The DOODLES, DESIGNS, and aRT of CHRISTOPHER BURDETT

Monday, December 5, 2016

Hunter in the Night: Star Wars LCG - Meditation and Mastery

I have another new Star Wars piece for you today! This time around, it is the Hunter in the Night Objective Card from the recently released expansion, Meditation and Mastery. Here is my piece titled, Hunter in the Night.

Hunter in the Night

Star Wars LCG - Meditation and Mastery

11 x 14 - Acrylic and pencil on board

Art Director - Taylor Ingvarsson

Original available on my store!

For those of you that play the game, you will know that Objective Cards have art that is thin and long that runs the length of the card. As you can see above, my art does not fit those dimensions. When I got this assignment, I worked with the art director to create a piece that fulfilled the production's need and allowed me to create a piece that was more in line with the size and shape of work that I like to make. This did mean I was creating more images then they needed, but it was allowing me to create the image I wanted. This all may seem weird, but I needed to do this. Here is the final drawing for Hunter in the Night...

Hunter in the Night

Star Wars LCG - Meditation and Mastery

17 x 14 - Pencil on paper

Art Director - Taylor Ingvarsson

Original available over on my web store

Here is the final production card for Hunter in the Night, and you can see how much the image I created was cropped down for production's needs. I delivered to them the cropped and original versions of the image to do with as they needed. While they were getting two images for the price of one, it gave me the flexibility to make something I was much more excited about working on.

Hunter in the Night in handy dandy card form

I will have more info and details about this piece in the coming weeks/months when I finally get around to sharing the process. Until then, here are a couple images of Hunter in the Night being used as article art over on the Fantasy Flight Games website. As you can see, this piece was officially spoiled over a month ago; it has taken this long for it to finally reach the front of the blog queue!

Hunter in the Night, used on the Fantasy Flight Games website

That is all for another exciting Monday on the blog. See you back here on Wednesday! Until then...

For more samples of my work or to contact me regarding my availability, head over to my website: www.christopherburdett.com

Friday, December 2, 2016

Looking Back: Unproduced "The Gambler" - Dreamblade

Today on the blog I am looking back at another Dreamblade miniature design that I have never shared before. This particular design never made it into production and was never a miniature, but the design was approved (somehow). Here is the design for the "The Gambler" which was slated to be a part of the first expansion (Baxar's War) to Dreamblade released back in 2006...

Unproduced "The Gambler"

12 x 9 - Pencil on paper

Unlike the Genteel Husk and the "Janus Scout" by the time this piece was approved I was not unhappy with the work that I had done. While there were some rocky spots while designing it, in the end I thought it was a descent enough design. Not one of my best at the time, but descent enough. I of course could do better now and there are plenty of things I would have liked to have done differently, but that is to be expected with anything you look back on. Here is a look at how the full turnaround turned out...

Unproduced "The Gambler" Turnaround

12 x 9 - Pencil on paper (multiple sheets)

While I was not unhappy with the final design, the work I did leading up to it did leave some to be desired. So that I am not beating a dead horse, you can review my post on the Genteel Husk and the "Janus Scout" to get all the details. This was kind of a weird mini. The art called for a guy with a gun and a hand full of dice who needed to have 20 sided dice for eyes and clothes featuring a motif based on the playing card suites. My first design was really flat and stiff...

"The Gambler" Version 1

9 x 12 - Pencil on paper

Working with the art director I was able to take what I have done with the first version and rework the pose, some of the details, and breath a little more life into it. I had some things right in the first one, I just needed to be smarter about it. I think that is the lessen to be learned by all these old Dreamblade designs I am sharing - you learn and you get better over time. My second attempt at the deign was met with a lot more approval...

"The Gambler" Version 2

12 x 9 - Pencil on paper

Unfortunately, like several of my designs that I did for Dreamblade, I had an approved design except for one element and then I would end up doing a bunch of variations and alternate versions to get that one aspect nailed down. For "The Gambler" it was the head/face. Just could not seem to get it right. It was as if I was not very good at drawing humans at the time and I was not using reference. Here are some of the alternate versions of the head that I did as I got closer and closer to the goal of an approved design...

"The Gambler" Version 3 - 8

12 x 9 - Pencil on paper with digital alterations

When I finally enlarged the head and made it more of a crazy monstery human guy thing we were in business. I made one last edit to get the approved design at the top of the post. This mini would not have won awards, but I think it is interesting enough and would have been neat if it had received a decent paint job. Who knows why it was never used, but I am sure there were good reason. Another gaming mystery for the ages...

That's all for another exciting week on the blog, see you back here on Monday! Until then...

For more samples of my work or to contact me regarding my availability head over to my website: www.christopherburdett.com

Thursday, December 1, 2016

Forest Awareness - Star Wars - Process

This was suppose to go up yesterday, but I had a day job photo shoot I was on all day and getting this post queued up slipped through the cracks.

In May I first shared with you my Forest Awareness painting for the Star Wars LCG. Today I have for you the process and steps that went into making this painting. This is another older Star Wars piece that was finally released and now I finally am getting around to sharing the process. To start things off, here is how the final painting of Forest Awareness turned out...

Forest Awareness

Star Wars LCG - Press the Attack

14 x 11 - Acrylic and pencil on board

Art Director - Zoe Robinson

Original for sale over on my web store!

This piece was a straggler that was done shortly after my Ephant Mon and Wicket paintings that I have previously shared. Star Wars cards come out in six pack blocks which are built around a theme, one set per month (give or take) for six months. An entire card block worth of art is commissioned all at once, so art can take a long time to come out.You never know if your card will be in the first pack or the last pack. Then there are times when the details, names, titles, etc change in production and then you never know what is going on. It's fun that way! Like I said, this is another card I did a while back that is just recently getting an official release.

This was an interesting one. The art order was really wide open and simply called for an Ewok doing something smart or knowledgeable in the forest. There were suggestions of the Ewok leading Rebels through the forest, hunting, tracking, etc. I talked a bit with Zoe about the direction to go with this one and we finally both agreed on an Ewok following track. Also, since the art order was open and allowed for it, I suggested that I make the Ewok a named and recognizable Ewok and I got approval to make it Teebo. With all that taken care of it was time to get to work!

Starting things of we have some thumbnails... because that is ALWAYS how I start these things off. I shot some weird selfies of myself crouching in my studio doing my best Ewok impression and then got to work. Here are how the thumbnails turned out...

Forest Awareness - Thumbnails

Looking at the thumbnails you know that option 'A' was the winning one. I still really like option 'B' and wonder how it would have turned out if we had gone in that direction. I liked the idea that Teebo is sniffing the air and getting his barrings on the animal that he is tracking. Oh well, what could have been. No matter, we have a finiahed painting of 'A' to look at. With a thumbnail approved, it was time to get drawing...

Forest Awareness

Star Wars LCG - Press the Attack

17 x 14 - Pencil on paper

Art Director - Zoe Robinson

Original for sale over on my web store!

They get no more straight forward than this. Translated the thumbnail into a finished drawing and it was approved. Added lots of details, worked out some stuff and at this point it was just a matter of getting started on the painting. Which I did. Here is the Forest Awareness coming together in 16 easy steps...

Forest Awareness - Process progression

This one had a little bit of an uncertain start. If you notice I was definitely going in one direction with this piece at the beginning - blue sky, a cool color scheme... and it was just not working. Hard to tell here, but it was really not working for me. It also felt odd, off, and maybe a little to similar to my Wicket piece. I wanted to do something different and something cool. I pushed the sky yellow and warmed a lot of things up and the moment I did this the painting began to come together. After this choice to go yellow the only other hurdle was to get the foot prints to work the way I wanted them to. The foot prints seemed to take way longer then they should of. Oh well... thems the breaks. Here is an animated progression of the painting to better show it coming together...

Forest Awareness - Animated process

As an added bonus, I happened to have taken a photo of my work space when I was finishing up this painting. Not sure if it will unlock any secrets, but if should give you an idea of how I work... or at least how a worked a couple years ago.

Forest Awareness - Work space

Here again is the final painting of Forest Awareness and the final production card that it was used on...

Forest Awareness

Star Wars LCG - Press the Attack

14 x 11 - Acrylic and pencil on board

Art Director - Zoe Robinson

Original for sale over on my web store!

Forest Awareness in handy dandy card form

That is all for another exciting Thursday on the blog, see you back here on Friday! Until then...

For more samples of my work or to contact me regarding my availability head over to my website: www.christopherburdett.com

Monday, November 28, 2016

Fortified Holding Cells: Star Wars LCG - Ancient Rivals

I have another new(ish) Star Wars piece for you today! This piece was spoiled at Gen Con with the early release of the expansion to the Star Wars Card Game Ancient Rivals. The expansion came was released officially a short time after Gen Con, and my blog schedule is finally opening up for me to share it here. Enough yammering; here my piece titled, Fortified Holding Cells...

Fortified Holding Cells

Star Wars LCG - Ancient Rivals

11 x 14 - Acrylic and pencil on board

Art Director - Taylor Ingvarsson

Original available over on my web store

That poor unfortunate Talz. It is definitely having a bad day. The Talz was on my list of Star Wars aliens and monsters I really wanted to officially paint, so this was a fun piece to receive for sure. I usually jump at any opportunity to illustrate any original trilogy creatures. Fun fact: while other of my completely bloodless Star Wars illustrations have been deemed too violent, this one, with splattered blood, bloody hands, and droplets of blood in mid-air made it through with no comment. Here is the drawing that I did for this piece...

Fortified Holding Cells

Star Wars LCG - Ancient Rivals

17 x 14 - Pencil on paper

Art Director - Taylor Ingvarsson

Original available over on my web store

Last but not least, here is an image of the card this painting was created for. It uses the football template, so there is some loss of the image due to the chrome of the card, but the important stuff is still there. All in all, it turned out really well...

Fortified Holding Cells in handy dandy card form

That is all for another exciting Monday on the blog. See you back here on Wednesday! Until then...

For more samples of my work or to contact me regarding my availability, head over to my website: www.christopherburdett.com

Wednesday, November 23, 2016

Volo's Guide to Monsters - Dungeons & Dragons - Part 2

Today I have the remaining two pieces that made up my contribution to Volo's Guide to Monsters, the newest gaming supplement to Dungeons & Dragons. If you missed the first three, I shared them on Monday. Here are my remaining illustrations from Volo's: the Morkoth and the Yuan-Ti Broodguard...

Morkoth

11 x 14 - Digital

Art Director - Kate Irwin

I think the Morkoth might be my second favorite piece from the book. How can you go wrong with all those tentacles and that nasty beaked face? The Morkoth got a visual update for the book, and I was thrilled to be tasked with taking the new concept work and turning it into a finished illustration. I love that the Morkoth collects things and carries it around on their backs. One of the bits of Morkoth treasure depicted in the concept art was a chair, I thought that was hilarious and such a great idea, so I had to be sure to include a chair on the back on my Morkoth (top left corner).

Yuan-Ti Broodguard

11 x 14 - Digital

Art Director - Kate Irwin

The Yuan-Ti Broodguard was an interesting one, it needed to be lithe and lanky. I have mentioned a dozen plus times here on the blog, I prefer big and beefy monsters. This does not mean that I was not happy to take on the Broodguard, it just means I had to fight some of my natural tendencies. I thought giving it some dramatic up lighting would work well for this one. Give it an additional layer of interest. Hopefully, it worked.

Below are the drawings that went into these illustrations. Since I was working on five pieces and I didn't think I had the time needed to do these traditionally the painting are digital. It would have been nice to have paintings of all of these, but the final pieces did end up way better by me doing them digitally. At least there are the drawings, get them while you can, they are going fast...

Morkoth

11 x 14 - Pencil on paper

Art Director - Kate Irwin

Original - SOLD

Yuan-Ti Broodguard

11 x 14 - Pencil on paper

Art Director - Kate Irwin

Original - SOLD

That is all for another exciting Wednesday on the blog, see you back here on Monday, tomorrow is a Holiday, and the blog will be resting on Friday. Until then...

For more samples of my work or to contact me regarding my availability head over to my website: www.christopherburdett.com

Monday, November 21, 2016

Volo's Guide to Monsters - Dungeons & Dragons - Part 1

I am happy to be able to start sharing my contributions to Volo's Guide to Monsters, the newest gaming supplement to Dungeons & Dragons. Volo's is just the kind of project I like - Dungeons & Dragons, monsters, and getting to work with the most excellent art director, Kate Irwin. Kate assigned me some really awesome monsters and this was a really really fun assignment to work on. I produced a total of five illustrations for the book, I will be sharing three today and the last two on Wednesday. Enough yammering, here are my illustrations of the Lizardfolk, Beholder Gazer, and the Mind Flayer Tadpole...

Lizardfolk

11 x 14 - Digital

Art Director - Kate Irwin

I think the Lizardfolk was my favorite piece from the book. I have a soft spot for the D&D Lizardmen that goes back decades. I played a Lizardman back in 2nd Edition and after reading the section of Volo's Guide to Monsters that had the player character Lizardfolk I am ready to roll up a new one! Thrilled to have been able to create the illustration for this section of the book. I love to work on scaly lizard people.

Beholder Gazer

11 x 14 - Digital

Art Director - Kate Irwin

You can never go wrong with a Beholder of any kind. I was given a tiny little image of an old Gazer illustration and was told to flesh it out and make it cool. I can totally do that! There ended up being two version of the drawing for this one since the first one was found to be a little questionable when it came to the eye stalks. You can see both drawings below and I will go into more detail about this when I share the process and step later.

Mind Flayer Tadpole

9.1 x 10.1 - Digital

Art Director - Kate Irwin

Last but not least of these is the Mind Flayer Tadpole. This was the perfect opportunity for me to do a self portrait of myself in a D&D assignment. I have some fun photo reference to share for this one that involve me and a kneaded eraser on my face as a stand in for the tadpole.

Below are the drawings that went into these illustrations. Since I was working on five pieces and I didn't think I had the time needed to do these traditionally the painting are digital. It would have been nice to have paintings of all of these, but the final pieces did end up way better by me doing them digitally. At least there are the drawings, get them while you can, they are going fast...

Lizardfolk

11 x 14 - Pencil on paper

Art Director - Kate Irwin

Original - SOLD

Beholder Gazer (Final Version)

11 x 14 - Pencil on paper

Art Director - Kate Irwin

Original - SOLD

Beholder Gazer (Original Version)

11 x 14 - Pencil on paper

Art Director - Kate Irwin

Original - SOLD

Mind Flayer Tadpole

11 x 14 - Pencil on paper

Art Director - Kate Irwin

Original - SOLD

That is all for another exciting Monday on the blog, see you back here on Wednesday! Until then...

For more samples of my work or to contact me regarding my availability head over to my website: www.christopherburdett.com

Friday, November 18, 2016

Looking Back: Unproduced "Janus Scout" - Dreamblade

Today on the blog I am looking back at another Dreamblade miniature design that I have never shared before. This particular design never made it into production and was never a miniature, but the design was approved (somehow). Here is the design for the "Janus Scout" which was slated to be a part of the original set of Dreamblade back in 2006...

Unproduced "Janus Scout"

12 x 9 - Pencil on paper

Unfortunately, I was never happy with this one, not with where it started and not with where it ended. This one felt like a slow motion car crash the entire time I was working on it. Almost all of this had to do with my lack of experience, both with drawing and using reference. Again, like the Genteel Husk, if I had this assignment to do now, it would be a none issue. I would shoot some reference, work out poses, do thumbnails, get feedback/approvals, do the work, and see it done - straight forward and easy enough. Back in 2005 when I was originally working on this piece I was adrift on the seas of inexperience and my ship was taking on water. In the end I survived, I got the work done, and it was approved. It was all just a lot harder than it needed to be. Here is a view of the entire turnaround...

Unproduced "Janus Scout" Turnaround

12 x 9 - Pencil on paper (multiple sheets)

If you are wondering why there are two faces it is because all of the pieces associated with the Janus Corporation in the game had two faces. Pretty neat detail in the game and an interesting aspect of all the Janus miniatures. As far as the miniature never getting made, who knows, these things happen. It could have been that production never liked the design, the miniature sculpt could have not made the cut, aspects of the game could have changed negating this piece, or any number of reasons. We will probably never know and at this point it kind of doesn't matter... except if it was because of my crappy design then I hope I never find out.

This piece went though many variations and had a lot of edits done to it before it was approved. I think these all speak for themselves and why there needed to be additional attempts at the design. Some didn't meet the requirements need to be a common miniature, some were because it was a crappy drawing, and some were because I had no idea what I was doing and was smashing my pencil to paper without any cohesive plan or direction. Enough self deprecating, here are various early versions of the "Janus Scout"...

"Janus Scout" Version 1

9 x 12 - Pencil on paper

"Janus Scout" Version 2

12 x 9 - Pencil on paper

"Janus Scout" Back Version 1 - 5

12 x 9 - Pencil on paper with digital alterations

It might sound like I am being overly negative about some of these designs, please understand it is all directed at myself and the holes in my skill sets back in 2005. None of this should feel directed at WotC and the production staff. I have had permission to share this unproduced work since 2009 and I have never made an attempt to do so. I still cringe at the piece, but it is part of my story and part of the work that I did to eventually be the artist I am today. Everybody has these skeletons in their art closets, it is part of journey. Hopefully this is all taken with a light heart and feels like a good amount of self deprecation - which it is. I still have more art skeletons in my closet to share...

That is all for another exciting week on the blog, see you back here next week! Until then...

For more samples of my work or to contact me regarding my availability head over to my website: www.christopherburdett.com