Operation: Paizo Portfolio of Power, Objective Complete

Yesterday I finished up a new piece for my Paizo portfolio. This one features the iconic Paizo character Feiya, and her trusty fox.

Feiya's Flee

During my portfolio review with Paizo Art Director Andrew Vallas at IlluXcon, Andrew mentioned that in order to be better considered for working with Paizo it's a good idea to show what you can do with one of their characters. This became the main goal of this illustration, to Showcase an iconic Paizo character. In addition I wanted to use this piece to emphasize my love for creatures / monsters so I specifically chose one of the characters that has an animal sidekick, as well as choosing to have the character confronting a fearsome monster.

Feiya detail

Fox detail

Monster detail

Dungeon detail 1

 Above and below are a couple little details I added to help connect the monster to its environment. I wanted to illustrate that this is the creature's home, and within there are embellishments referencing the creature, perhaps out of respect, fear, or caution. Looking at the piece afterwards I could have probably pushed this idea even further in other areas as well. I might even go back after this post and tweak a couple things.

Dungeon detail 2

That's all for today. I'm hoping to punch out at least one more piece before I send off my portfolio to Paizo again. I hope you enjoy following me build this portfolio, it's been a lot of fun so far.

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.

Art Order Submission: Nymph Challenge

 

The Art Order challenges are back and I'm ready to bring everything I've got! In past Art Order challenges I usually start off with a lot of steam, then midway through my piece I look at the other submissions in progress and get a bit intimidated and then I slow down a bit. If I notice someone doing something similar to what I'm doing I feel like I have to scrap what I have so I don't come off as copying. For this challenge I decided to hold off looking at the other entries until I was completely finished with my own, and I'm really glad I did so. I think I was able to come up with an original concept that I'm really proud of. Below are some progress shots and the full and final image..

Original concept sketch and color study

Above is the original rough sketch I came up with for my nymph. I decided to take my time considering what I wanted to do with my nymph so to avoid just jumping into something for the sake of starting. I wanted to be happy with my idea before I started drawing. I decided to go with a fungus theme as I wanted to have a big hulking fungus creature to accompany her in my illustration. I wound up getting pretty busy and also hit a rut with my concept that kept me from completing a full illustration. I got as far as a full finished drawing for the illustration, but I wasn't happy with it so I scraped it. More on that later though.

More color options and figuring out portrait

During my rut I decided to try and focus on the portrait a little bit  more so I could get into the piece again. I played around with some color ideas but decided to stick to the original colors.

Progress shots: preliminary drawing to final product

Above is an overview of the painting process where you can see how the concept changed a bit from the original sketch. I started out painting underneath my drawing in order to keep it intact for a while, painting over areas here and there to slowly get rid of the line-work. Unsure about what to do with the lips I started out painting them purple to go with her eyeshadow, but it wasn't looking too cute so I scraped it. The most drastic change for the character over the course of the painting would have to be the tone. I also originally intended on keeping the colors muted and dead looking along with giving her eyes with no pupils, just plain white. I wanted to make it feel like the fungus was taking over her body and almost possessing her. But it wasn't working for me and it wound up slowing me down. Once I decided to brighten the colors, adjust her pose and expression a bit and then add in some pupils, I really started enjoying the painting process a lot more.

After a month of hard work I finally have a finished Nymph piece that I'm proud to be submitting to Art Order. I spent a lot of time researching for this piece and gathering reference, and I really think it paid off. I may not have been able to complete a full illustration like I had originally hoped, but I have a character I'm extremely proud of and there's nothing stopping me from completing a full illustration, and I'm actually really looking forward to doing so.

Thanks to all the people who took the time to give me feedback on this piece and to everyone who showed support. I look forward to seeing the final Art Oder Nymph Challenge lineup!

Happy Holidays from Mike Burns Illustration

Christmas Goblin!!

 I just wanted to take a minute to say Happy Holidays to everyone. I hope you have a pleasant time this month and get lots of love and share some cheer. In an attempt to spread some cheer of my own I altered a few of my art pieces to make them Christmas themed...

...like Darksol, Lord of the Yule Tide

Thanks to everyone who stops by the blog. It means a lot to see people taking the time to leave comments on my page and support what I'm doing.

I've also been getting a lot more active on my Facebook page. I've been trying to make it a little more special by posting in progress sketches and updates as they happen. So swing by and check it out! That's also where you can see the 2nd Holiday themed alter I did titled "Wight Christmas".

Thanks again!

More Demon Dudies

Here are the last of my demon pieces. I'm going to give them a rest for now. I'm hoping to dive into the new Art Order challenge that's currently going on. I've really missed those challenges.

 The above guy I originally intended on being a demon, but it turned out looking too alien. There's a couple things I like about it but overall I'd call it a flop. It was a fun drawing though.

 I had a blast working on this guy. I really like the pose and the design. It took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do with the colors. I'm pretty pleased with the final.

 

I really like this portrait, I had a lot of fun drawing it and I think it looks really cool. But by the time I got to coloring in the image I realized this was too much like the Darksol portrait I did a while back. I decided I didn't want to do another face forward demon portrait. So I made the hard decision of casting this to the side and moving onto the next one. I'm still happy I did the drawing though, maybe I'll revisit this later.

This last one is a rework of an old design I came up with a couple years ago that I've been really wanting to give it a new spin and make it a technically better image. I'm really pleased with the results and it's got me wanting to go back and revisit the other stages of this monster.

My Wretched Offerings

Yesterday, the Kickstarter for "Parables & Prophecies to the Golden Ones" ended...in success! I've been hard at work doing some more demony stuff in hopes of getting in...

Me so happy, me so color!

Above is a rough color of the first demon drawing I created. I'm considering how far I want to take the coloring.

Demonus Plumpus

 Above is a new demon I came up with recently, which I really like. I originally gave him a sidekick, but I decided it was better to render them separately. Below you'll find his buddy along with a color version of the big guy...

Itty bitty baby demon

Demonus Plumpus Colorus

And that's all for now, just mainly wanted to show what I've been up to. Thanks for stopping by and keep your eyes out for the finished product of the Parables & Prophecies book! I'm really excited this project got its funding and I'm doing everything I can to try and get in. Stay tuned!