Melbourne – Australia

Usually I wait until I get back from my trips to blog about my MtG travels, but this time I decided it might be better to record a type of daily journal in order to save time. Usually by the time I get home I have so much work to do and so many different pictures to upload that I just end up never blogging.

Our flight to Australia ended up being pretty awesome because we got to fly Virgin Australia. I’ve always wanted to fly with Virgin, but they have such limited destinations that I never get to actually fly with them. People always talk about the cool purple lights, and the individual TV monitors. While we were in the terminal waiting for our flight there was this ad on the wall of Virgin Australia and the picture showed a desk, complete with a shelf on the wall that was full of books and even plants. I was like “no way they actually have that on the plane.” That has to be some metaphor about how cozy and awesome Virgin is that it makes you feel like you are at home. Of course when we got on the plane we had to pass by the first class section, and sure enough there were desks with bookshelves complete with books and plants. They even had a bar.

Coach, where we were, was still pretty fancy. Having your own personal tv monitor is always nice, especially when you get to choose your own movies from a selection of maybe 50 movies. I ended up watching The Adventures of Tintin, The Three Musketeers, Machinegun Preacher, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, and Cars 2. I must admit that I turned off Transformers and Cars 2 halfway through. Transformer movies always fail as soon as the transformers open their mouths. I liked the first Cars movie, but the second one didn’t interest me at all. Between catching some sleep and watching movies, the flight actually went by pretty fast even though it was a 16 hour flight.

Day 1

Well, with just getting off a 16 hour flight and the 18 hour time difference, even though we arrived at 9:30am we didn’t do much the first day. I think we both ended up crashing shortly after arriving at the hotel. I tried to stay up so that I could get back on a normal sleep schedule, but I felt like I had taken sleeping pills or something. We were finally able to drag ourselves out of bed and go outside.

Melbourne has a very San Francisco feel to it. The public transportation is very similar to the Muni in San Fran. The other similarity is that Melbourne is extremely expensive. I think San Fran is ranked the most expensive city in the US. People always talk about how expensive Japan is too, and they are right. I never realized how expensive Melbourne was going to be. I actually think that it might be more expensive than Japan. We went to the local 7 Eleven to buy some drinks and I was shocked at the prices. A can of Coke is about 50 cents in the US. Well in Melbourne it is $3. That is an increase of 6 times! Insane. A 12 pack was $15, while you can expect to pay $3.99 in the US. You know how mini bar prices in hotel rooms are so ridiculous? Those are normal prices for things in Melbourne. I think I’m going to live in a diet of tap water while I am here. We stopped by the local GameStop and the prices there were even more ridiculous. A 3DS game which is usually $39.99 in the US was $79.99 while 360 games were $99.99+. I saw some 360 games that were $160 a pop.

Day 2

Well, I was able to fall asleep at a fairly normal time, although it was incredibly early for my standards. Going to bed at 10pm might seem normal for some people, but I usually stay up until 3am. Waking up at 6am is also not normal for me, but I guess it is pretty good for an 18 hour time difference. We ended up staying in the hotel for most of the day because I had to work and my wife was feeling under the weather. It is crazy how much work you get done when you wake up at 6am. I ended up finishing a Magic card and wrote part of this blog before breakfast. I also ended up knocking out 26 alterations and worked on another Magic card.

Day 3

The breakfast at the hotel was very good. I’ve actually noticed that hotel breakfasts in other countries are always extremely good…and free. In the US the only free breakfast consists of a muffin. If you want a real breakfast in the US you usually have to pay for it. The apple juice here was actually the best apple juice I have ever had. Their peaches were also incredibly good. Speaking of having to pay for stuff in the US, I’ve also noticed that the US is the only country that charges for carts at the airport. All other airports give them to you for free. Most countries also don’t tip, but in the US you are expected to tip for almost everything.

We were walking around downtown and decided to get some Starbucks, and again I was shocked at the price. Normally two venti PMFs are $9.90 where I live, but here it was about $18, double the price. Not to mention the venti here is actually the size of the grande in the states. I then went to a fast food place and ordered a burger, not a combo meal. Just a burger ended up being $10. It makes me wonder what minimum wage is here considering everything is extremely expensive. I dunno though, from what I heard the pay there is similar to pay in the US, and some full-time positions don’t even offer any benefits. Seems pretty crazy to me.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the city so far. I would actually consider moving here, but if we did I think I would have to ask my clients to pay me more money since my current pay probably wouldn’t fly here. I’m actually curious how much the rent is here, although if you have to pay $3 for a can of Coke I might not want to know what the rent is here. One thing I noticed as we were walking around downtown and going into various shops was that the clerks were very hands off. In the US you almost have to yell at them to stop bugging you, but here they completely leave you alone. Actually, I don’t think any of them even said “hi” when we went into the store. We went into one game store and they had a shelf of Warhammer stuff and it was almost like the Daarken shelf because almost every product on the shelf was one of the covers I painted. It was cool being able to see some of my covers since I haven’t actually seen most of them in print before.

I noticed that there aren’t any homeless people here. In San Fran you can’t go 30 feet without being accosted by homeless people. Last time I was there the homeless people were starting to get really aggressive if you didn’t give them money. This city is incredibly clean; it reminds me of Japan in that regard. Now that I think about it, I don’t think I remember seeing any trash on the street. I’m not sure if there is some anti-homeless law here or something, but it is refreshing not having to push through throngs of stinky homeless people in order to get to your destination.

The weather is also a lot like San Francisco. I can see why some people were telling me that Melbourne is their favorite city in the world.

There is only one more day before I gotta go to the Grand Prix. I’m not sure what we are going to do, maybe we will check out the zoo.

Day 4

Instead of the zoo we ended up going to the museum. By the time we walked over there, I was already tired. I am so completely out of shape. I noticed that almost everyone there had really big calves…I guess most Americans are used to sitting around or driving everywhere. It was only a 20 minute walk, but I’m used to walking 0 minutes.

They had a pygmy blue whale skeleton near the entrance and a bunch of dinosaur skeletons on display. The dinosaurs were by far the best part of the entire museum, although they didn’t have very many. I think in terms of dinosaur museums, the best one I have been to was in DC. They also had a lot of spiders and insects, but the smell was so overpowering that I had to leave that part of the exhibit. It was crazy how strong the smell was even though they were all behind glass.

Day 5-6

The show was great. Not as many people were at the GP when compared to some of the GPs in the US, but they still had a little over 500 people I think. The GP in Austin and DC had about 2,000. I was busy the entire time and had to turn away a lot of people, but at least it wasn’t madness like it was in DC. I think I almost died at that show. I remember trying to take one bathroom break after working for like 8 hours straight and the fans got really mad at me. Working at these shows is a lot harder than my normal workday, but they are a lot of fun. The fans in Australia were great. Everyone was very nice and friendly. I got to meet fellow Magic artist Adam Paquette. He is a great guy and has created some awesome land cards. Grrrr, how come I never get any land cards??

As usual I spent most of my time creating alterations for the fans. The types of requests I received ranged everywhere from Sesame Street to Star Wars, which is funny because most of the time I end up drawing things that I am not typically known for. For example, one girl asked me to draw Hello Kitty and Stitch. Is it bad that I had the most fun out of the entire show drawing Stitch instead of scary zombies and evil warriors? I have a reputation to maintain!

Wellington – New Zealand

Ahhhh, New Zealand. I thought Australia was awesome, but I think New Zealand wins. While we didn’t get to go on very many hiking trips or even go outside of Wellington, it was still amazing. The first couple of days we ended up just relaxing and walking around the town a bit. We had initially planned on going to see Hobbiton, but I didn’t realize that it was a 6-7 hour drive from Wellington. There goes that idea. I even tried looking into using the train to get around, but most of the locations I was interested in were still 6+ hours away in one direction. I wish we had more time, or maybe if I had planned the trip better.

LotR Locations

I went looking around and found some tours around Wellington that visit all of the Lord of the Rings shooting locations. That seemed like a good way to get around Wellington and see some cool locations to boot. We ended up going with Rover tour. It was definitely worth the money and the tour guide was really good. I recommend them to anyone going to Wellington.

Talk about a nerd filled day! It was funny because almost everything the tour guide mentioned was straight from the LoTR extras, so I already knew most of it. It was still awesome seeing all of the locations. What is really crazy is that you will be in a dense forest that looks like it hasn’t been touched by man, but then you walk 50 feet away and you are in the middle of Wellington. It was really strange having that kind of juxtaposition. It was almost like playing WoW. You know how you can go from a desert zone and then the zone next door is a jungle and then the next one is covered in snow. New Zealand is kind of like that. I heard that there is a 7 day hike you can go on and you basically travel through every climate type there is.

The first image was where Helm’s Deep and Minas Tirith were built and filmed. They were built in an active rock quarry, so they had to basically ask the city to stop working for the entire time they were building and filming the shots.

Next we went to where the “Get off the Road” scene was filmed in Mount Victoria. This location was right in the middle of town, so it was weird going into a dense forest and then popping out in the middle of downtown. The square image is the scene where the hobbits rolled down the hill and fell onto some mushrooms. The part where they jumped behind a tree to hide from the Black Rider didn’t look the same at all because the tree in the film wasn’t real, so the actual location doesn’t look anything like the movie. I passed on the photo opportunity since there wasn’t really anything to show.

A few other shots were filmed here too. One was when they were going to the Buckleberry ferry and then there was another shot of Dunharrow when Aragorn and Theoden were looking out over their troops in the valley below.

Some of the other locations included The Great River Anduin, Rivendell, and Isengard.

Weta Cave

On Friday we met up with fellow concept artist Ben Mauro at the Weta Cave. Ben was gracious enough to show us around town since we were total Wellington noobs. We had some Dim Sum and then walked around town. Wellington is actually a lot smaller than I thought it was. You can probably walk to just about anywhere in town. You know how there is a Starbucks on every corner in the US? Well it seems like there is a Subway on every corner in Wellington.

Gotta love where Gollum is sticking that fish…that was completely unintentional, I swear!

You can’t see it in the picture, but the price for the large version of the gun was $5,500!! I must say though, it was freaking awesome looking. I wonder what customs would have thought about that if I tried to bring it through?


Oh man, the exosuit from District 9 was soooo cool. If it didn’t have an $800 price tag I would have definitely considered buying it. We almost bought a T-Rex skull, but I don’t think we would have had room to carry it on the plane.

Te Papa Museum
The next to last day we decided to go to the Te Papa Museum because the guide book said it was amazing and that everyone should visit the museum before they leave. Initially we were going to take a cab, but we found out from previous days that Wellington is fairly small, so we made the 20 minute walk to the museum. The actual design of the museum is really cool. I think the guide book said they spent something like 180 million on the museum, and it shows.

I think the layout of the museum was better than the one in Melbourne, but it lacked dinosaurs! They did have a pygmy blue whale skeleton like the Melbourne museum though, and a giant squid. I did find that I am more interested in dinosaurs and ancient civilizations as opposed to more recent civilizations. If they had dinosaurs and knights I would have been all over it. It was still a fun experience, but we ended up breezing through most of the exhibits.

Random Stuff
Here are a few more random pictures that I took from around town and around our hotel. People always ask me what camera I use, which is funny because I just use my iPhone. I have the older iPhone 4, so I don’t even have the fancy 4S camera.

Back to Australia??

Well, we had to fly back to Australia from New Zealand before we could fly back to the US. I didn’t really want to fly to two different countries in the same day (especially if one flight was delayed or canceled), so we spent one more day in Australia before flying back to the US.

We ended up just staying at the hotel at the airport. It was nice not having to wake up super early to catch a shuttle to the airport. The burger there was freaking awesome. I mean it had an egg on it, how can you beat that??

I love flying from West to East because the flight time is always shorter due to the rotation of the Earth. The flight back was around 13.5 hours instead of 16. Several movies later and an hour or two of sleep and we were back home. I had an amazing time and I am very thankful for having a job that allows me to travel around the world. Thank you to all of the fans that showed up to the show, I hope everyone had a good time!

What is awesome about Moo is that you are allowed to use up to 50 different images on your business card without any additional fees, so it is great for an artist! The cards are double-sided and have rounded corners. The stock is pretty amazing, and I didn’t even get the most expensive stock either. I am extremely impressed with the quality. The cards also came inside these black boxes, which are great for carrying around your cards. I ended up getting 3 black boxes with my order. I actually wasn’t even expecting that. I dunno, maybe they mentioned it on their site and I overlooked it, but it was a nice surprise. The blue part on the box is removable if you just want a solid black box. Also for those that care, the paper is 100% recycled from post consumer waste, 100% recyclable, and the factory that makes the cards is completely powered by wind generators.

I must say, I am pretty excited to finally have some real business cards to hand out at shows. I always felt really stupid when people asked for business cards and I didn’t have any available. I remember at the Wizard World Con in Chicago after the first day I ran to Kinko’s in the hotel and printed some temporary cards and then cut them all out by hand, haha. That was pretty sad. Anyway, I will have a handful of these cards available for the Magic: The Gathering Grand Prix in Australia in a couple of weeks and also for the Spectrum Live event, so get them while you can!

I didn’t record my painting process, but I did save some process images. This painting was painted in Photoshop CS5 on my Asus EP121. I don’t remember exactly how long it took, but I think I spent a couple of hours on it. I don’t have much free time anymore, so a 3 hour painting can take me several days to finish simply because I’m always working on freelance.

When I first started this painting I didn’t plan on painting the whole thing. I only planned on doing a quick black and white study of the face. I actually didn’t even plan on painting a likeness because I just wanted to use the angle as reference in case I ever made a painting like this in the future.

After the initial block-in, I decided to go ahead and paint a likeness, but I still wasn’t going to go past painting the face in black and white. As you can see I started out by painting shapes instead of doing a line drawing. I also didn’t measure anything because I wasn’t really planning on making a likeness and I tend to draw by just eyeballing things. This of course can cause me to spend a lot of time later on moving things around. I did another study from a photo the other day where I used the grid method to map things out, so I probably should have done that on this one too. Again, it was probably mainly because I never planned on painting the whole figure.

So of course after I did the black and white painting I decided to go ahead and add color. In order to get the base colors down I created a new layer and set it to “color.” Using the color mode is a good way to add color without changing your values. If you add color with an overlay or multiply layer you will end up changing your values quite a bit. This is just a starting point for color. Once I have the base colors down, I create a new layer on top and just paint opaquely with color. I also tried to get some color variation started in this stage. I will also use adjustment layers to change around the colors to get some color variation. Color balance is a great way to get some color variation and come up with things you hadn’t really planned on. Even at this point I hadn’t planned on painting the rest of the figure.

Ok ok, I changed my mind again. After I got the color down I figured what the hell, I might as well paint the rest of the figure. Since she is wearing a transparent top, I wanted to make sure to keep it on a separate layer. It also made it easier to paint her skin underneath the clothing so that I wouldn’t have to worry about painting over and fixing the clothing. I always paint with opacity jitter set to pen pressure. Since the top was on a different layer and I wasn’t pressing down all the way on my tablet, when I paint the skin underneath you can see a little bit of the skin showing through. At this point since I already have the face painted in color, I am just painting the rest of the body with straight color.

With the base color of her torso already established, I can go in and start to refine the shapes. Even though I’m working on the arms and torso, I still go back and forth fixing things in the face. Changing some shapes, resizing things, changing angles, refining some edges, etc. One great tool to make changes without having to repaint large areas is the liquify tool. I utilize that tool a lot when I’m painting, especially if I need to push the likeness of a character. Plus painting this angle is fairly tough since I never paint this angle, so I ended up having to make a lot of changes. It is also good to put your painting down for a day or two and then come back. Many times you will notice something that you need to fix or change.

This step is just a little further along in the painting process. Again, I am still refining shapes and changing the angles of her face. I think I also increased the size of her arms a little bit and started to push her pose more. At first I was just going to leave the bottom of the painting as it is, but then I thought it might be cool to make it look like the paint was dripping down the canvas, as if maybe it was in oils and you added too much turp to your paint. I also hadn’t planned on adding the necklace, but again I changed my mind and went ahead and added it in the final version. The shadows cast by the necklace were really cool and really informed the viewer what the planes were doing. Shadows are a great way to create form, which seems a little obvious since there is no form without light.

I added a few detail shots so that you can see some of the brushstrokes a little more easily. These detail shots still aren’t at 100%. I think these are actually only 50% of the actual painting size. For the skin texture I used this really cool custom brush that I found online. It is great for simulating pores.

Here is a shot of the face. Again, this isn’t the actual size of my painting. I think it is more like around 50%. I always paint in 300 dpi just in case I ever want to go to print. I won’t be printing this painting since it is just for personal practice and I don’t own the copyright to the original photograph, but I’m so used to painting in 300 dpi that I always do it automatically.

Well, I hope you enjoyed this little peek into my painting process. Maybe next time I’ll try to record my painting process for my Enliighten site. Just remember, always make time to practice your craft! Thanks for taking a look!

What I didn’t realize was how much of a toll it would take on my fingers and wrists. The workshop was 3 hours long and I was drawing in a fairly small sketchbook, which is pretty customary if you ever attended any of the AAU workshops with me. I like being able to stand while I draw so that I can easily move around the model to find the best angle possible. It was funny because so many people kept offering me a seat. I guess holding a sketchbook with one hand for 3 hours is harder than I remember. During the last set of 5 minute poses I had to sit down and take it easy because I was experiencing some pretty bad nerve pain in my wrists. I’m going to try and attend the workshop every Sunday, hopefully my fingers and wrists will be able to hold up.

I brought my tablet PC with me too in case I wanted to try and work digitally, but 3-10 minute poses might be a little too short to work digitally. I dunno, maybe if they threw in a 20 minute pose I might consider it. I think there is also something nice about being able to work with pencil again and have something physical to show people…even though I don’t really show anyone my sketchbook, hah! Maybe I should even consider getting some charcoal again…yeah I never thought I would catch myself saying that. I pretty much hated charcoal in school but now, I dunno.

These sketches range from 3-10 minutes long. I’m sure you can probably pick out which ones are which. On shorter poses I usually don’t block in the head very much, I’m much more interested in the pose. Even in the longer poses I don’t spend too long on the face simply because I am much more interested in the anatomy. Doing portraits of people is easy because you can find anyone to sit for you. Finding nude models is much harder, so I wanted to take advantage of the situation and focus on anatomy over portraits. I should probably work in a larger sketchbook too so that I can fit the whole figure in there. In some of the other drawings I did last night I made sure to include the feet.

I must say, getting back to some figure drawing was awesome. I think the thing I liked the most about school was going to the weekly figure drawing workshops. I dunno, there is something that I really enjoy about drawing the figure. Like I said before, hopefully I will be able to attend the workshop every week. If you are in the area, you should definitely think about dropping by. The school is fairly small, but it feels like it has a great community that is very close. I don’t attend the school so I felt really awkward going to a workshop where everyone else knows each other except me. Everyone was very nice and friendly and made me feel at home. See you next week CDA!

There are so many different types of swords out there from various manufacturers, so it was hard to narrow down which sword I wanted to buy. At first I bought a viking sword, but the company I bought it from was a complete nightmare. Let’s just say in the end they screwed up my order 3 times, sent me the wrong sword, and then cursed me out when I asked them to send me the correct sword that I had already paid for. So I returned the sword, got my money back, and did some more research in order to find a place that was a little more professional. It seemed that everywhere I went, I ended up back at the Sword Buyers Guide. The site has a ton of reviews and videos and I spent a long time trying to find the best sword for my money. I finally decided to go with the 1306 Medieval Knight Sword from Darksword Armory. The sword had a great review and I liked the look of the sword. Another thing that is cool about this sword is that it is historically accurate. It was modeled after the original that was found in the 14th century in the Musé des invalides, Paris, France.

You may ask “why do you need a battle ready sword?” Well, if I am going to invest in a sword, I want a real sword. I don’t want some lame fake sword that you can only hang on the wall. Sure I am buying it for reference purposes, but I always like to buy quality products just in case. Who knows, maybe the zombie apocalypse is coming soon and you know what, I’ll be ready for it.

You can read up more about the sword from the Sword Buyers Guide review. There are also some really great destruction test videos on there as well showing just how much punishment this sword can take. This sword was designed for steel on steel contact. Here are a few stats for the sword.

 
1060 Carbon Steel Blade, Tempered to a HRC of 53
Blade Length: 28”
Handle Length: 7”
Point of Balance: 4.5”
Weight: 3lbs 2oz

Considering this is my first sword, I am pretty happy. The only thing I was a little disappointed with was the scabbard. The sword doesn’t fit very well in the scabbard and rattles around a lot. The sword also falls out of the scabbard very easily since it doesn’t fit the sword. I probably won’t be running through a battlefield wearing my sword, but you always want the things you buy to be of a certain quality. I must admit though, I was walking around my apartment today wearing my sword.

It would be awesome to go chop up some bottles or chicken carcasses, but I am too afraid that I would mess up my sword or cut through my leg or something. Actually, I think I’m more worried about messing up my sword than hurting myself, hah.

This is actually perfect timing because I am in the process of painting a magazine cover of a knight wielding a sword. I shot some reference earlier today with my sword, so I hope to put it to good use later on today when I work on my painting. I think the next sword I want to buy is a katana, or maybe a two-handed sword, I dunno. Actually, I think I might want to buy a helmet next instead of another sword. Maybe one day I will have a full suit of armor, hah!

When Big Huge Games first approached me to design a Shepard inspired armor for Kingdoms of Amalur, to say I was excited is a gross understatement. Mass Effect has always been one of my favorite games, so I was honored to design a Mass Effect armor for the hero in KoA. I also designed the female version of the armor and I am happy to say that I was allowed to keep the covered up style from Mass Effect’s female armor designs. So for all the fans out there that want functional female armor, you should be happy.  It was really fun trying to translate some of the ME design cues into a fantasy based world while not going too far into the sci-fi realm. Hopefully the Mass Effect fans won’t be disappointed.

Several months later Big Huge Games e-mailed me again about creating a marketing illustration featuring both of my armor designs for the Mass Effect 3 and Kingdoms of Amalur crossover. Shepard’s armor is actually an armor I designed previously for Kingdoms of Amalur, with the exception of the helmet. I believe Todd McFarlane may have designed the helmet. I think he did a great job on the helmet and I think it really fits in with the Mass Effect world while still staying true to my armor design. That is the other crazy thing about working with Big Huge Games. Not only do I get to work on awesome promos with games like Mass Effect 3, but I get to work with Todd McFarlane who has been one of my art heroes since I was a kid. My picture with him when I was 12 still cracks me up.

As it is with most illustrations, this one was not without its trials and tribulations. Since this was a very high profile illustration from two different games and three different companies, a lot of people had their hands in it. Not only did I need approvals from Big Huge Games, but I also had to get approvals from EA and BioWare.

The first final I turned in had a completely different background. Since I was illustrating two different characters from different games and different genres, I tried to keep the background fairly generic. I wanted one that looked like it could possibly belong to both worlds. I really wanted to avoid any architecture since that would be very hard to fit in both worlds.

The image to the left is the mockup I received of the changes they wanted. What I didn’t expect was to completely redo the entire background. I hadn’t kept my characters on separate layers either, so I needed to go back and mask them out before repainting the background. I also need to make the changes by the next day. It was decided that Shepard needed the iconic background from Mass Effect 3 and the hero from Kingdoms of Amalur needed one as well. Trying to make two different backgrounds, one of which was from space looking down on a planet while the other one was on the surface of a planet, mesh together was a little challenging. I didn’t really want two separate backgrounds with a harsh transition down the middle, so I tried to blend them a little more by using that large rock shard element as the transition point.

As soon as I started blocking in the dark space behind Shepard I realized that my lighting scheme on Shepard was now completely off. I had to rethink my lighting scheme in order to make Shepard fit a little more with his surroundings. I also needed to repaint the Omniblade daggers and make a few other little changes. Ten hours later I turned in my revisions and got approval from all three companies! A few weeks later my painting was released and the crossover was announced. Now hopefully I’ll see it in stores!

Anyway, Worlds San Fran was awesome. I have never been to a worlds event before and it was amazing being in one place where there were so many people from different countries. There were also 3 other great artists there, none of which I had met before. It is even funnier because two of them, Jason Chan and Chris Rahn, both graduated from my school. In fact, Chris Rahn was there when I was there…and we had classes in the same building but I don’t remember ever seeing him. Matt Cavotta was there too, but who cares about that guy! I kid. Matt is awesome, even though he didn’t have computers back when he was in school. Hanging out with the artists is always one of my favorite parts about going to MtG events. We had some pretty tasty food…too bad Jason missed out!

It was good to be back in San Francisco. Both my wife and I went to school there, so it was awesome to visit all our old stomping grounds and hang out with old friends. It is always sad when you find out some of your favorite places are gone, like Borders in Union Square and The Crepe House on Post. Luckily I was still able to get my okonomiyaki in Japantown. If that place ever went out of business I would probably cry. Actually, I think almost all of the places we went back to eat at were Japanese places and Thai places…well we actually went to the same Thai place twice. Osha ftw.

Japantown is probably my favorite place in San Fran. It is always so nice and quiet there, plus they have awesome food and the Kinokuniya bookstore! The last time we went to San Fran we stayed in Japantown, which was good and bad because the shopping mall was just right outside the hotel. This time we were out by the Warf. It was funny because when we used to live there, walking from Pier 39 to Japantown was cake, but now I wonder how I ever did it. I am so out of shape now.

I ended up scoring a bunch of really cool books from Kinokuniya. The Hyper Angle books are awesome for reference. I also decided that maybe I should get back into drawing with pens and pencils. I’ve been wanting to go to some figure drawing workshops, so maybe this will give me a push in the right direction. There are actually some right by my house too….

Like I said before, we stayed at the Argonaut Hotel by Pier 39. I’ve never been there before, but it was a really cool hotel. I liked it a lot. All of the staff there were super nice and helpful. There is a museum in the hotel too, but unfortunately the new wing is still under construction. As you might expect, everything in the hotel was ship-themed. I took this picture of some lounge chairs in the lobby, but for some reason they look like little miniature toys.

I guess there isn’t really any point of reference and the depth of field filter made it look super tiny. During the entire trip the lobby was always full of Magic players. Not just any Magic players, but hall of fame Magic players. Pretty crazy.

Apparently my Dad has his own brand of water. He never told me about this new venture!

The best thing about Pier 39…mini donuts. That’s what I’m talking about. I probably should have ordered the big bag. I think these were consumed in a few seconds. Oh you tasty rings of evil. My belly curses you.

We went to Urban Outfitters on Powell and apparently Mimobots now come in blind boxes. I had to get a few. My Mimobot army has now grown to 5. In case you were ever wondering, you are not supposed to eat USB flash drives. You never know…I guess some electronics do look tasty.

Now for some alterations! This was the show for doing alterations on other artist’s cards. What was funnier is that several times I did alterations on Jason’s cards, even though he was sitting right next to me. Don’t hate me Jason! The fans demanded it! Just recently I started doing alterations with DecoColor paint pens. I really like using them because they are extremely opaque and dry fairly quickly. One reason I always hated doing alters in the past was because it is hard to make something look decent with only a black Sharpie and maybe a gold or silver pen. At least with these I can get a little more detailed and produce something that doesn’t look like total crap. The only problem is that they take a little longer to do.

So in conclusion, Worlds was great and I want to thank everyone for coming out to the show and standing in line. I had a great time and I’ll see you in Austin!

Due to the fact that some people might be looking for actual painting tutorials at the launch, I decided to create a special debut tutorial going over a speed painting of a character. I still felt that this wasn’t enough for the launch, so I went ahead and included a still life painting of a kettle. I wanted to show what I will be working towards with these tutorials and that people need to learn the fundamentals before they learn the “cool” stuff. Unfortunately I did some last minute panicking and didn’t record the audio for the metal kettle still life until around 9:00pm. It took about an hour to render the video and then another 80 minutes to upload to Vimeo, and then it has to convert the file…so the still life tutorial might not be ready until maybe around 12:30am (for those of you who are attending the midnight launch).

In any case, I hope you all enjoy the site and keep coming back for the new tutorials. Remember, new tutorials will be posted every Wednesday and Friday. Be sure to leave comments and visit the forums! See you there!

The first day was extremely busy. I ended up signing/drawing for 10.5 hours and I still had 30 alterations to take back to the hotel room. When I woke up on Sunday morning I was pretty sick. I ended up having a wicked fever during the whole show on Sunday. 8 hours later and I was able to go back to my hotel room and crash. I think I went to bed around 8pm that night.

This was the second show I was able to use my new DecoColor pens to do my alterations. I like them a lot more, but they tend to take longer to create. This show marked the debut of my new and improved Bobaghast!

I also tried to come up with some new alterations. Altering Birthing Pod is always a tricky one because there aren’t very many things that seem appropriate. I came up with the idea to turn it into a Chestburster, which was pretty fun to create. I still have around 18 more alterations and 2 playmats to do at home before Worlds in San Francisco next week. It is gonna be a busy week!

As is customary when I go on trips, I always forget my camera. I had to make due with my iPhone. We actually stayed off the beaten path in a hotel called Alexis Park. I wasn’t very fond of the hotel considering no one was around, there was no TV remote in the room (in order to watcht the TV you had to have the remote), the heater didn’t work, and we had problems with the booking. They tried to kick us out after 2 nights, even though we paid for 5 nights. The room was pretty cool, despite the minor setbacks. Cabbing it back and forth between our hotel and the strip was a bit of a pain too since not many cabs came out to the boondocks. I must say, some of the cab drivers were really interesting. We had one that is a doctor. He had practiced in India for over 20 years and then came to America to practice here, only to find out he is being forced to go back to school and start completely over before he is allowed to practice. Now he has to drive a cab in order to help pay for his schooling.

On Thursday we went to see Cirque Du Soleil’s Ka. As usual, it was an amazing show. I still think O is the best one, but Ka is great too. Some of the things they do with the set is insane. I had to sneak shots of the set before the show started just because it is so cool looking. The costumes are amazing in Ka. Some of them really inspired me to create some character designs, so I may have to sit down and do some quick paintings.

I also had to go out and get the soundtrack to Ka. It is also really great, but again, I still think O is the best. The soundtrack to O really reminds me of Final Fantasy Cyrstal Chronicles for the GameCube. Whenever I hear the soundtrack I always picture Selkies and Lilties running around. I really liked the soundtrack to Iris as well, but unfortunately they haven’t finished making it yet. I believe it is out later this month.

Right before the show we decided to eat at Shibuya. It was probably some of the best food I have had. The Wagyu Skirt Steak was amazing and definitely worth trying at least once in your life. I would rate it up there with the food I had in Japan. The Spider Roll is also very good, probably one of the best Spider Rolls I have had. The atmosphere of the restaurant is great as well, but I think most things in Vegas look really cool.

Wagyu Skirt Steak

Spider Roll

We also dropped by the Shark Reef, Bodies and Titanic exhibit, but unfortunately you are not allowed to take any pictures. I’ve been wanting to see the Bodies exhibit for a long time, and it didn’t disappoint. I really wished I had brought along a sketchbook, but I dunno if they would have let me draw from the bodies.

The Shark Reef in Mandalay Bay is really cool, but I feel like it is pretty small. I think we went through the whole thing in like 20 minutes. I took a lot of pictures, but most of them are pretty blurry because I wasn’t using a flash and everything was swimming around too fast.

It was a great trip and a great show and I would like to thank everyone that came out and waited in line. I hope you had a great time! Thanks!

More random pics.






Inside the Luxor.

In any case, this was for the Gravehammer album by the death metal band Vore. They were a great group to work with and it was really fun to create this fiery demon for their cover. Be sure to drop by their page and pick up the album when it comes out!

I am pretty happy with the way this illustration came out. It is always funny how people tend to like the paintings I didn’t spend as much time on more than paintings that take forever to paint. Maybe longer paintings end up losing the initial vitality and dynamism or maybe I lose a part of myself by refining the brush stokes too much. I think I only ended up spending a day and a half painting this cover. Maybe another reason is that it was more of a personal piece with more freedom. I didn’t have to answer to clients wanting more cleavage or making it look more like movie/game x. I was really able to take a very brief description and run with it. Luckily the guys trusted me enough to give me free reign.

One tough thing with this illustration was that I had to incorporate the band’s logo into his armor design. The logo is a very circular logo, so I wasn’t sure exactly how to tie it into the armor design. The brief mentioned that maybe it was a part of his chest armor, so I had to figure out how to place it without it looking silly or pasted on. I figured maybe since this is a fiery demon, maybe the logo is cut into his armor and you can see the fiery core of the demon shining through.

The hammer design was another thing I wasn’t too sure about. Since the name of the album was Gravehammer, I knew I had to create something unique. Since much of his armor design seemed to be fashioned from plates hammered together, I thought it could be a good look for the hammer too. A little fire never hurts either!

I hope you enjoyed this little look into my process of creating the Gravehammer illustration. Thanks for looking!