Designing creatures is a challenging and fascinating process. Whether a creature is for a film, game or book cover, it needs to convey a strong narrative and trigger specific emotions. In this lesson, I will cover the thinking process and the first steps for creating interesting and unique shapes and proposing multiple ideas with a specific visual language to explore all the narrative possibilities.

Bringing life and details to a creature is the second necessary step to further and fully bring the emotional elements to the design. In this lesson, I will discuss and share the process to approach and use the relevant and efficient visual language to successfully bring the creature to life.

Creating ships, mechs and weapons is an interesting and challenging process. Similarly to creature design, a successful vehicle needs to have a defined visual language and convey a certain narrative. Vehicles are also technical objects and often require having functionality. I think of it as mechanical anatomy. In this lesson, I will discuss proposing a variety of ideas as well as my sketch approach to design and shapes in 2D as well as 3D, and the relevance of using one or the other or both.

Proposing multiple ideas and exploring shape is the first process necessary to create an interesting vehicle, but to be successful the design also needs to convey a certain narrative. The choices of visual references, the details and materials used to complete the design are key elements to that process. In this lesson, I will discuss and share the process to approach that narrative aspect and use the relevant references and visual language to successfully bring a ship or a mech to life.

A successful and great artwork, whether it is a concept for films, games, theme park or a book cover, needs to convey several essential elements including clarity and originality. It needs to have a carefully planned composition, it needs to offer solutions and also convey excitement, narrative and emotions with mood and light. In short, the viewer should look at it and say, “Whoa!” These environment lectures will cover the different visual and thinking aspects and the essential elements required to create a successful and compelling image for book cover, film, game or theme park.

Sketches are the foundation of successful and compelling concept paintings and illustrations. This lecture will cover the thinking process and how to approach the composition of a scene, how to create a clear and engaging idea, and at the same time propose solutions to specific requirements. I will discuss the visual and narrative elements necessary to create a successful sketch foundation. This lecture will also cover the practical and relevant 2D or 3D techniques used for book covers, films and games and theme parks, and will include an exploration on shapes.

In this lesson, I will cover the narrative process and how to bring emotions to the artwork using composition, color, mood and light as well as the process of creating interesting shapes and how to apply and refine a concept with balanced details. I will also discuss the practical and relevant techniques used for different projects in 2D and 3D.

Creating an artistic vision from ideas to execution is a challenging but exciting process. It is a creative and very personal process that asks you not only to be a concept artist, but also an art director/production designer and a storyteller. In this lesson, I will take you step-by-step through the narrative and visual aesthetic process I used for an inspiring game project and I will show you the creative and narrative choices I made to establish a consistent and rewarding artistic vision.

Photoshop has been part of my artistic toolset since 1996 when version 4 came out. It did change my career and allowed me to explore new visual territories. As I was getting very comfortable with the software I also realized that it allowed me to think differently and produce new creative ways to do concepts and paint. In this lesson, I will share how to look at images in a different way and manipulate them with surprising and unexpected results to create interesting creatures and alien concepts. This process will allow you to think differently on how to generate ideas and look at image manipulation in a fresh, interesting and new way.

When I started doing book covers in 2002, the market was primarily dominated by traditional painters and was more focused on characters. I was more interested in exploring a digital painting process where the environment is the main narrative focus. In this lesson, I will share several processes and techniques I used to create two different book cover paintings. One has a more painterly and traditional approach and the other a quicker and more suggestive approach, but both use a similar technique that I found very effective over the years to create paintings in film, games and theme parks.

Doing concepts for film sometimes requires you to quickly create concepts. It’s often more about conveying an idea than it is about creating clean and polished paintings the way I would do a book cover. In this tutorial, I will share the step by step narrative and visual process I use for many of my paintings and will show you how to quickly advance through the painting and layering process efficiently, focusing on the narrative goal and the essential visual elements rather than spending too much time on details. I will also show you how to reshape your design and refocus your thinking when necessary during the process to keep you on target with the narrative.