One of the funnest things about doing character designs for Monopoly Streets was painting up the characters. For the most part I relied on a technique that I’d been playing developing for several years, inspired by Lowell Hess and other mid-century illustrators.

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.

For Monopoly Streets I was given the privilege of designing a cast of characters to accompany the classic tokens from the boardgame.  I’ll post art for my favorites, and ones that didn’t make it, but first, I thought I’d show the process for one character.

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…

Not much commentary to make here. Some of this stuff ended up in game. Most didn’t.

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.

So 2010, I spent a good chunk of my time working on Monopoly Streets. I got to do a lot of fun concept; buildings, character and general look-and-feel type of stuff. I character stuff was probably the funnest stuff to do, but the most satisfying stuff was doing architectural and building design. Here are a couple pieces I worked on that I really liked. I’ll post some stuff that actually ended up in-game later. The piece above was an early look-and-feel exploration while we were still exploring the concept of playing Monopoly in an actual growing city. Early on with dabbled with the idea of the game-board progressing through the century as you advanced. It was decided pretty quickly that that would be a bit too much to try and accomplish within our time frame. It was a fun piece to work on none-the-less. Below is the first of a couple of early house designs for Park Place and Boardwalk. The idea was to design something that felt like a high-end city dwelling.

I first did a rough sketch with blue pencil. You can see that after I scanned it in and dropped in a perspective grid, my freehand perspective mistakes became obvious.

Here’s the rough inks after fixing some of the perspective problems. The digital inking was done in Painter. I still prefer the line quality I get in painter to that of Photoshop. Sadly, its the only thing I use Painter for.

Final color done in Photoshop. Here are the inks for the Boardwalk concept. The perspective and line-work on this is a bit better.

With final color.

Unfortunately, neither of these concepts ended up being used in the final game. Thus is the life of a concept artist. Oddly enough, not having a concept used in the final game doesn’t disappoint me, as long as I was still able to do work I was proud of. Case in point: With the time restriction of real-world game design, you don’t always have the time (or the need) for a fully rendered concept. Below is an quick thumbnail I did for Free Parking. I didn’t take the concept any farther than this, and it ended up being used in the game. Not something I’d put in my portfolio, but that’s how it works sometimes.  Next time I’ll post some stuff that I got to render out AND was used in the final game.

Well, 2010 has been a crazy year to say the least. I did a little bit of traveling, trying to figure out the convention scene and to promote Green Monk.
The high light of this traveling was meeting all of the awesome artists and radical comic book fans all over the country, and discovering that there are quite a few in my own backyard. I tried some things out that were fun but didn’t quite work like writing a weekly theory blog and doing live art demos.  I even found a little bit of time to complete a short story.

Lastly, I ended this year saying goodbye to my dear mother, Susan Dayton, after a courageous battle with breast cancer.

I’ve gained some insights on where I want to go this year as I’ve reflected on this last year and particularly as I’ve reflected on the good life that my mother lived.

The main thing is that I want to refocus on my life’s work. Seeing the fragility of life has been a stark reminder of that things that are most important. I would like to do something everyday of my life, that I can look back on and be proud of when my time here is done. I dedicated much of my time in 2009 to complete a book that was the beginning of my journey in to comic storytelling. In 2010 I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what to do with the finished book. This year I want to return my focus to doing the work of making art and telling stories.

I’m cutting back on the conventions. I’m cutting back on writing about theory and I don’t plan on doing any regular video demos. Instead, I’m going to be spending my time at the drawing table working on the follow up to Green Monk (I’ll also spend some time trying to pick up a publisher). On top of this, I’m going to be posting to my blog at least once a week, and it will always be a post with art in it.

That being said, I want to finish this post with a couple of rough pages for Green Monk Volume 1. I hope you all have a great 2011.

Enjoy!

Just finished up with an exhausting weekend at the CTN-X in Burbank.  By far, the best part of the expo was all the awesome people I got to meet, but a distant second was doing the live painting demos.

I got to do four demos, but I only had an hour of time for each demo. The first two demos were pretty manageable, so I was happy with the end results. The last two demos we’re a bit more involved so I didn’t really take them to a finished enough state for my liking. So, I’m not going to show you the last two I did, but I’ll show you the first two. Hope you like ‘em!

I’m planning on making a much bigger post about this later this month, but I wanted to show a quick preview of some of the character design I did for Monopoly Streets. Sadly, this geezer didn’t make the cut, but I had some fun art that did. Stay tuned!

A monster design for the new Green Monk story. Also trying out my new 000 brush I picked up from the art store for all the little details.

I started doing some character design and thumbnails last week, and tonight I just finished the first rough page of Green Monk Chapter 1.

This time around I’m going to try and rough it out on big, cheap paper, scan it in, print it out on bristol, clean it up and then ink it. Hopefully it’ll make for tighter artwork.

I’m not going to make a habit out of scanning each individual page. I just thought this would be a nice way to kick things off.

Just finished up the exclusive print that I’ll be making available at the Phoenix Comic-con this weekend.

I’m going to be sharing booth 422 with master of cute,  Greg Ham. I’m also finally going to make prints of my two favorite Aang paintings:

So if you’re going to be in the Phoenix area, make sure to drop by and say hi.