Moai's Sketchbook

[Rob Powell]

Man, some really awesome stuff! Loved those mat studies and all of the thumbnails on the previous page, and of course that Peatigerphant!! Keep up the awesome work, mate!! Will be keeping an eye on you!

[Moai]

Mark Tarrisse- Thanks!
Rob Powell- Thanks, man!

So, it's been a while since my last update. Even longer than my usual wait. Life is busy! I recently received a freelance assignment having to do with the seven sins, so I'm going to be needing to produce a full-size color illustration every week until the end of may. Good fun and decent money!





More thumbnails! The last image are the final characters that I chose from.




The next phase of the assignment is to draw the characters in various styles. So, here they are in the manners of Joy Ang and Rael Lyra, respectively. Superfun!





More figure goodness. We're learning so much from Ron Lemen.




Funstuff! The first critter is simply my version of a sphinx, modeled after a gelada baboon. The second is based on a sketch by the remarkably talented Brynn Metheney! Follow her work, browse her blogs, be her friend on Facebook! Do what you have to do!

And again, I've really been producing so much more than what I've shown here. A lot of it is under NDA, though, and other stuff just never got to a state fit to post.

[Moai]

Also, this.

[Eric-Anthony]

i like your figure studies! im always too lazy to do them but they really help

love ur sb!

[Moai]

I recently fulfilled my childhood dream of doing work for an RPG monster manual! Not an official D&D monster manual, but a Bestiary nonetheless. These were done for Open Design, the publishing company that also commissioned all my Kobold Quarterly work, Courts of the Shadow Fey, Lost City, etc.

Here you have a Mithril Dragon and a ghoulish ogre, whose real name I don't remember. Way too much fun.

[Metal Fingers]

great works cory!

[dan liimatta]

Same - lots of cool studies and pieces since I last went by last spring - strange that one can remember the pieces from back then but I guess its telling - seems to have been a good year artwise.

[HunterKiller_]

Your ink/marker pieces are excellent!
Great work on the figure/gesture studies, also.

[Moai]

Konstad, dam liimata, hunterkiller- Thanks, fellas!


A young acolyte and an eight month old Crowned Foo pup rest after an afternoon walk. The breed's characteristic striped ears, tail, and tongue are very noticeable, and though this young individual's namesake cranial spines are still developing, it already sports a full bristling mane. Like most Foo, the Crowned was bred as a dedicated temple guardian in the northern islands. The breed's particularly well-developed third eye makes it uniquely well suited to the task, allowing it to detect demons, halfbreeds (coarsely called Bastards), and other spirits seeking to enter and possibly desecrate temples in disguise. Killing or at least driving off such foul entities is one of the breed's primary duties.

*****

Inspired by Chinese guardian lions, which are sometimes called Foo Dogs, a name also applied to pugs. The idea of an enormous, ferocious, but oddly pug-like beast has fascinated me for a long time.
I should also probably mention the spectacular foo-themed creature designs of Allison Theus , which probably influenced this a bit. I was more inspired by the pug connection, though. The striped tongue was inspired a bit by the unusual tongues of shar-peis and chow chows, which are also foo dogs!

[lord_regenschirm]

not only that you have great designs in mind you also put them into very interesting mythological contexts ... always a pleasure to read the story behind I just commented on your deviantart sketchbook ... unfortunately I totally lost track of your developement so I completely missed out on you being into TAD for quite a while already thus the pretty delayed congratualtions anyways am looking forward to the next study dump seems like one awesome lectural program ^^

[Moai]

Hello again, conceptart.org! It's been a long time! This will be the first in a series of posts making up for my past seven (!) months of inactivity.

Firstly, some news. I finished my last semester of TAD not two weeks ago. I'll continue on with my studies, but I'm glad to be done, and I look forward to taking on whatever life brings next. Also, six months ago, I moved to San Diego to study with the awesome Ron and Vanessa Lemen. I'm pleased to say that, since the move, freelance has been coming in steadily, enough that I haven't had to get a "real job" to pay the bills!

Okay, I'll open with a round of obsolete freelance work. This was for a series of articles by Open Design themed around the seven sins. They were all rather rushed, do to my own lack of organization more than anything else, and when I look at them all I can see is how much I've improved over the last six months (these were finished off in June). I'm just now figuring out the questions of how I want to work, what methods I want to use, and what I want my final illustrations to look like. I look at these and see how confused I was by all of that. Hence my calling them obsolete.

[Moai]

Here's some more Open Design stuff, also over six month old. The first three are some new Shadow Fey characters. If you haven't memorized every single thing I've done ( ), I did a bunch of Shadow Fey illustrations back in 2010. The rest are chapter opener illustrations for a small book about planes. Fantasy parallel universes, that is, not aircraft.

[Moai]

And here's a bunch of work I've done for Glorantha, a very cool RPG setting by Moon Design Publications. Everything is very exotic and bronze ageriffic and awesome. A joy to work on. Plus, their kickstarter campaign went above and beyond, which will hopefully mean much more work for me!

[Moai]

And now we move on to another one of my current main clients, Zombie Sky Press! These are spot illustrations I've been doing for their newsletters over the past few months. I have a handful of more elaborate illustrations I did for a bigger project of theirs, but I don't think I can post those yet!

You can judge how much I like these by how large I'm posting the images. I think I'm going to work some more on that Frankenstein's monster at the end and polish it into a portfolio piece.

[Moai]

And here are two of the coolest pieces I've ever done for clients, but unfortunately neither has led to much of anything else yet. The first is a sharkodile (or gatorshark, if you prefer) for a movie poster! The movie is called Gatorshark Vs. Zombie Cheerleaders. Seriously, google it! This was by far the largest PSD I've ever worked on. Gotta love five minute save and load times.

The second one is a monster for a client who may or may not be too good to be true. He gave fun prompts with loads of creative freedom, and paid well, but so far has only commissioned one monster from me, and that was months ago. I still have hope that I'll be able to work for him some more, because it was awesome.

This about wraps up the stuff that I can currently post now. I've also done several pieces for Poxnora by Sony Online Entertainment, but I'm not sure if any are free for me to post yet. Stay tuned!

Also, I do of course have a fair amount of academic and personal stuff. However, I have yet to organize any of that, so this will have to do for now.

Thanks for looking!

[sony]

reallllly enjoyed the concepts, gooooood luck this year!

[Moai]

lord_regenschirm- Hey, long time no see! Thanks!
Sony- Thanks!!

[Jarrad]

I've found you!! and I wasn't even trying. How are things in SD? I reeeaaaly like the last creature posted.

ILL BE BACK

[Mr.Pryminista]

Cool work man. Fkn love that last creature!

[Quike Garcia]

Man, these lasts works are great Love the Glorantha stuff

[jhonshadow]

amazing work! hope to get at a level like this one day ^^

[M.Calza]

Really inspiring SB, since the beggining you had some crazy designs(in a good way), and now the hability to put them together, congrats