Revisting an old friend

I recently decided to revisit an older piece of mine and here's the final product which I'm really satisfied with!

Sometimes I really like the ideas I come up with but I can't always execute the idea as well as I'd like due to my technical skills at the time. However, when I really like an idea I can really get a craving to redo the piece.

Above is the original B&W piece I did about a year ago I think. At the time I was really happy with some elements of the piece but I felt like there was something missing (and it wasn't just color). What's great about redoing an older piece is that I have a lot of things already figured out it's just a matter of refining everything. The older version winds up being a roadmap for the new piece. I hope you like the new version!

CollegeHumor Cards: Videoitized

CollegeHumor released a video yesterday advertising the deck of playing cards I illustrated for them a few months ago. It's pretty cool seeing a bunch of people excitedly promote a product I worked on. If you are so much inclined to desire a deck of your own, or even gift one to a friend, you can purchase them here!

     

    CollegeHumor’s Favorite Funny Videos

Conventions, and me being at them.

Just wanted to let everyone know that I'll be attending a couple of conventions in the next few weeks. Those conventions are New York Comic Con and IlluXcon.

I'll only be attending the New York Comic Con on Friday, October 12. I've never been to NYCC and I'll be attending the con as a spectator. I'm planning on enjoying some entertainment panels and having fun, but there's also a panel being held by Capcom on how to get a job in the video game industry which I'm really looking forward to, so I'll be trying to squeeze in some business on the side as well. I'll even have some of my new postcards on me just in case (see below). I'm really excited to be attending the NYCC and depending on what happens I'll see about making a blog post about my experience.

As for IlluXcon, this will be my 2nd time attending the con, and I'll be setting up a table for the first time as well. The con is from November 8-11 and this is the big one for me. Over the past year I've been putting a lot of effort into taking my artwork to the next level and I'm really hoping to attract a lot attention from art directors. I'm really looking forward to making new contacts, meeting new people and catching up with old friends. Look for my table at the Showcase event where I'll have some large framed prints up on display and you can even purchase them if you'd like. Below you can see one print I already have made of my Darksol portrait. See this and many more pieces, including my General Mills Cereal Monsters Series, and grab some of my new postcards / business cards too.

I'll be posting more updates on what's in store for my Illuxcon venture so stay tuned. Let me know if you're going to the con too! I'm really looking forward to meeting tons of awesome people.

Woodland Predator

Here's my latest piece in my ongoing series I'm calling "Why You Should Hire Mike Burns". I have a habit of avoiding environments in my illustration work so for this piece I wanted to focus on establishing an environment to place my star creature in. I originally just wanted to showcase a creature (like usual) but instead I wound up giving him some prey to go after, thus creating some story, and adding to the drama of the piece and adding some story. Later on I decided to add the doe in the foreground to emphasis the story and drama even further, not to mention adding some depth to the piece.

I'm pretty happy with this piece for a lot of reasons. I think it's a lot different from the work I usually produce. I also got a very pleasing amount of useful feedback and advice from several fellow artists who really helped me push this piece to it's limits. A special tip of the hat goes to renowned creature monster illustrator Christopher Burdett. Chris gave me a lot of really helpful feedback regarding some anatomy and perspective mistakes. As an artist, there are many mistakes we get so used to making that we don't even notice that they're there. Chris noticed some problems with me piece that he struggled with in the past as well, so he knew what he was talking about. Check out his work at the above link, some killer creatures are on display.

I hope you like the new piece!

I'd also like to remind everyone (or announce for the first time in case I hadn't done so already) that I will be attending Illuxcon V, 2012. Keep an eye out for more info in a later post, right now just wanted to make sure everyone knows I'll totally be in attendance. Hope to see some of you there!

Sanbone Trio Portraits: COMPLETE

I just finished up the last of the 3 Sanbone Trio portraits (from Gitaroo Man) and I've compiled them into a single image.

Pine, Carrot & Soda

 It's been fun working on the portraits and I'm really happy with how each one turned out. For anyone who's interested in Gitaroo Man I've added a clip from the game, featuring the battle with Pine, Carrot, and Soda.

  Thanks for checking them out!

Extreme Makeover: White Walker Edition

First, I need to gush a little bit. I love Game of Thrones / A Song of Ice & Fire. I've watched both seasons of the show and I've started reading the the 3rd book, A Storm of Swords. It's an amazing story and I love all of the richly detailed characters. Even the characters I hate as people I still love as characters. Anyone who likes fantasy settings and great characters should check out the books and the show. Each version of the story has aspects that I prefer over the other and in the end I'm really happy that both versions exist. Anyways onto the artwork...

This piece started off with me wanting to do a portrait of myself as an icy, undead wight, and in the end I decided to add in some of my close friends. They know who they are. Thanks for stopping by!

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.