Spider-Pod concepts!

All right, it took a looooong time to get approval to show some concepts from my work on the Fighter Pods lines, extending out from Star Wars into Ultimate Spider-Man.

So far Wave One has been released, and here some sketches from that round of work.

First up are rough pose ideas for the SHIELD gang, Spider-Man, Power Man, White Tiger, Nova, and Iron Fist.  And this is about as far as I went with this line, I usually get to do clean-ups and views, but the turnaround was pretty fast for wave one, and the modelers had a lot of experience from the Star Wars line at this point, so the chain of development was a lot more streamlined.

Now some baddies - Task Master, Venom, Rhino, Electro, Kraven the Hunter, and Beetle.

And a few more heroes, Agent Coulson!, Thor, Iron Man, and Nick Fury.  And also the pod shooter concept thumbnails, which kind of all amalgamated into the final retail version.

And that's about it for now on Spider-Man, until whenever another wave comes out.


Next up, some wave 4 Star Wars Fighter Pods...

Transformers Prime : Beast Hunters #4

It's a bloodbath, a BLOODBATH!!!  Grimlock has swatted some flies.

This was cover was my idea;  I turned in the #3 cover at the latest deadline I could, due to the cons I attended in the spring, and it was almost time to start the next cover.  Given #3 had a ton of Insecticons, I suggested an aftermath scene, if it fit into the storyline.  My editor (new guy since #3, taking over for John Barber - Mr. Carlos Guzman!) thought it could be pretty cool, and gave me the go ahead.

This is the layout drawing for approval to final, and honestly it was just a clean up of the thumbnail I suggested, almost exactly.  I had a pretty clear vision of what I wanted this to look like, so the process went pretty fast.

And here is the final line art, tightened up even more from the original thumbnail and layout sketches.

This might be my favorite cover so far, and ever since that Ser-Ket vs. Grimlock fight from Rage #3, I've been wanting to get that bloody energon idea onto a cover!

Aligned Soundwave!

So. I was so honored and happy to get the job working on new character designs, that I kind of just took whatever they gave me.  But then I got a brave after a little while, and requested *Soundwave, if he hadn't been taken by someone else yet.

He is my all time favorite Transformer.  I lucked out, and got to take a pass at him.  I got the assignment, and he was to be explored as a secret government FBI/CIA type SUV, in the style of 24, or a Presidential Caravan.  I knew this was coming from his previous incarnation from Animated.

Now that's about as nondescript as you can get, right?  We did explore a little bit of a comm array that would expand when he was transmitting, but it never got fully developed before we moved on to other things.

Transformed!  As always, I try to keep as many classic cues in as possible, but there were a few things being asked from Aaron and Eric at Hasbro to try to add, like a movie style head, and there was something with the legs, though in the notes I can't seem to find any reference, probably was in an email that was deleted long ago.

And because we were kind of whipping through these, I never got to do the back versions, but I had the idea the the tires would push back from the shoulders to have some kind of speaker look, with the doors creating an amphitheater type effect on his back.  For maximum bass.

And so that's it for now.  Pre-pre-production conversation starters - and I kind of want to make that point.  This is all first look intended work, in no way meant to be the final vision of anything.  Conversations in the fan forums; that sucks, that's awsome, why didn't we get that, we should have gotten this instead....you're all right. That's the point of the whole endeavor, it's the development process.  Putting something up, that folks can discuss, take in that new information, and try again.  It's concept art, not final design.

I wasn't too excited about the truck mode, but in the growth of development, Soundwave was envisioned as a Drone - and I LOVE that.  I wish I thought of it!  The Transformers Prime Soundwave is second only to my unconditional love of G1 Soundwave.  But, honestly, if they told me to try a Soundwave with a paint can alt mode, I'll try to make it cool!

*And the micro-minions as well, but they weren't ready to deal with those guys at that point.




All right, later this week, up goes the development for the Beast Hunters #4 cover.  And of course, this is still going on:

If you're a Facebook user, I invite you to enter into the Like Drive I have going on for the next two weeks, on the Bad Flip Productions page.  Participants can win some free art from me; here's the announcement:

For two weeks, I'll be running a Like Drive on the Facebook page.  It's been up for two years, and I've done NOTHING to promote it, other than letting it exist. Give me a break, I'd much rather being drawing than marketing!

All the rules are posted in the picture, which will be the cover art on the Facebook page for the next two weeks.  Recommend the page to five friends, (or you could just share the page on your timeline!) say you did so in the comment section of the above cover photo, and you're entered!

Here's a helpful link to get you started!

Facebook Page

Jooooooiiiin uuuuuuuussssssssssssssss.... 

Charticon! August 9th-11th in Charlotte, NC!

I'm happy to announce that I'll be a guest at Charticon, later this summer.  I'll have a table, and participate in a panel during the show.  I'll have more details as the date gets closer - I'm really looking forward to it!  Who's going to take me to the Penguin?

Here's the info for the show:  Charticon!!!



And of course, there's this thing going on right now...

If you're a Facebook user, I invite you to enter into the Like Drive I have going on for the next two weeks, on the Bad Flip Productions page.  Participants can win some free art from me; here's the announcement:

For two weeks, I'll be running a Like Drive on the Facebook page.  It's been up for two years, and I've done NOTHING to promote it, other than letting it exist. Give me a break, I'd much rather being drawing than marketing!

All the rules are posted in the picture, which will be the cover art on the Facebook page for the next two weeks.  Recommend the page to five friends, (or you could just share the page on your timeline!) say you did so in the comment section of the above cover photo, and you're entered!

Here's a helpful link to get you started!

Facebook Page!

And stay tuned to the blog for the next couple of weeks, I got the green light to post a few more 'Aligned Continuity' Transformers concepts.  But be prepared for the watermarks.  It's the only way I can get these fully rendered images out on the internet...

Megatron - Tank Mode

This one got banged out really fast...

Wow, I'm making excuses already.  It's not that I don't like the direction, but it's only a good first step.  It's a tank with a little bit of character.  Megatron needs to be a tank (or whatever his alt mode would be) with A LOT of character.

The assignment was to envision a near-future tank, so I did a few quick sketches, got feedback from Siebenaler, and actually only did a colored line art pass, because of a time crunch.  After the presentation and following feedback, I was asked to render it fully, with no changes, along with the Prime truck, that was also initially done as colored line art, for the same pitch.

Of course, in all the details I managed to put in the alt mode, I was already planning on transformation logic, how to split the treads, how to recompose the barrel and turret elements into the arm cannon, and other character themed things to try to modernize the early era Megatron.  That's why there are a lot of flat panels - the vague idea I had at the time was to do blockier G1 style over armor, but a sleek under structure.  Alas, I never got the assignment to do the bot mode of Megatron, (and have never actually seen the bot counterpart to this project) and was asked to move on to other characters.

Maybe someone else got to do the second pass, and really punch up the character of the tank, a little more than what you see here.  Looking at it now, I would want to redesign the top of the turret, widen the overall tread stance, and break up the rectangle top view, by pulling in the front center, and maybe making the back end a little more robust, and this, and that, and tweak those...

But that's the thing with concept art, it's a long road of redesigns to find the right look.  Especially in this series of assignments, try a bunch of different stuff, and throw it all into a pot and see what comes out.  The current incarnation of Megatron is a Cybertronian Jet, if that's any indication!

Ok, I have one more character to post next week, and it's actually both bot and alt modes, stay tuned!



In the meantime, the Facebook Like Drive continues:

If you're a Facebook user, I invite you to enter into the Like Drive I have going on for the next two weeks, on the Bad Flip Productions page.  Participants can win some free art from me; here's the announcement:

For two weeks, I'll be running a Like Drive on the Facebook page.  It's been up for two years, and I've done NOTHING to promote it, other than letting it exist. Give me a break, I'd much rather being drawing than marketing!

All the rules are posted in the picture, which will be the cover art on the Facebook page for the next two weeks.  Recommend the page to five friends, (or you could just share the page on your timeline!) say you did so in the comment section of the above cover photo, and you're entered!

Here's a helpful link to get you started!

Facebook Page!

And stay tuned to the blog for the next couple of weeks, I got the green light to post a few more 'Aligned Continuity' Transformers concepts.  But be prepared for the watermarks.  It's the only way I can get these fully rendered images out on the internet...

Optimus Prime - Truck Mode

I'll start off slow here.  This image was published a couple of years back in the Transformers Vault, so it's kind of old news, but I just recently got the greenlight to post the image, and talk about it a little bit.

Now this job was so much fun, it was in the middle of my first assignment from Hasbro, Inc. directly, doing inspiration art for a new direction for the brand overall.  They used a bunch of artists, under the guidance of Aaron Archer and the lovely Eric Siebenaler, to really just try a little of everything.

By that I mean I did a one shot render at each assigned character, then moved on to something else.  Sometimes I did a 'from scratch' character, like Ironhide, or I did a second look, rendering in my style a character pass by someone else.  (Generally the great Emiliano Santalucia, or ideas from Siebenaler or Archer themselves.)

Or I just did the vehicle/alt version of a character.  In this case, the truck mode for Optimus Prime.  The request was to keep him a long nose, as he now appears in the film series, and if I remember right, that was just about it.  Of course I ventured the question. "I don't have to put those flames on him, do I?"  But I did keep in line with the movie logic of the long nose, giving him more mass to work with in robot mode, and we added in a roof fairing over the extended cab to build it out even more.

And that's about it for this one, I ended my work on Optimus with just the vehicle mode, and you can find the bot mode printed in the Transformers Vault book.





If you're a Facebook user, I invite you to enter into the Like Drive I have going on for the next two weeks, on the Bad Flip Productions page.  Participants can win some free art from me; here's the announcement:

For two weeks, I'll be running a Like Drive on the Facebook page.  It's been up for two years, and I've done NOTHING to promote it, other than letting it exist. Give me a break, I'd much rather being drawing than marketing!

All the rules are posted in the picture, which will be the cover art on the Facebook page for the next two weeks.  Recommend the page to five friends, (or you could just share the page on your timeline!) say you did so in the comment section of the above cover photo, and you're entered!

Here's a helpful link to get you started!

Facebook Page!

And stay tuned to the blog for the next couple of weeks, I got the green light to post a few more 'Aligned Continuity' Transformers concepts.  But be prepared for the watermarks.  It's the only way I can get these fully rendered images out on the internet...

Facebook Like Drive!

For two weeks, I'll be running a Like Drive on the Facebook page.  It's been up for two years, and I've done NOTHING to promote it, other than letting it exist. Give me a break, I'd much rather being drawing than marketing!

All the rules are posted in the picture, which will be the cover art on the Facebook page for the next two weeks.  Recommend the page to five friends, say you did so in the comment section of the above cover photo, and you're entered!

Here's a helpful link to get you started!

Facebook Page!

And stay tuned to the blog for the next couple of weeks, I got the green light to post a few more 'Aligned Continuity' Transformers concepts.  But be prepared for the watermarks.  It's the only way I can get these fully rendered images out on the internet...

Arts I made yesterday.

Just some stuff for fun, work ideas, and getting started way early on next years Transformers sketchbook...

Avengers Black Widow.

Artsy Stormtrooper.

Autobot Springer bust.