This is the logo I designed for Adventure Gamers last year.

Gnarly Narwhal Bar on the Island of San Pendejo in the town of Bodacious Bay. This image is from my adventure game you can find on Steam called Duke Grabowski: Mighty Swashbuckler. 

This is my version of the demon Demogorgon from the 1st Edition Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manual. Its a two headed mandrill with tentacle arms and chicken legs. These two are having an argument and are not speaking to each other.

This is background art test for a side-scroller video game me and few guys I know were thinking about doing, but we figured out our schedules weren't going to match up so we called the project off. It was called Miskatonic Mary, about a super geniusn little girl who goes to Miskatonic University, the infamous university mentioned in a lot of H.P. Lovecraft books. She gets picked on and use the Necronomicon she read at the University Library to summon monster to beat up her bullies, but the gateway to the netherworld open up and won't close so evil monsters and evil corruption leaks out, so she fight the monsters using spells to save her city.

Howdy,
I am doing a Kickstarter campaign for my prequel to A Vampyre Story called A Vampyre Story: Year One, in case you didn't know. It has a little more than a week left. Here is the link.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/876324751/a-vampyre-story-year-one

And I was interviewed about it for the LA Times.

http://herocomplex.latimes.com/games/lucusarts-vet-turns-to-kickstarter-to-revive-a-vampyre-story/

DEMETER II Salvage Compnay

         FINALLY! When I was a kid about 12, living in Bartlett, Illinois,  I had a sliding door for my closet that had a bunch of shelves that slanted back because it was over the stairs going down to the basement. I had a ton of spaceship toys- Space 1999 Eagle, BattleStar Galactica Viper, X-Wings, the Big Track, and the ever so cool Milton Bradly Star Bird. 
        So I emptied out my closet and used all the shelves as landing platforms and pretend it was giant 700 ft tall cave that had a large titanium blast door that could seal off the base in case of attack.I even simulated an attack on this base with 4th of July fireworks- the smell tipped my parents of to the attack as soon as they got home. So this is an image of what I had in my head back when I was twelve.
        I have been working on this picture on and off for ten years. I added the NEC logo as part of a gift for my father's Christmas present since he works there. 
        So the story behind it is that corporations, mostly mineral and oil firms, bought the jungle world of Demeter II, named after the Greek goddess of the harvest and fertility. There were an inordinate number of pirate raiders in the system which forced the companies to set up shop inside heavily defended military bases, like this one:Fort Sabino (named after the Logistics CEO).
        Theses companies pillaged Demeter II after about three decades and left. Soon a salvage company leased the fort from NEC and used it as their base of operations. The rest of the planet is thick, steamy jungle and stormy seas, and very hot due to the fact the planet is close to it's twin blue and red suns. 
         This image was inspired by Ron Cobb, one of the art directors on the movie A L I E N.

This is one of the outfits you can buy in the iOS game Bounty Bots. The outfit is much like the one Clint Eastwood wore in The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. The robot is base don Darth Vader and the Cylons.

This is color design for a level in a game that takes place in 1880's Old Mexico on the Day of the Dead.

Smuggle Truck and SNuggle Truck now available for Download

I did the art for a game called Smuggle truck, a casual driving game for PC, MAC, iPhone and iPad. We had to change some of the art and the name of the game for the iPhone and iPad. You can buy the PC and MAC uncensored version here:

http://smuggletruck.com/

And go to the Apple App Store to buy Snuggle Truck, the stuffed animal version.

Its a fun little game and not expensive at all. Hope you like it!

-Bill

POTC Strange Tides and Ghost Pirate of Vooju Island

A fan of Ghost pirates said the new character form the Pirates of the Caribbean On Strange Tides or is that Stranger Tides?...anyway... looked a lot like Jane Starling. I think she does. though not legal exactly like her, not enough to break any laws. So here are the similarities:-  they are both: Spanish, long dark hair, big wide hat,  feather in hat, long  thigh high boots, con artist/ spy, maroon and brown clothes, vest thing, and puffy shirt, master of disguises, tricks/ seduces people to get what she wants, orphans, buckle in hat, both pirates That seems like a lot of similarities to be coincidental to me. And these guys took from a pirate adventure game I worked on before (Curse of Monkey Island), what would stop them from doing it again? They took/ bought the On Strange Tides story from an idea given to them from Ron Gilbert, who said he got the ideas for Secret of Monkey Island from the Stephen Powers book On Strange Tides. So they obviously read Ron Gilbert's gamer blog. They worked on games for Spielberg, and the Monkey Island move for Speilberg, the one ILM was doing. So why wouldn't they look at a pirate game by one of the MI artist?
And I thought I'd add mermaids and zombies to my game because we didn't really have them in Monkey Island when I was at Lucas, except Zombie Le Chuck. So I wanted to add idea into my game that had not been in a Monkey Island game before. So lo! and Behold! There they are in the movie- mermaids and zombies! So again none of these idea are copyrightable, so no laws were broken at all, and I am complemented they liked my ideas well enough to use them in their movie. I just wish they through a little credit my way. Might be asking too much? Let me not be a hypocrite and say I was inspired by the Disney Ride and very Much Monkey Island, and on Strange Tides book. Jane Starling is a feminine inspired version of Jack Sparrow. Jane was inspired by Catherien Zeta Jones in Zorro, and Brienne in Song of Ice and fire, and the Captain in Treasure Planet (same writers on that did POTC OST) And we made fun of Disney's Little Mermaid too. I always list my inspirations. I wish the makers of this latets POTC movie would list theirs  as well.

Merry Christmas from AME and the Tillers

This time Apple rips me and the Dig team off!

Wow! Looks like we on The Dig team accurately predicted the future and designed the iPhone 4 before it came out. I think the similarities are eerie. But we didn't predict color, but we added a red light to our video phone to let you know it was recording. iPhone 4 doesn't have that! Lame! (I still want one!) But our works with alien phone cells so HA! Take that Steve Jobs!

Modern Creature From the Black Lagoon color rough

Camp Ground color study

Had an itch to do some weird colors and a simple style. This is my idea of  a campground in some sort of UPA animated TV shows from the late 1950's.

Proof of Alien Life on Mars!

Curse of Monkey Island art inspire more games and movies....maybe. Probably. Yes! Part 2

I saw a new adventure game on Adventuregamers.com that seems to have been inspired by Curse of Monkey Island art. What do you think?

Curse of Monkey Island art inspire more games and movies....maybe. Probably. Yes!

These look a bit similar to me. What do you think?

The top one was made for the game The Curse of Monkey Island in 1997 and is a ship that has been thrown up on to tree in the middle of a swamp by a tidal wave, and is now being used by a black woman and voodoo priestess.

The second one was made for the movie Princess and The Frog in 2009 and is a ship that has been thrown up on to tree in the middle of a swamp by a tidal wave, and is now being used by a black woman and voodoo priestess.

World of Warcraft test art

Witch Queen Doodle

I was in a conference call, and I got a little board and drew this witch queen on her broom. I think I'll make this into a painting later today- a quick one- and fix the hands. i have a hard time with hands without any reference.

One of these days I swear I am going to do the web page for the Mysteries For Hire company. This is a sketch I did trying to think how I'd do it.

More doodles on my tablet PC. Can't wait to get a iPad and doodle on that!

Image from my game Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island. If I re did the Curse of Monkey Island SE game it would look as good as this.

My scary vampire clown. He's very entertaining.

Windy day vampire seductress enjoying the cool breeze.

Some doodle from my sketch book/ lap top/ tablet PC. Enjoy!

My Christmas Card

I alway loved the Charles Dickens book A Christmas Carol, and with the Disney/ Image Movers Digital moving coming out, I thought it would be fun to theme this years Tiller Family Christmas card on the book. Lily, my youngest is the ghost of Christmas past, Logan, the middle one, is Christmas Present, and Zoe our oldest is the ghost of Christmas yet to be. I wanted to paint this but I didn't have time, so I just colored the sketch I did in Photoshop. I always have more ambitious art projects in mind than time to do them in. Maybe I need to theme my cards with a thought towrad how much time I realistically have.

CMI and POTC Movie

Is it me or do these images look similar?

New MI1 special edition

Back in 1998 I wanted to re do the Secret of Monkey Island with the CMI art style. I made this image to get the idea off the ground, but Lucas management wasn't interested at the time. I'm glad the new Lucas Arts president has seen the light. Anyway I just thought I'd share this with you all.

Cool Art Web site

I wanted to share with you a good art web site that i go to all the time called www.arthistory.cc. Not sure what the CC stands for (community College maybe), but it has a wide sample of classic art and art from modern science fiction and fantasy artists. Go check it out!

AG Logo

Notice anything different about this logo?


Yep. The guns. I was told that might imply that adventure games have a lot of shooting. So I was asked to changed it. So I did, to an idol and a Torch. I agree. Good call AG!

More Character Doodles

When I was young I never drew cartoon characters or anything whimsical. but now that is all I seem to like doing is drawing weird and unusual faces. Here are a few.

Did I post this yet?

I can't remember. Anyway this was justa color comp of a mountain I was doing, seeing how this color scheme might work.

Old Cowboy

Some nights I just start sketching in Alias Sketchbook and come up with unplanned for doodles or characters. This is one of them, a grizzled old cow boy who has shrunk due to old age and hasn't bothered to get new shirts.

More Two Towers

When i was working at Stormfront on EA's The Two Towers game, we came up with a good deisgn system for the levels. First the level designer would make a blue print of the level on graph paper. He would indicate height of the terain, positions of buildings, and locations of characters. A lelv modeler would scan the drawing in and lay it over a flat 3d planne, then raise the emsh to the correct height and place in basic shapes to stand in for house and trees. The we owuld throw in soem basic lights. After that we would take 12 or so screen shots of various locatiosn in the level and then draw over them and if we had time color them as well. Then the set and props modelers would take these drawing and build the whole level as closely to the drawings as possible. It worked out pretty good. It was my job to makse sure the final level looked as close to the drawings and aintigns that EA approved as possible. It was fun but that project was very stressful.

Tomb Robbers

This was an image I did for Indian Jones and the Infernal Machine , a 3d Inday game that ripped off Tomb Raider or was an homage. Take your pick. I like this image ebcause it shows how little respect tomb raiders/ grave robbers have for history and other cultures.

Mona in Paris

This is a color design (not a final costume design or drawing) of Mona when she is in Paris in A Vampyre Story 3. I want the game to take place in the day time, so Mona has adapted by wearing a wide brim hat, a veil over that, and a scarf that covers her face, and long gloves to cover her arms. As long as she has feed quite a bit, she can endure the daylight, just like Dracula in the book and the Francis Ford Coppala movie. I didn’t want her to always be in black and purple. That would get tiresome after a while. So she will be wearing some sort of Victorian dress like this one in AVS3.

Lord of the Rings Moria level

After my six month stint at Arena. Net I boogied on down to Stormfront to design new areas not seen in the Lord of the Rings movie for EA's Lord of the Rings Games. thsi was one area. Those huge columns we impressive and ominus and I wondered how they made them so I picture soemthing like this image, with carvers working from the top down on scafolding and using these dwarf powered lifts to get dwarves and supplies up and down the columns. Eeriely I did this image just a month before 9/11 and at the time I thought it kind of looked like the World Trade center. So I can't look at this image with out think of those towers now. thsi level was cut from the game by Neil Young who didn't want areas that were not in the movie. A lot of work for nothing.

Deranged Proffesor

This guy I figured was deranged proffesor from Cambridge. Could be a villan or just an odd side character.

Now that I look at it, definitely villan.

Father's Day Shoot Out

This was a Father's Day card for my step father Jerry, who likes to shoot these guys,  stuff 'em and then mount their heads on a wall to freak out my kids.  But other than that he is a great step father!

Robot Assassin Attack Tiger Team Go!

This here is a robot assassin that will be in Autumn Moons first episodic adventure game serial, IF we ever get any investors for it (big 'if'). It is a retro sci fi killer inspired by the movie Forbidden Planet. If you are an invetsor email me please!

2004 Christmas Card

This was our Christmas card from '04. I spent housr putting this together and was it ever a big pain in the @$$! I love those Rankin Bass holiday specials. They a really are beautiful. Myzaki actaully used to work on some of these shows too, oddly enough.

The Lucky Carms of Money Island

http://www.luckycharms.millsberry.com/

Lucky Charm's web site seems to be a bit inspired by a cool pirate game made by Lucas Arts.  Look at the above images and then go to the Lucky Charms page. See if you notice any influnce there. Now, if only I could figure out how to get paid for all this influencing I'm doing...hmmmmm.

Did I influnce World of Warcraft a little? Maybe.

I made a portfoli web page back in 2001 (the bottom image) and i noticed this cosmic map in Burning Crusade in 2007. Notice anything simiar? A Blizzard producer once told me the art in Curse of Monkey Island blew away the art in the Warcraft Adventure game and so they decided to cancel it. And when I interviewed the Art Director for WOW and aske dis puerto Pollo from CMI was the inpsiartion for Booty Bay, he said it was defineitly one of them. So my thinking is maybe they looked at my web page and were inspired by that too? What do you think?