the cleveland steve'er

Starcraft 2 part 2

2010-07-21T14:45:00.000-07:00

all images in this post are copyright of blizzard entertainment

another image i painted got released by blizzard recently. it's an image you'll see in the game along with a few others.

also another commercial for sc2 has been released

I just got my advance copy and it's pretty freaking amazing. pick it up next week!!

starcraft 2

2010-06-11T11:22:00.000-07:00

it's done when it's done, so yeah it's done.

Heaven's Devils

2010-05-17T18:37:00.000-07:00

all images in this post are copyright of blizzard entertainment

hi all, i just saw this image in the starcraft wiki so i thought i'd post it up here. it's a group shot of Raynor's crew pre'starcraft. i was given a really rough description of the crew and i had freedom to do whatever i wanted after(awesome!), this is what i came up with...little did i know they would write a book based on this concept/illustration. http://www.amazon.com/dp/1416550844?ie=UTF8&tag=tuxlog-20 pretty cool! i did the image a little over two years ago and it's always been a favorite of mine, so i'm really glad i get to share it! you can learn about the characters here

http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/StarCraft_II:_Heaven%27s_Devils

the idea behind it was an old photograph of Raynor and his crew pre starcraft 1

here is the image with out the photograph ageing junk.

all images in this post are copyright of blizzard entertainment

Enough of dat cute shit, time for some WIPs

2010-02-27T18:39:00.001-08:00

heres a couple of wip paintings i did after work, hopefully i can come around to finishing them.

this dude is pissed cuz he can't raise his arms without stabbing his own head...well i do work at blizzard, which means bigass spikes on bigass shoulder pads is tha shit!!!!

this little guy was suppose to be death and the idea was to have these clock work gears inside his chest, so when the time came he'd knock your ass out! whut whut!.....except he can't do that cuz i'm too lazy to paint in the gears and finish him...he is sad....

thanks for dropping by!

For Jona

2010-02-16T18:09:00.000-08:00

heres a valentines doodle i did for my lady friend. she luv'd it and i luv her....mannn i got a big head! oh yeah, gung hay fot choy!

Been Awhile....Again

2010-02-04T19:41:00.000-08:00

sorry for the long gaps inbetween posts....being lazy is just too easy! well heres a few quick paintings i did after work in the last week or so. trying to paint more and work on my own projects outside of work. anyway ther're my attempt at painting classical monsters. i had alot of fun doing these and i'll probably do more. as my lunch lady says, "hope you enjoy it!"

DracDeezNutz, dracula in his monsterous form. he has fangs and he wants to eat your nutz!

FrankFooter, "johnny 5 is alive"

WolfmanDaDoofman, has a underbite cuz drac teabagged his nostrols...

thanks for coming thru and checking out the paintings and drawings, much appreciated!

steve

Its been awhile

2009-08-06T20:09:00.000-07:00

hey guys it's been awhile, work work work....well anyway there is this gallery that me and my cohorts are going to be a part of at the gnomon art school this saturday the 8th so come by and check it out! heres a link with all the talented artists who are going to be showcased, http://www.gnomongallery.com/. heres a doodle about a couple of old characters i did in college, not much story or design to them i just wanted to paint them. i wish i put more thought into the design but i just wanted to lay something down that was different from what i was doing at work. if you scroll down you'll see the original designs, they're the barnstorming siamese twins except here they're not so siamese...go figure!

An ode to my buddy B'gay

2009-03-24T18:25:00.000-07:00

heres a little doodle of my story board buddies. one just got promoted to director, congrats marc! and the other promoted, in my book, to senior baby gymnast, congrats ben gay. you guys are best in the biz!! yes, ben likes to stare at his cintiq with flies circling his head.

samu tha suckah'rai

2009-02-28T18:15:00.000-08:00

a wip/speedpaint, hope to come back and refine this piece.

some sketchies

2009-01-31T23:49:00.000-08:00

so the cinematic artbook for WOTLK is out...now get a copy!!! heres a link:

http://www.amazon.com/Cinematic-Art-World-Warcraft-Wrath/dp/1933784814

on a sadder note bj penn lost tonight, it would've been legendary if he had won but reality thought differently(so did GSP, dudes a machine that keeps getting better...scary). onward to the sketches. heres a few pages from my sketchbook, nothing fancy just stuff i do when i'm on my couch vegging out.

just a random page of noodle doodles

an art fart shart, 'what, what?!'

guess what i was watching when i noodled this? thats riiight the ceiling....man, i'm dumb.

on the road again.....

oh yeah, i want to say a huge congrats to my buddy Dave Apgar, he got a job in Utah as an animator and i know they'll appreciate all his talent, hard work, and perseverance. the mans an animal, i mean literally, he looks like a knuckle dragging chimp...=)

take care, seeya in my next post!

Ho, ho, hoe?

2008-12-19T13:18:00.000-08:00

Poor Santa....

Have a safe and happy holidays!!

thanks for the help bernie.

More WOTLK

2008-11-16T16:48:00.000-08:00

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!

2008-10-15T20:13:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-15T23:10:00.000-07:00

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...

2008-08-13T22:53:00.000-07:00

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

Lair

2007-09-24T20:55:00.000-07:00

FINALLY, an update! Sorry for keeping you guys in the dark for such a long time but work and freelance work has gotten me pretty tired the last few months, so now whenever i get free time all i do is veg out on my couch, but all of that is going to change as soon as i get off my couch... anyway here are some concepts i did for the game "Lair". i really learned alot while working there, i had a really talented and great art director, Wayne Lo (who had ALOT of patience with me) and a very talented concept team which consisted of Anthony Ermio and Pat Presly(visit their blogs great stuff there). those guys really helped me and pushed me to become a better artist, i owe alot to those guys. the experience i had there was great and that was only because of the people i worked with. they made it very easy to work there and very hard to leave. i wish wayne good luck with his sculpt because as anthony puts it, "you just tried to recreate one of nature's most dense objects ever found in the universe." and pat, "GAHHHHHHHH!!!"

here is the concept for the "Blood Dragon". this dragon was really a group effort where everybody had a part in the design. this concept here was the initial design.

Koba Kai in his armor

some early sketches for Koba Kai and Atta Kai, i don't know what the deal is with the names but i had alot of fun exploring these characters.

some sketches for Asylian helms.

here's an early sketch of a dragon steam knight. i did the initial sketch and Anthony Ermio did a bad ass refined paint over making it look alot better!

All images are copyright of Factor5

Mirko!!!!

2007-01-27T19:30:00.000-08:00

here's a speedpaint from a photo. i'm trying to get my sense of color better and expand that mental library. the painting looks totally different from the photo i referenced, but hopefully it's one step closer to being a better painter!

happy new year!

2007-01-05T09:59:00.000-08:00

heres a painting i did for warmup at work awhile ago, hopefully i'll have time to bring it to a more finished state.

Speedo

2006-12-15T12:05:00.000-08:00

another speed paint(1hr) i did yesterday.

Bubbles!!!

2006-12-13T14:25:00.000-08:00

heres a speed paint i did in the last 2 days(spent about a half hour a day, a little over an hour total). it started as a warmup scribble and now it makes bubbles! and if you notice it has a lipstick launcher next to his head as well, oooooooooo, ahhhhhhh.

half-bear half-drawing

2006-11-27T22:38:00.000-08:00

heres a couple drawings from the ol' sketchbook, ones a bear mixed with sumthing? and the other, a sketch of a beautiful person who puts up with my annoying tourettes and my down syndrome'esqe looks...the bear is the one with the claws.

Pecker

2006-10-08T23:31:00.000-07:00

brain dump...

Hoes

2006-10-04T21:39:00.000-07:00

so many hizzz'oes! things are going well in So Cal, hope things are going well for you.

Unpacked!

2006-09-24T22:46:00.000-07:00

Finally unpacked! I've moved to southern cali and I just unpacked... sort of. Anywho, I wanted to update my blog for a while but my scanner broke during the move, so I got a new one today. so here are a few drawings I did in the last couple of weeks. no real description is needed, i just did these because i wanted to draw, although i will say that i was really inspired after looking at maschinen krieger's books(thanks for the recommendation anthony). to my peeps and super-interns at f-f5, I want to say it was a pleasure working with you guys and I'm positive that we'll be working together again. Crab'man your "i ain't got time to bleed/don't talk to me" shield worked to perfection, there were points where you even had me convinced to ignore myself...Masterful, masterful indeed.

Update!

2006-07-18T15:04:00.000-07:00

i haven't posted in a llllooooonnnngggg time, been pretty busy with work....too bad i can't post work stuff, fudge! anyway here is a sketchbook rag tag drawing of a unresearched time traveler. this is more of an ideation...a start to brainstorming...i just wanted to draw randomly. i'll try to post something at least once a week...probably not though, oh well.

2006-04-02T01:17:00.000-08:00

grrr...someone farted

2006-03-23T17:18:00.000-08:00

just to change up the pace. did this for a hallmark workshop over a year ago. learned alot from that workshop.

2006-03-23T17:14:00.000-08:00

some figure drawings, about an hour a piece except for the one thats a gesture drawing.

2006-03-23T17:04:00.000-08:00

the last painting was part of a punch sequence that was flash animated. here are the four drawings to that punch sequence. this was one of like 7 or 8 characters done for Cisco.

2006-03-15T23:03:00.000-08:00

freelance drawing that i painted over in my free time.

2006-03-15T23:00:00.000-08:00

an old hansel and gretel environment.

2006-03-10T22:47:00.000-08:00

some character designs i did awhile ago. a rag tag team of barnstormers that had a drunk for a pilot, a WWI veteran for a leader(the jolly rotund fellow), a chimp for a steam engine operator, and siamese twins as mechanics?! wow, i reeeaallly had fun with this!

2006-03-10T22:25:00.000-08:00

more sketchbook stuff

2006-02-23T22:52:00.000-08:00

more mindless junk in yo' trunk muthasuckah

2006-02-11T00:49:00.000-08:00

some mindless sketchbook stuff, no real research, just drawing, i like to draw, i like run on sentences, i can go on and on and on and on and...

2006-02-11T00:35:00.000-08:00

i luv doing character designs! being able to create characters and give them each their own unique history is definitly a fun and wonderful thing. here's a few i did over the summer. i'll post the story behind them soon.

hello and goodbye

2006-02-11T00:10:00.000-08:00

hi, welcome to my blog, thought i'd take the time out to make a blog and have a way for people to see my artwork. well, see ya later!

Steve