After a lot of self-help reading and medication, a couple of weeks ago I crawled into a plane and flew to Massachusetts for a friend’s wedding. I had never been to the East Coast before, and was looking forward to poking around to see what New England had to offer (besides clam chowder). In general, I was taken aback by the beautiful Berkshires, all the old colleges in the quaint towns, and the plethora of vegetarian options at the restaurants. There were two museums, however, that totally converted me to Masslumism.

The  Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge features an incredible section of the Massachusetts native’s oeuvre. All of the Four Freedoms were on display, along with other classic works like “The Problem We All Live With” and “The Golden Rule.”

Being able to get up close and see the textures and brush strokes on Rockwell’s huge canvases was only worth the price of admission. But they were also running an exhibition of William Steig‘s magazine and kidlit output. Everything from Shrek! originals to his New Yorker cartoons and covers filled the two galleries, along with dummy book manuscripts and collage art pieces from his wife.

As if that wasn’t enough for one state, the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst has an incredible collection of children’s book art from the likes of Leonard Wiesgard, Leo Lionni, and Eric Carle himself (just to name a few currently on display). Moreover, the day we arrived they were opening an exhibit of the Hans Christian Andersen Award-winning artist Lisbeth Zwerger, who ranks at the top of my favorite living illustrators.

Getting to meet Zwerger was itself a thrill, but seeing her pieces in real life was one of the most inspiring experiences in my life. Unlike Rockwell, Zwerger’s pieces start tiny and are blown up for publication, allowing the slight pencil marks, brush strokes and paper stock to  gain additional texture and weight in print. As an illustrator who always wants a vice-tight grip on my linework and color, her loose renderings and messy watercolors challenged me to continue to branch out in my own work.

Hence the painting above. I did it very small, on a far coarser paper than I usually use, and did my best to keep the color loose. I also focused on rending in ink only those aspects that absolutely had to be, and leaving the rest for watercolor. Full disclosure: the idea was my wife‘s. I personally find the concept of a mouse playing violin to be repugnant. They’re far more suited to the oboe.

Anyway, for anyone interested in beautiful views, great architecture, good food, fantastic museums, and American and literary history, I’d recommend a trip to Massachusetts. And if you’re interested in gold chains and sleeveless sports jerseys with the pastiest arms imaginable sticking out of them, you’ll love Boston.

-Bernard “Beardo” Nickels, Head Guru, Beardo’s Bounty

INGREDIENTS: Organic tofu, organic patchouli marinade (pine bark shavings, humanely harvested bear sweat, words of healing, incense ash, faerie tears), organic baby bok choy, organic sullen teenage bok choy, moonbeams, eight hour guitar solo, Lucy-procured sky diamonds.

Also Available: Curried Soy Chunks, Tempeh Wads in Saffron Sauce.

BE SURE TO CHECK OUT OUR DELICIOUS CEREALS!

In the 13th Century, Genghis Khan led an unstoppable army through Eurasia, conquering all in his path, driven by one burning desire: to discover the world’s greatest soup! Now, BROTH of KHAN invites you to lead your horde into the realms of deliciousness with our mouth-watering selection of hardy soups. Take just one bite and you’ll agree, it’s a soup fit for a KHAN!

INGREDIENTS: Entrails, falcon mutes, the tears of lamentation from the eyes of all enemies of the great khan, corn syrup.

Also Available: Airag Gumbo, Muttonsnout Stew.

—————-

Remember, you can always find me on Twitter and Etsy!

All the images in this post (except the header), © Copyright Her Interactive, Inc.

My wife and I have recently become obsessed with the British television comedy The Thick of It, after having seen the movie adaptation of the series, In The Loop. It’s superbly written, and all the actors in the series and the film do an amazing job as ineffectual, self-important bureaucrats vying for power in a fictional department in the UK government. But the show would be nothing without Peter Capaldi’s portrayal of Malcolm Tucker, Director of Communications for the Prime Minister.

Malcolm Tucker is the most wrathful, vulgar, cruel, and just friggin’ hilarious character that’s graced the idiot box in a long time. Watching him bend the other characters to the PM’s will and spin their public foibles into something manageable is like watching an obscene Baryshnikov perform political ballet in a blinding haze of spite and vitriol.

It’s fantastic, so I went ahead and drew him. For my wife. As an anniversary gift.

If you’re interested, I’d highly recommend picking up In The Loop. Or, you can start on YouTube with this montage of Malcolm’s best bits. I warn you, though: I am not kidding about the vulgarity, this is massively NSFW stuff.

Excuse the hiatus – one of the difficulties of being a professional video game artist is that by the end of the work day my creative energies get a bit zapped. This is especially true when what I’m doing at work is especially creatively challenging and/or fulfilling. Though I’ve recently finished a project that was both, I can’t show it to you for a few months (another difficulty with being a professional video game artist).

What I can start to show you is the work I did on the recently released (like, today) 22nd installment in the ever-expanding casefiles of one Miss Nancy Drew, entitled Trail of the Twister. One of my environments in this game was a Oklahoman Mom and Pop store called – wait for it – Ma and Pa’s. That’s right, I was entirely responsible for coming up with enough product art to fill an entire convenience store.

So, over the next few weeks I’ll be inundating you with products that don’t actually exist, but definitely definitely should. Like this totally edible-looking cereal:

I don’t know about you, but my mouth is watering just thinking about that delicious homunculus!

—————-

Remember, you can always find me on Twitter and Etsy!

All the images in this post (except the header), © Copyright Her Interactive, Inc.

I’ve been frequenting the children’s book blog Vintage Kids’ Books My Kid Loves for a few months now, and if you visit the site (which you should) it’s easy to see why. Burgin, who runs the blog, posts near-daily scans and summaries of some of the best-loved and sometimes unjustly-forgotten gems from the 50s to 80s — everything from Mercer Mayer‘s non-Little Critter titles (I never knew he did anything but), to Leonard Weisgard‘s gorgeous illustration work. The image-rich site is a treat for anyone even remotely interested in kids’ books, but also for anyone interested in art and design from that era. Really, how much more am I going to need to talk the site up before you visit?! JUST GO ALREADY, YOU LOVE IT!

So I was surprised a few weeks ago to get an e-mail from Burgin asking if I was available for a commission. Her husband’s birthday was coming up, and Burgin thought an original illustration featuring their son would be a good gift. She also thought my penchant for drawing birds would lend itself nicely to the job, since the boy is a huge bird fan (he’s also a huge fan of “enchanted animals,” which is nothing short of awesome). The above illustration is the result.

Burgin’s own write up on the piece features some of the nicest things anyone has said about my art, which was very kind of her (honestly, it was enough to be mentioned in the same post as Ward Jenkins and Cory Godbey). Hope the painting will bring lots of joy to her household, and that her son finds it sufficiently enchanting.

FUN FACT: Did you know a group of Red-Breasted Sapsuckers is called a “Slurp”? Did you also know the core audience of this blog isn’t mature enough to be trusted with any of this information? It’s true!

—————-

Remember, you can always find me on Twitter and Etsy!

It’s a leper Khan.

You’re welcome.

—————-

Remember, you can always find me on Twitter and Etsy!

A few of my loyal readers have shown interest in a behind-the-scenes look at how the environments are created, from sketch to the finished product. While I’ve handled this a bit in previous posts, let me take you through the process step-by-step, focusing on a single object in the cellar environment from Warnings at Waverly Academy: the furnace.

The cellar furnace played a dual role in the game – it not only had to add to the spooky atmosphere we were trying to create, it also was the scene of one of the game’s puzzles. This meant I had to design a furnace with a lot of character that also had specific features (ten valves) that could be seen on a single game screen (so the player could solve it without navigating away). Sorta tricky.

After studying a LOT of reference photos of old, rusty furnaces, this is what I came up with: 

If you squint really hard you can make out a skull shape to it. Squint harder.

I sent this to my 3-D partner (in this case the talented Josh Crandall), who created a model of the object (in yellow, below) and unwrapped its separate elements:

Next, I took the unwrapped file into Photoshop and created a 2-D texture for my 3-D partner to put on top of his model. In this case, since the furnace was supposedly constructed out of the same metal, the resulting texture ended up looking like a big rectangle of rust with some shaded bits here and there:

Doesn’t look like much, right? But put it in the game environment, add some environmental effects, and viola: big, spooky, puzzling furnace:

Ta-da!

And now I’ve got just a touch of bad news. I’m running out of interesting things to show you from games that have already been released, and I can’t show you art from games that have yet to be released. So, until the next game is out, the Drewsday posts will be a bit more sporadic. However, once the new game is released I’ll have just a TON of fun stuff to show you guys, so watch for that around… er… July? I think?

Anyway, Cheers!

—————-

Remember, you can always find me on Twitter and Etsy!

All the images in this post (except the header), © Copyright Her Interactive, Inc.