Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Blast from the Past: Clone Wars Concept Art




There was a panel at Star Wars Celebration Anaheim where some previously unseen concept art for the Clone Wars was revealed. I had a couple images in the slideshow. It was good to see the unused Ahsoka design; her post padawan getup was a fun challenge.

The outfit ended up very eclectic. I even got to do a Kaminoan tribute to Hokusai on the arm band callout and a wolf-themed knife. I had no idea what a Star Wars knife was supposed to look like, so that took some tinkering.

What can I say about the Padme ship nose art? When I read in the script that the Bad Batch Clone Troopers had it on their ship and that Anakin would see it, I cracked up. I'm sorry the episodes were never finished, but the work lives on. Much more concept work from my wonderful design friends is on the StarWars.com website. Check it out!


Sunday, April 26, 2015

Princes of the Apocalypse Rough Concepts

The Dungeons & Dragons: Princes of the Apocalypse adventure book was recently released. A while back I was lucky enough to be part of the early concept phase. This was one of my favorite jobs because there was a real sense of collaboration: I would send off drawings, some of them would spark ideas with the game designers, and they would send more ideas that forked to new paths neither party had expected. Many times the art direction was, "come up with something cool."

I thought none of this art would see the light of day because it was very run-and-gun. There was little time to draw the concepts, and the finish level was supposed to be rough; just enough to show the designers the idea and give the illustrator responsible for final interior book art a visual target.

I was pleased to see that the afterword has some of my sketches. It makes me smile, but it's a bit embarrassing, as some of that stuff...oof. Definitely not gonna win any awards.

In any case, it was a pleasure to work with Wizards on Princes of the Apocalypse, and I hope everyone who plays the game has as much fun playing as I did drawing.