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!

Korrok, Slavemaster from the Eighth Plane (John Dies at the End)

Here he is! It's been a lot of work and a big struggle to complete it but I've finally finished my painting of Korrok from John Dies at the End written by David Wong.

"With a tiny change in your brain chemistry, I could make you a child molester." -Korrok

I tackled a lot of stuff I don't normally go after with this piece. Korrok may be a monster, but it felt more like I was painting a landscape because he's just a big somewhat ambiguous form, so there wasn't any real anatomy to nail. Just like the last two paintings, I tried my best to fit as many details straight from the text as I could, but this was definitely the most challenging of the 3 in that department. There was just so much going on, and the scene was so specific I had to cut some things I would have liked to put in for the sake of having a good painting overall. Still I knew that what was most important with this piece was to illustrate the huge scale of Korrok as well as showing off all his disgusting bits. For the fans of the book, I hope it lives up to the image you had in your head while reading.

For anyone who's interested in how the painting process went for this piece, here ya go! By the way, there's some more words after, so scroll to the bottom for the blog post wrap-up.

1 - Sketches

 Really wanted to make sure I went with the best idea, so I did a bunch of variants...

2 - Chosen Sketch

...ultimately settling on this sketch.

3 - figuring out forms/ refining composition

 It's best to figure out all of you compositional problems with a rough sketch before laying down all the detail.

4 - adding color

 Trying to figure out a rough color palette so I don't have to make it up as I go.

5 - refining color options / experimenting

6 - final color study

 From here I decided that I liked what it was so far, and this gives me a really good road-map for the rest of the painting

7 - painting begins

 I dive right in, painting in the form of the eye and starting to add some detail in just to get a feel for how I want the whole thing to look in the end.

8 - laying down texture

 I knew I wanted this thing to be really gross and nasty looking, so I spent a lot of time laying down texture over the whole body of Korrok...

9 - building up more texture

 ...seriously, lots of time layering up all that texture, a lot of which comes through in the final image.

10 - adding form, details, foreground

 So I have my flat, textured form, now it's time to carve into the mass with highlights and shadow, I used multiply and overlay layers to keep some transparency so I didn't lose all of the texture work.

11 - up the lighting, adding form, more details

 The piece was looking too muted so I made it brighter, more carving out details, lots of layering to get things just right

12 - more detail, hue shifts

All of this layering took a LOT of time, I basically spent the whole painting noodling over area after area. I also wanted the colors to shift here and there so I apply that here.

13 - starting the eye

 I looked up a bunch of different reptilian eyes to make sure I got the details right. I wanted the eye to be the focus, so nailing the detail and color was muy importante.

14 - eye refining

 Just rendering out that eye more, adding all the love and care Korrok deserves <3 br="">

15 - light & texture adjustments

Decided there wasn't enough texture, so I added more, and light, I added more of that too.

16 - darken background...oh, and more detail

I wanted the piece to read more dramatically, plus Korrok is in a cvery dark room surrounded by shadow men, but I decided I didn't want to cover up all of that detail with blackness that most people probably wouldn't be able to tell what it was from this far out. So instead of smoke and shadow-men I made a dark background to emphasize that idea. This was one of those areas where I had to decide between being faithful to the text by adding in everything or giving the painting what it needed. I may have to make it up to the shadow men one day, they deserve some love too right?

17 - detail, starting catwalk

 From the start, I knew the catwalk would be the very last thing I painted. I rather paint over-top of a huge mass than painting painstakingly around one. It would've taken a lot more time and effort to paint in the catwalk first. Why hassle yourself? Also, keep that on a separate layer, also muy importante.

18 - catwalk support, tiny figures

From left to right, it's the masked fat-man, John, David and Molly.

19 - Final tweaks made (final image)

And there you have it!


It's been about 4 months since I started my John Dies at the End series, and with this painting the series will come to a close for now. I'll be leaving for Illuxcon in a couple days and I'll be shopping my artwork around (including these 3 JDatE paintings!) and then after that I'm going full-force into working on a Magic: the Gathering portfolio, because I'm tired of not working on Magic already!

I want to sincerely thank all of the people who've spent time checking out these hopefully enjoyable paintings of a definitely awesome book. Including everyone who posted such kind words over on the thread I made on the Cracked.com forums. You guys were awesome!

And a special thanks to David Wong himself for writing such fun material for me to work from. Make sure to check out the source material John Dies at the End and it's sequel, This Book is Full of Spiders. They are a beautiful blend of humor and horror.

Click here to purchase a print of Korrok!

"The Rise of the Wigmonsters" a 'John Dies at the End' painting

Over the course of the past month I've been working on my 2nd John Dies at the End painting, this time featuring the ridiculous and horrifying wigmonsters as they attack the audience in a Vegas ballroom, interrupting a show put on by Dr. Marconi.

The Wigmonsters

I decided to do something a little different with painting this one. Instead of posting process shots on my facebook page like I normally do, I exclusively posted my process for this piece on my own thread on the John Dies at the End sub-forum on Cracked.com. So if you're interested on reading up on how this piece developed I encourage you to check out the thread HERE.

If you'd like to purchase a print of this piece you can get one on my InPrnt shop HERE

I go into detail on each step of the piece on the thread but I figured I would post the step-by-step shots here as well for anyone who doesn't want to scroll through a forum page. I hope you all like the piece!

Initial Scribble

Final Image

The next and final piece in my John Dies series will be featuring Korrok. Keep an eye on my thread if you'd like to follow along!

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.

John Dies at the End, Part 1: Meat Monster with Process shots

“Prepare to meat your doom!”

Meat. Dozens of the wrapped and now partially-unwrapped hunks from the freezer, laying neatly on the floor next to the bed in an almost ceremonial fashion, the objects arranged in the rough shape of a man.

I moved the light toward the head area, where I found a frozen turkey still in the Butterball wrapper. Under it, wedged between turkey and torso, was the disembodied deer tongue, flapping around on its own accord.

Hmmmm. That was different.

Excerpt from John Dies at the End, by David Wong.

Initial greyscale sketch

John Dies at the End is a novel later made into a movie written by David Wong, the pen-name of Jason Pargin (shhh, don't tell anyone!) who is the executive editor of humor website Cracked.com. At it's core, JDatE is a chilling horror story coated with the perfect amount of hilarity resulting in a very deliciously entertaining meal.

Final color sketch

My first experience with JDatE was watching it on Netflix (it's still available for streaming) and I really loved what I saw. Being a big fan of Cracked.com, when I learned that the guy who wrote the book it was based on was an editor for the site, I became very interested in reading the book, so I hunted it down and devoured it with much pleasure. If you like horror and you like witty and immature humor you might really like this book/movie.

The book and movie are both very different from each other, yet both great, each showcasing the different strengths of each medium. One of my favorite parts of the movie was the scene depicting the monster made of  meat, the costume that they made was really beautiful and had an appropriate edge of silliness to it which was perfect for the film. However, the way the book describes that scene is a bit different, and the description of the monster is different as well. Feeling the urge to paint something JDatE related, I decided to tackle the book description of this scene.

If you want to know exactly what it says, pick up the book (you'll only regret not reading it, trust me). But for my painting I wanted it to be as close to the text as possible. I spent a lot of time skimming over the text to make sure I had all the details, from the bedroom setting to the Butterball-turkey head. It was a very tough challenge for me. I wanted the unsettling mood to be just right, the pose needed to convey what I wanted it to and despite the monster's lack of eyes, I wanted it to stare into the viewer, as if it was ready to step forward.

I really pushed this piece further than any other piece I've done so far. I called it "finished" about 4 or 5 times before finally posting it online. It got pretty tiresome at times, but in the end, I think it really paid off, and I'm very happy with how the piece turned out. Thanks to Stephen Najarian, and Alex Gustafson, for giving me advice on the piece, and extra special awesome thank-yous to JDatE connoisseurs Liz Goss and Heather Hudson, for their very helpful suggestions to help me nail the piece as close to the book as possible.

Heather in particular offered me some really great insight to the piece and pointed out something really important about the piece as a whole. In the end, the piece as it was was doomed to fail as a fully fleshed out illustration for a general audience. It lacks the storytelling elements necessary to convey a clear story to the viewer and winds up just being a meat monster in a bedroom without any context. I spent so much time trying to nail the details and rendering everything as best I could, but because I didn't plan it out better, there will always be something missing.

It was very frustrating to hear this advice, not because I felt put down, but because I knew I could have an even better piece if I hadn't missed the opportunity. It's the kind of comment that's going to rattle around in my brain come time to tackle the next piece, and it'll be all the better for it. So a sincere thank you to Heather for that push.

Still, that's not to downplay my excitement for the piece. Despite the fact that most people won't know what they're looking at, I think any JDatE fan would be able to instantly recognize this scene, as I feel like I've succeeded in depicting the description in the text. In the end I'm still left with a piece I'm very proud of.

Final

I hope you've enjoyed seeing the new piece as well as seeing the process shots throughout this post. This won't be the last JDatE piece I make, but I don't want to give too much away. I will say that it's monster related, and that's all. Lastly, speaking of Cracked.com, I'm hoping to announce some news regarding a project I worked on for them soon which I'm very excited about sharing. If you're interested in purchasing a print of the Meat Monster piece, click this link to my InPrnt shop. Alright, that's all you're getting out of me from now, go read and watch John Dies at the End!

Click the above image to go to my InPrnt shop!