Ironclaw: A Bestiary

Woot! The book came in the mail and looks great :D I compiled the illustrations I made for Ironclaw (offsite link) that I made earlier this year into an "Art of..." book, along with my texts for each entry. I printed this over at blurb.com and a copy of the book just arrived yesterday! 80 pages. Contains 41 full-color illustrations with accompanying text and commentary. Here's how you can get yours.

"Buraq"

digital. A depiction of the mythological steed from Islam, renowned for carrying the prophet Muhammad around the Holy Land and on up to Heaven, way back in the day. Abraham apparently also had a ride. It's supposedly a kind of flying donkey with a human head, how cool is that?(!) I just made the above picture, but it's not new imagery for me. I first learned about it back in 2003 and made these: Later, in 2005, when taking my intro digital class, I felt the class was too basic and challenged myself to try more digital painting on my own. This was one of my first real efforts: I didn't get very far though; my ambition often outstrips my abilities with new mediums/techniques. I particularly like the "baked potato" he ends up standing on :B Of course now the Illustration department offers an advanced digital painting class, specifically :)

P.S. Across his chest it reads "Love and Peace" in Arabic. The mask/antlers are also "Love" just mirrored left and right.

Ironclaw

Ironclaw: A Bestiary by Chris Goodwin | Make Your Own Book

Earlier this year I finished a huge illustration project: creating images for use in the latest edition of the Ironclaw roleplaying game manual. The setting involves animal characters in a fantasy, pre-industrial European setting - from the Medieval period through the Renaissance to the early 1800's.

I was featured along with other artists in the book. And so, after it was done, I collected mine together to publish as a stand-alone portfolio / "Art of-" companion book, including my writings for each image. My process involved first writing something for each entry, and then basically illustrating this text.

Contains 41 full-color illustrations with accompanying text and commentary.
For those of you interested, the book is finished and available :)

I didn't make much fuss about the project here as I was working on it, I figured I'd just wait until now to point to it. The little preview widget above is cool, but might take some time to load all the thumbnails :P

"Quarter Melon Moonshine"

digital.

I was working on a business card redesign and got distracted by the small format. "Doodled" in Illustrator.

BREMEN: Warren related stuff.

Here are some face studies for Warren. He's not that complicated a character, visually.



Plus a random spot of calligraphy, since I had my pens out.

BREMEN: "California Dreamin'"

digital.

Not the old The Mamas &The Papa's original, but this quick and sloppy phonetic cover by Japanese punk band Hi-STANDARD who sound like they have no idea what they're saying.

I imagine that regardless of whatever the band is actually playing, Warren hears it this way.

BREMEN: "Amateur Night at the Fireball"

digital.

Some environment design.

Dogs everywhere!

haven't been updating here so regularly, but here's some stuff!

finished the design for the dog character, named Warren, from the BREMEN stuff I'm still chewing on.



and just now this little gouache painting (about 3"x5") for my friend wyatt who likes great danes.

BREMEN: "Dock of The Bay"

digital.

featuring Miah and Gerick.

She's strumming a simple cover of the the classic by Otis Redding.

I'm starting to think more about the setting. While the city of Bremen itself is someplace impossibly glamorous and unrealized like The Emerald City of Oz, or the aura around Hollywood/NYC in the late 70's, most of the road trip setting will be strip mall suburbia hell, or some kind of run down post-industrial urban blight mill towns.