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(Check out the digg and reddit comments for this image, because they're deeply insightful.) |
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BrikWars is a tongue-in-cheek wargame for construction-system toys, and it
does its damnedest to cover every possible genre of fantasy warfare.
For this poster, I tried to do the same, with mixed success - since
completion, there's been a great outcry about the omission of giant
robots. What kind of fool tries to have a war without giant robots? |
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| detail:
The Jaw-Jaw Horde |
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As you might expect, this painting is peppered
with in-jokes for the nerderati; I'll point out two in specific.
In the left corner are the zombie-like Dimmies, enemies of construction
quality and good taste, who breed in swarms and make intermittent
dull-witted attacks on brick civilization. In the right corner are
the filtheriffic Jaw-Jaws, eaters of sewage, maniacally determined
to defile everything that is good and true. The two are the chief
villains of the BrikWars universe, and both are less-than-subtle references
to the lowest depths to which LEGO had historically sunk (prior to the Galidor theme, after which any further satirization is moot).
I get more requests for
prints of this poster than for anything else I've ever done, but
sadly it's not to be - LEGO is of the opinion that the
fellow in the middle there bears more than a passing resemblance
to their Minifigure trademark. As a result, I can't use the image
for much except as an occasional surprise gift to the LEGO managers
I work with from time to time. The best I can do is offer a free desktop graphic (1280
x 1024, 234k) for download.
(Thank you to everyone
who's written in with helpful suggestions, but a trademark is a
whole different animal from a copyright or patent, and is basically
impossible to get around, legally or ethically.) |
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I went through a pretty good series of sketches for this one, it
took a couple tries to figure out how to pack in all that chaos.
(Special thanks to Alex Gross for help with that.)
All told, it took a pretty
solid month or two to get this one finished.
It's funny to look back
on these now, I can assure you that I got much better and faster
at drawing minifigures once I got hired to do it full-time. |
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When I started this one, I was in the habit of starting with a graphite
drawing, making a brownline transfer to vellum, wet-mounting it
to board, and moving forward in oils.
I got this painting about
half-finished that way before coming to my senses and scanning it
into Painter instead. Thank goodness! I don't think I've touched
a paintbrush since; I'll consider going back to physical media when
science develops an "Undo" button for canvases.
The half-finished oil
painting is still hanging on my studio wall; the graphite drawing
now hangs in the collection of Shaun
Sullivan somewhere in the depths of New Hampshire. |
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