Reign of Winter parts 2 & 3

Covers for Pathfinder's Reign of Winter: The Shackled Hut, and Maiden, Mother, Crone. I kept the palettes limited, even the warmest hues were mixed with a little blue to maintain a very cold feel. Art direction by Sarah Robinson, cover design by Andrew Vallas.

Grayscale

Color

The finishes turned out very close to the approved sketches. The winter witch's face looked a little odd, so I completely repainted it in color, and the centaur's war hammer needed to be redesigned to match a previous reference.

Final Composites

Wookiee Navigator

Here is the first of my Star Wars work for Fantasy Flight Games new line of Star Wars gaming products. This piece is from their new Star Wars card game core set that came out in January. It is a might Wookiee and the card is aptly named... Wookiee Navigator.

Yes, the Wookiee is at a gunner station - You don't sit in one place the entire time you are in a star ship, remember that time when Han was in a gunner station?

No, this is NOT Chewbacca - From the very beginning the card had to be very much the "NOT Chewbacca" card, hence the vastly different fur color and pattern.

Now that the two things I keep hearing OVER AND OVER again are out of the way, here is the Wookiee Navigator...

Wookiee Navigator

© 2012 Fantasy Flight Games

I think in fact he is saying, "RAWR!" in the illustration. Here is the drawing that I did for this piece...

Wookiee Navigator - Drawing

© 2012 Fantasy Flight Games

It was very important that this piece read, "NOT Chewbacca" so after I submitted the original version of the final there was some concern that the piece still looked too much like Chewbacca. If you are at all familiar with how Chewbacca looks it would be immediately clear that this was not everybody's favorite Wookiee. The call to change it still came down and my art director was there to save me from myself and made sure they got the changes they wanted to see. Here is the original version...

ORIGINAL Wookiee Navigator

© 2012 Fantasy Flight Games

Here is a progression of the painting in 8 easy steps.... it is just that easy and that hard...

Wookiee Navigator - Process progression

© 2012 Fantasy Flight Games

And now a handy dandy side by side comparison of the two final stages of the Wookiee Navigator. I was really resistant to the final production Wookiee for a long time, but I think it is finally growing on me. It is hard to have such a major change made to the first piece done for a product that has been a love of mine since I was three years old. But I got over it... maybe...

Wookiee Navigator - final and original comparison

© 2012 Fantasy Flight Games

Last but not least, here is the how the actual card turned out. I think it is funny that even though it says 'Wookiee Navigator' and nowhere does it say Chewbacca people are still complaining that Chewbacca is the wrong color... oh well...

Wookiee Navigator Card

© 2012 Fantasy Flight Games

 

RAWR!

Remorseless Winter

Hey guys, wanted to share a new WoW sample piece I recently finished.  In between jobs and holidays and moving, I'm glad to finally have this portfolio piece done.  With each World of Warcraft expansion, there are new class spells and abilities along with armor sets and other content added into the game, occasionally I'll read through them and see if any sound like fun to illustrate. Most of them are great descriptions to work from. This time around, I knew I wanted to do a Death Knight piece, and came across one of the new spells called "Remorseless Winter."

Remorseless Winter

Bestiary: Ye Olde Creature Catalogue

I realized that I had not posted a recent Dungeons & Dragons monster I got to update and illustrate, time to rectify that oversight... Dragon #418 features the article, Bestiary: Ye Olde Creature Catalogue, and I was tasked with updating the wily Decapus. They call it a Decapus because it has ten arms... and because it lives in trees. Wait... Anyway, the Decapus is one of those monsters that has been around in D&D for a very long time and I was thrilled to get the chance to update it. This is how the final tentacled beast turned out...

Decapus

© 2012 Wizards of the Coast

There were some classic characteristics that I had to adhere to, but other then that the description was rather open to interpretation and I had a lot of fun making the monster come to life. Here is the drawing for the Decapus as well as a process progression of the painting...

Decapus - Drawing

© 2012 Wizards of the Coast

Decapus - Process Progression

© 2012 Wizards of the Coast

 

RAWR!