Nate Simpson is a concept artist who has worked in the gaming industry since 1993. He has worked for companies like The Dreamers Guild, Taldren, GoPets Inc. and Gas Powered Games.

His credits include leading the art team for Demigod, a 2009 game from Gas Powered Games and Stardock, from which you can see an image in the Concepts section of is web site.

According to a short note on his site, Simpson is “…currently taking year off to learn how to make comics”. Judging from the sample pages he has posted, particularly those in the section of his site for “New Comics“, which are for a an endeavor Simpson calls “Project Waldo”, he is learning quite well indeed.

Simpson’s comic art sensibilities are distinctly European, having a feeling in keeping with some French and Belgian comics artists (which is a Good Thing in my book).

When clicking through the galleries on his site, click on an image to make it larger and then step through with the arrows. Much of the appeal is in the rendering and contrast between levels of line weight in the inks. This is again more in keeping with European (or Japanese) comics than mainstream American comics, in which line weight is frequently varied throughout the delineation of every figure.

You can find even larger images, including inked pages prior to the application of color, on Simpson’s blog, which is named for and devoted to Project Waldo.

His tagline for the blog reads “Follow along as I learn how to make a comic by making a comic. I hope you’re not in a hurry.”

Those who aren’t in a hurry, and can take the time to go back to the beginning of Simpson’s posts and follow through, will find a good deal of insight and valuable information that he has accrued in his learning process, and offered up in the course of the past year.

The image above shows page two of the story, along with detail crops below of inks and final color from the lower center portion of the middle panel. (See the original large image on Simpson’s blog here.)

Simpson puts a great deal of detail into some elements, leaving others open to be carried by the application of color. His background landscapes have more in common with Bruegel’s landscape drawings than with mainstream comics.

The color itself is in the style of European comics albums, bringing to mind the work of Moebius in particular (when he is coloring his own work, not handing it over to someone else to bury under inappropriate Beltran-like over-rendering, but I digress; that’s a topic for another post).

Word is that Simpson has gotten expressions of interest from some publishers, but there are no specifics yet, and it has now been a year since his first post on the Project Waldo, and he is only up to page 8 (out of how many pages total, I don’t know). It looks like those of us who, like myself, are looking forward to reading the finished story, will also have to not be in a hurry.

In the meanwhile, whether in concept art or comics, Simpson is a artist to watch.

[Via Drawn!]

After graduating from Clemson University, William Smith started his career in advertising, eventually working with clients like Coke, Novartis, Wal-Mart and Procter & Gamble.

In 2008 he shifted into a new career as a concept artist in the gaming industry, and is now working with TimeGate Studios.

His online portfolio is divided into three sections, through which you scroll horizontally. I don’t know anything about the individual projects for which they were created, but there are a variety of environments and scenes, most with a science fiction flavor.

Smith often contrasts bright, high chroma colors with more muted passages, and sometimes with passages of complimentary colors, giving the focal points in the compositions an extra jolt of intensity.

[Via Annalee Newitz on io9]

Luc Desmarchelier is an art dierctor at Sony Pictures Entertainment as well as a concept and visual development artist who has also done work for DreamWorks Animation and Amblimation/Universal Studios.

Desmarchelier maintains two blogs, Ushusia, which showcases his professional work, and harmattan, which is devoted to his personal projects, paintings and sketches.

He doesn’t include much biographical information on either, but you can see his professional film credits on the IMDB.

His concept art pieces, in pencil, watercolor, gouache and acrylic as well as digitally painted, are evocative, atmospheric and wonderfully textural, with a marvelous sense of place, season and time of day. His professional blog also includes sketches and the final piece for his contribution to the Totoro Forest Project (image above, top right, see my post on the Totoro Forest Project.)

Thumbing back through his blog posts takes you not only through several films, but through numerous locations that feel like a kind of travel adventure.

In his personal blog, the travel and places are real, and beautifully expressed; particularly in his directly observed but poetically rendered Moleskine sketchbook watercolors (image above, bottom).

You will also find figure studies, and paintings in acrylic and oil, as well as digital sketches in Painter and Photoshop, of subjects and places both real and imagined.

Freelance illustrator and concept artist Jason Caffoe works on a number of projects for which he can’t show or talk about his recent work, but his blog does have some work from older projects, along with engaging images from personal projects.

There is one current project that he can discuss, his contributions as colorist, background painter and concept artist for the second and third books of Kazu Kibuishi’s Amulet graphic novel.

The first two books of Amulet are now available, The Stonekeeper, and The Stonekeeper’s Curse . The third book is still in production. You can see some of the pages from book 2 on this interview with Kazu Kibuishi on Newsarama that also references Caffoe’s involvement with the project. (For more see my posts on Amulet and Kazu Kibuishi.

Caffoe also did some color art for Jake Parker’s Missle Mouse (here’s my post on Jake Parker).

Among Caffoe’s personal pieces on the blog are landscape concepts, fantasy themed drawings and dinosaurs, a subject always of interest to me (grin). Though his site doesn’t include an online portfolio, one is available in PDF form from links on the splash page or sidebar.

Caffoe is a co-founder with Matt Kohr of the collaborative blog Concept CoOp.

He also contributed to the Terrible Yellow Eyes project that I reported on here, (my post included his piece for the project at top). He was included in the Gallery Nucleus show for the project.

Caffoe’s work is currently part of another group show at Gallery Nucleus, Lift Off: The Art of Airships (image above, top) that runs to February 1, 2010.

One of the things that appealed to me right away when I browsed through the (still in progress) portfolio site for concept artist and designer Billy George was the nicely otherworldly color schemes he worked with in his environment paintings for Spacetime’s Blackstar game project (image above, top).

He used palettes of seemingly not-of-this-Earth colors, but made them nicely consistent within themselves.

I was then impressed with his subtle and restrained concept art for Disney’s Treasure Planet feature animation (above, middle), and, in particular, his beautiful workbook sketches for Brother bear (above, bottom).

You can find a number of these and more in the galleries on his site (note the sub-navigation at top to other sections, like Layouts, Characters, etc.).

You will find more work on his blog, including comics work, in particular an in progress graphic novel, Ruined Earth, storyboards and other goodies, like experimental vector drawings intended for Flash animation.

George was hired by Disney as a trainee when he graduated from Art Center College of Design. He worked with them for ten years and worked on seven feature animations. He left to pursue work in the gaming industry, but has recently returned to the Disney fold as Lead Concept Artist for the Disney owned Junction Point interactive studio in Austin Texas.

Ordinarily, concept art for film is created as a means of visualizing scenes before they are staged and filmed; giving directors, designers and production companies a guide as they develop the components necessary to actually bring the scene to to the screen.

However, according to Borys Kit of The Hollywood Reporter, this is a case of specialized concept art being utilized at a much earlier stage — to sell the film idea to the studio.

Producer Lionel Wigram had the idea for the action hero take on the Sherlock Holmes tradition, but felt that a written story treatment wasn’t sufficient to get the idea across to the studio executives.

He contacted Gregory Noveck at DC Comics and asked for a recommendation for an artist who could help him convey the idea visually. Noveck suggested John Watkiss, an artist with experience in both comics and movie concept art (see my previous post on John Watkiss).

Working together they created a comic book like pamphlet with illustrations that got across a visual and dramatic punch that sold the movie to the studio. (The comic-like format led to rumors for a while that a Watkiss-illustrated Sherlock Holmes graphic novel was in the offing, but unfortunately that was not the case.)

Watkiss used dramatically staged ink and tone drawings, heavy with chiaroscuro, to convey both the mood and action intended in the production.

The drawings themselves are an unusual style for concept art, but work beautifully for the purpose (and would have made for a terrific graphic story).

Many of the original illustrations are currently on display, and for sale, at Gallery Nucleus in Alhambra, CA, in an exhibit called The Art of the Motion Picture: “Sherlock Holmes” by Jon Watkiss, that runs until January 18 2010.

If you haven’t seen the movie, you might consider some of the images plot spoilers.

[Via io9]

After spending much of her career in the animation industry, working for companies like Walt Disney Feature Animation and Hanna Barbara, Allison Proulx turned her attention to gallery painting.

She studied at Rhode Island School of Design and Art Center College of Design and worked briefly as a freelance illustrator before entering the animation field.

Her web site featured galleries of work from both sides of her career, including figurative work.

Her simply and clearly stated landscapes come from direct observation, and are a marked contrast to the stylized animation background art that is also featured on her site.

I always find it fascinating when an artist does both real and fanciful landscapes, as the comparison speaks volumes about the intent and techniques employed in the creation of each.

Goro Fujita, who I wrote about in 2008, was kind enough to write and let me know about a new blog called Travisty’s Beard.

This is a collaborative art blog whose members are concept, production, character, and design artists from the art department of PDI/DreamWorks. The blog has no official relation to PDI/DreamWorks, it’s just the group of artists getting together to have fun.

The intention is to give themselves a challenge topic each month, and have the individual members respond by posting their interpretation of the topic. The blog takes its name from the initial topic, “What’s in Travesty’s Beard?”. The new topic for December is “New Year’s Resolution”.

This is a closed group, and the challenge is only among the members, but it should be fun to watch.

Though there isn’t a great deal of work posted yet, one of the most interesting parts of the blog at this point is the list of links in the right sidebar to the blogs and web sites of the participating artists, lots of work to see there.

(Images above: Goro Fujita, Lindsay Olivares, Shannon Jeffries)

“Gifted Artist” is a charity art show and auction to benefit the Loma Linda University Children’s Hospital in Loma Linda, California.

The event will be held on Saturday December 19th from 5 to 10pm at the CCAA Museum of Art in Rancho Cucamonga.

The auction features work by a long list of concept artists, character designers and illustrators from the film and gaming fields, as well as children’s book illustrators and other artists.

There is a blog devoted to the event that shows some of the art that will be up for auction, and will be adding more as the event approaches.

The list of participating artists includes a number of artists that I have featured on Lines and Colors. Here are some links to my posts: Alina Chau, Bill Perkins, Chris Appelhans, Iain McCaig, James Paick, Justin Gerard, Khang Le, Mike Hernandez, Peter de Séve, Robh Ruppel and Shaun Tan.

The Gifted Artist blog lists all of the artists, with links to their web sites or blogs in the sidebar. There are also posts of a flyer (front and back) that gives more details about the auction and event.

(Images above: Erik D. Martin, Uwe Heidschoetter, Pascal Campion, Martin Hsu)

Peter de Séve, a terrific illustrator, New Yorker cover artist and character designer for animated feature films, who I wrote about back in 2006, has a new children’s book (Hooray!), a new blog (double Hooray!) and is the subject of a new monograph (triple Hooray!).

The children’s book is The Duchess of Whimsey, written by his wife, Randall de Séve, the blog is called A Sketchy Past, the Art of Peter de Séve, and the monograph is titled the same, A Sketchy Past, the Art of Peter de Séve (look for the link to download a beautiful PDF preview of the book under the images in the right hand column; Amazon link here).

More Hoorays: there is an audio interview with De Séve on Sidebar (look for “Click Here” link at bottom of post), a video interview (conducted by Bobby Chiu) on Imaginism Studios; and word has it that there is a tutorial DVD in the works at Massive Black (no direct info yet).

There is also a nice selection of original art for sale on the Arludik Gallery. The site is unfortunately in frames so I can give you a direct link. Click on his image at top left an follow through the work, drawings first, then color works.

De Séve has a sharp, lively style, springy with confident draftsmanship and sparkling with whimsey. He wields it with aplomb across the range of his endeavors. He deftly captures light, movement, expression and energy in his pen and watercolor pieces, and somehow makes it look easy. His solid background in traditional drawing technique serves him well in his imaginative expressions of wild characters and delightfully loopy animals.

The new book, which I haven’t had the chance to pick up yet, has over 200 pages of full color art, and promises to be a first class treat.

Hooray!

Addendum: Parka, of the always enlightening blog Parka Blogs, was kind enough to point out in this post’s comments the that new monograph is currently available from the publisher, Stuart Ng and Amazon France, and will soon be available from Amazon Canada, but is listed on the U.S. Amazon site with a release date of May, 1010 (go figure).