Artist Links for a change!

I've been holding back on new posts to sort of showcase my work a bit to clients, but screw it, I have to share these mind-blowing artists.

The first one I found courtesy of joshuathejames, a guy named kenichi yoshida. Apparently he did key animations for several miyazaki films and a host of other titles. I love how no-nonsense some of those pencil drawings are. Very cool.

Then there's someone I found from Paul Richards' blog that everyone needs to recognize, Sergey Popov. Not only is he an astounding concept artist, but he can also rock out 3d models as well. That kind of ability is intimidating...

Finally, you should all check out my friend Dan Hay's blog. It's a bunch of caricatures of people he saw walking around while he was at work (caricature artist at Sea World Orlando), and he just draws the funniest drawings. That's just how he rolls.

Later!

Here comes art, sort of!

Now that I finally have time to get myself organized, here goes with some of the concept art that I made in the past year:



Moria dwarf, made for marketing purposes:



Some shaman helms for LOTRO:


The gates of Caras Galadhon, home to Galadriel and all of the other fun-loving elves of Lothlorien:


Creature designs for Moria versions of LOTRO's cave claws:


Lothlorien armor sets for LOTRO:


Helms and shoulders for Lothlorien armor, some belonging to the aforementioned suits:

A generic Elf Tunic, made for LOTRO cosmetic apparel:


A dwarven bed for player housing:


Some Wizards of the Coast work that I did, two magic: the Gathering illustrations and a dragon for the 4th edition Draconomicon:


This is the Watcher in the Water, the big 20-tentacled monster that forces the fellowship into Moria:

This is Balin's Tomb, the library/grave site where the Fellowship fights a bunch of orcs and whatnot. Turbine ended up using this room for their main Moria cinematic, so there is footage out there of what it looks like in 3d:

That's it for now. I'll post more as it becomes declassified/un-NDA'ed.

Magic: the gathering booyaw!

Last year I got to start working on my first Magic: the Gathering illustration, and since WotC is showing my work around I figure it's safe to show the image off myself:
The card's called Courier's Capsule, and if you want to see what the actual card does you can check it out here.

I have another Shards image to show, but I'll show that when the rest of the set comes out.

I'm not dead yet!

Wow, I'm really lazy for neglecting this blog for so long. It's weird doing a constant stream of NDA work. When something gets released, I always feel like that old work is way worse than what I'm working on at the time, so I end up not posting it. With enough of that kind of thinking, a whole year goes by and I still haven't shown anything. Yesterday was my 1-year anniversary at Turbine (geez, time flies...), so I figured it was time to expose myself to scrutiny again. I obviously have way more to show, but this was all that I had lying around on my home computer. I'll post more as soon as my absent-mindedness lets me grab the rest.


These were helmets that I made for Lord of the Rings Online in my first months at Turbine:


Some assets that players can buy for their in-game houses. The first two are kegs, one normal and one EEEEEVIL. The other is just a hobbit fireplace:


an elven quiver:
A Lossoth cloak for the Forochel addition to LOTRO, released a few months ago:


This is a succubus creature called a Morroval. This was one of several variants on the original morroval, and it was fun getting to update the old ones with some different flavor.

This was a design for the boss of the evil nomads. Apparently downward-pointing triangles mean evil, so he's evil times a thousand:

Some cultural assets for the evil sea god cult Dungeons and Dragons online:This last one is a concept for the upcoming Mines of Moria expansion for LOTRO. This is the first room that people enter in the mines, and the image is a super updated version of my old lame work in progress that showed up on the internets a few months ago.


The Moria expansion will be released in a few months, at which time I'll be allowed to show much much more of my underwhelming accomplishments at turbine :)

What else can I say? Well, the Comic Con was excellent, and everyone should go next year and hang with me and lie to me about how awesome I am. I also just finished a figure drawing course with RISD professor Jeff Hesser. Best anatomy class I ever had! I'll show a pile of my mediocre figure drawings as soon as I get around to photographing them. I should also show my zoo drawings and gouache landscape paintings, but again, I have to un-lazy myself and digital that stuff up. Hopefully I'll post again before 2010! See ya!

Dave Des FORGERY!

like blatant copying much?

http://www.davedesforges.com/

It's always frustrating to see people land industry jobs by stealing work from others, but it feels even better when the offended see justice. The good boys at polycount noticed some shady swiping in his work, and word spread like hot fudge on a sundae! Is it a bummer that he lost his job over this? Sort of, but it's a bigger bummer that a real artist was denied a job that he was qualified for because someone lied their way into it. The company that he formerly worked for asked everyone to stop blasting the internet waves over this, as they don't want to get sued over the rampant plagiarism that they didn't know about. That said, I think it's healthy for everyone to burn this guy's name in our brains and to be eternally vigilant for this kind of thing. It's not the end of the world, though. If he actually wants to be an artist, he can always change his name and make a brand new portfolio of REAL work. The choice is his, my friends.

See ya later, Florida Gator!

After close to 2 straight years living in Orlando, FL I have finally gotten a good excuse to leave here: a Concept Art job in Boston!

I'll be starting at Turbine Games in 10 days as a "Staff Concept Artist." It sounds like I'm going to be doing a wide variety of work, so all I have to do is be the master of drawing characters, creatures, environments, props, buildings, weapons, armor, texturing, and storyboarding, within tight deadlines. No big deal, right? Hopefully I'll be okay :/ At least it'll pay some bills and I'll finally have human contact again. I miss seeing people...

Destruct-i-comic-Con!

That's right, here comes the San Diego Comic Con! I'm going to be extremely there this year, running around and trying to pester potential clients. I'll even be there on preview night, since the con can't get enough of me. I'm definitely excited to see the Watts Atelier demos, and I'm sure that I'll collapse from overdoses of awesome. You'd better be there!

Oh yeah, and Paul Richards' website is www.autodestruct.com. He's a better artist than you are!

Mediocre'd!

I've been working on this for awhile, and instead of resolving it to my satisfaction and making a glorious epic painting I came up with this:


It's not bad or anything, but I definitely learned a lot about what to do the next time I compose a group image. Also, I ran out of time for it, which is all too common for me. I had fun with it and like how parts of it turned out, so I have that to smile about. Back to work!

Tide you over! Unfinished?

Instead of just posting every illustration on my website, I thought I'd put something different on my blog. This way it will actually serve a purpose!

This is a black and white unfinished sketch/comp I did. I guess I could go back and finish it, but it was so long ago that I'd rather do something new instead. Since it'll be another week or so before I post a new piece, I figured I should get it out. That, and my arch-nemesis JoshuatheJames pestered me to show it. Be sure to smack him on the way out :)

Shaman

Besides becoming the next great book cover artist, I also want to become the next great trading card game artist. I figured that one of the qualities that these companies look for is creating a distinctive character in a distinctive environment. With that in mind, I made a little something like this:


I'm working on another fun piece right now, and I'll post it in the coming weeks. I promise that I won't neglect this blog like I have in ages past, so stay tuned!

Warhammer

Here are a couple of pieces I did for a WHFRP (Warhammer Fantasy Role-Playing) book. I did them six months ago, so I'm pretty sure they're safe to show.

With this first one, they just wanted me to paint bloody hands. Gross!


This was a kind of weird topic. It's called "Foreshadowing Death" and the idea is that seeing a bunch of stuff in threes is a bad omen, thus she's all panicked.


Both of these are different versions from the ones in the book. For the sake of Warhammer I had to add more ornamentation and a lot more dirt, but for my own version I omitted the excess stuff. Also, I don't pretend that these are two of my best works, but I figured that they would be okay enough to show. Anyway, that's it for today.

Finally, something new!

As you can see, I'm finally posting on my blog again. I'm gearing up for going to conventions and begging for work (San Diego Comic Con and Gen Con Indy), so I figured that it would be okay for me to gradually start showing what I've been toiling away at. Since most of my recent work is floating in NDA land, it took me awhile to prepare something, but lookie lookie!


Since I want to start doing book covers, I tried to push the sense of focus and realism as far as I could, but I think that constant wrestling with this piece is starting to show results. I still have plenty of fixing up to do on this, but I'll get around to it sooner or later. See you then!

Self Portrait

I know I've had this as my profile picture for basically forever, but I thought it was time to officially post it. Now I have. Thank you.

My first album cover!

Since the band decided to show this off on their myspace page, I guess it's okay for me to show as well. It's the cover for their new album, and as with most albums the release date keeps getting pushed back for one reason for another. They're a bunch of nice guys who were easy to work with, and I had fun working on it. On top of that, it's the first image of mine that ended up on wikipedia! Now I'm a real star!



Anyway, the band's name is Jacobs Dream (not Jacob's), the new album is called Dominion of Darkness, and if you're into Melodic Power Metal I highly suggest checking them out!

2 little tiny spots

Even though I wanted to wait for a bigger pile of finished work before unleashing a new post on everyone, I'm going to post a couple of things anyway. They're just two item illustrations, and mainly I was just trying to cram all of the realism and polish that I could into these things. They're not too bad, check em out! They're excitingly named "Book" and "Candle," WOW!

Prepare for battle, Gen Con!

After creepy amounts of sleep deprivation, I present to you: more work!

They're only 3 pieces, but I'll share the rest of my current work soon enough.

Road Trip to the Extreme Hella Max!

A few weeks ago my friend Josh received wonderful news: he got a new job as far away from his old apartment as possible! (within the continental US). The bad news was that he once again had to pack up and move, only this time with a week of driving ahead of him. (Which quickly turned into me driving the entire 3,500 miles. No big deal...) Our immediate answer: road trip! Go to all of those cool places that we read about but never get around to visiting! Thus I spent the past week helping him move from Fairfax, VA to Carlsbad, California for his new job at Concrete Games.

Day 1: we (meaning I) woke up at 4:30 and drove 870 miles to get to my uncle Gerald's mansion in Memphis. We had good food, got to hear incredible stories about his organic farming, rain-making, draft-dodging, scientology-angering, alleged drug-dealing (years and years ago) brother. It was a heck of a time, and it and the whole road trip experience can be summed up with my uncle's Buddha statue:














Day 2-3: Austin, TX and beyond

If you've never been there, you're extremely missing out. Austin is proof that Texas is big enough to have a bit of everything. It's full of mountains, a million trees packed in around houses, and gorgeous lakes. It sucks when you have to get somewhere, but it's amazing for sightseeing. We hung out with Eric Ehoff, Tara Rueping, and several other cool guys. Check out the Blue Iguana restaurant if you want a meal with a ridiculous view of a lake.

And, as we all know, Texas ain't Texas without an endoskeleton Bull:


Day 4: Gazing Arizona

After taking hundreds of cloud pictures and getting a speeding ticket (argh!), we finally got out of Texas, drove through much of New Mexico, and cut through a state highway to break up the monotony of the interstate. It's a good thing we did, too, because we saw the secret landscape of awesome doom!

I'm totally beasting out that landscape. See how that works?

This was only the beginning, because an hour or so later we saw this off of I-40 right when we entered Arizona:

As great as these were, it was only buildup for our next stop: the Petrified Forest National Park/Painted Desert. After a million jokes about how we couldn't find a single freakin' tree in this supposed "forest", we were stunned by the fantastic scenes around us. It felt like humans didn't belong in this place, like dinosaurs would start popping out in front of me at any minute. It was probably the most amazing visual experience of my life. I feel like a douchebag holding back the awesome reference as if everyone's gonna use it and steal my glory, but on this trip we literally took thousands of pictures that I don't dare show due to its extreme usefulness in my future art. I will show only one photo, just to prove the amazingness of what we witnessed:

I can't see. I got blinded by all of the awesome.


Day 5: They call it grand for a reason

After buying an extra 1 GB memory card to prepare for the photos we knew we would take, we slept, woke up at 3:30 AM, rushed to get packed up and outta the motel, and drove like hades to make it just in time to see an amazing Grand Canyon sunrise:

We risked our lives dozens of times to get some sweet pictures. Since words can't describe how amazing every inch of the Grand Canyon is, look at more photos:

Like insane views much?



Sadly, this was right when Josh plummeted to his death, but since his blog will stay around for all eternity, it kind of evens out.

There was other amazing insanity (like Canyon Lake near Phoenix, AZ, Dean Cornwell murals at the LA public library, and driving while extremely drunk), but that's about 20 other cans of worms. What I liked as an artist from this odyssey was seeing such a variety of landscapes while driving across the country, and realizing how many different kinds of colors schemes occur naturally. It's as if I knew that I had this freedom all along, but seeing it in real life has finally given me permission to use that stuff. It's the duty of every serious artist to do something like this. Get to it!

THUNDERDOME!!!

conceptart.org just posted their Last Man Standing Thunderdome images. There were a few really nice pieces, several decent ones, and a ton of other stuff ranging from okay to unfinished. This was my entry:



From looking at the other 200+ pieces and the overall responses, I think I can see the importance of making an eye-catching image. It's like making a poster vs. a double-page spread, and for the next round I'll be sure to make a piece that's more like a poster. I'm just glad that I can move on from this piece to something else. I get that way after staring at my work long enough. Anyway, check out the thunderdome stuff here, here, and most importantly here. Later!

here comes San Diego!

Next week I will be my first run-in with the San Diego Comicon, and I am pumped beyond belief. I'm going to get to meet many of my favorite artists, see piles of art, and hopefully show my work around to a million companies and get good responses. I've heard so much hype about it in the past, and I'll have a blast if even half of it is true. Hope to see you there!

It begins

I'm Andrew Murray, an artist out of Orlando, FL. All I have to show right now is the same art on my website, but in time I'll show sketches and other work on this blog. Anyway, to get this started, here are a few paintings:











That's it for now. More coming soon!