New site + old Fallen Frontier work

Updated the ol' website! Thanks to Snowpocalypse 2012 and being trapped in the apartment for a week.... anyway, here's some old Fallen Frontier stuff I came across while putting together the new site. Not all super portfolio-worthy but I wanted to show it somewhere.

Concepts for some cinematic shots.

Paris, 2429 - background painting for a cinematic piece.

Some character designs from the game.

Logo designs for some of the major corporations that featured in the game's story.

Designs for other name ideas before we settled on Fallen Frontier.

Logo for our custom game engine.

Stills of an augmented-reality hacking interface featured in a cinematic.

Go Go Kiddo!

I recently had the opportunity to do some promotional work for our latest game, Go Go Kiddo. If you have or know any pre-school kids (age 3-5) it's a really cool app for them, with all sorts of fun kid activities. The game features a great art style and lots of 2D animation done by my super-talented co-workers Chris & Anton.
I cut together a trailer for the app, and also shot & edited a short interview with the creators.

Imagine FX #76

Here's a cover I did for ImagineFX #76, which should be available now. Sort of a frustrating piece as it developed but oh well, always a good learning experience! Flattered to be asked to do it, for sure.

Crimson: Steam Pirates

This is an iPad game I worked on recently! I helped establish the art direction and put together a lot of the in-game assets. It hits the app store September 1st and it's free, so if you have an iPad check it out!

Horizon's End

A workshop painting for ImagineFX #72.

This one was fun! Having to record and write about your work for these things is a really good learning experience I think... it forces you to think about what you're doing and makes your weak points pretty clear. So it was helpful to me at least, hopefully it will be helpful to someone who reads the article too. : P

Arcade

Late night sketch time... inspired by an early scene in Neuromancer.

CFSL Tsunami Project

tsunami.cfsl.net - inspiring.

Fallen Frontier Concepts

Here's a dump of some of the concepts I've done for our game. It's sweet to finally be able to put these up.

Announcing Fallen Frontier!

This is game I've been toiling away on for the last year - check out our announcement trailer and let me know what you think!

The game will be playable at PAX East this weekend - if you're there, stop by and say hi!

Meet the Titans

From Revenge of the Titans - Can't get enough of the modern/retro style they got going on. The game is pretty addicting too, check it out!

Brrrr cold

I' ve been wanting to paint the view from our balcony since we moved in... guess it figures I chose a super cold night in January to finally do it! 1.5 hrs.. really rough still, bunch of perspective issues but I couldn't stay out there any longer without my hands falling off.

Was really fun to paint from observation again without layers & fancy brushes, I gotta do this more often. Maybe when it's warmer...

Happy Holidays!

Our Moonshot holiday card for 2010. Hope everyone has a great 2011!

- Mike

Wintry

Wow, it's been a really long time since I've posted anything. I'm going to try to get back to it! Maybe a preemptive new year's resolution...

Here's a couple hours experimenting with brushes and shapes!

Updated portfolio

I finally got around to updating my portfolio site - the art isn't old anymore and I've added some film and design work. Hope you like it! : )

I'm currently available for small freelance concept, illustration or web / graphic design projects. For work inquiries, please email me at mike.mccain@gmail.com.

Pals

For www.drawgasmic.com book / show thing. I don't know how well it fits in with what they got going on, but hey they invited me. : )

Going off mostly this same idea lately... I like robots and my girlfriend likes penguins.

Something different...

This is a painting I did for my grandmother. It's based on an old black & white photo my granddad took. (Haha... the kiddo there is my mom.) I wanted it to look more painerly so I avoided the usual slew of photoshop tricks, and stuck to simple, "brushy" brushes.

I played around with the composition and mood of the piece, but pretty much just drew the poses from the photo. So I don't really get credit for coming up with the idea or the poses. Great learning experience though.

Odyssey

First painting of this series! I'm pretty happy with how the shapes turned out in this one. : )

Thumbzz

Some scene ideas - a boy and his robot travelling through a deserted world. I am hoping to illustrate a couple of these as a series, and try out a simpler, kinda storybook style. Of course we'll see what happens . : P

Sunken City

This piece was a pretty spectacular example of how fixing a painting can be a real bitch once you get started on the wrong foot. I didn't think about the idea or composition nearly enough (even after being ultra-reminded to do so), and played doctor for several hours as a result. Still not great, but I have no more interest or energy for this one.

Lesson learned? I dunno. For some reason every few weeks I become re-convinced that I don't need to think to paint, and then this happens.

Snow + crappp

Just messing around, didn't have anything in mind here, it shows! Finally got used to using the lasso tool and made some new brushes though.

Kaboom!

A speedy from this afternoon. I'm trying (REALLY HARD, I swear!) to get back to painting and experimenting every day. Recently I've been trying to improve and simplify my use of shapes - I never spend enough time thinking about strong shapes for the big-picture read of a piece. So here we are... Also been trying to just paint SIMPLER. At a certain point, I always tend to hide behind textures and details without putting enough time into getting composition and lighting right.

ImagineFX article

I got the opportunity to do another workshop article for the folks at ImagineFX a few weeks ago - it's in Issue #54, check it out! I think that means it'l be in stores here in the U.S. in a month or so. It also has a sweet Adam Hughes cover which makes me a little embarrassed to be in the same issue.

Here's the painting itself.

Use Google Reader!

Google reader is awesome. A lot of amazing artists these days have blogs (and most are way better than this one). Collecting those in one place is a great way to follow what others are doing and keep yourself inspired. I add at least a couple new blogs to my Reader list each week.

Seriously, as an artist you owe it to yourself. Here is just a small sampling of the folks I stalk follow with Reader. And if you have some good blogs to recommend, post in the comments!

http://travistysbeard.blogspot.com

http://erwinmadrid.blogspot.com/

http://paperwalker.blogspot.com

http://peterdeseve.blogspot.com

http://ashleybambaland.blogspot.com

http://gorillaartfare.com/

http://characterdesign.blogspot.com

http://calader.blogspot.com

http://chapter-56.blogspot.com

http://robin-chyo.com/blog2

http://conceptships.blogspot.com

http://www.markbehm.com/blogger

http://www.artofthetitle.com

http://sparthconstruct.blogspot.com

http://n8wragg.blogspot.com

(Most of the time you can just paste the link into Reader and it'll find the RSS feed. Many sites also have feeds available for news and updates even if they aren't a blog per se. As a general rule, any time I find an interesting source of ongoing content, I try to add it to Reader.)

Lunar Holiday

Happy holidays everyone : )

This is the cover I painted for our first Moonshot Games holiday card (and online greeting here). Hope you like it! I wanted to find time to do a personal holiday painting too, but I don't think it's gonna happen this year.

Here's to a great 2010!

Concept ships!

I got a cool feature on concept ships a few days ago! I love that site, exciting to see my stuff there. Even if I don't quite feel worthy.

Announcing Moonshot Games!

I recently started working for a new game studio here in Seattle, and we just officially announced the company.

Check out the website and press release here: www.moonshotgames.com

I've been working hard on the logo and identity, so it's cool to be able to finally show it!