Monstercat Commissions

Lately I've had the pleasure of working with Monstercat! They're an amazing group of people and I feel so honoured to work with them. Here's some of the work that's been released so far:

Best of 2013 Poster

7 Minutes Dead "Act III" Single Album Art

October Daily Painting Challenge 2013

October is one of my favourite months of the year, and this year I wanted to paint an electronic music related pic for every day of the month till Halloween. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to complete the challenge on time, but some fun images and ideas occurred along the way.

Left to right:
Split Heads - Knife Party
Ghosts n Stuff - Deadmau5
Feed Me - Feed Me
Taratula - Pendulum

The Alchemist - Savant
Equinox - Skrillex
Dance of the Skeletons - South Central
Black Magic - Kill the Noise

Monstercat - Monstercat
Retrograde - The Upbeats
Raise a Light Up - Modestep
Organ Donor - Zomboy

Slime - Eptic
Stahlivision - Blue Stahli
Danger - Stranger
October Death Bunny - Blackburner

Figure - Figure

EDM Arena Challenger Reveal 6

Starting batch 7! 

Ziv (Krewella)
     - Ziv is a Hebrew name meaning "light" or "glow", relating to Krewella and Gareth Emery's song "Lights and Thunder". Name is subject to change... it was the best one I found at the moment.
     - Ziv's design is heavily influenced by Krewella's Play Hard EP.

There needs to be more female characters to the EDM Arena roster! Also, batch 7 is probably going to take a long time to complete, so don't expect the finished batch any time soon.

Moar Plushies

I went on a plushie-making rampage one day. I have too many plushies. Help.

This little guy was made from R KP's rejected leg and G KP's rejected head. A great friend of mine put the two pieces together and thought of this amazing Journey idea. The plushie belongs to him now, but it's one of my favourite KP-related plushies I've made.

Wanted to make a SkriRex plushie and cut out a pattern for him on a whim. Turns out the pattern worked beautifully and now there'll be an army of baby, plushie t-rexes.
I originally wanted to make the default, black haired, dark purple skinned SkriRex but the hair that I used for R KP was too short to emulate Skrillex's hair. I had a bunch of red fur from a previous plushie project I did that involved red hair that was the right length for Skrillex. Then I had a bunch of pink fabric lying around... so pretty pink SkriRex! :D He now has custom kandi thanks to a tumblr friend who made some for him. :)

I made this guy a day or two before October - was getting into the Halloween zone. Finally made a pattern for KP heads and it worked! Also tried to find another design to use more of that red fur.

With all these plushies lying around, some sort of giveaway may happen. Stay tuned. ;)

6AM Sharpie/Marker Chibis

So far all of these chibis happened at 6 AM. I don't know why.

Knife Party

Zedd and Foxes

Deadmau5 and SOFI

Pikachu Used Thundershock 6

FINALLY, batch 6 is complete!

Mad Neon (Madeon)
     - Probably one of the most requested characters at the time.
     - Mad Neon's design is heavily influenced by fan input. Special thanks to a certain deviant for suggesting his look and other fans for adding the "Icarus" (one of Madeon's songs) ideas to his design.

ChaosOne (ShockOne)
     - After listening to ShockOne's Universes album (and falling totally in love with it) I really wanted to create a character for ShockOne. This guy took the longest and the most iterations to get to a finalized design.
     - The bands on ChaosOne's eyes resembles a plot of the Lorenz attractor, relating to the Chaos Theory (also name of one of ShockOne's songs). Through the many design variants ChaosOne went through, his final gained a solar flare-y look. He can shoot lasers from the hole in his chest (related to another song: "Lazerbeam").
     - ChaosOne is friends with Lord Pendulum (as also in real life).

C.P.U. (Daft Punk)
     - Didn't want to create a Daft Punk character without modding their design, but since they were also frequently requested I gave in and pretty much kept their original designs but chibified them. So they play like the Ice Climbers from Super Smash Bros.
     - "C.P.U." stands for "Chibi Punk Unit".

XXP (Modestep)
     - This character's look comes from Modestep's album "Evolution Theory".
     - One of XXP's abilities is throwing those "smiley" masks at opponents. If aimed properly, the masks attach themselves to the opponent's face, draining them of their health, power, or mobility for a short period of time.

N01-Z!A (Noisia)
     - Info can be found here.


I'm now taking a break from designing any new EDM Arena characters and focusing more on skins and environments for the game. I'm still open to suggestions, but don't expect batch 7 any time soon.

Pokemon-Inspired Fashion Design

Started a series of characters focusing on fashion design. The twist: creating modernized, casually wearable Pokemon gijinkas.

(Aggron, Absol, Steelix)

(Furret, Koffing, Vileplume)

(Mega Absol, Yanmega, Mega Lucario)

(Kakuna, Leavanny)

Sketchbook Updated: Pen Sketches

Sketchbook page has been updated! Been drawing quick pen sketches from various photo references for practice. Gonna aim for several of these poses or heads a day.

13 Years of Progress 2

I grew up loving Pokemon and Digimon, so naturally I would try to draw characters that were inspired by these franchises. My first Digimon toy was a Birdramon that could transform into Garudamon. I drew a man-bird character that may have been inspired by Garudamon, starting somewhere in the late 90s to early 2000s, then I redrew it two more times in different years:

This character was originally called "Tribeamon" (clearly a Digimon rip), but it was later renamed to "Crona Blaze Hawk". Also not sure why I refused to give him pants or some kind of cover in 2006...

For the 2013 revamp, I tried a different, faster approach in completing this concept piece. I kept the rough, sketchy gesture, decreased its opacity, and rendered the character under the gesture layer using a texture brush. This different approach was much looser, thus saving time in painting the feathery details. Overall, this character was finished in approx. 6 hours.

2013 Crona Blaze Hawk single image:

EDM Arena - Skin Pack 1

First skin package for five selected EDM Arena characters!

Process Log 21: Veil, Dragon of the Holy Element

Back in 2009, I drew a sketch of a boss "dragon" for a made-up RPG called "Ayanseila". Then I redrew the sketch 2 years later and then proceeded to render it in Photoshop...

It wasn't until 2013 that I FINALLY decided to finish this character. This is where I left off in 2012:

The biggest aspect about this painting that bothered me was Veil's legs. There's no way the gold armour on its forefeet could bend that way - and I don't know why I thought that looked good at the time - so I redrew the lower body and tweaked a few more parts of the painting to get this:

This was the first painting where I used Photoshop's Lens Correction filter.

A little bit about this character:
- Veil is one out of seven, elemental boss dragons and the toughest one to find in the game. It resides in a hidden chamber in the Capitol at the fallen city of the Holy element, guarding whatever's left inside the Capitol.
- The Holy element is pretty much equivalent to "Light". It boasts healing and defensive properties. Its weakness is the Tempest element (combo of Wind and Ice).
- Unlike most of its brethren, Veil is not an aggressive creature and only fights the player as a challenge/side quest battle.