Ho, ho, hoe?

Poor Santa....







Have a safe and happy holidays!!





thanks for the help bernie.

More WOTLK

so the game is out and doing well, but the cinematic artbook won't be available till January 09... i thought it would've been out sooner. oh well it'll be worth the wait especially with the amazing artwork put in by the team. while you're waiting here's a few more pieces i did for the cinematic.


like i said in the previous post, i got the chance to update the details on the arthus character. here's a few armor pieces i did. i was given screen grabs of arthus's armor to paint over. here is a comparison of the old arthus belt to the new version i did. i had a blast with these and the modeler(tyler hunter) did an amazing job modeling it. i think he made it look ten times better than whats here!






this heel piece i had to do from scratch i think(it's been awhile). if i remember correctly arthus didn't have a heel piece to begin with, and in this cinematic it starts off with a close up of his boot stepping into frame. because of this they wanted something interesting on his heel...'why not another skull' i said, to which the director replied, "Steve your a genious!! you deserve a raise!!" i happily agreed, then i woke up and was late for work.... yeah still, a skull on the heel is better than nothing...

heres a couple concept pieces for the undead army. in the story boards of the cinematic there are a couple undead warriors that were closer to the camera than the rest . their whole body wasn't shown so that part didn't need to be designed out. what needed to be designed was mostly their upper portions. this guy here was in the midground and the concept following was in the foreground. i didn't design the arms for the foreground character because in the story board they weren't seen(he was pretty close to the camera).






all images in this post are copyright of blizzard entertainment



thats it for now, hope you guys dig it!

Wraith of the Lich King Cinematic Artbook, Buy it!

yo yo, so blizzcon has come and gone, and if you were there then you must've picked up the cinematic artbook for the wraith of the lich king...cuz it reeks of awesomeness! there was an exclusive hardcover blizzcon edition designed by the great bernie kang, a very very talented concept artist and an even better ping pong loser...at least to me that is. the book covered pretty much all of the preproduction artwork as well as matte paintings and the process that it took to make the cinematic for the Wraith of the Lich King. it features the art from myself, bernie kang, graven tung, and the ever so late and talented brian huang(resident homeless cinematic hobo...the boy eats garbage!!!=P), it also showcase the matte painting skills of the furor of matte painting Chris Thunig, Mister GSP french canadian Jonathon Berube, the enemy of the german blitzkrieg Peter Swigut, the prince of scarab the arab himself Alex Murtaza, and the true Frenchman from the depths of france mister "Whatever Dood" Matias Verhasselt(i think his work is in there). Blizzcon itself was great, it's always a great time when you meet the fans of blizzard games, awesome and interesting people, they definitely have my appreciation and gratitude. so if you didn't get a chance to pick up the book, good news, the book will be available in a few weeks on amazon.com. once i find out when i'll post up a link. so on to some artwork! here are a few pieces from the book and i'll post more soon.

all images in this post are copyright of blizzard entertainment.


For the Wraith of the Lich King i primarily designed the undead scourge army, so intially i did some thumbnails, heres a few. i had fun with these, i tried to incorporate some personality as well as some interesting, readable silhouettes. the dude scratching he's head, yup you guessed it thats my silhouette fu!



heres a few more pieces of exploration where i added a bit more detail. come to find out that the undead army where mainly human, oh well... but come'on who doesn't like an undead female dranei stabbing herself?! i know i do, she's freaking hot, whoop whoop!







so there was suppose to be a race of gigantic undead viking type creatures called 'vrykul' in the cinematic. i took the guy in the middle of the three above and decided to redesign and color him intending him to be the vrykul, they decided to go in a different direction and all together cut the race from the cinematic. the direction that they went is very cool and i can't wait for you guys to see them in game, still this is one of my favorite pieces.





i also got to be a part of the exploration for the undead dragon Sindragosa, i may have misspelled her name. anyway i wanted to explore the idea of an armored dragon and came up with this concept. brrrrrr charlie murphy, you're cold as ice!!!! totally random, i know.





On WOTLK we explored different ideas of how arthus would look like, in this piece i imagined him to be totally immersed with nerzul, the lich king armor. i focused more on how arthus and the helm merged to one incorporating elements of his helm into his face and head. the body isn't too finished as i mainly focused on the head. it would later be decided that arthus would remain the same as we last saw him in the warcraft 3 expansion, except he's armor would be updated and detailed alot more...who has two thumbs and worked on the details of arthus, (pointing at myself with both thumbs like an idiot) this guy....




i'll post more later. i hope you guys dig this and pick up the book when it's available. it was a pleasure working on this cinematic with a talented director like Jeff Chamberlain as well as a very very talented group of artists and animators.

P.S. i'm trying to update my links, so if you have me linked i definitely owe you one shoot me an email.

all images in this post are copyright of blizzard entertainment

more sketchies

so whats new? ...i went to Maui with me lady friend, 99lb 5 ounce baby jona, late august and it was great!!!! the water was crystal clear and the scenery was just breathtaking. the bad part though was that we had to leave... i went there for a week and man...it just wasn't enough time, oh well it definitely served it's purpose, it was a great vacation! i think i'm going to have to make it an annual trip every year. i also checked out the DUck!!! gallery show, http://duck218.blogspot.com/ back in the bayarea showcasing the ever talented allums of sjsu, i was super impressed by all the beautiful work. it was great seeing old friends and making a few new ones. anyway on to the sketchies.



this drawing started off as an ode to the joker and ended up looking nothing like him...word, i suck..




a whale of a snail... sort of...



the village idiot who lives in an unfinished forest...sad...he likes to DP his own nostrils...even sadder...



last of the Mohawk Mandingo tribe who hunts disabled pygmies...funny how he's suppose to be the last one yet there's a faint unfinished drawing of another next to him... he's a liar...

WOW! almost a year without a post...lame i know. well things have been pretty busy, work, tv, sleep...awww who am i kidding i'm pretty freaking lazy. a few things though, if you haven't gotten tickets to blizzcon well you might be out of luck. they sold out in like the first hour or so, and i've seen tickets on ebay going for over a grand...crazy! if you do have tickets then you can pick up the special hardcover edition Cinematic's art of book for "The Wraith of the Lich King". the book features art from myself and the rest of the concept team over here in Blizzard's cinematic department, it also goes in depth to the process it took to create the cinematic trailer, World of Warcraft the Wraith of the Lich King. the preproduction, production, and post production...a bunch of goodies in that book. Blizzcon is in october so after the book is out and with the permission of the powers that be, i'll post up some concept art for the cinematic. i had a lot of fun on that project and i'm having a ton of fun on starcraft and diablo, btw if you haven't seen the teaser trailer for diablo 3 check it out it's insane! well anywho heres a few sketchbook pages from my sketchbook, nothing too amazing but it's pretty relaxing working in my own flow and pace, i had fun with these pieces. i have a few more sketches to scan and as soon as i do that i'll have them up here. oh yeah comic con was a blast except for the crowdedness of stinky people, i caught up with a few friends and got punched in the arm by a rowdy christian, good times.


heres some mindless scribbles