Thanks for looking!

Bad guys this time around ;) These, as the last bunch, are © Øone Games

I’m working on some new stuff for FantasyFlight games these days, and I can’t wait to show you guys when the NDA lifts! Might be a while though, so I’ll try to post other stuff on here whenever I have the chance!

As always; thanks for stopping by!

It seems like forever since I made a blog post…  sorry about that (and to you guys that have been naggin’ me about posting new stuff; thank you! It helps me keep up! )

I did art on a table top game called “Venture” from Øone Games a few months back, and now it’s out!! It is always awesome to see the product with the art implemented! This is the first time I’ve worked on a table top, so I was pretty stoked to see the images of the finished thing!

I did characters, item cards, a screen for the game master and the box cover!

Here is the box cover:

The Evil Keeper Screen (click for full image):

And some of the characters:

All of the above images are © Øone Games

I had a great time working with Øone Games! Doing fantasy art like this is always fun, and one of the reasons I got into the business!
I’ll be back with more art from Venture later on!

Hope you guys like!

I haven’t blogged since April about what I’ve been up to lately..Jeez..

In May I started working at a game developer called Snowcastle in Oslo. I was hired on to do concept art on their first full length game and I’m having a blast these days! I’ve only been with them a couple of months, but it’s a great studio to work at! Lots of laughs and I’m learning new ways to work (I’ll show you guys results when I can! Promise! ;) ) and the guys I work with are great!

So I’m working full time for them, while doing freelance art like I posted now, collectible card games, and all kinds of cool stuff. Kinda eats into the time I have for blogging, but I’ll try to be good and post more!

I’m also on twitter, if you want more inane day to day stuff.. ;)

Thanks for stopping by people!

I did the concept art for this robot dude! I can’t show the concept art just yet, but when I saw this I got stoked and wanted to share:

This image is copyright Storyline Studios!

Actually I wasn’t aware that they were going to do this in stereoscopic 3D, but that only made it more awesome!

I have been working my ass off on three different gigs lately so there hasn’t been much time for anything but working and sleeping. I really wanted to share something though, and I got the green light from Cosmic Apple to show one of the character designs I’ve done for a movie they’re producing in collaboration with Rowbot Street.  Doing concept art for movies is great! I’ve had a lot of fun working with Dan Rowbottom who is writing and directing the thing. It is currently in pre-production, and it’s already started to pop op on various movie sites around the net, which is awesome! Cosmic Apple is also doing a podcast series during the production. The second one is out now and I’m in it stumbling over words and trying to be coherent about what a concept artist does on a film.. haha.. have a look at it here: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xcz5ly_raven-waiting-podcast-episode-2_shortfilms.

Anyways.. here is the character/creature design I was allowed to show:

Thank you for letting me put it on here, Dan!

It’s gonna be awesome to see the guys I’ve designed walk around on screen!

And the title promised a photoshop tip as well; I was thinking about composing pictures and placing focal points. So I wanted to make a way to get the rule of thirds as a guide when I’m doing the composition sketches and such.

Some of you guys might have already found this one out, but I wanted to share nonetheless.

So here it is; the rule of thirds tool type thingamajig:

Step 1:

Step 2:

And you’re done! You can turn off and on the guides by pressing CTRL+’

The beauty of this thing is the guides will readjust regardless of your canvas size or pixel count :)

Hope some of you found it useful!

Thanks for stopping by!

I’ll post an update in the previous post on the illustration later on today.

So I did a rough sketch yesterday I’ll be continuing on today. In the last post I said I might do a projects page, so consider this a soft start in the blog :)

I don’t think I’ve ever done a werewolf illustration before, so now I’m going to.. haha.. I decided to put the scene into a passenger car on a train.. Felt a little more original than having them fight in the woods :) Also it adds sort of a claustrophobic feel to it (I hope). It’s hard to run away in such cramped quarters. I’ll update later on today with where this has ended up.. gonna split my time between work and this one until it’s done. There will probably be a lot of changes before It’s finished.. I’m just having fun with it :)

Right, need to get on with some other work, so here is where it’s at now.. still very much a WIP :)

I’ve changed the design on the head of the werewolf. I wanted it to be something more in between a man and a beast. The first design looked too much like a dog.

Added an overlay layer and dumped some color in with the paintbucket tool in order to be sure I got color in on everything. Nowadays I’m usually working directly in color, or at least switching very early to color, but seeing as how this piece started as a fun sketch, and I was just messing around with the design, the color came in later :)

I’ve added some reds in the focal areas trying to create a triangle-ish composition going from the werewolf head, to the dude on the floor to the guy shooting.

I’ve also started thinking a bit more about the atmosphere. I wanted to give this piece a cinematic feel, and go more for dramatic lighting rather than pushing “natural light”. Like a DOP on a movie will put a spot off the side if it gives off a cool light, even though it’s not necessarily the way the light would’ve behaved in real life.

Still a lot to be resolved about the passenger car itself, and the characters, of course, but I wanted to give myself a focal point early on so I can gauge the detail level off of that.

So I noodled a bit more on it today. Rendered out a little on the werewolf and the dude shooting, started correcting a lot of the lines of the passenger car. If I had done this for a job, I would’ve had a stage in between the sketch and where I’m at now where I would’ve made sure the perspective lines were more correct from the start of the illustration, but hey.. it’s all for fun, right? :)

Trying to figure out a little more of the light as well. Putting some light that bounces off the floor, to push the shadows a little more. I’ve also started to think a bit more about my edge control going in with a soft brush to round off some edges.. up until this point I’ve used almost exclusively the standard round hard brush with size to pressure and opacity at 100%.

Had some huge issues with the shooter guy’s fedora, it didn’t read like he was actually wearing it. One google image search later, he looked a bit better. If in doubt; get reference! :)

I’ll update the post when I do the last session on this piece.

And of course the obligatory studies ;)

Had some time today for a little speedpaint in addition to my studies! Woohoo! The concept of a hidden city in the jungle is a very cool one, and I don’t think I’ve explored it before, so I did today. I kinda like this 30 minute sketch, so I think I’ll refine it and do a finished piece of it. (Click for larger version)

I have been thinking about adding another sub page to the site for a while where I would do a more in depth look at individual projects and pieces. I would very much like your thoughts on this. If you’d find it interesting or rubbish and if it’d be nice to see some steps, thoughts and background on what I do both with professional work and personal art? I’d arrange it so there would be some more meat to each post so to speak. Say if there’s a particular world I’m developing, you’d get to know a bit more than just the final pieces.

Do leave a comment on here about that! Very interested in hearing you guys’ thoughts!

Right.. and the studies :)

I’m doing some character designs for work these days, and having a blast with that!

Looks like I’m going to be doing something with ImagineFX as well for the magazine! Good times! I’m stoked! :D I’ll update on what happens there when I know for sure!