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.
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.
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!
This week I experimented with sketching with color. No pencil sketch to start with, I just jumped into Photoshop and started exploring shapes. You can see the full video here:
And here is the finished art. I could certainly spend some more time adding details, but the most important stuff is here.
I continued the work form last week, designing and painting an exclusive Green Monk print for the upcoming MoCCA festival. We also had a visit from fellow concept artist Xavier Garcia and had a chance to talk about art, comics and all sorts of stuff.
Here’s the beginning sketch followed by the in-progress painting. Still much work to do to figure this thing out.
Tonight I started on a project for my wife and her two sisters. They run a blog called wabisabi mama that’s all about being a mothers and celebrating their Japanese heritage. They’re redesigning the blog and they asked me to illustrate a couple of Kokeshi doll versions of themselves to go in the new header.
And here’s the still-in-process artwork. They asked me to put them into Kimonos instead of temporary clothing. I’ve still got to add one kokeshi and their kokeshi children.
Had a ton of fun doing some digital painting tonight for the artcast. I demoed my custom brush set and did a digital painting of Aang from Avatar The Last Airbender.
Here’s the full video:
And here is the final piece:
If you’re interested, you can still get the custom brushes by signing up the Whistling Cloud Newsletter in the sidebar.
The monitor mount that I use for my Cintiq is a combination of these two mounts:
Boo hoo. I forgot to record last Monday’s Artcast. Fortunately, I can still show you what I did. This is a continuation of the painting I started here.
Adding more texture and tone to the face. Working out the eyes.
Adding in a background. The wallpaper pattern is a custom brush I built then varied its alignment and duplicated it across the background.
Adding noise and texture to the background. The texture is a hi-res custom brush.
Adding a flame to the background and some color variation on the wall. Also painting in some reflected light on the suit
The finishing touch.
Voila! Apologies for not recording this. I’m going to be doing a whole different approach to coloring at the Artcast Network screening room, tomorrow night at 9 pm EST. Hopefully that’ll make up for it.
