Art Concept Books

Lately I have been trying to draw more in my spare time, as such I have been trying to recoup my collection of drawing tools from Faber brush-pens, to PrimsmaColor markers, various pencils, Staples Optipoint Pens (an awesome gel pen that I have found great for random doodles and sketches since the ink flows really well and best of all the pens are dirt cheap) and lastly oil painting supplies. While visiting these stores I have manged to stumble upon some really cool book that cover some really need art-theory (as well have really cool pictures).

Mechanika: Creating the Art of Science Fiction with Doug Chiang
Doug Chaing is a really amazing concept artist who has done incredible work for various films and computer games and this book shows various concepts he independently designed and the workflow and techniques that he used to create them.




Drawing And Painting Fantasy Landscapes And Cityscapes
A cool concept book I found that has various samples and techniques for landscape and architecture.







50 Fantasy Vehicles To Draw & Paint: Create Awe-inspiring Crafts For Comics, Computer Games, And Graphic Novels
Another book of techniques and great samples that show some great design logic for creating various vehicles from pure mechanical sci-fi, to organic and of course a mixed bio-tech design too.

Kachiko for the iPhone & iTouch

Late last week we officially released Kachinko: our Pachink inspired, match-3, puzzle game onto the Apple AppStore for the iPhone and iTouch devices. Here is a short video that I did of the game being played:


iKachinko - Kachinko for the iPhone, Live Demonstration from mgtgames on Vimeo.

Do you part and buy Kachinko today. Trust me it's an awesome game (and I am not just saying that because its a game I helped make).

50s Monster Movie Creature

A while back on the GarageGames site I had posted a link to a small artist challenge to create a 50s inspired Monster or Scifi movie creature. The idea of the challenge was just to have some fun and see what people could come up with with a set of guidelines.



Click Here for Larger Version

My goal was to create a Creature from the Black Lagoon type monster combined with a few aspect of 'Ymir' from the movie 20 Millin Miles to Earth.




I spent a couple of evenings just doing research with Google Images, a copy of the incredibly awesome Dark Horse Comics version of the film (art by Art Adams), a pen and a pad of paper. Getting an idea for the shape and form and how the original Creature suit looked and pulling in elements of Ymir that I liked.



Next up I went into 3DS Max to create my 3D model for this creature. I kind of cheated here and repurposed one of my generic male models I created and did some quick modifications to get a generic form I could take into Mudbox 2009.



I probably dont need to display the work I did in Mudbox again (since its the first image that you see for this blog. But once I was done with Mudbox I exported the base data back out to 3DS Max (so I can make the character into something I can load into a game engine) and here is how it looks in Max with some viewport shaders.



You will have to forgive the blue normal map look of the model, I dont have a diffuse map ready for it yet (and there is no displacement map loaded to do the extra little modifications for the model).

More to come later...