Finished a new image!

I’m working on a series right now that’s more oriented towards children, as I want to put together a promotional flier with some examples of children’s illustration. This one is called the Frog King:

You can see it full size at my gallery site here.

Pretty simple in concept, just a couple of kids at the edge of a spooky forest. I wanted to do a “fairytale” scene on the dark side, so here it is:

I added lots of creepy-crawlies into the woods at various places.

You can see the larger version at my gallery site here.

The story behind the image:
My wife was coming home one night in a nasty blizzard and made it almost all the way home, but got the Jeep stuck in some snowdrifts that had blown across the road near our house. As we headed out with shovels to dig it out, the headlights in the blowing snow looked surreal…I decided to do an image based on that scene. Later, I had dropped my son off for a Boy Scouts camp and they had used snowmobiles to get the equipment back to the campground, so I took pictures of snowmobile details and worked those in too.

This was modeled and rendered in Cinema 4D, with post work and overpainting in Photoshop.

It was a fun piece to put together.

I don’t really have much time to play online games, so I kind of dabble with them for a while when a new one comes out. I tried Age of Conan for a bit when it first came out…I liked some things about it, but they apparently have no crafting in the game until you reach level 40. What’s up with that? I’m one of those strange people that actually likes crafting, so that pretty much sucks. I’m not going to play a character up till level 40 just so I can see if the crafting system is any good!!

Anyway, while looking at some of the concept art for Warhammer Online, I saw a character sketch for the Knight of Tzeentch that I thought was really cool. I thought “that would be fun to build” so I did a fan art piece:

While I’m looking forward to the game and I hope it’s good, I’m also hoping it’s not too good. If you’ve played these games you know what a crazy timesink they can be! I don’t know much about the crafting system yet, but hopefully you’ll be able to try it before level 40.

Read more about Warhammer Online.

So this is my idea of what the Angel of Death might look like. It feels great to finally have a new piece done, and I am starting to think about what the next one will be. I have foolishly made a New Years resolution that I will finish 10 new images this year. (!) That’s a lot considering how busy my job keeps me, especially in the summer/fall, but I’m determined to goof off less, and make more art.

You can see the full-size version at my gallery site, here.

Mrs. Foree is the Art teacher at Spring Creek Elementary, and she thought it might be nice if I could give a talk about what I do, and how some of it’s done. So last Monday, I gave a talk to the 5th grade classes and showed my artwork, as well as an introduction to 2D and 3D Art on the computer, and talked about my job at Insomniac Games.

I had a great time, and wanted to thank Mrs. Foree, Spring Creek Elementary School, and all the students who came to the assembly! Click on the image below for a larger view.

I’m an artist with a fascination for Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror.

I live out in the middle of nowhere, in a town called Spring Creek, Nevada near the foothills of the Ruby mountains. I came here to escape the city and enjoy the beauty of the wide open spaces and clear, starlit skies.

I have way too many hobbies, including photography, blogging, gardening, aquarium fish, computer games, cooking, carpentry, painting, and computer graphics. I will never be bored.

Professionally, I work as a lighting artist for Insomniac Games. We make games for the Playstation. The job of a lighting artist in the realm of computer games is actually pretty similar to lighting in the real world, it’s just that the environments we light don’t actually exist, except in a computer. Pretty freaky, huh?

This blog site is where I bitch and moan about various things, but also mention useful items that I sometimes stumble upon. When I first heard about blogging, I thought “why would anyone want to do that?” But after starting to read other people’s blogs, I decided they were kind of interesting in a “fly on the wall” sort of way. You’re basically listening in on someone’s life, which for me anyway, beats reality TV all to hell.

So here I am.

My artwork can be seen at my gallery website, Cybergooch.com.