Tiger PGA Tour 09 Lighting Target - Sun City

All images property of Electronic Arts.

This is one of the first projects I worked on when I transitioned over to the Concept team. I was given an idea of the overall color they wanted for this course,. I was also given the top image as a starting point.

I used adjustment layers to adjust color and repainted some of the light shadows. The time of day is late afternoon/early evening.

The purpose of this piece is to give the lighters a target for color and atmosphere as they light the course they get from the environment artists, as well as set the sky. I am not sure what the course looks like in the actual game, I guess I could go fire it up.

It was awhile ago, but I think these took me a few days to do.

Madden NFL 09 Stadiums

All images property of Electronic Arts.



These stadiums were painted for Madden NFL 09 intro screens. We did a day and a night version for each stadium. Unfortunately, I didn't get to do the night one for the Cardinals, which is one of my favorites because it looks like a UFO. These images are more like matte paintings in that elements of photos were used, but there was also a good deal of painting into them. We started with a 3D render of the stadium as a guide. The parking lot and street had to be in the same location.

If you fire up the game and watch the intro, there is actually a camera move, which was done by projecting our paintings onto geometry to get realistic parallaxing. I think they turned out pretty nice, considering we only intended for them to be static 2D images to begin with...

These took 3 days each. The Colts stadium was particularly interesting because it was not completed when I had to do the painting. I used whatever reference of the building plans I could find on the internet, so it may not be 100% accurate.

I got a lot better at painting windows by the end of the 32-stadium project (64 paintings), even though I only did 13 of them.

Oil sketch

This little 3" x 5" sketch in oils took a hefty 2 hours to do. I haven't painted in quite a while, and want to develop more control in the medium. I am far from it, as you can see by the muddy colors and heavy purples in the sketch. I worked from a photo of Otter Creek PA my wife took last time we were up there.

I was having a hard time painting wet on wet and with only one brush (I dislike having to clean tons of brushes!). My friend Steven Geer told me I should be using multiple brushes and paint shadows thinly at first, building up to thicker opaque lighter values, so that's what I'll be working on next time. Wish me luck!

Tiger Woods 09 lighting target - Sheshan

All images property of Electronic Arts.

This is one of the first projects I worked on when I transitioned over to the Concept team. I was given an idea of the overall color they wanted for this course, Sheshan. I was also given the top image as a starting point. The lighter strip you see on the bottom of it is actually the finished artwork in Photoshop. I added the strip to shift the horizon line higher and make the composition more appealing.

I used adjustment layers to adjust color and repainted the sand traps to have a nice cool shadows. I was told to paint it as a certain time of day, can you tell what it is? I am not sure if I hit it as accurately as I should have...

The purpose of this piece is to give the lighters a target for color and atmosphere as they light the course they get from the environment artists, as well as set the sky. I am not sure what the course looks like in the actual game, but I do have a copy of the Wii game. I wonder if that one looks as good as the 360 or PS3 one... doubtful!

It was awhile ago, but I think these took me a few days to do.

Keep checking back, I will be posting more of these and then some Madden NFL 09 work.

Concept art

All images property of Electronic Arts.

These are some pieces I did within the past year. The Sand flea/squid was a one day exercise, the subject was simply "Industrial Design". I did a page of silhouette sketches to warm up and explore different shapes, then took the rest of the day to paint it. Props to my co-worker Steven Geer for his paper texture that I now use for everything!

The PS3 background was for an internal PS3 load screen. It was fun, even though it's pretty Matrix-ey....it's what they wanted...

I can't get enough ART!

Ok, I'm sorry for not posting more regularly. This blog has kind of taken some twists and turns, and mostly been a place for me to post random stuff. Eventually, I may split this blog into two streams of consciousness, one for art and one for everything else....

I am taking a break from furious mouse-clicking to type this blog entry. I am compelled to save artwork to look at and study and draw inspiration from, so I've been going to a bunch of art blogs and saving the images in reference folders for myself to peruse at my leisure. My wife snidely comments on my "stealing" work, but sometimes people's blogs or webpages disappear, or they take work off of it. I love studying other artists' work, and learning from them. I have a LOT of artists blogs in my Google Reader, but I'm not sure how to get a list and link them easily. If anyone has an easy method for this, please let me know!

Here are just a few of my favorites (legendary status) lately:

John Nevarez
Hans Bacher
Nathan Fowkes
Robh Ruppel

Sorry, no pix! I'm feeling WAY too lazy and I'm also grumpy at Blogspot's lack of layout tools for the non-HTML nerds.

Pix

I have a new little snapshot camera, which I bought from a friend for a few bux and need to get a replacement battery door cover. I just like how small it is, but I need to get the manual to figure out some stuff. Here are some pictures I've taken lately! Abbie's school had an event called "Donuts with Dad". As with any publicized event with free food, there was a mob of hungry dads and kids. Apparently, last year the event didn't have nearly that many people. When we walked into the cafeteria, I noticed 4 or 5 Krispy Kreme boxes and some drinks, and noted the fulness of the cafeteria. We were lucky to get any Donuts at all, and they were the backup Dunkin Donuts that showed up 5 minutes before school started...

I won some tickets to the Magic vs Raptors game last Tuesday. The company's season tickets are in the lower bowl, and great. I had a headache but went anyway and it was a great game.

The picture of Lucas was taken at the park when I took the kids for a half-hour romp yesterday. The weather was great and he liked to hang out watching the other kids play.

I am truly blessed!