Adventures with Applibot

I have been doing some work for Applibot's Legend of the Cryptids lately and it has been a blast so far. Here are a few of the pieces I have painted for them to date.

The Ruler of Shadows

The Military Undead

Darkness

Eidolon and the Phantom Beast

Theros Cards

Here are a couple cards that I had in the Theros set.  Very fun world to work in.

Ordeal of Erebos

Voyaging Satyr

New MtG Cards: Dragon's Maze and M14

Here are a few recent cards I did for Magic the Gathering.

Ætherling - MtG Dragon's Maze

Ruric Thar, The Unbowed - MtG Dragon's Maze

Syphon Sliver - MtG M14

Dawnstrike Paladin - MtG M14

The funny thing about this piece last is that it was one of the very first cards I ever painted for MtG.  I guess they finally ended up using it, which is great!  I did it along with the card Sneak Attack (below) which was only available in a promo pack.

Sneak Attack - Promo Card

Theros!!!

With the announcement of Magic the Gathering's latest release of Theros, here is some of the key art I created.  Both feature the planeswalker Elspeth.

Elspeth slays the Hydra

Detail

Elspeth Box Art

Detail

The Sundering continues....with Isteval

Late last year I designed a new character for Jon Schindehette at D&D.  He was to be named Isteval.  The writers at D&D provided me with an awesome description of an old paladin who's glory days were well behind him now, yet he still had some stature and pride.

Isteval Concept Art

Ultimately he was to be part of a large lineup of characters for the next Sundering adventure for Forgotten Realms. This was another layered image containing many characters I had addressed in some other covers for D&D as well as a few new ones.

The Sundering - Make Your Story Legend

Each character had to be on its own layer, very much like the previous Sundering image I created.  Here are a few shots of some of the layers as well as a few closeups.  The full image ended up being pretty enormous. I had a blast working on this one.

 I also had to go into some detail for the stained glass window in the background.

The Sundering Stained Glass

Finally, the crew at D&D ended up putting together some pretty amazing stuff.  They had a cinematic video created that featured Isteval in full 3 dimensional action walking around in a scene which also contained my stained glass window.  I was completely floored when I saw all this.  I never imagined my character coming to life like this.  Huge thanks and congratulations to everyone at D&D that made this happen.  

You can find the full video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2W__zxJroio&feature=share

The main Sundering site: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/sundering.aspx

Jon also did a nice write up about mere here, discussing my time working with D&D over the years:  http://www.wizards.com/dnd/article.aspx?x=dnd_4dreye_20130807

Much more to come.  I am sorry for the delay in posting.

Magic Update - Ravnica and Gatecrash

I think I have only posted one of my Magic card illustration so far.  I have fallen a bit behind so here is a big update of many of the pieces that have been recently released.
From the Return to Ravnica Set:

Martial Law

Chaos Imps

Thrill-Kill Assassin

And from the recently released Gatecrash:

Firefist Striker

Gyre Sage

Domri Rade - Planeswalker

Aurelia's Fury

Vizkopa Guildmage

Cheers!

Happy New Year

Happy New Year to all!!  I painted this portrait of Sir Peter Jackson and month or so back. After recently enjoying The Hobbit film, I thought I would share it before the year's end.

Rise of the Underdark 3

Well, I finished these Rise of the Underdark images many months ago (nearly a year), but the time has finally come to show the last piece in the set.  Here are the previous ones if you missed them.  Underdark 1, Underdark 2.

This project certainly took some doing as each piece got a little more complex as we went along.  When I reached the last image the AD, Melissa Rapier, really wanted an explosion which the other pieces would lead up to.  The burning of the world and the complete rise of the Drow and the Underdark.

Some details

Here is some process work.

Initially I had a pretty different idea with a large monster behind the main figure.  That was scrapped and a larger scene with more figures and depth was worked out.

We also played around with the main figure and how he should fit in the scene.  In the end I opted to have him set back more in the haze of fire.

Here is the final pencil before I got into all the layered figures.

Finally,  here is how all the layered played out.

Stone of Tymora

A little while back I completed a cover for R.A. and Geno Salvatore's latest novel "Stone of Tymora".  I worked with the always awesome Jon Schindehette on this one.

Here is a little closeup of Asbeel, the main villian.

The Sundering

A few months back Jon Schindehette asked me to do a large character lineup for a new series of novels coming out from D&D.  The project was titled "The Sundering" and was debuted at GenCon a few weeks back.  The character lineup had a double purpose, requiring the six main characters up front to also exist, vignetted, on their own backgrounds for each novel.  It was a heck of a lot of fun building many of these character who had never been seen before in this format.

 
Figuring out where to start on this project was a challenge, not to mention the entire project took quite some time to complete.  I came to a realization that I had to fit all the character into the lineup at the very beginning before trying to solve the six main characters' individual covers.  I decided to do a sort of rough pen and ink style sketch of the whole lineup and use that as my starting point. It worked out great in the end because Jon decided to use that very drawing as promotional material in previewing "The Sundering".

Drizzt and Guen were my starting points because they are right in the center of the lineup as well as being the most iconic of the characters.  I am sure many are familiar with Todd Lockwood's amazing work with the duo. Once I had developed all the characters in the lineup and had them working together in the scene I could move onto designing background for the 6 main figures. These would be the jackets for each respective character's novel.

While the project took a long time to complete, I certainly had a blast working on it.  Many thanks to Jon Schindehette and all the writers (R.A Salvatore, Paul Kemp, Erin Evans, Richard Lee Byers, Troy Denning, and Ed Greenwood)  for their awesome ideas along the way.  Here are some closeups on a few of my favorite characters in the lineup, and a zoomed in set of them all together. 

 Drizzt

 Elminster

Vasen Cale

Cheers!