Shadowcore at Illuxcon

This past weekend was Illuxcon 4! Not only was it an amazing four days of workshops, demos, lectures, and the best in contemporary illustration work out there, it was also the first opportunity for some of the members of Shadowcore to gather in one place. Chris Rahn, Mike Sass, Christopher Burdett, Anna Christenson, and Tyler Jacobson attended Illuxcon and shared their work with all who attended. Chris Rahn and Tyler Jacobson had booths in the main show of Illuxcon. Mike Sass, Christopher Burdett, and Anna Christenson took part in the Showcase event which took place the second night of Illuxcon. The Showcase is a four hour exhibit event that allows those not in the main show to share their work with all who attended Illuxcon. I think it is safe to say we all had an amazing time and hope that the rest of Shadowcore can make it out to Illuxcon next year!

From left to right: Chris Rahn, Mike Sass, Christopher Burdett, Anna Christenson, and Tyler Jacobson.

Tyler Jacobson in his booth in the main show!

Chris Rahn in his booth in the main show!

Christopher Burdett's table in the Showcase!

Anna Christenson's table in the Showcase!

This should be Mike Sass's table in the Showcase... Sorry Mike...

*EDIT NOTE* Cynthia Sheppard was nice enough to share a photo she took at Illuxcon of Mike Sass's very impressive banner which was right next to his table. Thanks, Cynthia!

The one, the only, the Mike Sass Banner!

Everybody just goes crazy for a chance to hold a Shadowcore flyer!

We had a spiffy new flyer printed for Illuxcon so that we could spread the word and so that those not able to attend could be there in name at least. We all had them at our tables and gave them out to all that we could.

Front / Back
The Shadowcore flyer!

Even the great and powerful Jon Schindehette (Senior Creative Director at Wizards of the Coast) loves his Shadowcore flyer!

I hope that next year all twelve members of Shadowcore can make it out to Illuxcon, it is the premiere event for illustration and a super fun time to be had!

Murder and Zombies

A while back I was asked to do the following two pieces for Wizards of the Coast.  What I always try to do when approaching client work is add elements that are going to make the pieces interesting to me.  If I lose that feeling that I am learning something new or adding details and elements that I like to a piece, the image will usually fail in my mind.

In this case I wanted to play around with the point of view, and especially in the case of the Zombie painting, explore variations in skin tone and lighting (something that I've been focusing on in the year since).  The very stylized fog was also kind of a throwback to some of my earlier stylistic choices in my work.  In the case of the Bloody Murder piece, it was a good opportunity to paint some snow, and I was really interested in exploring the pink/green color scheme.  I think this was the first time I'd really pushed pink in a piece before.

Here are the final pieces:

And here is a short walk-through of the Murder painting! 

I'll always start with thumbnail sketches.  In this case, I did a bunch and then neatened a few up and sent them to the AD to see which ones she liked more.  If the deadline is very short, I don't always send thumbnails off (although I will still do them), but instead I will just send a final sketch, similar to the one below.

After thumbnail approval- or before the final sketch- I'll gather references for items that seem important to the piece.  In this case I took a few photo references for the characters, and also gathered a lot of references of houses from the internet to help inspire the setting.

So next is a sort of abridged progress.  I'll usually draw out the sketch and include values in some way.  Depending on the piece I'll sketch in values or in line, or alternating between the two- but usually it will be something more like a line drawing with some multiply layers to add value.

After that, I'll start in with a variety of multiply, color and hard light layers to get in some very rough colors.  Then I'll pick a spot and start to render, skipping around to the next areas that look interesting or are bothering me and I want to see completed.  Once everything is in, I'll just keep refining and adding details until I'm ready to call it done or I need to move on to another piece.