After trying out some different ideas with the fat dragon, I sketched out another dragon laying on the fat dragon. It made me start thinking about how I could incorporate a representation of all the dragons in the same illustration.

The scribble on the right was my first concept for the final composition. I started working out details of the piece and thinking about ideas for each dragon.

Playing around with lots of ideas. Part of designing characters is working through the  cliches first. Eventually you have nothing left to do but come up with some new ideas. Fortunately I liked enough of my ideas that I actually didn’t have a place for all of the ones I liked. A documentary on lizards on the galapagos island helped with inspiration.

The “final” thumbnail. I blew up this sketch and refined it with marker paper.

To get this:

From there I took it into Photoshop and refined it to the sketch in this post. One thing you’ll notice as the sketch is refined is the changes in relative scale. One of the things that was important to  sell the concept was having interesting contrasts in scale. In the initial sketch the dragon queen was too large compared to the other dragons. I scaled here down, and cropped in on the bottom dragon to make him seem more massive; as if he is emerging from below. I think I could have pushed his size even more.

From there it was ink, ink, ink, color, color.

One of the assignments I got was to take the first pass on storyboarding a promo piece of Mr. Monopoly “planting” a city. I love it when I get a chance to storyboard, and I try to find the right balance of communicating as clearly as possible without taking too much time to make things look nice.

I try to really push the boundaries when I’m doing this stuff. You can always pull something back if it’s too far out there, but playing it safe is just playing it safe. I got a particular hard time from my art director on this project about a shot he likes to call the “Nose Punch”. See if you can find it.

I recommend clicking on the link that says “View with PicLens”.

[View with PicLens]

That being said, I have been working on the next book. As proof, here are the next couple of pages.

Enjoy, and I hope to be figuring out the next step soon.

You can see the rough pencils here.

It’s a fast technique. I can finish a character in 1-3 hours. It’s what I used to do these demos for CTN-X, and it’s what I’ve used to do most of my artcasts.

It communicates texture, color and shape nicely and its fun to do.

Initially the designs were very specific to a classic Monopoly feel. I was trying to match the vibe of the Community Chest and Chance illustrations, and as a result the characters feel like they belong in pre-Depression American city. AS things developed it became clear that we needed a look that was either more contemporary or, at the very least timeless.

I was also asked by my Art Directer to start pushing the paintings to be more 3-dimensional and have greater dynamic range. In other words, give us an idea how the characters would look in the actual game.

I was pretty happy with my first attempt, although it took a lot longer than my previous process, and never really got to a point that I was totally happy with.

I wanted to try and see how quickly I could accomplish something similar. The next couple of images were completed in 2-3 hours. I discovered some cool things, but didn’t quite get to the point on wanted to with them. Sadly, this was near the end of the character design process, and I didn’t get to refine this approach any further.

And of course, of all these designs, only the cop, the kid in the suit, the soldier and the maid made it in to the final game with little alteration to their designs. But it was worth it anyway.  Another chance to learn a little more, and add a couple more pieces to my portfolio.

We we’re trying to come up with a character to accompany the wheelbarrow, and the first thing to come to mind was some sort of farm type. My first pass was a back-woodsy-hill-billy type.

This ended up being one of my favorite sketches.

The next stab was a more Joadsy-type farm feller.

I thought he ended up looking pretty good with color.

Alas, it was decided we needed more diversity of the female variety, so I started trying variations on the farm-girl.

As is the case with character design, we decided to take bits and pieces form sketches we liked and combine them in one.

From here on out, for every revision I laid a sheet of marker paper over the previous sketch and refined it.

Another pass.

Trying to give her a bit more personality.

Okay, let’s just give her a nice happy expression, and no bulging biceps.

Part of the process is putting all of the character together in a line-up to make sure their silhouettes are all unique and that they contrast well with one another. I did about 20 of these with all the changes we made to characters. Maybe I’ll do a post with just the line-ups sometime.

Finally, I get to color.

The final model (not done by me). This model was probably the closest to the original concept.

And she’s off! They grow up so quickly…

An early attempt to try and design around the established iconography of Monopoly. One of the goals of the game was create something novel that still felt immediately true to Monopoly. The block letters were one of the first things to go. When you have to translate a game into other languages, block letters can get very expensive.

My first attempt at the GO building. Taking inspiration from Tekkon Kinkrete and early Atlantic City architecture (the city Monopoly is based on). This was the one case where it was decided that the block lettering was worth it and had to be modeled in every applicable language.

The building below actually was modeled (and improved on by the talented Ken Lim). It didn’t make it into the default board but ended being salvaged for the “Monument City” board.

Another design that didn’t make the cut. Here you can see the two different rendering approaches I work with. In the approach above I build the structure out of shapes, then render over it. I like it because it gives a nice painterly finish, and is closer to what things look like in game.

The approach below is nice because its quicker, and still has a nice polished look.

The one that survived the cut.