Dermot Power is a concept designer and visual development artist with an impressive list of credits in feature films like Star Wars: Episode II Attack of the Clones, Batman Begins, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, V for Vendetta and three of the Harry Potter films, as well as high-end gaming projects like Bioshock 2.

Since I initially wrote about him in 2006, Power has redesigned his website and added concept art from several new films, including Beowulf, A Christmas Carol and Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland.

I’m constantly struck by Power’s masterful use of value in composing his images. This is most evident in his compositions that are monochromatic, or nearly so, which have a dynamic and atmospheric power that make them a visual treat in themselves.

Not that Power doesn’t also do wonderful work in color, he certainly does, but where other concept artists rely on color, often with high-chroma complementary colors laid side by side to exaggerate their intensity, Power creates palpable atmosphere and intense visual drama using value as his major instrument. Even in his full color work, you can tell that value is a primary concern in his handling of the subject.

Of course, it doesn’t hurt the Power is a terrific draftsman, with a snappy, economic style that makes his character designs a visual treat as well.

When viewing the galleries on his website, and flipping through the (unfortunately small) controls above the images, don’t miss the fact that some of the projects have more than one section, accessed on the bar to the right of the title. Also, look for Power’s interesting commentary at lower left of the images.

There is also a biography and interviews on the site, along with a FAQ, links and more. Unfortunately the “Tutorials” section is limited (at least for now) to a single time-lapse digital painting. Power also maintains a blog titled DMOXIA.

It’s easy when viewing concept art for familiar films to unconsciously think of them as after the fact, because they often look like the images you’ve seen on screen, but keep in mind that images like these are what the movie scenes are based on; they facilitate the communication of visual concepts between the director, cinematographer, production designer and other contributors who produce the final look of a feature film or game.

Power’s beautiful concept designs for Alice in Wonderland (images above, top two) and A Christmas Carol (second and third down) are so striking they make me wish the final movies were filmed in black and white and looked as close to his digital paintings as possible.

Among artists who work in the medium of digital painting, most notably visual development artists, comic book artists and illustrators, the two most popular applications for painting and drawing directly on the computer with a ressure-sensitive stylus and tablet are Adobe Photoshop and Corel Painter.

Photoshop, because of it’s much broader range of use in photo manipulation, compositing and prepress, is the subject of far more instructional material than Painter, which is much more focused on the direct creation of digital art. Those of us who love to work in Painter are always interested to see books on the subject, and are always hoping for a greater range of instructional topics and approaches.

Secrets of Corel Painter Experts by Daryl Wise and Linda Hellfritsch is a welcome addition to that list.

The book is subtitled “Tips, Techniques, and Insights for Users of All Abilities”, but I think it’s best suited for those who already have a grasp of Painter basics and are looking to take their skills to a more advanced level.

The book calls on a range of digital artists who are working in Painter and are recognized for their expertise in their field. Each chapter in the book is devoted to one of the 17 artists and focuses on an aspect of Painter techniques in which they are proficient.

Each artist is profiled, with background on their work and influences and a brief question and answer, as well as relevant links. The main feature is a step by step instruction on the technique or process that particular artist has been called on to demonstrate, along with a gallery of the artist’s work.

In addition, the artists also frequently contribute more general tips about their Painter working process.

Many of the artists included are familiar names in digital painting circles, drawn from the fields of comic art, illustration and concept art, as well as fine art and photography, and include John Derry, one of the original team that worked to develop Painter in its early stages at Fractal Design.

The accompanying DVD is a bit less that I might have hoped for, with mostly mid-resolution and a few high resolution images of the artists’ work, but not conveniently arranged for browsing. It is nice, however, that the DVD sections for each artist include clickable versions of their “Favorite websites” links from the book.

Corel Painter is a very powerful and flexible application, and can also be complex and somewhat daunting, with over 900 brushes by someone’s count and numerous other tools and settings. Secrets of Corel Painter Experts is not meant to be a comprehensive manual, but a focused series of instructions on specific techniques from working professionals.

(Images above, Andreas Rocha [main cover image], Waheed Nasir, Wonman Kim, Brian Haberlin, Benjamin, Thorston Wolber [2 images], Chet Phillips, Mike Thompson, Dwane Vance, John Derry, Pete Revonkorpi)

Tomasz Maronski is a Polish fantasy artist who started in traditional media, primarily oil, but after 10 years decided to move to digital painting.

Working primarily in Corel Photo-paint, Maronski creates richly textured fantasy landscapes, lush with fantastical forms that seem to take inspiration partly from biological sources and partly from Surrealist masters of textural suggestion like Max Ernst and Yves Tanguy.

Maronski often works with a restricted palette, casting the majority of the composition in a small color range, accented with sharply contrasting hues from the other side of the color wheel.

He also likes to play with light and shadow, often with dramatic shafts and beams of light giving his subjects a theatrical focus.

It seems Maronski no longer has a dedicated website, instead relying on galleries on sites like CG Society and deviantART as a substitute.

I can’t find an actual bio or working credits; so I’m unsure of the range of his clients or work, though he apparently had illustrated a number of book covers.

His work is featured in Masters of Science Fiction and Fantasy Art: A Collection of the Most Inspiring Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Gaming Illustrators in the World by Karen Haber.

For reasons that are lost on me, concept and visual development artists for the film and gaming industries often go by “handles” (nicknames) when publishing their work online.

“Goodbrush”, AKA Craig Mulllins, is by either name one of the most recognized and respected artists in the field. He is also one of the first to move into digital painting, and remains at the forefront of the medium.

Since I last wrote about him, Mullins has launched a redesigned website that showcases the broad range of his subject matter and approach.

The “Quick Tour” section will give you an overview, highlighting selections from the other categories, and the other sections go into some depth, with numerous selections of his concept art, matte paintings, promotional work and various kinds of painted sketches and drawings.

In addition there are sections of his work in traditional painting media, oil and watercolor.

One of the things that always impresses me about Mullins’ work is his ability to leave out the inessential and suggest more than is there. Even in pieces that look very realistic, the actual rendering and detail are minimal; Mullins uses his superb control of color and just enough detail and textural elements to allow your eye to fill in the rest.

I also always enjoy his wonderfully playful explorations of light and shadow, contrast and highlights, with which he enlivens and energizes his images and commands the path of your eye through the composition.

Those of you who admire the work of great illustrators like Howard Pyle and N.C. Wyeth will easily find their influence in Mullins’ historical pieces.

Speaking of influences, don’t miss the downloadable PDF of John Singer Sargent’s notes on painting that Mullins has been kind enough to make available from this page.

For more, see my previous post on Craig Mullins (and here); I’ve listed additional resources below.

[Update suggestion courtesy of Will Kelly]

The Art Center is a blog devoted to, as the tagline says, “Sharing Ideas and Tips from Artist to Artist”.

An offshoot of the Character Design blog, which is devoted largely to interviews with artists working in the film, gaming and illustration fields, The Art Center features tutorials, walk-throughs, how to videos and discussions of process and technique for character design, concept art, storyboarding an other aspects of related visual art.

It also includes basic tips on painting, drawing, composition and rendering in various media, including digital painting.

You’ll find a list of the contributors, all working artists in related fields, on the left side of the blog, and a list of topic and artist tags on the right. The artists list is linked to the contributor’s blogs and websites, so you can click through to see more of their art.

You’ll have to put up with poke-your-eye-out graphic design, trying to read bright green text and bright red titles on a black background (what are they thinking?), but for those working in this vein, the tips and techniques are worth the effort.

(Images above: Florian Satzinger, Rad Sechrist, Hat Lieberman, Mark McDonnell, Louie del Carmen, Leighton Hickman, Sam Nielson)

[Via Dave Gibbons on Twitter @davegibbons90]

Robh Ruppel is a well known art director, concept artist, character designer and matte painter for the film and gaming industries.

He was the Art Director for the animated feature films Meet the Robinsons and Brother Bear and did visual development work on films like Treasure Planet, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Tarzan, Mulan and The Emperor’s New Groove. He is currently an art director and visual development artist for Naughty Dog, a gaming development studio in California.

Since I wrote a post about his work back in 2006, Ruppel has revised and expanded his website, maintained his Broadview Graphics site and continued to add to his now extensive blog, The Broadview Blog.

The galleries on his website are only identified by number until you click into them. The first few are concept art, matte painting, animation and color keys. I enjoy his colorful, atmospheric work on the Meet the Robinsons in particular (images above, top two).

Gallery 8 consists of sketches, largely in a science fiction vein (image above, third down), and Gallery 10 is fantasy art (from somewhat earlier in his career, I think).

Long before the current spate of iPad location painters, Ruppel, along with a few other concept artists like Nicolas Bouvier (“Sparth“), was an early practitioner of digital plein air painting, taking a laptop and Wacom tablet on location to paint from life in applicaitons like Painter and Photoshop.

Now, of course, he’s taking advantage of the much more manageable digital location painting process afforded by the iPad, using apps like Inspire Pro, and iPhone, using Autodesk Sketchbook Mobile.

Gallery 9 on the website is his gallery of Digital Plein Aire (images above, bottom three).

I particularly enjoy his on location digital paintings of room interiors, such as his Vermeer-like painting of a doorway shown above, bottom.

There is a new collection of Ruppels’ work titled Aspect Ratio, available from Gallery Nucleus. It features some of his digital plein air paintings as well as his science fiction themed art. You can see a review/preview of the book on Parka Blogs. Ruppel’s professional work is also featured in The Art of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (Parka Blogs’ review here).

There is a nicely illustrated interview with Ruppel on CGSociety. There is also an interview with Ruppel on his use of Google SketchUp in Game Design, which includes more shots of his concept design work.

The Wormworld Saga is a new online graphic novel by German illustrator, comics artist and gaming concept artist Daniel Lieske.

It is an adventure story centering on the memories of a young boy recalling a time in his life when the world of the everyday intersected with the extraordinary.

The format is a bit different from most online graphic stories, which are posted a page or a few panels at a time; the first chapter of The Wormworld Saga was just posted complete; a necessity in this case because the entire chapter, in a variation of Scott McCloud’s “infinite canvas” concept, is essentially one long scrolling page, with the panels interconnected by larger passages and shared backgrounds.

The comic is read by scrolling down (something seemingly particularly appropriate for reading on the iPad), and though there are sections that might be considered “pages” in that their content and panel format is related, they defy the boundaries of conventional page layout.

Unlike some artists who have experimented with the online comics format and the conventions of how comics stories are read, Lieske hasn’t indulged in experimentation at the expense of graphic storytelling fundamentals, and his story reads well, flows nicely and is easy to follow.

The story, though only one chapter long so far, also stands out for its pace, more like an actual novel than the pace of most comics, which tend to proceed like a movie or television show, in which the narrative is compressed. Lieske seems comfortable with a pace that allow him to build up background and narrative texture; though the story is told well enough that there is no feeling of lag or delay.

The most outstanding characteristic of The Wormworld Saga, however, is Lieske’s artwork, which is highly accomplished, quite original and wonderfully realized.

Lieske is a digital painter by profession, both in his illustration and his game related concept art (you can see his professional portfolio here). He has applied his skills with digital painting tools to the images for the story in way that is delightfully painterly; and no, I don’t think applying the description “painterly” to a digital medium is a misuse of the term, it refers to the application of color in patches that look and feel like physical brush strokes.

Combined with a cinematic feeling for drama, his painterly textures and judiciously applied details give the story an emotional resonance and sense of place and time.

Lieske created a page called The Wormworld Saga Exhibitions, in which he talks about the project and its origins. he also maintains a blog which likewise features background on the story and art, as well as a personal website with sections for his other projects, including galleries of digital painting and sketches, and a page about the artist. There is also a page for ordering prints that should go live sometime this month.

If Lieske continues his practice of creating an entire chapter before posting, the next installment of The Wormworld Saga may take a while to arrive; but the current chapter ends in a way that will allow us to wait, and the next chapter should be worth waiting for.

[Via MetaFilter]

Ian McQue is a concept artist, illustrator and art director for the gaming industry. He is currently working for Rockstar North, and gaming aficionados will recognize the several Grand Theft Auto titles to his credit, along with an number of other games.

McQue works in both traditional and digital media, the latter including Photoshop, Illustrator and 3d Studio Max.

When not working, McQue likes to add to his flotilla of steampunk airships. Wonderfully realized, improbably heavy, they appear battered and patched, as though the aerial equivalent of the junks and salvaged ships one might find in an off the map Pacific port, trading in God-knows-what, plying the currents in the grey skies of another place or time.

You can find a nice big introductory batch of his flying ships on Concept Ships, where his work was chosen for the Monthly header this month.

You’ll find more of his on his blog, along with some of his nicely gestural sketches. There is also a gallery on CGHub.

[Via io9]