My One Fantastic Interview with One Fantastic Week, and a Wig Monster

Wig Monster from John Dies at the End

The guys who run the web show One Fantastic Week recently interviewed me for their monthly viewer interview! If you've ever wondered what it would be like to ask me questions and then me answer those same questions then this is perfect for you. This was the first interview I've ever done and I tried to make it as helpful (with links to different resources and artists I like) as well as informative.

You can check out the interview HERE!

One Fantastic Week is a weekly web show hosted by Sam Flegal and Pete Morbacher, and every week they talk about their weekly adventures in the art world as well as talking about various art topics and interviewing different artist guests. It's a pretty great show to listen to while working.

You can find all past episodes HERE.

As for the above drawing, it's a preliminary sketch for my next John Dies at the End painting. Just wanted to figure out the design of the creature before I place it in a scene.

Twas the Day Before IlluXcon

Twas the day before IlluXcon, 

when all through my mind,

I was so freaking excited, 

can't wait for good times.

Excuse that awful joke. It's the Eve of IlluXcon and I'm getting super excited! I've been waiting for this convention to come back around since the last one. While getting all of my stuff ready for the con, I realized I wanted to have a little more to have on display at my Showcase table so I spent the past couple weeks working up some original drawings for people to look through, which will also be available for purchase.

Below, you can see all of the drawings I did. If you'll be at IlluXcon this week and you like what you see, swing by my Showcase table and grab some for yourself!

My Demonic Calling

"I just want a hug"

I recently picked up a item called 'Hymns & Wretched Offerings to the Golden Ones'. It's a gorgeously made book that was put together by fantasy artist Jim Pavelec. The book is 135 pages long (counting from page 1 to the last page featuring artwork) and it's full some beautifully grotesque artwork showcasing tons of unearthly beings drawn by some of the coolest artists around.

The first tome

I bought the book from Jim at his table in the IlluXcon main show and I got to briefly share my enthusiasm for the book and how I'd been itching to get my hands on it. I had also overheard Jim explaining to someone else that there was a second book in the works called 'Parables & Prophecies of the Golden Ones'  and I told him I would really like to be a contributing artist if possible. He told me to send him an email...

'If the offerings are sufficient, I may then enter the mortal plane to conduct endless chaos and misery'

...so a couple weeks after I got home I made the above drawing and sent it to him. I hope you can see from the piece how excited I am about this upcoming book. It would be a HUGE honor if I was given the opportunity to be a part of the book. Some of my all time favorite artists made it into the first one and I would be extremely excited if I got to see my artwork sitting side-by-side with theirs in this upcoming book. But in order for this book to become real, it needs your help; so if you're interested in seeing a 2nd book happen (and maybe even MORE) then I strongly encourage you to swing by the kickstarter page and contribute a little something. Just $30 gets you the book itself, and even just sending the page around to others would be a huge help. With your help, you can make our nightmares come true!

How Gabby, my 2 year-old niece, inspired me

A couple of days ago my sister posted to Facebook a doodle that my 2 year-old niece did. After looking it over I got really excited at the idea of giving it my own flare. I brought her drawing into Photoshop, lowered the opacity of it and traced right on top of her drawing, adding in details I imagined when I looked at her picture...pretty much doing my own take on Dave DeVries' The Monster Engine.

Gabby's & Michael's drawings

I really like the outcome of my piece. I think you can clearly see my nieces drawing come through, but at the same time I've made it my own. I'm not sure if my niece Gabby can understand what I did if I showed her the drawing, but maybe someday she can appreciate it and maybe even work with me on another piece.

From the Sketchbook #5: Shining Force

Here are some sketches I've done recently of some characters from Shining Force.

Marionette

Domingo

Darksol

Hiatus? Explain this!

You may have noticed that last week I missed out on a couple of posts, or then again maybe you didn't! Either way, I totally missed out on a couple of posts. This was due to a combination of being away from home for a while and me getting some important emails which needed immediate addressing. I woke up one day to find 2 emails in my inbox that made me VERY happy. The first was from an art director at Fantasy Flight Games who offered me some work to do illustration for one of their games. I happily accepted as FFG is on my career goals "to work for" list and I consider it to be potentially a huge career-changer. Can't really post much more about that now, but as soon as stuff gets published I will be sure to share, though that might be a while.

The other email I got I can totally talk about but I'd rather keep it somewhat to myself until the end of the process. What I will say is that I applied for an in-house illustration job in NYC and I was contacted back asking me to complete an art test because they liked what they saw in my application. If you poke around on this blog you can find out who it's for but I'd rather announce it at the end. I have a really good feeling about the in-house job as I busted my butt working on the art test and I'm really hoping to get an interview.

Anyways, that's my excuse for not updating, I've had a lot on my plate. But things have cooled down enough to where I can start posting regularly again. Even though I totally never officially announced I was going to post 3 times a week. Here's a random character I've played around with recently...

3rd week of studies

I'm really happy with a lot of the stuff in this batch, particularly 15, 16, and 17. These studies are turning out to be a lot of fun and I feel like my work is already improving from them. I'm going to give a warning ahead of time, the start of the next batch was a little rough due to the holidays and some traveling, and some aren't so much studies as much as me staying productive. I'm still making the effort though so that's the most important thing to me. Anyways, enjoy the new batch!

From the Sketchbook #4

It feels like it's been a while since I've drawn anything on paper. I didn't know what to work on so I decided to dig up an old piece I did of this same character of mine and give it a make-over.

I'm going to fully paint this guy and I hope to post him up sometime in the near-future. Along with it I'm going to show the past image I was referencing from to show the difference, and I'm even going to show the very first time I drew the character, about 4 years ago. It should be a fun post so keep an eye out for it. Until next time!

From the Sketchbook #3

Been so busy working on finals lately that I haven't done any sketching in a while. I really need to get back in the habit of doing so. Can't lose sight of the fact I still have to practice. Here are some recent sketches I managed to make time to do...

 

I've got a lot of ideas for what pieces I want to do in the future but I'm having a little bit of difficulty deciding which ones to stick with at the moment. I may be leaning towards a specific idea, but you'll find out what I've got in store in soon enough.

From the Sketchbook #2

Here's a new addition to my sketchbook. I was on a long car ride into the mountains of upstate PA and I decided to entertain myself with some drawing, but being in a moving car presented some...challenges. Since I knew it would be very difficult to keep a steady hands at all times, I decided to embrace the wobbling around aspect and decided to draw something that looked mutated so I wouldn't have to worry about getting the shapes and proportions just right. I really like what I came up with and I plan on adding to it in Photoshop, and maybe painting it up entirely.

I know it's kind of weird seeing such a creepy drawing from me right after the adorable AWWWW-fest bunny painting from the last post, but I say, what's wrong with enjoying both? This drawing also gives a bit of a hint as to what the next Inspiration Spotlight will be in a couple days. It's definitely a strong source of inspiration for this drawing, and to many of you who know me, it won't be a surprise at all