A while back I posted some of my work from when I created original illustrations for magazines and periodicals. Editorial art was my chosen field of aspiration upon graduating from college, and I did get published on occasion for the first 7 or 8 years that I actively pursued it, with occasional commissions from Playboy, Outside, National Lampoon, Crain's Business, The Atlantic Monthly, and others.
Along the way, I supplemented the erratic income of this profession by freelancing in the advertising business, doing layout design, marker renderings, and some storyboarding. All of this while living in Philadelphia and regularly trekking up to New York to show my portfolio. eventually falling into designing product at Tyco Toys as a freelancer, it didn't take long until I stopped pursuing commissions altogether I just became so busy creating toys. Now it seems like another lifetime.
This was before the advent of digital art and desktop computers in general, so everything I did was on the drawing board by hand. Some of my influences during this era were illustrators like Blair Drawson, Lane Smith, and I was also exploring some resist wet media with gouache and colored pencil. Looking back, I was trying to cultivate my own signature style so it was always evolving somewhat, but from 1987 until 1994 this was some of the work I was doing for the editorial world;
It has been a little while since I've posted illustrated works for promotional posters, which are always loads of fun to work on. The majority of what I've generated up to this point has been for Arcana comics and Rough Sketch Studio, specifically; Koni Waves, which has seen its initial arc of success in published form, and is in some stage of development as a film project or TV show. Exciting possibilities, but nothing definite as of this writing.
In the meantime, there have been a few 'Art of.." books to which I've contributed, as well as the occasional isolated project, like the following illustrations.
The first was done for the relaunch of Captain Action, an action figure line from the mid 1960s, who has his own comic book. The current redux includes a counterpart heroine called 'Lady Action';
Another was a quick commission done for last years' ComicCon in San Diego, to cross-promote 3 of Arcana's leading published heroines; Koni, Jinky, and Eve. The theme was 'Arcana's Angels', my treatment was titled 'Angels raising hell';
It's not immediately apparent that the huge explosion behind them takes the form of a skull.
"Anything strange or other-worldly, ..not just aliens, vampires and zombies."
I like that kind of freedom, which eventually pitted Koni against a swarm of nasty looking 'hellbats';
.. and inspired this poster involving a vintage Corvette and some vintage pteranodons;
When I began freelancing in the toy industry back in 1992-93 I started working exclusively on game concepts for Tyco Toys, based in Mt Laurel New Jersey. Their games director needed some creative hands to handle everything from concept art to inventing, to assembling prototypes. It was more out of necessity than anything that I quickly learned how to wear several hats in developing all kinds of games, and within a few months I was dealing with model makers, licensing departments, marketing executives and engineers. I worked on literally dozens of games and activites over a 2 1/2 year period before eventually being offered the salary position of games maven at Tyco, but by then I had already decided I was moving back to the Chicago area. Also, having worked on games already, I was really interested in designing product for other departments; RC cars, slot racing, action figures, preschool, activities, dolls, everything I could. Tyco needed help visualizing those ideas as well and even the VP of product agreed that I'd be more useful to them as a freelancer.
Over the years I have been able to work in virtually every other category, some more regularly than others, and have even continued developing games of all sorts. I still consider them to be a favorite area of expertise and it's always exciting when something new occasionally lands on my drawing board. One of the highlights being the 70th Anniversary version of Monopoly.
Here are a few other games I've created over the years. Again, there are lots more than what's here, and I'll cover more games in later posts, these are specific examples of board games produced and sold;
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Veggie Tales' Jonah: An Overboard Adventure
Big Idea Productions was operating out of the Chicago burb of Lombard when I got the call to design a board game around the Jonah movie they were working on. Their close proximity helped because there was a lot to do in a short time, and being able to meet with them personally and hand deliver everything worked to our advantage. I did some work on the game play itself, but my main task was designing and generating all the production art involved; including final board art, cards, spinner, pawns, ..everything except the package art.
It was a challenge because at that point I hadn't done much digital illustrating for print, and I wanted it to look as good or better than anything I could generate on the drawing board. I learned a lot about working in Photoshop over those couple of weeks and I've done a lot more digital art for print since.
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Looney Tunes' Smush 'em!
While Tyco held a license for Looney Tunes I was asked to come up with some game concepts using their stable of classic characters. There were a few ideas I brought to playable prototype, including the "Smush 'em!" board game. Another was a Tazmanian Devil board game that used a spinning top Taz. Landing your character on certain spaces required starting the sculpted Taz character with a zip-strip and setting it loose. It would swirl around the board and wipe out the moving pawns. A fun alternative and a contender for what was ultimately decided on here;
doughy fun for the entire family;
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The Cat 'N Fiddle game
Along with perennial favorites like Monopoly, Clue, and The Game of Life, I've also worked with Hasbro Games on other Milton Bradley and Parker Brothers concepts, some of them for younger tots. Candyland, Chutes & Ladders, and Operation are a few other classics that I've also revisited for newer generations, trying a fresh twist on an old theme.
For something newer this 'Cat & the Fiddle' game was fun to work on because of my old-school aesthetic approach. I remembered those old "Happy Harmonies" and "Merrie Melodies" nursery rhyme cartoons from the 1930s and drew from that style. They really liked that look and ended up going with it for the final design;
After I had generated some illustrations for their Monster Sports Games, Shelcore asked me to revise the packaging art for their Shake'n Bobbles Hazard Highway, which was commercially promoted;
The marketing folks at Shelcore felt the existing art was somewhat inaccurate, as well as busy and confusing in how the set was presented. They also felt the angle of the illustration didn't highlight the features in the best way. So, I was given some new direction and asked to take a crack at it.
Here's the existing;
The main points to tackle; 1. A fun but clear vision of what this thing looked like when in action, 2. A better representation of the item itself, and 3. Instead of featuring the rocking green bridge they wanted to show the car dropping from the upper deck of the orange break-away bridge to the track below.
They did ask me to purposely omit the clumsy dropping platform connected to the bridge for simplicity (which is why it's not seen in the final revised art). Otherwise; "make it look like it works".
To make things easier for myself and Shelcore in assembling the final image, I generated some of the key elements separately. Mainly the character/car, and the track set itself.
Here are the pencil sketches I submitted for approval;
I included a paste-up version with the car in place and given approval on the basics, after a couple of tweaks, I started work on the final art for print. Unfortunately, Shelcore went through some management changes while in progress, and the project was killed.
..Still, not one to let the work done go to waste, I took some time to finish up the project on my own down-time.
Here are the finished illustrated elements as separated;
Finally, I assembled the parts in one piece of art, adding motion to the rocking bridge feature, and bobble-head. Here's the final art ready for print;
..and here's a mock-up of what the revised package may have looked like;
With the success of Koni Waves comes the demand for more commissions.
The Arcana-produced property has developed a respectable following over the past few years, and the opportunity to promote it further was a fun prospect for me. Koni's creator and lead artist, Steve Sistilli, published an 'Art of Koni' book that flew well with fans enough to put out a 2nd volume, and it seems a 3rd one is on the way. And being a close pal of Steve's, I'm more than happy to oblige when I can.
It's not only another opportunity to see my work in print, but it is a kick when I have the chance to hang out with him at a comic convention. We get to act like a couple of kids, and glad-hand with all the attendees.
Here's a couple of more recent posters ready for print;
Print size on the following is 18" x 33"
The below large poster prints out at 36" x 48"
Not too difficult to see why the comic fanboys love Koni.
This novelty electronic was designed specifically for Apple's iPod touch.
What car doesn't have a stereo? And the notion of an RC vehicle that doubles as an iPod dock/player seems like a novelty to me. Any number of cool vehicles present themselves as a candidate for such a concept, but the application of a perennial license like Scooby-Doo was one way to get this concept across in a way that would appeal to teens and baby boomers. Especially if there's some neat animated feature to play with. As much for a Nick@Nite watcher as the Sharper Image shopper.
My illustrations show the dual function;
Here's the Mystery Machine in its static state, the iPod touch shows scale and rough position where it drops into the slot dock on the van's rooftop.
Open up the back end and its display becomes the TV screen on the inside of the van.
The wall speakers function for stereo sound, the mirror ball spins, and the sculpted Scooby bobs his head in time with the music (much like your average iPet).
The tail lights function as manual controls for the iPod, and the license plate is an LCD display for track number, volume level, or even AM FM signal.
Spin Scooby around, and he can join you while you view any videos you may have stored.
The same LCD screen displays running time, or can function in clock mode.
Before it became a popular XBox game, Crimson Skies was originally a PC game conceived and produced by FASA Interactive.
FASA was a Chicago-based game company headed by a fine fellow named Jordan Weisman, that created and produced role-playing and PC software games. I was brought in as a conceptual artist on this, as well as some later projects that would ultimately be produced for XBox and Playstation.
Crimson Skies was one of the first projects on which I worked. The developers there were putting together an 'Aircraft Manual' for the PC game, which would contain the basic rules of game play, but also technical descriptions and illustrations of all the different models of planes used in the game. Given the game's premise, scenario, and time period, these planes defied conventional design for a more 'steroid injected' look. These were aggressive dog-fighters.
I was given the copy pages describing each plane, then I was given free reign in designing them.
They would need orthographic views of each plane drawn for one page, and a 3/4 view action shot of the same plane for the other.
The view drawings were done using fine felt-tip pen, and the dramatic action shots were rendered using gray-toned Pantone markers.
With some minor back-and-forth feedback, all 26 planes took about 4 weeks to design and render for delivery.
Here are 12 of the 26 planes found in the published manual;
The people at FASA were a joy to work with. Focused, creative. and fun. Over a period of 2 years I had the opportunity to generate characters, wardrobe and accessories, vehicles, storyboard cinematic sequences, visualize landscapes, cityscapes, exotic structures and their interiors. Much of this conceptual work either helped define the overall look of a game, or was used directly in constructing them digitally in the actual program.
By the time I finished working on my third project with them, Jordan had offered me a permanent position there as staff artist. It was tempting, and while I was considering it they got a lucrative offer from Microsoft. My offer still held, but Bill Gates ended up moving FASA's offices, and most of its staff, to Seattle upon acquisition.
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