8/15/2010 - MageMaze!
Over the last half year or so, I have been busy working on a new iPhone game called 'MageMaze' with my friend Kristof Minneart. The two of us are co-designing it, and I am doing most of the artwork and animation while Kristof is doing the coding. In 'MageMaze,' you play as Svenn the Svaliant who is exploring the dungeons of the evil mage Yngvarr the Ynvoker in order to retrieve stolen gold and defeat the monsters there. You not only get to move Svenn around but can slide and rearrange any row or column of the maze.
You can play the game right now on its web page Mage-Maze.com or visit our development blog. But if you don't want to play the game, you can just look at some pretty pictures here:







In other news, you know that "Valley of the Vampire Vixens" image that I posted earlier? It won "Best Concept Artwork" in the last CGSociety Challenge. And I now have a new job, as Art Director for social gaming company Kabam.
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3/17/2010 - Valley the Vampire Vixens
My completed entry for the CGSociety B-movie Challenge:

In a land forgotten by time, dinosaurs still roam! Herbivorous sauropods forage for plants, vicious theropods hunt them down... and at the top of the food chain, savage Amazonian vampires feast on them all! When a small plane carrying explorers and scientists crashes in the heretofore undiscovered valley, the men aboard must defend themselves against killer raptor lizards and terrifying pterosaurs. Eventually they will come face to face with the beautiful and barbarous Vampire Vixens!
Sporadically created over a 2 month period in Photoshop.
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3/2/2010 - More prehistoric vampiric amazon women
Work continues on my CGTalk B-Movie entry. Here's the rough:

And here are some work-in-progress shots:


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2/18/2010 - Fantasy Art Now volume 2
'Fantasy Art Now volume 2' came out late 2009 from Ilex Press in Britain, and was edited by Aly Fell and Duddlebug. The book is a showcase of many contemporary fantasy artists, and is a really beautiful collection: Hardbound, lots of beautifully-reproduced full-bleed pictures in all sorts of styles. The collection features a few pieces of my art, so I thought I'd share them here:
(That's the cover. I didn't draw it, it's so you know what to look for in stores.)


And the big double-page spread (!):
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2/18/2010 - sprites and other contest stuff
My finished sprite animation of Zorrusk for a Game Artisans contest:

and some more roughs from the CGTalk B-Movie Challenge:


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2/4/2010 - Mudbox sculpt
While I have a little downtime at work, I've started to learn a new tool: Mudbox. It's a 3D sculpting tool, similar to ZBrush, but with (I'm told) an easier learning curve. Here's my first finished sculpt using it:
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1/5/2010 - Sprite animation for iPhone game
Over on GameArtisans.org, we're working on a community-driven sprite-based iPhone game. I'm running a series of contests there to design and animate characters for the game - a sci-fi Paper Mario-style RPG - and the winners get to be in the game. Here are a few of the animations I've created myself:
This one shows the main character Ketra attacking an as-yet-unanimated bad guy. The background is just a mock-up (all of the action takes place on a space station) but the UI is close to final.

And here's a mini-boss who is animated:
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10/28/2009 - Walrus Wallpapers now available!
My new iPhone app is now available! It's called 'Walrus Wallpapers,' and is, appropriately enough, a collection of my art that you can use as backgrounds for your iPhone or iPod touch. I don't have to sell you on my art - if you're one of the few people who visits this blog, you know what I do. And now you can help support the artist by getting your own copies of the art for your iPhone!
It's here in the iTunes store.
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10/17/2009 - The Legend of Spirehold
The new social network RPG that I worked on had just gone live (in the past few weeks) at hi5.com. I Art Directed and helped design the title, and did some art for it too. Here's a new piece I just finished, a title page for the game:

In other news, my secret agent painting, "Agent Orange and the Underwater Base" was awarded an honorable mention in the latest CGTalk Challenge.
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9/11/2009 - Fantasy RPG art
I'm working with SocialMoray Games on a new fantasy IP. Here are some of the concepts that I've been doing for this new title.
A DragonLord:

A Troll:

an Ogre:

A Goblin:

and some environments... Raven Rock:

And Granite Ridge:

I'll let you know when the game's out... looks like next month!
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8/8/2009 - Agent Orange and the Gallery Show
The secret agent painting is done (or close enough to show, anyhow):

close-up of Mister Mind and his various henchmen (and woman), including Double Barrel, Mr. Chin, HammerTime, Minja, the Australian, and others.

In my last post, I was requested to show photos from my gallery opening. Here they are:




Scott fails to keep Zachary from raiding the bar:

Tito, Jana, and I (all Oberlin alums)

Talia and I in front of our anniversary alien painting
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7/25/2009 - Secret Agents
Another CGSociety challenge, the theme for which is 'Secret Agent.' I judged the last CGSocity Challenge but was so in love with the theme (Steampunk) that I made an entry anyhow, even though I wasn't eligible to win anything. (They gave me an honorable mention just for fun.) This time around, Anton said he knew I was going to paint something anyhow, might as well let me compete for real. So here's my work in progress for the secret agent painting:




 
More to come as I paint in the details...
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About Me
This is the sketch-blog of Mike Dashow (walrus.) Hopefully this will get me off my butt and force me to sketch more.
Friends
� Neneuche � duddlebug � Tiramisue � HellboyOne � genconfusion � PaintMonster
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