Godfather: Brooklyn

While updating my portfolio a few weeks ago, I discovered that I never posted any of my work for The Godfather's Brooklyn expansion. I was really dissatisfied with my work on this release when it initially launched but came to like it months later. I did the neighborhood background plate and two racket buildings (Brooklyn Bridge and Greenwood Cemetery). The lower right corner is empty because the user interface covers that area. The factory, firehouse block, and estate were done by other artists. The shoreline is plain so that waves could be animated over it.

Dragons of Atlantis: Cloud Outpost

Over the last 2+ years, I've primarily worked on The Godfather: Five Families. Occasionally I'm asked to help out with another project for a little while.

This is the Cathedral I did for Dragons of Atlantis' Cloud Outpost. It offers some kind of health boost or healing property.

Below are the thumbnails I did for the Cathedral. They're pretty basic.

On a related note, my time on The Godfather has come to an end. I'll probably be asked to contribute a few pieces of art from time to time but I've been moved to another game team and look forward to sharing art from that game later this year.

Kabammers

Here's a page I did of some coworkers at an all-hands meeting. Lower left of the right page is Mclean Kendree, who used to be my intern and upper right of the same page is Eddie Lucero.

Below: BART sketches. I don't draw on BART as often as I used to because it's harder for me to get seats at the times I normally ride it and I get tired of drawing people looking at their smartphones, which is 95% of everyone on the train at any given time.

Godfather: Chinatown

This has been sitting in my unpublished posts for 2 months. I guess it would help to publish.

I did initial concepts for Godfather's 6th estate, Chinatown, back in November of last year. However, I had to pass those concepts off to a few other artists since the project straddled my trip to India and Paris. When I returned they passed me back what they'd done while I was gone and I painted the 4th levels of all the buildings and went over everyone's work to make them all look like they were painted by the same hand.

Here's the level I painted (level 4). The buildings are 95% my own paint and the background plate was done by John Brassell.

Below: Concept sketches for Chinatown. I proposed that instead of having 10 different buildings that correspond to different functions (like we always did with our expansion estates) we instead make each floor of a building or set of buildings correspond to those functions. This way, we could maintain a more realistic, cramped, New York City feel.

Below: These are the more polished sketches I passed off to be modeled in 3D right before I left the country.

Below: Color comps for possible Chinatown moods. We picked the middle left comp and they did the final estate painting based on it. As you can see, they stuck pretty close to what I left them with.

Below: This is the breakdown guide for the modeler. He needed to know which elements were separate pieces so they could be upgraded in a modular way and rendered out separately for the artists to paint over and export.

This was a very strange release for me given that I wasn't present for a month of the production. There wasn't a single bit of artwork for this expansion that wasn't touched by my hand. I went over everything in the neighborhood view as well (not pictured), which included a background plate and 4 racket buildings. I had to adjust the background plate to fit the style better and expand the view. The racket buildings needed to be adjusted to fit the background plate again too. Overall I was pleased with the results.

Godfather: Atlantic City

Here are my contributions to the Atlantic City neighborhood expansion for Godfather: Five Families. These were done in summer 2012.

I created the look of the estate. I painted the estate background and three of the levels: 11, 10, and (I think) 7. I painted the beach barren so that waves could be animated over it. Jason Courtney designed the buildings themselves... he was switched to another team mid-project and I took over where he left off.

And here are the color comps I painted for the estate:

And here's the final color comp, which is a composite of two of the above:

Porto Casimir Thumbnails

I normally don't share concept sketches that aren't done for work but as I'm not doing sketchbook studies as often as I used to, I thought I'd share these thumbnails I did for an upcoming personal project. Maybe you'll see one of these as a full illustration in a few weeks. These are of a fictional city called Porto Casimir.

The Midnight Express

I did this illustration for The Godfather: Five Families a year ago. We had a light work load between expansions so I was assigned a promotional image to do. I believe this is available as a wallpaper on Kabam.com somewhere.

I've been sorting through old work quite a bit lately. I'll have a couple posts up next month with my work on the Atlantic City and Chinatown expansions.

Private Eyes

They're watching you.

I don't often do character work at Kabam. I'm primarily an environment artist. Every so often the opportunity to paint humans comes up though and this piece was just such an occasion. This is the G-Man, a troop type in The Godfather: Five Families that can only be trained in Atlantic City.

Paris

I did a study abroad program for a month in Paris in 2007. It was a little spooky to find that I remembered the city so well that it was like I'd only been away a few months when I returned in December 2012. The only difference was that I was there in the summer last time.

It was a huge culture shock to go from India to Paris and the climate was drastically different too, of course. It was freezing and raining and there were Christmas decorations everywhere. I took 3 years of French language classes in high school and that was enough to get by on. Everyone was very kind to me and a few told me I spoke good French, although I get the feeling they were just trying to be encouraging. I'm glad I got all of the tourist sites out of the way last time I was in Paris so this time around I could just wander the streets, eat food, enjoy the holiday season and revisit my favorite places. I went up to Sacre Couer twice for that incredible view of the city and made sure to hit up the Musee D'Orsay on my last day there.

There should have been more drawings done in Paris but if I'd stood still too long I would have frozen and it's hard to draw with gloves on anyway.

Darjeeling & Varanasi

Our second stop of our Indian odyssey was Darjeeling, which turned out to be my favorite city of the entire trip. I can't begin to describe the beauty of the Himalayas and the kindness of the people there. We drank tea around the clock. Almost every shop and restaurant boasted an astonishing view of the mountains and valleys below since the city is built on a mountainside. I loved the smell of the mountain air, tea bushes and clouds.

After Darjeeling, we went up to Gangtok for a few days. Then we went to Varanasi for 5 days... we actually got stuck there after two failed attempts at getting a train. Varanasi's largest festival happened while we were there and it was nearly impossible to get out of town without hiring a car. We wound up shelling out extra cash for a flight to New Delhi and had to cross Udaipur off our itinerary. From there, we went to Agra and Jaipur and then returned to Delhi for our flight to Paris.

Look. Drawings.

Kolkata

That was a long break but I've been buried in work, busy with vacation planning and holidays, and was out of the country for a month. I visited India for 3 weeks and spent 5 days in Paris on my way back for no other reason than a mere 4 hour layover there seemed kind of absurd. Our first stop in India was Kolkata (Calcutta) where we spent 3 days. I'm surprised I got so much drawing done there but my sketching dwindled more and more with each new location.

Kolkata looks like it's being reclaimed by a jungle. Trees and plants sprout from every crack they can get a hold in often breaking up walls and roofs. The air is moist and spicy just like every book I ever read set in India described. I'd heard about the insanity of the traffic there but it was something I really had to experience to understand. Motion and color permeate your entire field of vision. The best chai I'd ever had in my life up to that point was had in a silk shop in New Market.

Here are Kolkata drawings.