Eclipse Phase

Today, a project that I worked on a couple of months ago went on sale called "Eclipse Phase: Transhuman" by Posthuman studios. It is hard to describe the setting in a few sentences but suffice it to say, it is a Sci Fi RPG game and if you interested, you should check it out. The book has gone on sale today and can be purchased at RPG Dru Thru HERE as a .pdf and goes on sale in print format in a month or two.

These are a couple of interior illustrations that were my contributions to the book.

Cheers!

Sexy Secretary

Hah, I bet with a title like that for my blog post I'll be getting a lot more traffic ;)

Anyways, here is a new illustration that I did for Uken Games. This character is going to be featured in their game Crime Inc.You can Check it out and download it for free HERE.

The Making of Hon El

Hey Gang,

Today I am going to share my process for creating the illustration "Hon El the Dancer" for Moon Design Publications's up coming "Guide to Glorantha".

To preface this article, I'd like to explain that the world of Glorantha was created over 40 years ago and is probably the most richly detailed and complex setting that I have ever worked in. I've worked on over 20 illustrations for Moon Design Publications and pretty much all of them come with very specific and detailed art direction like the following document.

Art Direction:

OK, this is an "In-Gloranthan" piece that decorates the wall of the Temple of Hon-Eel in the city of Furthest (where the goddess Hon-Eel founded the ruling dynasty). It depicts the goddess Hon-Eel the Dancer overcoming the horse barbarians and enthralling the storm barbarians, bringing both the Lunar Way. Stylistically, this should be a cross between the color and dynamism of Etruscan tomb paintings (http://www.anatomyofnorbiton.org/images/Etruscan-monsters-fs.png) and the movement and grace of ancient Hindu-Buddhist devotional art.

 

I've attached a picture by another artist of scene from this culture, just to help with the feel.

 

Background: The goddess Hon-Eel is the daughter of the Red Emperor (the god-king of the Lunar Empire that is like an ancient Assyria ruled by a Greco-Buddhist mystery cult). The Lunar Empire was desolated by horse barbarian attacks in its early years. After the barbarians were defeated, Hon-eel appeared and renewed the empire. She restored provincial lands which had drifted from Lunar rule as a result of the barbarian attacks, settled new lands, drove the last of the horsemen off, and discovered a new food grain, maize, for Peloria. Hon-Eel brought the Lunar Way to the storm barbarians and founded a mighty royal dynasty. Hon-eel danced her way to the end of the universe and brought back rich blessings of fertility for all who were wise enough to call on her.

 

Picture: This picture is a color fresco, based on the attached sketch (Hon-Eel.jpg):

 

A. Hon-Eel the Dancer. Hon-Eel is a graceful, beautiful woman. She is dancing, balanced on her right foot (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Apasara_Img445.jpg). Her left foot is on her right knee, and she holds forth a bundle of maize. She wears golden bracelets, armlets, anklets, and necklaces (like http://www.inst.at/trans/16Nr/05_1/sengupta_08.jpg). She wears a beaded skirt (like http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Apsara_441.jpg or http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WLA_lacma_Celestial_Nymph_ca_1450_Rajasthan.jpg.)

Her skin is golden-brown and her hair red. Hon-Eel's eyes are green. She is not tattooed.

Behind her head is an ornate halo like http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Apsara_441.jpg, but glowing red.

In her left arm she holds a bundle of maize. In her right hand she carries a bronze sickle that is dripping blood. 

 

Hon-Eel is flanked by two ripe maize plants.

 

B. Red Goddess. Above Hon-Eel is her grandmother, the Red Moon Goddess. She is seated in a lotus position and making a gesture of peace (the Abhaya Mudra, see http://www.cambosastra.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Mudra.jpg). Her skin is red and she is surrounded by a glowing red halo like Hon-Eel.  She is either naked or wears a gown covered with stars (see plate01final.jpg).

 

C. Red Emperor. Watching Hon-Eel, and giving his blessing is the Solar Emperor (who in various incarnations is the Sun God, the son of the Red Moon, the father of Hon-Eel, and her lover). He is based on the Emperor Yelm.jpg, His garments are golden, as are the wings, but the disk is red like the moon.

 

D. Dead Orlanthi King. Hon-Eel dances atop the corpse of a dead Orlanthi king (like Kali does with Shiva, see http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/08/Kali_1800-1825_Kangra._The_Walters_Art_Museum..jpg, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Goddess_Bhadrakali_Worshipped_by_the_Gods-_from_a_tantric_Devi_series_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg or http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kali_lithograph.jpg). The king is bearded and wears a crown, a golden neck ring or torc, and golden spiral arm ring. He has a bronze sword (symbolizing his violent nature). He is tattooed with Air, Movement, and Mastery. Bonus points if he has the same tribal tattoo as Arim the Pauper did in the previous commission - this is Arim's distant heir, King Pyjeemsab. Pyjeemsab was entranced by Hon-Eel's beauty. He was killed after the marital conjugation (perhaps during it), but nine months later, Hon-Eel gave birth to his son and heir, who became the new king of a new dynasty (that worships Hon-Eel as a goddess).

 

E. Defeated Horse Queen. This is the Queen of the Horse Tribes. She's much smaller because she is a barbarian. She is riding a horse and wears an ornate costume like that of the Scythians (eg http://www.cais-soas.com/CAIS/Images2/General/Iranian_Women_Warriors.JPG or http://realtruth.org/images/scythian-ashz-120523.jpg (on the left)). She has her hands up in worship of Hon-Eel.

 

F. Worshipful Storm Barbarian. This is a bearded Orlanthi barbarian (one of Arim's people). He carries a sword but has his hands up in worship of Hon-Eel.

The art direction was very specific so I put together 2 Comps for the AD to look at with my preliminary ideas.

After discussing the image with my AD ( Jeff Richard), he was on board for my idea to do this illustration in the style of Alphonse Mucha. This was great news to me because I greatly admire Mucha's work and it is always nice to pitch an idea to a client and have it accepted.


Next I completed 4 more rough sketches incorporating my ideas and all of the various symbology.

 

 Once we settled on the various compositional elements that we liked, I set out to incorporate all of them into the image as well as some Mucha inspired design elements. These next 3 images depict the various stages in the evolution of the final drawing.

 In this stage I had masked off the various elements and on a separate layer, I had flatted in the basic color scheme for the image.

 Final illustration.

I hope that you found this article informative and if you have any questions or comments, I'd be happy to hear from you.

Cheers!

Another Guildhall Review

I found another review of Guildhall on You tube. It`s a few months old but I thought that I`d post it here. They seem to think the Pig Farmer is Creepy ( hah Hah Tom!) but over all they rated my work `Pretty Good Artwork, Very Catchy`. Check it out if you so inclined....

People who hate Bob Ross probably advocate drowning kittens!

I was trolling the internet the other day and came across the Bob Ross remix video and I just had to re post this. If you are an artist and this doesn`t put a smile on your face then that sucks for you. I`ve met lots of artists who have an unreasonable amount of Hate for this man and his work which I attribute to jealousy. Sure, he`s no Rembrant. But, in his time, he made a significant impact on the painting community as a whole and inspired millions in his lifetime. He has such an encouraging attitude which I think is very important for beginning painters. Learning the medium can be very intimidating and he helped millions to overcome that. I still have `The Joy of Painting`sitting on my bookshelf and I just like looking at it for what it is.  I personally think he was under rated as a painter by the art community because of his commercial success. But when you look a this ability to create a composition and his mastery of his technique, I suggest that he was a bonafide Master painter in his own right. In fact, I had a throw down with my wife the other day because I claimed that Bob Ross was a better painter than Emily Carr who I think is incredibly over rated. lol ;) needless to say that didn`t go over very well.

Anyways, enjoy the Ross Video.

Kalikos HeroQuest

Today I am posting up another Glorantha image to share. This time it is of the Epic Kalikos Hero Quest. For more information you will have to get the guide but the long and short of the story is that this is an epic quest to the edge of the world which is crucial to the survival of Glorantha.

For more information on Glorantha etc. You can check out the Glorantha group on Google + which is very vibrant and full of all kinds of information including some of my rough sketches and process pieces for these images.

Cheers!

Arachna Solara Vs Wakboth the Devil

What a name!

Today I am posting up one more Glorantha image to share with you. Recently, the folks over at moon design updated their kickstarter page with this piece of mine so I figure that it is safe to share it now.

I called this Glorantha #16 and I'm currently still working on 19 and 20 so stay tuned for a lot more because you have not even seen the half of it.

Cheers

Mike