Book cover smackdown!

My friend Lou Anders sent me two links to a pretty fun concept on sfsignal.com. It's what they call "Book cover smackdown!". like some sort of a cover fight - point your favorite, with comments added. It's interesting and the feedbacks are valuable and different than elsewhere too. You can go check it here:

terra-insegura vs haze vs boneshaker

salamander vs the quiet war

A good way to introduce the cover i did for HAZE last year. erm. At least i think it was last year... and also, i really zapped this one since i did it while doing my migration from Dallas to Seattle. It's a book cover for the Star Trek universe. I'm not particularly good at strictly respecting such a renowned IP when it comes to detailing and style. But the good thing was that the typical star trek elements were really quite invisible.

january dancer - electric candle city

These aren't new. but since i never posted them, here they are now. attached to this blog forever and ever. second one is a cover for TOR.
Sorry for having kept you waiting, moving is not easy. it's now done: we're very well installed in the east of "sunny" Seattle. Happy altogether and enjoying life. tons of things to post soon. new book covers. new art. new adventures ahead: new company for me, new life for my happy family, and a new balance for us all.
oh and by the way, Structura is sold out! it's a great news indeed as it means we reached, thanks to all of you, our expectations. there should be a reprint pretty soon.

happy new year!

Happy New Year to all of you!

i've been very silent lately. two reasons for this. first of all we're now a family of 5. Baby Zelie was born on december 9, 2008. she's a very easy baby, to the point where we were wondering why she was sleeping so much during the first 20 days! her two brothers are very kind with her, so fascinated by this little squeeking thing.

The second reason is that i will very soon leave Texas and IDsoftware in order to go to Seattle. it's always a bit difficult to take that type of decision, since we had our house here, as well as a permanent sun throughout the year. No matter where destiny leads us, that's the way it goes. I can assure you that planning a move with a new born baby and two kiddoes is not an easy task for sure!

I've been doing a lot of Concepts for RAGE since 2005, and i hope these images will one day pop out of the boxes for your viewing pleasure. i'll probably look back at these in a few months with a lot of Nostalgia.

here's two concept arts showed to the press last year.

B&W tests - Wired

Today WIRED posted a gallery with concept ships on its frontpage. WIRED being pretty big and mainstream, it's a pleasure seeing these images on their site. (thanks jenna!).

Apart from this, i still have this regular batch of tests. here's two black and white images taken from the bunch.

Structura is out!

Structura is finally here, or at least you can obtain it on the DesignStudioPress site for now. it should be on Amazon and other stores in the next days or weeks.
I am of course delighted to see the book being released. It is always a pleasure to touch the final object and have it in the hands: the quality of the printing is amazing. Not to say i am grateful to DSP and Scott Robertson for this project to see the day. I also hope it will match your expectations.

Sparth

tripod or octopod or else

don't know why, but this one had to be rapidly extracted from my mind. it was pretty impulsive. i guess that i create better when things are dictated by impulse.

white thing, manufacture 222

Prime Spot

Happy new year 2008 everyone!

here's a small brush test slowly transformed into an image. oh, and most important, my book STRUCTURA is officially finished. it should be out in march. more informations soon.

sparth

Latest Covers

i may not have a lot of time in my schedule, but don't ask me how, i managed to squeeze three book covers in there. done over the last months. the best way to keep track of the stuff i've done is probably to make a post here on the blog.

the covers for croisiere sans escale, by brian aldiss and Fahrenheit 451 by ray bradbury were both done for french publishers. my friend benjamin carre added the final touches to that bradbury cover since i fell ill at the exact same moment i had to send it to the publisher.

the middle cover, untitled the martian general's daughter, by theodore judson, was done for Lou Anders and PYR publishing. It's actually my second cover for the US market.

DS Sketches

A large tribute has to be given to jens andersson for that little COLOR program, that gives us artists the ability to paint wherever we want, with no real constraints. the nintendo DS is light, the screen is bright enough, and the proggie is very well done, with all the basic features necessary for doing fast sketches and concepts. Not to forget that they managed to implement pressure sensitivity and opacity to the brush system.

It's actually the first time we artists have an access to such a tool, even if it is via the DS. It seems unbelievable that in 2007, no company has taken the time to create such a portable platform specialized for this usage. We are in such a specialized niche, i suppose.

These are the first tests i've done. and you can see more on the COLORS gallery, here.
If you want to look at the process, playbacks are available at the bottom of each image page.

Assassin's Creed

looks like "assassin's creed" is near completion, and artworks are starting to appear here and there. CGsociety has just released an article on the subject, mainly oriented around the artistic direction and concept design of the game. i gave them a tiny tiny interview concerning my contribution to this project, and they're also featuring my friends raphael lacoste and vyle. left the project at the end of 2005, and it's actually fun seeing things from two years ago being finally shown. here's a concept of one of the cities.

Suspended Structures

Cenotaxis - extract

Moving from an apartment to a house is a crazy process, especially when kids are in the way when you move boxes around. actually i guess it's far more exciting for them that for us. Anyway it is now done. we moved. The house is great. huge. and we are happy and exhausted.

Tinnitus is still here, and unfortunately the 1 year milestone has been reached in august. It is sometimes hard to plan the future when you don't know what tomorrow will be made of. sound? no sound? full sound? "T", as they call it, is a bit like a torture. true it is not cancer, and theorically i'm not going to die tomorrow because of it. but when the sound is at its peak, i sometimes wonder how i'm able to deal with it without losing my mind. it's a day after day process i suppose... and there's still very bearable moments, so i'll shut my mouth.

Anyway i'm still creative, and that's probably the only thing that counts. here's an extract of an illustration i did around june, for the cover of a novel by Sean Williams, called Cenotaxis.

Milicia

it's been a while...