Xander From Zee

So one of my biggest regrets at the moment is not being able to work on "Project Zee" an indie game that myself and several other artists have been developing under the name 13th skull productions over the past years. (right now 13thskull.com goes redirects to artofgon.com) i was told to change the name of my portfolio because it sounded like a virus
I am so satisfied with how the story and game play has fleshed, and will never let the concept truly die. I really believe that someday soon we will pick up production again.

Project Zee is based off of several characters that were originally created while I was in college. The game is loosely based within my favorite subject matter. Dreams.
It will be a homage to old school gaming with a new school graphic twist.
Some day folk. Some day.
The name "Project Zee" was inspired by a good ole friend Adrian Saylor. I believe if i do remember correctly, it was his idea to call the world Zee. I thought it was clever and very observant of him. I think it was him that pointed out that I used Zs alot as a tag in my work.



This is Xander. He is the highly imaginitive hero of the story. He is infact the main character, but not the character that is played throughtout the most of the game. He is the host that grounds the playable spirit of Gutter to the physical real world. Gutter travels through Zee. Battling the Anu space demons that enslave the minds of many.
Xander or Zan is a collector and a trickster at heart. He is guided by Amas in the teachings of their ancient ancestors. Lots of mayan influences there. Look for more later ;P

gonna paint some normal maps for this bad boy

Working in Richmond

So right before moving to California to venture into the videogame industry, I was freelancing in Richmond, Va with several different clients. I did T shirts for Jinx clothing, did some low poly models/textures for Sparkplug Games, and I worked as a general production artist for a marketing firm called Eastwood media. While working with Eastwood, I was tasked with a wide range of work including, t shirt designs, flash adverts for website, comic book pages for a modern spin on Little Red Riding Hood, background and characters for an Ipad game marketed towards kids, character designs for the local Baseball team's comic starring their Mascot Nutzy the squirrel, and wallpapers for ipad/iphones.

Here is my favorite piece that I did for them.
Its Santa and Nutzy kickin some Grinch ass... normally I would be rooting for the grinches. BAH HUMBUG.

Part Deux

Eve- Done for an open house gallery event called Artists of Eden in Baltimore. Very much inspired by the artists audrey kawasaki, stunt kid, and the model/erotic dancer sara ecks. A very good friend of mine named Jessica Esper
invited me to showcase/sell some digital works at a semi urban open house gallery setting. Had loads of fun talking first hand with some fans and even opened up to break dance a bit. Thanks Navix for the dance moves ;D
and thanks Jess for the invite. Miss ya

Art DUMPZ

Hey there ghouls n gals. Hows eternal life treatin ya?
Im back from the dead and ready to ooga booga boogey woogie. call me crazy legs.

Ive been quite negligent of this blog for some time, but now I see this is a much quicker way to be a tad informal/slightly more informative. Not as many people follow my blog, so I am more comfortable sharing a little more of whats in my head on some of these designs.
Please excuse the art dump of a few old ghosts. These demons just wont rest. They claim they'll liven up the room, so ill give em the chance to shine again.

I hand picked some of my favorite old works from my new portfolio and will spit a bit of fire on the hot topics.

Speaking of spitting hot magma.
Heres a pic Spitfire. An old concept for a personal project code named "P13"
She's a engineer bar brawling engineer tattoo artist that hangs out at the infamous "Bad Apple" outside of the core in the Lost Sandz. A dessert world that doubles as graveyard/ dumping zone for the ashes of the fallen city citizens.

She can normally be spotted talking to Whowolves in scatter junkyards, asking about airplane engine scraps, or tattoo the toughest lost sanderz at the bad apple. for a hefty price.

3D

damn 3d is FUN! really gettin the hang of it. want to build a few more character busts for the portfolio. then maybe some full character turnarounds.

GDC in Austin

Well just got back from GDC , and i have to say i had a great time in Austin. Gotta thank Ralph Pacheco for helping me out and telling me about this event. He even gave me a grand tour of the city. Austin is a kick ass place. I would be very comfortable living there. I must have walked through the city streets for 5 hours at a time just feelin at peace and digging something new. Talked to a good number of artists in the industry. Showed some work to Mario Piedra; art director at Cartoon Network, and got some great feedback. Also got some excellent advice from Peter Konig from Valve. My favorite dudes to talk to was probably the guys at FrozenCode Base. they were pretty damn cool, and had some really funny vid up of this bunny drummer dude. a local legend in Wisconsin. pretty much everyone tells me to stick with what i do best; which is the more exaggerated cartoony character work. This doesn't mean i wont be doing other styles and environments, just means a majority of my work will be in that realm. i need to develop a style of backgrounds for the exaggerated characters i develop. Ill be taking my friend's advice using less texture and refining the forms of the objects in the environment to create a clear render. its tough to adapt sometimes... but i gotta lay off the damn texture.

Gotta alot of work to do and jobs to apply to. wish me luck.

heres some work i did to show at GDC

Giving Tree

my own version of a giving tree.