SDCC Planeswalkers

Garruk 

So here they are in all their black-n-white glory: the Magic:the Gathering M14 Planeswalker promo card illustrations.  Wow, such a long title - but, as I have heard on the internet vine, deservedly so.  At least for now, those little cards are VERY highly coveted. The project however, didn't start out as illustrations for exclusive promo cards that you could only get at the San Diego Comic Con.

Jace

I was originally commissioned to do these planeswalker images as multi-use graphics that would go on t-shirts and a few other sundry M:tG products not directly part of the game itself. Much to my delight and excitement, a little while after I had completed these illustrations, Wizards decided to use these very same pieces on the aforementioned SDCC exclusives - a pretty damn big deal.  Planeswalker cards are popular in the Magic community - let alone extremely rare exclusives like this was to be.  And yes, I was compensated for the switch in primary use of the images (a nice little surprise bonus just before Christmas last year!)

Lilliana

About the illustrations themselves well, not only was it a switch in technique for me from full-color painting that I'm used to these days to a straight up black-n-white, but it was also a different way of approaching the black-n-white imagery as well.  My art director (and long-time friend) Matt Cavotta pushed me to drop reliance on lines to define form and shape and trust in a harsh, singular light source and shadow to make the image work.  This took some time for it to click as I had filled my freelance schedule for years and years on black and white pen-n-ink work - almost all of it defined by the linework of the drawing.  It was very easy to slip back into my old habits and take a more "comic book style" approach using lines and stylized shading, etc.  But Matt kept nudging me in the right direction until finally I saw exactly what he wanted. After that moment, it became really fun to do these.

Ajani

The images that are shown here (and used on the final cards) are technically mixed-media.  They started out as mars black acrylic on bristol paper but through a lot of back and forth with Matt, we ended up cleaning up parts and portions of each one to make them stronger images.  Most of it was "simplifying" - that is, just dropping unnecessary details in favor of larger areas of positive shapes or negative space.  Lilliana and Garruk required a little bit more attention to make the lighting situation work better though.  All of this, of course, was much easier to do digitally than if I was masochistic enough to rework them traditionally.  In the end, I'd say they are probably 90% traditional and 10% digital.

Chandra

So, speaking of the originals of which there has been quite a bit of interest, I will indeed be putting them up for auction.  I'm hoping to do so by August 1st.  All five will be auctioned together - and yes, I'll have pictures of the actual (untouched by digital retooling) illustrations on the eBay auction.  So get your bidding pants on next week!

P.A.C.T. Support!

Hey people!  Pardon me but I'm kinda slow hopping in with my word-of-mouth support on this important project called P.A.C.T. (Professional Artist-Client Toolkit).  This is an idea conjured up by a group of talented, business-savvy, and (most importantly) intelligent artists working out there in the world - concerned with making it a better and more fair landscape for us artists to work in.  The idea is to have a database website for illustrators to reference when out there trying to make a living.

The site will be a resource destination for  illustrators with sample contracts, educational resources, and a list of companies reviewed in the member's area. As a member, there will be a ratings tool to rate companies based on contract terms, rate of pay, timeliness of payment, and ease of working with client.

If you are an illustrator at any stage of your career, this is a project worthy of your interest and support.
Right now, the support most needed is contributing funds - funds needed in the next four days to reach the set goal.

 Heck, enough of my interpretation of the project and all it's about, go to the Indiegogo page for P.A.C.T., check out the video of the venerable Todd Lockwood breaking it down for you - and then read up on everything they're trying to do there.  Also, check out all the goodies you can get depending on how much money you contribute.

If you're foolishly interested in only Steve Prescott product - well, one of the perks includes a copy of my book AGGREGATE. Hop on over, check it out, and give it its due attention!

GP PROVIDENCE!

June 7th and 8th (that's this coming weekend y'all!), fellow fantasy art doodler Dan Scott and I will be making an appearance at the Magic: The Gathering Grand Prix in Providence, Rhode Island. Both of us will be signing all day Saturday (10:00 to 8:00) and most of the day Sunday.

The official playmat for the show features the above Summer-themed illustration by that guy I am.  The first 250 teams to register on-site on Friday will get one.  That makes this sucker a pretty nifty limited edition playmat!

Dan and I will be armed to the teeth with sharpies - ready to sign anything you put in front of us: cards, playmats, binders, cleavage, etc.  We'll also be selling artist proofs and prints (and maybe even a couple original Magic paintings!).  Hope to see you there!

For more information on the event go to:  PROVIDENCE GP 2013

SIDE PROJECT: Birthday Invites

I often get asked if I do any artwork outside of fantasy or gaming.  Or fantasy gaming.  The answer is YES.  Unless you're asking if I ever get PAID for any of my work outside of fantasy gaming.  Then the answer is almost always NO. But I do indulge in plenty of creative projects beyond my "work".  One ongoing project is illustrating my daughter's birthday party invitations. 

Every year since my daughter was about to turn two, I have crafted a simple, kid-friendly illustration for each of her party invitations.  This year she's turning eight!

Don't know why I didn't do a first birthday piece to start it all off.  But I did do a baby shower illustration if I can find where that one is.  Luckily, the rest of these are in a folder on my computer so I had easy access to drag 'em out and share them. Pardon the aesthetically wretched copyright tag on each one (the internet is full of pathetic douchebags that like to steal artwork and use it for their own gain). I have also extracted the text for most of these, too - nobody needs to know when to show up to a party that happened four years ago - and nobody needs to know my phone number either.  I spend too much time as it is not answering my phone.

So have a look.  And then have some cake. All images ©copyrightsteveprescott 2006-2013.

There are five 5's in the birthday 5 piece.  Likewise, there are eight 8's in the octopus one. Find 'em all and then give yourself a pat on the back!

Old World of Warcraft Shtuff

I spend a lot of time posting about Magic:The Gathering but not too much about the other TCG I do work for: World of Warcraft.  Obviously, it doesn't have the fervent fanbase that M:tG has and the design and sensibilities are very specific, but I have a lot of fun when working on a WoW piece. The first five or six illustrations I did for WoW were lackluster - I think it took some warming up to their crazy, ham-fisted style.  But once I figured out where my boundaries were and when I could stretch those or not, it started to click.

I'll spare you from seeing some of those first pieces when I was getting my legs under me and jump ahead a few jobs to what you see here.  Not only do these mark when I started to have a better approach and enthusiasm for Warcraft art, they also came at a time when my painting style started to get a little bolder and painterly.  Whether one was the result of the other or not, I'm not sure.

There are a handful of recurring visual-cues for Warcraft art.  First, dudes are built like juicing narcissistic bodybuilders and females are lithe and sexy.  Second, armor and weapons must be insanely huge and impractical.  And thirdly, lots of shit glows.  Take, for instance, the piece at the top of the draenei sorcerer and the Moonkin one below.  Expect there to be multiple light-sources and/or multiple glowing items in each WoW illustration.  Rare is the piece that has NO glowing anything in it. Heck, even that archer guy below has nocked a glowing arrow!  Why is it glowing?  Just turn your brain off and look at the pretty pictures.

Accounting for all the glowing shit and crackling energy and what-not can sometimes be a bitch.  But I often welcome the challenge and try not to put too much emphasis on the complications of those little details.  As with any job, I have to try and make whatever is asked of me look awesome somehow.  A dude in huge armor using a bow and arrow? Wha? Well, ok - here ya go.

I get asked all the time what medium I work in.  If I don't feel like explaining myself, I say acrylic - because, for finished full-color artwork, it is true 99.9% of the time.  Unless it's for World of Warcraft.  the truth is, almost all of my Warcraft art has a degree of digital touch ups.  Some more extensive than others.

Most of the time, there are fixes and reworks asked of me after the final art has been turned in. It is unusual if anything major is asked - usually it's quite small.  For such things, I just bring it up in photoshop and fix it in a few minutes.  All three of the images above have some minor digital tweaking here and there - making the glow a tad glowier, punching up the contrast just a smidge, etc.  Still, they are predominantly acrylic paintings.  I could still show and sell the original paintings - they are finished pieces by themselves.

But have I ever done a digital piece before?  No - not 100% digital.  But this one here comes the closest.  This piece is probably 75% digital.  The dude in the foreground retains some painted elements that I tweaked and worked over - everything else is digital.  Why did I do this? Well, this piece was going nowhere fast and I had exactly NO enthusiasm to traditionally paint it that day.  I decided to just scan in what I had and muck around with it digitally and see what happens.  It's effective and looks nice shrunk down - but it's not a very memorable or good illustration. I did however want to show it as an example of an extremely rare foray into professional digital work on my part. Photoshop was very helpful in getting me through that piece, but it's not a dish I want to eat very often.

Magic:The Gathering Original Artwork Price List

In lieu of a proper database for the time being, I'm posting a roughly slapped together price list of all the original Magic:TG paintings I still have and that would love to have a new home!

I'd say about 80% of these are 9x12 inches - some are bigger.  Only the Lorwyn Harbinger pieces are slightly smaller than 9x12.  All are acrylic on bristol paper.

If any of these interest you or if you have questions, e-mail me at steve2@rottface.com and we can discuss things further.

This list has been removed temporarily.  I have sold 10 paintings since I posted it and I now have to relist it minus the sold paintings so I don't have to keep telling everyone which ones I don't have anymore!

Magic Card Action Illustrating

I don't flex my "action" illustration muscles often enough - usually my job is to just make things look cool, scary, beautiful, etc.  So when the times comes around to illustrate a scene of some very specific action, it can often be uncomfortable for me.  A lot of the "action" in my commissions are purposely left fairly vague - it'll be something like "show an armored lancer charging into battle" or "show our two heroes attacking a giant spider" and so on.  Those type descriptions leave a lot open to interpretation and artistic license.  I can construct the scene according to just shapes and negative space - how I position the lancer on his horse can dictate how the rest of it falls into place.  I could have guys getting trampled, skewered, jumping off to the side, taking a swipe, reeling in horror, or eating an ice cream sandwich.  But the general action is still there.

But sometimes the action is described more specifically.  Take these two pieces.  The first is "Shattering Blow".  The description: a Ravnican giant swinging a heavy wrecking ball on a chain and smashing a statue of a certain character.  These items had to be laid out with much more deliberation and thought - I needed to retain the energy of the scene but also solve the problem.  Composing this is suddenly a different animal - I can't just toss secondary components in there anywhere like I am prone to doing.

This other one is "SlaughterHorn".  This is even more difficult of an action because I needed to show an action that is a reaction to another action.  These types of descriptions can often be impossible and thus, really annoying.  An example of an action/reaction scene: "show a warrior beheading an ogre and the ogre's head rolling away".  You can't really show both those things in one illustration without some sort of aesthetically lame gimmick.  You can show the head rolling away and the headless body tumbling to the ground and maybe the warrior in a followed-through pose.  But you can't show the beheading AND the rolling away head in one still snap shot.  In this piece, the description was to show a gruulox battering a hapless servant creature - and the servant creature is flying limply into the air.  One is a reaction to the other - but luckily the events are close enough together that with some rather ham-fisted visual suggestions, the viewer is lead to put together the events in their heads.  The motion blur of the gruulox's charge, the bloody mist of the impact, and the trail of blood as the servant flies off limply.  Sure, none too subtle, but it solves the problem while retaining some energy in the scene.

Here's one that I posted before called "Divine Deflection".  The art description wanted a Innistrad priest using his divine powers to send a whirling battle axe back at the thrower - specifically, the axe was supposed to be bouncing off the priest as I recall.  Eegads, that's a bitch.  But here's another chain of actions that needed to be shown to properly illustrate the card.  I needed to imply that the axe was coming toward the priest, was magically intercepted, and is being returned at the attacker. First of all, illustrating a thrown axe whirling through the air is a son of a bitch by itself and I loathe the day I ever have to illustrate one again.  But then I have to show this specific action/reaction along with it?  Ugh.

My first move as a prima donna artist is to nix the "bouncing off the priest" part - that just flat out did NOT work.  BUT, what did work for the same mechanics was having the axe boomeranging around the back of the magical priest dude and heading back to the thrower.  To ham-fist it home, I put glowy trailers on the whirling axe so it looks like it was tossed by a "black" creature, intercepted by the "white" creature and returned using "white" magic. Oh yeah, and then I had to paint it and make it look professional somehow. This was probably the most difficult of these three to orchestrate and the success of the final image regarding what was requested is questionable (the axe doesn't look like it is rotating at all!) but at least it looks pretty good on a card.  And hey, that counts for something!

NOTE: First, just so you youngsters don't think you can just go all rogue on an assignment, I didn't change the specifics of the action on Divine Deflection without running it by the Art Director first.  Secondly, yes, I'll bitch and moan about art descriptions from now and again, but I still welcome the challenge almost all the time.  Illustration is about problem solving in many ways and though the aesthetics of the artwork are sometime impeded by difficult specifics, you'll never learn anything and grow as an artist without putting yourself in uncomfortable situations and taking on challenging assignments.