Carol of the Bells Metal-Orchestral Cover!

Ho Ho Ho!

Season's Greetings!

Well, I'm sure no one's Xmas Carol-ed out yet...

So here's another!

Please enjoy this Metal-Orchestral Cover of "Carol of the Bells" Arranged, Performed, and Recorded by myself and the talented Ian Leung.



A colaboration between myself and a good friend of mine, Ian Leung for a special Xmas Podcast he is Music Director for.

The Electric Guitar and Drum Kit were performed and recorded by Ian Leung.

The Synth and Orchestral (Tubular Bells, Chimes, Vibes, Strings, Brass, Bass, Timpani, Piccolo, etc.) instruments were performed and recorded by me... Mat Andre.

Hope you like it!

Thanks for listening and for your support!

Happy Holiday wishes to you and yours!

Till next time!

Personal sketches

Dear Blog,

Still workin' away at some commissions and home/yard renos these last few weeks...

In the meantime, thought I'd share with you some of my personal sketches from a while back.

As I often don't get quite as much time as I'd like to draw, I try to keep somewhat fresh with a few personal doodles from time to time... I often jump from subject to subject each time, either out of a direct decision for personal growth, or from the random "what-should-I-draw-now's".

Here are some of those instances:

A random sci-fi girlie.

 

A Medieval Knight Armour study sketch...

A really quick Skeleton sketch to test out a textured brush I made in Photoshop.  

Simple, but I like it for some reason.

 

And lastly a night time forest environment speedpaint... Approx. 1hr

That's it for now, but thanks for taking the time to check these out!

Keep in touch and in tune for more soon!

Cheers and Take Care 'til Next Time!

Mad Cy-entist and Snake n' Cross Tattoo Commissions...

Hey There,

Been busy busy with the new Big Boom at Celebrations! 

On top of that, we had our 5th annual crazily spook-tacular Hallowe'en Bash - H-13! Great turnout, costumes and fun!

Thanks to all that attended! :)

And then there was Central Canada Comic Con (C4)... The cast from our show went in costume and character to the Con and it was a blast!  Had tons of recognition and photos, and the people showing the Time Traveling DeLorean from Back to the Future came to see our show, driving it to, and parking it outside our theatre during the performance - lights lighting and flux capacitor fluxing!

1.21 Jigawatts! 

Anyways...

Also been quite busy with many-a-project as usual and two handfulls of commissions these past few weeks.

Here are a few of them.

A Snake and Cross Tattoo design for a gentleman who was referred to me by a friend. (Thanks Matt D!)

And a Mad-Cyborg-Scientist design for a logo/ t-shirt.

I am currently working on another ad/poster for the same commissioner as the Cy-entist as well... Stay tuned for that soon, as well as more updates on Prime, Slingin', Champions of Haven, Adventurer's Inc, and more!

Thanks for the support and take care until next time!
 

Prime Concepts

Hey Hey!

Here are some concepts for a project I am working on with another gent - Chad Shelton.

The project is tentatively titled  "Prime" and is set to be a fantasy adventure of epic proportions!

The story will split among multiple paths and universes, each interweaving and connecting with each others worlds, stories and characters, some possibly crossing paths with some "familiar" looking characters of pop culture and history as well...

One of the main characters will be Atirakis - An ancient Elf-like cleric-wizard-warrior...

Here are some Concepts of him so far!

 

Atirakis v.s. the hordes of Chaos!

Below are some early concepts...

The Leftmost one turned out more like a "Samurai" Atirakis, which may actually be further developed. As the story spans multiple universes and "versions" of the characters, a Samurai Atirakis could be a possible character as the plot develops.

Atirakis' Staff and other weapons (depending on his particular universal persuasion)  are composed of a material known as "Godstone" - a luminous crystalline substance that contains black "veins" that grow as it's power is consumed.

There are also other types of stones inhabiting our worlds such as the Soulstone and Bloodstone, each requiring supplies of their respective titles to utilize and increase their powers...

Here are some rough concepts of such stones...

And below are some other Characters, beings, and governing powers-that-be of the multiverses, otherwise known as the "Primes"... 

The Prime Chaos

- Having taken control of a mortal's body and mind.

 

One of a pair of Golden Dragon Twins.

 

Fiona - A Phoelarch (Humanoid Phoenix) Ranger

And the lord, conciousness and creator of all that is - 

Chronos.

More of Prime and other projects coming soon!

Thanks for the support and as always, please leave a comment or feel free to get in touch!

Take Care till Next Time!

Big Boom Billboard!

Hey,

The new Big Boom Theory II Billboard design is out!

Probably already all over the Facebook, but thought you might like a preview...

I am Leonard, the gent with the glasses on the right... This may be the only time I'll say this, but they made me look too tall! I am actually much shorter than "Sheldon" in reality, not unlike the television show... 

Going into second week of rehearsals today and so far, the show is turning out great!

And it wouldn't be the same without my extremely talented cast-mates and friends:

"Sheldon" [Right Centre] - David Finley
"Penny" [Left Centre] - Aimee Beaudoin
"Howard" [Middle Left] - Lance Cardinal
"Bernadette" [Far Left] - Mandi Maxwell
"Amy Farah Fowler" - Andrea Bailey

Look for the billboards around Winnipeg soon!

Hope to see you at the show.

Stay tuned for more art updates later this week!

:)

Slingin' Along...

Hey again,

I know what you're thinking...

Your Thought Bubble - "Wait, two posts in the same week!?  Is he insane?" 

Well my friends, yes.  Yes I am.

...So here are some more card designs from our Upcoming Gansta Collectable Card Game - Slingin'!

We want to get a variety of cards from each of the deck underway so that we can have a playable demo game as quickly as possible...

NOTE: These are all still in conceptual stages and the final designs may vary...
 

Here are the backs of two of the decks so far...

Downtown Deck and Uptown Deck.

Not sure if I should keep the "Line" (intended to be reminiscent of a line of Cocaine...) in the front of both skylines or one in the back as in the Uptown Deck... 

What do you think?  Lemme know in the comments!

And below are their respective Front Designs...

Each card will be roughly designed as such, but the Card Name will be in a font matching the card's subject.

The small symbol of the flexing arm is the "Muscle" stat indicator, which will change depending on the cards.  There will also be stat indicators for "Smarts", "Rep", "Heat", "Lawyer Rating", "Cunning" and "Money", depending on the card.

We may go with the big "Arcade Boss" "?" for some of the demo deck, both to raise some hype and money from our future Kickstarter campaign...  

And here are a couple other card sketches...

 - One from the Action Deck -

Punk Out

(After sketching out this card, I've decided the final version will have the "Punk-er" giving more of a chest-first-open-arms "Dis" rather than the 'Ol "Flinch Fist""

Punk Out             -Play against any G who has a lower rep.  They must either pay you $1 or lose 1 rep.  If they have no money, they may choose to permanently discard one card  

Here is a Background Card Concept for

Big Paws on a Puppy

BG Cards are meant as your "Playable Character", each with a unique background, starting stats and money... Until your character gets killed, then you pick a new one from the pile... Just like real life!

I wanted to show the characters as they were when they were younger, and how their back-stories have sculpted and evolved them into the gangsters they are now...

 And lastly one from the "Downtown Deck" - 

One to the Dome

 ...And what the final card might look like...

My co-creator (Richard Hart) and I would love to hear what you think of the game so far!

Do you like the Designs? The Art? The Text? The Style? The Gameplay?

Would you or someone you know play it!?

Lemme know in the comments or shoot me an email!

Stay tuned for even more insane posts coming up soon - with more from our upcoming web series Prime (Next time!), concepts for a comic I am creating, Hi-Fi, tattoo Designs, Personal works and of course, more Slingin'!

Thanks for checkin' out my work and take care till next time!

Murals! More Murals!

Hey Hey!

Here's the completed Greg Dunstan Centurion piece I worked on here in Winnipeg...

 

Below are some party-goers from My Big Fat Calgary Wedding... Some new faces and some familiar ones...

 Some pieces below from Best of Friends Reunion....

In Winnipeg for this show we painted rats on the walls, as it is part of the plot that rats have taken over the restaurant... However, it was only revealed in Act II, so the Director requested that we not paint rats for the next cities, to not give away the surprise...

If you look closely, there's a rat hidden in nearly every mural we painted... Just for fun... Haha.

 (Work in Progress)                                              (Final Painting)

 

 ( This couch is one of my favourite paintings I've done! :) )

And finally, some of the forest we most recently painted last week in Calgary for Johnny Be Goode!

I really liked how this city's murals turned out!

(Work in Progress above)

Hope you like these murals, as it will be my last full change-over painting for a while...

BUT, you can catch me on stage in Celebrations/ Jubilations Dinner Theatres as Leonard in "The Big Boom Theory II: Time Traveling Geeks" beginning in Winnipeg, running October 18th, 2013 - January 18th, 2014!

I have also been asked by the set designers to design the wall murals for Big Boom II!!! 

Which is quite exciting!

So stay tuned for more on those designs and a lot of other updates coming for Prime, Slingin', Hi-Fi, a new Tattoo design commission, and some personal works!

Thanks for the support and don't forget to be in touch!

Take care till next time!

Caesars Palace Roman Centurion Murals (WIP)!

Dear Blog,

Usually don't take photos of the mural work in progress that we do for Celebrations/ Jubilations Dinner theatres (Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary)...

...So here are some!

This first Roman Centurion  type fella shown here in a couple stages (painted by Yours Truly), wasn't quite finalized at the time, but I thought it may give some fun insight into the process for all those who very rarely catch a glimpse of the room between shows.

As I may have mentioned in previous posts, we use digital projectors to first place, arrange, and otherwise "block in" or outline the paintings throughout the room.  Different techniques are used depending on the art style of the particular show, but most are started with projectors and finalized without, using photo/image references (shown taped to the walls beside the murals).

This soldier was projected, blocked-in with the main solid colours, and using a light brown ("Red Brick") paint, the outline of the details and facial features are traced onto the base coats.

 It was later decided that we would paint the faces of the centurions and show girls with likenesses of our crew and staff...

So here are the middle staged of repainting his face to resemble none other than our theatre's Music Director, The Fantastic Greg Dunstan!

 

From this point on, several more passes were made to tighten up the painting and details, but when we finished painting, it was followed immediately by clean-up, get-the-heck-out, and enjoy beverage and Folklarama (Caribbean/African and Israel Pavilions [Both amazing!]) time, so I will be posting the final photos in the future!

Some other works-in-progress by myself, one of a Statue of Caesar overlooking the main entrance (below), and, at the time of these photos, I had painted the whole fraction of the pillar above the cupboards on the right (Bottom)! Hahah.

The red inside edge was "cut-in" by the Lovely and Multi-talented Gillian Moon, later to be filled in around the other images as the room's background, the other pillars by The Fabulous Karen Turnbull, and the large white gap in the second image was filled with a rather large centurion the following day by myself and our Set Designer, The Magical Rom Fantini...

 

...And that's all for this one, but stay tuned for more and don't forget to leave a comment!

This blog has been mostly a base website for my art and other fun things, but feel free to let me know if you'd like to see more or less of certain things, articles, links, exciting and inspiring info etc...

I want to make this blog as entertaining and worthwhile to all those who continue to read and support!

Thank you for all the amazing comments and feedback so far and take care till next time!

Upcoming Ganster Card Game "Slingin'" Sketches!

Dear Blog,

Here are some more Sketches for a card game I'm co-producing with a gentleman by the name of Richard Hart....

...So far, a creative and thorough game designer, and a wonderful person to work with!

Richard has designed Slingin' -a Drug-War-Gangster-Hip-Hop style card game- with an easy to understand, yet incredibly deep and immersive gameplay style. 

The game comes ready to pick up and play as one "Full" game deck comprised of several smaller game decks, like:

Uptown and Downtown Cards with cards designed around
           Weapons (From Baseball bats to Shotguns),
           "Whips"(Sexy Cars),
           And all manner of crazy characters from Cops and Lawyers
           to Shorties and O.G.'s (Girlfriends and Original Gangstas)!

And of course there'll be

"Go to Jail" style cards and

Background Cards for playable characters, each with their own unique stats

...Just to name a few!

You start with a character and draw cards from the decks, attempting to gain more money, rep, smarts, and dead bodies than your enemies...drawing a new character from the backgrounds if you're killed (and you most likely will be!

Though Slingin' will deal with adult themes and contain graphic content, it's still intended to do so with a tongue-in-cheek approach, parodizing the culture rather than glorifying it.

Of course, that isn't to say it isn't going to have awesome art and gameplay!

Here are a few sketches of some card art so far...

 

These (above) are the Victory Cards - Won at the end of the game for the Most Bodies, Rep, and Money, respectively...

 

We've since decided that the lady friend in "Run This Town" will now be "toned down" a little and will share centre with the her male counterpart, as we want to encourage female gamers to play and win just as much as male gamers!

That's all for now, only another 120 or so more card designs to go... And then to clean and colour them!

But it'll all be worth it, cause this game is gonna to be Off The Heezy!

Stay tuned for more updates and our upcoming Kickstarer Campaign! (Start savin' up yer nickles! :) )

Take care till next time & don't forget to leave a comment!

We'd love to know what you think of Slingin' so far!

Dungeons and Randomness Limited Edition Art Prints!

Dear Blog,

More great news!

Got contacted a few weeks ago by a gentleman by the name of Erik "Tyson" Spindler from the popular D&D Podcast Dungeons and Randomness about some commissioned art prints!

D&R has recently beat out one of, if not, the largest fantasy company in the world, Wizards of the Coast for iTunes Downloads (Last I heard, 44,000 on their "Mailbag 4 Episode"!!!).

Congrats to the entire team!

The Dungeons and Randomness Podcast is a what you would expect from the title- An entertaining and often hilarious combination of two groups (alternating occasionally from cast to cast) of truly down-to-earth, relatable people, from various places, who just like to have a good time talking about the most random of subjects, and equally playing some in-depth and character driven D&D!

Truly a fun time!

They started posting their games on Podbean and the casts started to snowball...

Their followers and fan base continue to grow, even to the surprise of Erik -

"I honestly don't know how it blew up so fast, but it's been a super cool project."...

 and the team has begun to receive requests to bring their world to life.

As a fan of conventions, art and local artists, Erik, being from Winnipeg, came across my Freelanced.com profile while searching for some artists!

We are currently working together on a character portrait of Malchus Grimnas - A Tiefling Warlock played by Rob Wiesehan.

So far the preliminary sketches have been approved and I am continuing to conceptualize and solidify Malchus' look and design as we move forward!

It's been a blast!

As there will be a set of exclusive, limited edition prints being made, I won't be posting any Sketch-work of the portrait until the finals are complete and released to their collectors.

There may be more to come yet and I'll be posting updates on our progress!

In the meantime, you can check out the Dungeons and Randomness Podcast here, or you can find a link to their Podbean on the left of this Blog in "My Friends' Sites!".

And here's the Mailbag 4 episode where Erik and the gang first mention the art project-

(Name drop around 79:00 min! ;p )

Podcast Powered By Podbean

Check back in the next few days for some more updates on my other Projects- Champions of Haven, Slingin', Chronos, and Hi-Fi!

Cheers!

Fringe Posters and Female Phoenix Rangers.. Oh My!

 Dear Blog,

It's been a busy last couple weeks and a lot of good news!

A few weeks ago I finished up some more animations for Video King and I am just waiting on final testing to make sure they're good to go. As soon as I know, I'll be posting them here!

Last week I was painting at Jubilations Edmonton again for the Johnny Be Good show.  More trees and bears and stuff.  It was a crazy long week!  Most days were around 15 hrs, with only a break for dinner. The room has the largest wall space of the three theatres and we have one less day to paint than in Winnipeg...

We just barely made it out before tech rehearsal, so I never got a chance to take pictures.  I will take and post some next time we are there....

Got to see one of my bestest friends Aimée, who just so happens to be moving right here to Winnipeg, in with my other friend Cherie - seven blocks away!

When I got back, I got an email from a good friend of mine, Cory Wojcik, requesting some Winnipeg Fringe poster work...And he needed it in a jiffy!

Here's the poster I did for his Fringe show Phoney Baloney Pantaloné!

And seeing as how it's a kid's show, I did up a colouring sheet of the main character for the little childrens!

 While a little more time and notice would've allowed me some more polish, I like both of them a lot!

I particularly like the sketchy, watercoloury illustrative look the poster has.

Both were done based on photos of the cast in costume.

Look for these posters around the city of Winnipeg soon!

And please let me know if you see any! I'd love to hear about it! :)

While I was in Edmonton last week, I began discussing some commissions with a fellow online by the name of Chad Shelton...

He has an extremely wild and fantastical story and cast of characters that he wants to see brought to life.  We have very similar tastes and we have been working on some thoughts about a web series and/or some printed material to collaborate on. 

There will be much more to come (Character designs, environments, weapons, scenes etc), but we decided to start with one commission to make sure we're on the same wavelength...

This is the first sketch of one of his characters...

 She is a female Phoelarch Ranger.

A Phoelarch is like a humanoid Phoenix.

Her cape is made of a magical firey material and her hands burn white hot, fueling the scorching arrows she fires from her glowing obsidian bow...

Her clothes are made of swirling "liquid hot magma", that she controls with her thoughts and her ankle and shoulder spirit wings help guide her through the air in a blinding burst of energy!

Check back soon for the finished version and much more from this new project!

 Another exciting project I've been asked to be co-producer of is Slingin' !

Slingin' is a collectable card game like Magic The Gathering or Pokémon etc.

But Slingin' is a game based on "The Streets".

In it you control playable character cards and gain power ups like Rep, Muscle, Smarts, Heat, Cash, Weapons, Whips (Nice cars), Properties, Drugs, and of course, by killing the other playahs, yo! ...Just don't go to jail or get capped yourself!

The project will involve myself and the gentleman who created the game, Richard Hart.

We worked together on the project a bit last year and it kind of fell through for various reasons...Richard recently contacted me to offer me the opportunity to be the Artist for the entire game, and to share in the (potential) profits as Co-producer once it get's off the ground as well!

We are in talks of some Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaign in the near future to get some funds to complete the game (so stay tuned for that!), but right now we're fleshing out the card designs first.

We've yet to start on new ones for this version, but he liked the direction I was going with the last ones, so we are going to use them as a base point and go from there...

Here are some of the OLD CARD ROUGHS  that I had worked on last year... 

What do YOU think, blog? .... I'd love to hear your comments...

...Lastly...  Just some face sketches I did a few weeks back.  Nothing fancy, I just find that sometimes my faces all look the same, so I thought I'd try some ethnicities I don't usually draw...And yet they still look similar! Haha...Just my style I guess.

Well, that's it for now, but stay tuned for a lot more updates on our new web series, Slingin', my personal work, and more illustrations for the Champions of Brumor by Riley Martin!

Thanks for stopping by and don't forget to leave a comment! 

Until Next Time