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!

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!

"Male Pattern Badness" T-Shirt Art for Cracked

I am very excited to announce that yesterday my very first project has been released on Cracked.com! A couple months back I was asked to take a Photoplasty contest entry by Darren James and turn it into a fully illustrated T-shirt design which can be seen below...

My artwork for Cracked T-shirt design "Male Pattern Badness"

"Like looking directly into the sun, some art is so powerful, so blisteringly glorious that it sears itself into your retinas and stays with you long after you look away. It reminds you that even if the rest of your life is full of wretched misery, you were at least once in the presence of magnificence and it hurt a little. This shirt is one of those arts. Also, if you looked at the image above without any protection, you're pregnant now, with a baby named freedom. You're welcome."

-The Lovely Cracked Staff

That is the actual product description for the shirt in the Cracked Dispensary, where you can buy the shirt. I couldn't have written it better myself. When the time comes for me to publish my own art book, you can bet I'll be asking Cracked for a quote. I've been a huge fan of the Cracked website for years now. They have some amazingly interesting articles dripping with a thick layer of humor, so if you like learning and laughing at the same time seriously check them out.

If you're interested in buying the shirt for yourself or for a friend, it's available in Small-2XL for Ladies and Small-3XL for Men. So what are you waiting for? 

BUY THE SHIRT HERE!

Also! In case you needed more incentive, Cracked is currently running a SALE on ALL OF THEIR SHIRTS, so check out the link HERE for the promotional code to get 15% off from now through 4th of July Weekend!

I've got more work for Cracked to be released so I'll be back to post about those when the time comes. Until then, thanks for stopping by!

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.

"The King of Winter", A Tribute to George R. R. Martin

 

George R.R. Martin "The King of Winter"

Game of Thrones is such a huge thing these days. It's everywhere, and everyone is talking about it with great excitement. Like many others, I got my first taste of the world of Westeroes (and far beyond) thanks to HBO's show based on the "Song of Ice and Fire" novels by George R. R. Martin. I watched the first 2 seasons and soon became completely consumed. After hearing how great the source material was and me being unhappy with having to wait a year for the next season, I eagerly sought out the novels and read them all, back to back to back to back to back. By the time I was done I was completely engrossed, and ever since it's been my new favorite piece of media. There's just so much to enjoy from these books, so much so that you are pretty much guaranteed to miss many of the extra golden nuggets of enjoyment first time through. I've enjoyed these books and the show so much that I'm always itching to come up with a fun idea for a painting based on the series. But because of the show's popularity, there's already tons of other fan-art out there already, so it can be tricky trying to come up with what I could paint that might stand out. Do I paint a creature? Do I paint my favorite character? My favorite scene? I thought about it and decided to paint George himself, immersed in his own world, as one of the Others. After all, he is the one true creator of all that belongs to the World of Ice and Fire, without him, we wouldn't have any of it.

I've been sitting on this idea for a while now, but I decided to finally give it a go thanks to a Tshirt design contest currently going on with Cracked.com on the topic 'Portrait of an Icon'. I'll have a post up on the step-by-step in creating this painting up in the next few days so keep an eye out if you want to see how this piece was made. Thanks for stopping by!

Buy a print of the above piece on my InPrnt shop! CLICK HERE