Alien All-Stars

For the past 3 years or so I've been helping develop Alien All-Stars with Derek Munson, author of the award-winning children's book Enemy Pie. Designed for 6-12 year old boys, the property mixes science fiction with sports and galactic weirdness with humor, along with an occasional dose of gross. The first offering of the property will be a series of trading cards released in 2009 with a support website. The initial site will be expanded into a virtual community as the AAS universe grows.

My character designs for Alien All-Stars are influenced by, among other things, Alex Toth's Space Ghost, Pixar's The Incredibles and Odd Rods. The first piece I completed for the project was a promotional "Souvenir Guide" for potential investors. The logo calligraphy was hand-drawn, then warped using Adobe Illustrator. All of the final cover artwork was rendered in Adobe Flash, based on original concept sketches created by myself and Jason Medisky, another contributor to the project.

Once I finished the guide I began producing artwork for the initial 48-card series. Most of my cards use the same flat "cartoon" style I used for the guide. There are two other contributing illustrators on the project, Chad Otis and Monte Michaelis.

With a few of the cards, I've experimented with a more painterly style using Corel Painter.

I helped create the design template for the cards, but Chad did most of the heavy lifting.

Here's what the flip side of the player cards look like.