Tales of Monkey Island

This is the cover I did for The Telltale Games Tales of Monkey Island pre-order slipcase. I stuck it in the pirate frame for your viewing pleasure. Telltale Games is selling a print of the image at their online store. I'm currently signing a stack for their inventory. I will follow up soon with some in-progress photos and notes.

Acrylic 16X22

--Starchie

How 'bout a Monkey?

Character design from an unmade something or other.

Acrylic 6X9

--Starchie

Shameless Promotion

Thought someone here might care about this Ebay listing. It's a crew jacket from the Sam & Max animated series. Not mine but was my wife's who I don't think ever wore it >snif<. Size Large.

UPDATE: The jacket is on its way to a good home in southern California. Thanks for playing!

Real post soon.

--Starchie

Tragedy

I tend toward using candy palettes so I was pleased that I was able to drain the color out of this one.

Acrylic 4X9

--Starchie

The Leviathan

I have a few more of these little production paintings.

Acrylic 4X9

--Starchie

The Curse...

Submitted for your approval - one random piratey concept painting depicting a moment in a speculative piratey piece of potential film entertainment - circa AD 2000. Stop me if I'm repeating any of these.
More to come.

Acrylic 4X9

--Starchie

Can't Show it Yet...

Something I've been working on. Should be able to reveal in a couple of weeks with a little journal post of the process.

--Starchie

Sam & Max and Stuckey's

I'm writing this perched on a box of Stuckey's Pecan Log Rolls. YES, Stuckey's is a real place and has paid tribute to Sam & Max in their corporate newsletter. In the first of a series of articles on Stuckey's contribution to pop culture they have called out Sam & Max for their multiple interactions with the iconic roadside America gas and gift shop. Whew! And I thought they were calling to sue the crap out of me!

--Starchie

Monkey Island 2 Now in "ILLUSION-O"

So I heard that some ambitious fan found a way to blow out the backgrounds in Monkey Island 2 LeChuck's Revenge. Here's his demo showing how he took my cheesy marker drawing from almost twenty years ago and make it into an immersive environment. I love how he fully realized the little embryonic contents of those jars in the foreground. It's all really pretty cool.



--Starchie

The Aftermath

ComicCon always makes me think I should be making a new comic book.
Let's see if I can keep that pilot lit for awhile.
Will post some new artwork soon.

--Starchie

Off to ComicCon...

I'm traveling to San Diego any minute and will be around to sign stuff at Telltale Games booths #5364/#5365 from 2:00 to 3:00 on Friday and Saturday and at Symbiote Studios booth #4533 from 4:00 to 5:00 Friday and Saturday.

Traveling light but will bring along some original artwork and out of print copies of The Effigy Mound Sketchbook. If you're in the neighborhood come and wade through acres of brash, unrepentant geekflesh to say hi. I'll scrawl you a Max or a Guybrush or some damn thing. See you there!

--Starchie

On the Subject of T-Shirts

Though I'm too late to create any new T-shirts in time for San Diego's Comic Con I'm tossing ideas around for the next round of Sam & Max shirts for the Fall.

My last shirt was a skull Max and crossbones in green and cream. I liked that it was not a literal rendition of the character and so it doesn't come off as an ad for something.

I liked my first Telltale shirt and and I'm not opposed to plugging the characters into these sort of nostalgic motifs once in a while,...

...but more like the skull shirt, I would like to try and get a bit less specific about the characters and try to think of a few cryptic images that are fun to look at even if you don't know Sam & Max. The rat idea at the top of the post is a new one. As I try some others I'll consider posting them here for your opinions, because I think I heard somewhere that people on the internet are more than happy to express their opinions.

--Starchie

Just a Few More...

On the "Tales of--" front, Telltale, a while back, put up a little "in progress' post for the Pre-Order cover art I've been working on. Ultimately I'll post a series of shots showing where it went from start to the finished cover. It should be done shortly. In the meantime, the first episode of Tales of Monkey Island has been released to great acclaim and rejoicing.
And today, here are a few more character concepts from Curse of Monkey Island. Larry Ahern was thinking hard about the Guybrush design and had been pushing his proportions. The one shown here was me enjoying the freedom to stretch Guybrush around like silly putty.
Pen on Paper 8 1/2 X 11 each

--Starchie

Monkey Bucks

Here's a promo coupon I got to paint, probably for some early 90's LucasArts Adventurer edition. It's actually amazing how much of this kind of stuff I was trusted to do with little or no content notes from above, which made it tons o' fun.
I'll see if I can track down my activity pages with the art lesson and the Guybrush paper dolls.
Watercolor 4 X 9 1/2

--Starchie

The Curse

I have a buy off on my rough for Telltale Games "Tales of Monkey Island" cover. Still too early to post any of it as I'm in early stages of the illustration. In the meantime, here's part of my tiny contribution to Curse of Monkey Island. I believe Larry Ahern and John Ackley pitched me their idea of a LeChuck with a flaming beard so I was thinking his skull could be silhouetted in the fire. I think my Elaine is a variation on a design Larry had done, but I do sort of like something about my slender version of the Voodoo Queen.
Pen on paper 8 1/2 X 11

--Starchie

Cartographer's Cabin

I have a rough sketch for the Tales of Monkey Island pre-order cover in the pipe waiting for final approval. I'll post it at some point soon.
In the meantime, here's a color test done for Monkey Island 2 LeChuck's Revenge probably painted in 1990. In this game we had the luxury of being able to draw backgrounds on paper and scan them giving us a greater range. This was my first background test of a cartographer's cabin painted in gouache. Peter Chan was a fiend with color markers and we ended up doing a lot of the backgrounds in marker as it was much quicker than painting.
Gouache 5 X 9

--Starchie

The Dawn of Monkey Island

So I've been invited by Telltale Games to create an illustration for their Special Pre-Order edition of Tales of Monkey Island, a five episode series of adventure games coming this summer from Telltale. It's fun to get a chance to reconnect with Monkey Island since it was one of my first jobs at LucasArts, and I was fortunate to contribute artwork to various Monkey Island projects several times throughout the years.

I'm sketching the concept right now and I will plan to document the progress in stages. I'll have to wait until we are closer to the official unveiling of the cover to let you know what I'm up to but in the meantime I'll post some ancient concept art from the original games. Here's the sketch for my first Monkey Island cover done in 1990.
Pencil on Tracing Paper 8.5 X 11

--Starchie

Vintage Suda

Here's an old one. An early Ernie and Suda portrait. I made this image to fit an old frame I was given which once housed a gorgeous Jeff Jones painting. At one point I had real cob webs and dead spiders draped across the frame to add a little atmosphere. Over time those trappings sort of fell away but I still like the idea of customizing a frame to fit a painting. On that front I've still got a few ideas floating around in my skull.
Acrylic 8 X 10

--Starchie

Blue Bear

Here's a little gift for a friend's new born son painted one evening while watching a particularly terrifying episode of "Breaking Bad". Fortunately the image was immune to the suspense and horror I endured.
Acrylic 3 X 5

--Starchie

A Bit of Process

Here's a cover I did a couple of years ago. The magazine provided the blank cover format so I was able to digitally sketch into it on a Cintiq tablet. For the final illustration I pulled back in the composition so the characters were not overlapping the logo, something the magazine didn't tend to do though they were agreeable about letting Sam & Max cross into the white logo area. Also, I thought showing some of the white floor in the final helped balance that white logo field at the top.

The painting took on a style of it's own as I worked on it, an extra choppy, scumbly effect which I observed happening as I was doing it and didn't try to fight. I sort of liked it at the time though I think I prefer the tighter composition in the sketch.

Acrylic 11 X 14

-Starchie