of just the mask turning into the creature, I wanted to create a creature that the mask could be based on.

(100% resolution)

I was pretty happy with the results of my redesign, and so instead of stopping there, I decided to incorporate the design into a full illustration. I wanted to show the moment of Skull Kid's temptation for the Mask. At the point depicted in my illustration, he hasn't yet worn the mask, but he can sense great power coming from within, a power that is looming over him and just waiting for him to seize it. A lot of my portfolio tends to be a lot of dudes just standing around, so I really wanted to try and tell a story with this piece. I hope you like the results. I'll be posting process shots in a later blog post so keep an eye out if you're interested<3 br="">

Click HERE to buy a print!

Red Wedding Still Life (+process)

Here's a new piece I recently finished up for the Game of Thrones Compendium thing going on. Hoping to get some publicity through that with this still life depicting the Red Wedding. I thought it would be an interesting idea to depict the Red Wedding scene from the books by only using objects. There's so much great symbolism in the books that I wanted focus on that for this painting.

If you really like it you can pick up a print of it over at my InPrnt shop, just click HERE.

Here's the step by step:

Initial Sketch

Final Rendering

Goblin Swineherd Process

It's been a while since I wrote one of these, but I just realized I never posted progress shots of my last painting so I thought I'd share them now. I hope you enjoy seeing the step by step. Feel free to message me if you have any questions. Also, if you want, I can have a high-quality trading card playmat made (email me) or you can buy a print of it on my InPrnt shop. Thanks for taking a look!

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16 - FINAL

BONUS! Here's some step by step of the Christmas alter I did, your reward for scrolling down this far!

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20 - FINAL