Steampunque Project

 A little while back I was contacted by the creator of a great little iPhone app called StampArtFever. The concept is essentially digital stamp collecting, allowing users to buy, swap for, bid on, and hunt down rare stamps to complete sets created by a single artist. Many of the stamps are lovely, using artwork either commissioned or leased by the game's creator, which makes the game a real treat.

So I was pretty excited when he contacted me and tapped me to do a few pieces based in the steampunk world of The Robber Baron painting I did a while back. I already had a few characters floating around in my cranium, so it was with great pleasure that I took up my stylus and got cracking.

The Tinker.

Here's a preview of one of the characters, The Tinker.

Nailing down a design for this dude was tough. The other three characters arrived pretty quickly, but this guy took a while. I knew I wanted someone who wasn't particularly heroic -- really just a professorial guy who makes cool gadgets for the government, and has since gone on the lam.

I eventually got some solid line art down for the pose and face, with a few suggestions of the gun and shoulder piece. After that I did a lot of slow form-finding for the equipment by scribbling in and erasing out until things started to happen. From there I started building up washes of color and solidifying the forms.

I'll try to post a few more updates as things progress, but in the meantime, check out StampArtFever. It's free for the iPhone/iPod, or a whopping 99 cents for the hi-def iPad version.