You and I and Months of Snow

Witness Sola and Lune, the celestial pair from By Moon Alone, my birthday present for Honoel. Usually Sola is the strong and protective one, but even the sun child needs to rest sometime. All right, I'll admit it: I also have a weakness for role reversals.

Somewhere Only HAI Knows

My partner in crime, Honoel A. Ibardolaza -- creator of By Moon Alone and illustrator of the Laddertop manga series -- has returned from hiding and opened up a blog where you will find artwork & writing excerpts, as well as all sorts of humorous ramblings.

What are you still doing here? Go visit his new blog, Of Drawn Things Great & Small and maybe drop him a note while you're there.

Fox Nouveau

Clay is a big fan of the Art Nouveau style and since today is his birthday it seemed fitting to present him with a Jugendstil makeover of Nazo, one of his characters (first introduced in this post).

And because I'm sure he's not the only person on this planet with a penchant for elegant fox spirits, you guys get a peek, too!

As an aside, I set up a Google+ profile for those of you who would prefer to get updates delivered to their stream (if you just want to add me so my buddy list won't look so pitiful, that's fine too). My Twitter and Facebook accounts could use some lovin' as well.

Clay's Nowhere Land

My buddy Clay Gardner, creator of the OVA Role-Playing Game and co-author of Fantasy Realms, started his own blog earlier this year. He's covering all the topics close to his heart, such as tabletop gaming & RPGs, anime, video games, typography...oh, and turtles.

If you're interested in turtle wisdom (or any of the other things listed above), definitely give Clay's Shell Games a look!

OVA: Creating a Character

What's this? An update?! Don't freak out, there might be more of these in the future -- this blog's been desolate for too long now.

You may remember that OVA Role-Playing Game I'm doing the artwork for? Progress has been slow, but we're getting there. The final book will have well over 60 full-color illustrations and I still have some work left to do before it can go to press.

Below you can see a sneak preview of the character creation chapter, featuring new and exclusive artwork.

The OVA Role-Playing Game is scheduled to be released as a PDF download in 2011 and a print version will follow later. I will definitely post more art excerpts when we are nearing completion!

Kitty Litter

Tao is Taokaka! I love the character designs of the Kaka Clan, especially the kittens. Only the Japanese could make a black ball with two dots for eyes and lots of teeth look so cute.

Cat Got Your Tongue?

Carl Clover and Kokonoe are easily my two favorite characters from the BlazBlue franchise. I figured even a mad catgirl scientist with a candy obsession can't deny such a polite boy a taste of her lollipop.

I'm so excited about the US release of BlazBlue: Continuum Shift!

Ambivalent World

It's been a while since I last drew this little guy. Heck, it's been a while since I last drew something just for fun!

In other news, I replaced the default commenting system on my blog with a more customizable and powerful set of tools by Disqus. If you don't have a Disqus account, you can post as a guest (with your name and e-mail address) or log in using Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, or OpenID. Please let me know if there's any issues.

Die letzten Helden

One of the projects that has kept me busy the past year is the German radio play series Die letzten Helden. Radio plays (German: Hörspiel), for those of you who don't know, are a more sophisticated version of audiobooks, using a cast of voice actors supplemented by music and sound effects to tell the story. This particular project is a rather ambitious one, with over 40 hours of audio material and 300+ voice actors.

I was hired to do the cover illustrations and concept art. You can see some of my work below.







The first six episodes (out of 24) will be released in 2010 and can be ordered on Amazon.de or directly from the official homepage, where you can also listen to some audio snippets. If you enjoy epic fantasy stories and speak German, be sure to give Die letzten Helden a try -- the production values are phenomenal!

Studio Cramoisy

Studio Cramoisy was formed by Niko Geyer and Honoel A. Ibardolaza in 2007 in response to a gnawing need to bridge the narrowing gap of their unique working environment -- Niko is based in Germany and Honoel in the Philippines. Before the online studio, both artists had worked independently on a variety of projects, from collectible card games to full-length graphic novels.

They joined forces with American Clay Gardner to round out their offerings with a bit of design, typographic flair, and really tiny icons.

In 2010, deciding that three continents wasn't enough, the studio invited Madeleine Rosca, the award-winning artist from Down Under and author of Hollow Fields.

Studio Cramoisy provides many theoretically useful services: cover illustrations, comic books & manga, children’s book style artwork, concept art production and all matters of graphic design. We would love to work with you!