Pssst!…..Check it out!

About 4 years ago I worked on a bunch of concepts for a project I shall not (yet) disclose. As far as I have ever seen, the project never reached a final phase and was shelved early on in the creative process. Never-the-less, the company involved might get a bit ruffled and cause me financial distress should I blab about it openly so I'm going to remain annoyingly vague about what it was I was doing these drawings for.  I have since lost my contact information for the art director I worked with - and talking to the legal department I know will most likely get me a disappointing answer. So I shall remain for now like a seedy stolen watch dealer in the shadows of a grimy alley - showing my illegal wares to those interested.

I actually forgot about these drawings until just recently and was pleasantly surprised at how much fun they are still. Which, of course, made it a little more painful that I can't share them. The rarely-present risk-taking bad boy in me convinced the rule-follower that we should pick out a couple of the more vague drawings just to give them life outside of my closed sketchbook.

So here are two of maybe only 25 drawings I did for this. There's probably no way in Hades that you could guess what product these were concepts for - which maybe adds to the excitement.  If you were one of the very few I talked to about this project a little more openly, you best keep your comments to your damn self! The rest of you feel free to enjoy this meager sample and wonder about what was the greater scheme going on here.

You may also feel free to comment on my open innuendo about "showing my illegal wares".

GOBLINZ!!! 6

It's been a while, but I still have more goblin crap to share so I hope ya ain't sick of it yet.  In Goblandia, there was, of course, need of a mining faction to hastily and dangerously extract mineral resources for the depths of the world's crust.  Mining goblins obviously spend a lot of time down in the dark pick-axing and shoveling and drilling away.  Their eyes are pale like a cave fish and they're often not even as intelligent as their surface-dwelling brethren - probably because of the lack of adequate ventilation and thus, not enough oxygen to the brain. The drill borer is one of my favorites from the whole goblin series.

There is also a bioengineering division which experiments in complex biosciences - but with rudimentary understanding and tools.

Being foolhardy and distractedly industrious, goblins are prone to war.  War leads to escalation of weaponry - which leads to goblins figuring out ways to use plutonium.  Here is a plutonium bomb mechanic.  Radiation suits were not thought of yet.


Side note: over on my Art Blog I have a post about illustrating specific actions for Magic:The Gathering cards as well as, if you're interested, a complete list of all the original Magic:The Gathering paintings I have left and are for sale.  Prices included in the list.

Also, must I remind you still?  I have a book chock full of pencil drawings sure to delight your eyes and offend your parents (if they are offended by malevolent fantasy creatures and the occasional bare bosom).  The book is called AGGREGATE .  It is $25 (plus whatever shipping costs might apply).  If you like what you see here, you'll definitely like my art book so pick one up while I have some!  Contact me at: steve2@rottface.com to make an order.

GOBLINZ!!! 5

Yet MORE goblin drawings (I told you I had a lot of them!).  This batch includes some conceptualizing of the "Dark Arts" goblins and the "Dracogoblins".

The Dark Arts goblins dabble in all sorts of seedy and exceptionally dangerous projects - all having to do with tapping the demon world and using volatile enchantments and potions.  It goes without saying that they don't know what they're getting themselves into.

The Dracogoblins are the goblins that deal exclusively in dragons.  From catching to wrangling to taming (doesn't really work out too well) and also egg harvesting, these goblins work an extremely high-risk job.  I like the goblin that has a pathetic little net to cast on a dragon - he cowers behind his ceramic heat-shield knowing his job sucks.

Lastly is the guy with what HE thinks is the suckiest job but is really one of the safest (with a mortality rate of merely 57%).  He's the fertilizer goblin - and his job is to scoop dragon shit all day long and take it to the agriculture goblins so they can use it to fertilize their warped, monsanto-like crops.

Once again, all these images are copyright©Wizards of the Coast.

GOBLINZ!!! 4

Can't get enough goblin-oriented pencil drawings?  Well then, I'll have to oblige.  Here we follow up the previously posted "Brewing Faction" goblins with their own Beer Battle Cart which they can only use on downhill antagonists.  Notice the goblin puking - if I can work the act of puking into an illustration, by golly I will!

Above and the next two drawings are some goblin structures.  We have Goblin Political headquarters, A plutonium bomb factory, and a sorcerer's tower.

Looking at the plutonium bomb factory, I am reminded of my approach to goblin society.  Their society is much like how human society would be without ANY regulations of any kind and if you scrapped almost all design aesthetic.

And lastly, a goblin dentist.  He can help you with premium dentures OR budget dentures.  And no need to fuss over Novocain and pain relief - he doesn't really believe in that.

GOBLINZ!!! 2

Tossing out a few more goblin drawings for ya.  Here are a trio of drawings for the Goblin society's favorite spectator sport: GoBall.  I have no idea how it is played but it's fun just to come up with the possible positions.  I intended to draw a goalie goblin, too but never got around to it.

Yes there are even Goblin hippies.

Yes, there are even narcissistic self-improvement Goblins. Who forget to improve their legs.

GOBLINZ!!!

To start out 2013 on my blog-o'-pencil art I'm going to be posting a whole mess of goblin drawings.  With tongue-in-cheek I often endearingly generalize that my job is "drawing goblins".  It's often easier to tell people that have no clue about the gaming world, the fantasy art world, or the fantasy gaming art world that I draw goblins and dragons all day then to try and describe not only what a collectable card game is or Dungeons & Dragons, but also to describe how my artwork fits in with that.  I'm usually pretty sure that no matter how much I say, the listener only hears "draws goblins and dragons all day" anyway.

*This drawing is my fave - sums up all you need to know about the flavor of the goblin world. A frying pan, a plunger, a board with nails? All viable goblin weapons!

You and I know of course that I draw and paint a whole lot more than just goblins.  HOWEVER, in 2007, an art director at Wizards of the Coast, having just seen my concept work on Lorwyn, called me up wanting me to work on a little online game side project.  The game was all but entirely based around a humorously crazy, chaotic, and extremely volatile society of goblins.  This of course, sounded like loads of fun to me.

*There were many different goblin factions - this one was all anarchists! And the piece at the top is the Brewing Faction.  How fun is that?

I worked feverishly from my home studio for a few months on this project and churned out dozens and dozens of drawings of goblins and their genius-but-dangerously flawed technologies and tools. I never found out how the game was actually going to work or what it would finally look like - it was shelved indefinitely for years.  Just a few months ago I found out that the project was dead.  This was sad to me because I thought there was some great and fun ideas put together by the art director and myself.  I passively inquired whether the rights to the images and ideas could be bumped down to me but Wizards still owns the rights it all (for whatever it is actually worth to them).  I wondered about repurchasing the rights to my stuff but I have enough other stuff going on right now that such a transaction, if even feasible, can wait for now.

BUT, the good news is that I am free to share the drawings as I please!!!  So enjoy the silly goblins - and remember that they're all copyright©Wizards of the Coast.

Innistrad Concept Drawings pt2

One last post of Innistrad stuff.  Wish I had more (since I probably did at least 50 more drawings for this concept push) but currently, this is all I have in my possession to show.  These here are my werewolf designs.  There isn't a whole lot left to do with werewolves unless you want to get really wacky.  For Innistrad though, werewolves had to remain within a classic look.  So I took a werewolf I might draw for White Wolf's Werewolf:the Apocalypse game but hyper exaggerated the proportions.  Instead of sleek and super-muscles all over, these werewolves have smaller heads, elongated arms, tiny waists and hind legs, and smaller thumbs higher up on the wrist than a human hand (right about the middle between a human hand and a canine front paw).  Females are more svelte of shoulder and chest. Thought they came out pretty cool.

Wolves in Innistrad are separate from the werewolves and thus did not have to look similar.  I threw out a bunch of little thumbnail to see what caught the eye of the design team.  the one that worked best was the hairless-muzzled one at the bottom. I tried to picture a classically "horror" version of a wolf and seemed to recall seeing an old old artist representation of a wolf attacking somebody and the wolf was truly monstrous (not the elegant, primal beauties they are in the real world).  The wolf in the picture had no fur on its face and exaggerated teeth.  So I kinda rolled with that: bare, bulkier muzzle brimming with long teeth, and a nose that was more like a weird bear than a canine.

Here's another take on what humans might wear to battle in Innistrad.  Black iron being the metal most often used, I applied bits and pieces of spiked iron armor to their otherwise leather and cloth outfits.  Gotta protect the neck from those damn vampires (thus the high collars!)

Well, that closes the book on the Innistrad stuff I currently have access to.  One day I'll have the rest of the work I did on this concept design project and I'll post some more.  For now though, I next will move on to posting some Return to Ravnica sketches - and then another "Guess the Album Cover" contest!  Stay tuned......

Innistrad Concept Drawings pt1

Hope you're not yet sick of Innistrad posts - because I still have more to show!  I think I linked to some of the concept art I did for Innistrad before.  Much of that was probably pencil drawings with some digital color plopped on.  Here are a few of my pencil-only contributions of the work Mike "Daarken" Lim, Steve Belledin, Richard Whitters, and I did in concepting the Magic: The Gathering world of Innistrad.

Above are some samples of humans.  They hold no high status in this world - they are essentially the part of the populace constantly at odds with the rest of the denizens of Innistrad.  They are the prey species - the wildebeests, if you will.  But they aren't push overs.  However crude and utilitarian their clothes, armor, and weapons are, they've got spirit!

Oh man, working on the blue-aligned alchemist humans were fun! I unfortunately didn't get a chance to do up one in a final illustration but at least I got to dabble a bit at this stage.

The vampires are the uppity, fancy-clothes-wearing, nobility of the realm.  One of their unifying visual cues was wrought iron design work and filigree worked into both clothing and weapons.

Here's another vampy dame - a cleric.  probably blessing a keg of blood at a sweet vampire frat-party.

If you dig this Innistrad stuff, be sure to slide your internet butt on over to my Art-Blog and see some of the fully painted work I did for set.  Fun stuff indeed!

Lorwyn Concepts 5

I still have a few more Lorwyn concept drawings to toss out there, yes I do! In this three-pic installment you will lay thine eyes upon my design for a Shadowmoor merfolk. Where Lorwyn merfolk were like fish-like mermaids, when the world got all dark and sinister by Shadowmoor, the merfolk became more like mermaid-like fish. We needed to figure out a way for them to be able to travel and fight while NOT in water so I took a page from walking catfish and gave them little clawed fins and a eel-body with which they could slither up onto land and hack away at some enemies.

The third piece is a grouping on Shadowmoor boggarts lookin' all creepy and vaguely like somebody dropped some bat and goat DNA in the bowl by accident.

Two more things, I am going to be launching a sister blog to my draw-blog. It will basically encompass everything that isn't pencil drawings and sketches. I'll post current finished artwork as well as stuff dug up from the deep dark past, step-by-steps, insights, and various things for sale. Speaking of that, since I'm in the middle of a Lorwyn revisiting, I'll be posting all my remaining original artwork with sale prices - expect that at some point this month.

Also, I haven't mentioned my book of pencil drawings in a while: AGGREGATE: The Art of Steve Prescott. I have sold out of the limited editions but I still have regular signed (upon request) copies for sale. If you like what you see on this blog, you'd probably really enjoy the book. Check out a very tiny taste on my website placeholder page HERE!

Lorwyn Concepts 4

Here is another small batch from my Lorwyn concept drawings circa 2006. Not seeing this above "coal hound" since, well, pretty much since I drew it, it was cool to rediscover it some 6 years later. Not sure what exactly the angle for the coal hound was - probably some sort of "red" creature - maybe even a replacement for wolves. Whatever though, it didn't make it into the style guide nor, as far as I have seen, any of the cards in the Lorwyn black. I do really like the drawing though - would have been a cool addition to my Aggregate book!

Not sure what the hell this leafy fellow was intended for. A lot of the concept designing phase was just throwing up ideas and seeing what the design crew thought. This leaf dude might have been some sort of elemental or possibly some sort of freaky elf/plant hybrid.

The little fire-dudes below are silly, yes - but part of a interesting development during the design push. Originally, there was no specified race for "red" (other than goblins, to an extent). But at one point during the weeks I was out there, it was decided that us artists needed to come up with some fire elemental folk. At first, we thought this was to fill a creature or elemental spot and so we drew up some very simple little fire/rock weirdos. Turns out, they actually wanted a race that can have a culture and weapons and ornamentation, etc. I recall being frustrated and stumped for the better part of a day and a half with these fire folk - because nothing we were coming up with seemed to fit the fairy tale Lorwyn world even remotely. Then Jeremy Jarvis Finally broke through with a cool design (that look almost nothing like these little brazier critters!). His design would go on to become the excellent flamekin you see in all the Lorwyn and Morningtide artwork. Thank goodness, because these dudes are a bit dingbatty.

Lorwyn Concepts 2

Here is an attempt at a black-leaning treefolk - a sinister deciduous bastard that awoke in the "Shadowmoor" set. It's just fun to draw gnarly branches!

And secondly, a couple very very early versions of what would become the much more human-looking Kithkin. I think the vaguest early description was that Kithkin (or whatever we were calling them at the time) were simply the replacements for humans in Lorwyn. And we went from there.

These early Kithkin concepts were probably done in the first day or two of concepting. In that stage, at least for me, I'm just throwing down anything that seems like it might capture the flavor of the setting to see what the art director is looking for. It's the buckshot approach - fire off a large spray of smaller drawings to see what hits the mark and go from there.

Lorwyn Concepts 1

As per my promise, I'm going to post a series of my pencil drawings from when I worked on the concept design push for what would become Magic: the Gathering's "Lorwyn" block (which includes Morningtide, Eventide, and Shadowmoor, as well).

These drawings are from all the way back 2006. Wow - has it been six years already? Anyway, the artist team I was on included Omar Rayyan, Warren Mahy, and Jeremy Jarvis. Good times all around but there were plenty of obstacles we had to either hammer out or at least pound on for a while to see if there was anything there.

The first sampling I am posting is a cute little concept for a blue faerie or elemental - and the Lorwyn version of a goblin (boggarts). I think we actually went less pig and more mutated goat/bat with the look of the boggarts. But these gross pig dudes were fun to tinker with. Definitely tapping some Mike Mignola with this design.