Catpocalypse

 I did some early concept work for an iPhone game about a Rambo-like cat fighting to save kitties from cat zombies in the Catpocalypse (we've all had that dream, right?). The game is currently in development over at StudioCity Games.

I was asked to do some rough ideas for what the main character and the cat zombies could look like. The goal was to shoot for more cute and less disgusting. Needless to say, this was a really fun project to be involved in. You can check in on the games progress and learn more about the company producing it HERE!

Nationwide Children's Hospital App

These are some assets from a character design I did for Nationwide Children's Hospital. They put together an iPad app that guides young patients through the process of an appendectomy. They wanted to make it non-threatening and engaging for children, so they came up with the idea of using cartoon hosts to narrate the process. This was the host I created that made it into the final app. They wanted a male character that looked goofy enough to be fun, but serious enough to trust with conveying important information.

Another Yeti

This is a more refined take on the yeti concepts I had previously posted. It was done as a little morning warm up over a couple of days.
You may notice that a couple of months have gone by since the last post, but rest assured, when that happens, it means I'm busy on projects. So that means I should have some things to share with you soon that I'm very excited about.

Yetis

Here's a little morning warm-up. Had to do something to shake the cobwebs off this place.

Sand Sling

 Sand Sling was a mini-game developed for McGraw Hill's FLEX Literacy program. The idea here is to teach contractions through a fun, carnival-like attraction where the player selects an answer printed on a sandbag. The player then tosses their chosen sandbag at the robotic dinosaur, who will gladly gobble up correct answers, but he gets very angry and won't even open his mouth for incorrect choices.

Clearly not the right choice

He LOVES it!

This is an image for the end screen when your score gets tallied

Professor Jasper P. Lillyfoot

Years ago I had a conversation with a buddy of mine about the type of books we would write if we were authors. I decided that I would write Sherlock Holmes novels with monsters and robots that would be ridiculous and probably awful. I did a quick sketch of the main character of the novels while we were talking, and it sat in my sketchbook for a few years.

 Eventually I decided to dig it out and do a full blown cover illustration for a book in the imaginary series. So this is the cover to Professor Jasper P. Lillyfoot in The Inexplicable Return of Cthulhu Jr.

Rebranding and Relaunching

As you may have noticed, the blog is looking a little different these days. This is all part of a big refresh to my branding and website. All of this was made possible thanks to a lot of hard work and encouragement on the part of the lovely Rachel Dangerfield.

So bop on over to Davearmstrongart.com and let me know what you think of the new digs!

Rumors

The topic of this week's Weekly Design Challenge was "Rumors."

I've been living in apartments for the past 7 or so years of my life, and I'm pretty confident this is what every single complex is like. I know I'm guilty to eavesdropping on my older, Romanian neighbors when they used to argue for hours about whether or not the husband would wear a coat when it was cold outside.
I wonder if he ever wound up putting that coat on...

Dionysus

This week's Weekly Design Challenge topic was God/Gods/Religion, so I chose to do an image of Dionysus, the greek god of wine.
My research shows that he was typically shown as a thin, feminine man-child, and not a purple, obese jackass. Clearly, I made the right choice.

Gallery of Mo

This is a piece I did for Movember's Gallery of Mo. It's a very cool group who ask for people to donate money and a photo of themselves, and in return, an artist of their choosing volunteers to use the photo as reference and create a custom portrait featuring the addition of a handsome mustache. So the donator gets a nice piece of art, and their money goes toward fighting prostate cancer. It's a great group of people, working for a great cause and keeping a really fun, upbeat attitude about it.

I did this piece for their 2012 gallery. I just recently found it in my files and decided to touch it up. You can check out the organization and other portraits here: http://www.galleryofmo.co.uk/

Bizzaro

Our weekly design challenge this week was "Movies currently in theaters." I decided to go with Man of Steel but slowly started drawing Bizzaro instead. Bizzaro is a character I know next to nothing about other than he's a gray, zombie looking version of Superman who talks like an idiot and there was a Seinfeld episode based on the concept of Bizzaro World. So I hope comic fans will forgive me if there are glaring inaccuracies with the character.
Anyway, it was a fun excuse to play around with the polygonal lasso tool in photoshop.

I guess it's also fair to note that I don't think Bizzaro has anything to do with the Man of Steel film... so... sorry about that?

iPhone Monster Game

About a year ago, I did some concept work for a group of guys who were developing an iPhone game that had the players battling lil monsters against their friends. The project didn't wind up going very far, but here's some of the concept art I did based on two of their character descriptions. One was a cute mummy character name Rabba that would use his bandages as weapons, and the other was a flying fire turtle named Zarok.

Rabba

Zarok

Early game screen concept

This was really fun work, and I'm sorry that it didn't wind up going anywhere.