A sea creature like something from a HP Lovecraft nightmare rises out of the ocean. Men on the shore stand frozen in awe and terror. Beautifully rendered in the Impressionistic style of J.M.W. Turner, this eye-catching, illustrated concept art, designed for the video game “Dishonored 2,” is a past A’ Design Awards winner. The A’ […]
Category: Digital
Haunted by Animals: Cryptic Visions by Jenna Barton
Twilight fields and haunted pool sheds set the stage for illustrator/designer Jenna Barton’s cryptic visions. Combining watercolor with digital processing, Barton populates her mysterious world with unusual anthropomorphic beasts—a horned saint, a smoke bear, and a shadow dog that revisits the viewer like an unsettling dream. With minimalist yet symbol-filled compositions, Barton invites the viewer […]
Spectral Beasts in the Shadowy Fantasy Realms of Jade Mere
Jade Mere is a writer and illustrator with a passion for fantasy, science fiction, and the paranormal. Humans and animals are her favorite subjects, and this post features a selection of the latter. Just like the moonlit waters of Mere’s Pacific-Northwest home, the animals are filled with phosphorescence, light leaking from their eyes, mouths, and […]
Hypnotic Digital Sculptures by Maxim Shkret
Maxim Shkret is a Moscow-based artist creating digital sculptures of animals and people. The tools he uses include Autodesk 3ds Max, Vray, Corona Renderer, Pixologic Zbrush, and Wacom Intuos. His unique 3D modeling, reminiscent of paper art, captures the essence of flowing fur, ridged scales, and contoured bone. From foxes to dragons to fierce heroines, […]
10 Best Projects of the A’ Design Awards, So Far
While the alien-like image above looks like something straight out of a Hollywood sci-fi movie, it is in fact 2017’s A’ Design Awards winning “Robot Artwork,” by Huayu Li (category: Arts, Crafts and Ready-Made Design). The A’ Design Awards—with is grand jury panel made up of over 200 leading experts in the field of art—is […]
Darkly Elegant Digital Skull Art by Billelis
Billelis is a Brighton-based 3D illustrator and art director. Peruse his portfolio and you will quickly see his fondness for skulls, depicted in a hyperrealist style described as a “dark-yet-elegant romantic fusion.” In the series “Blossom,” flowers erupt from bones, signifying the eternal dance of life and death; elsewhere, as in “Prototype,” his fascination for […]
Call For Entries Open for the 2019 A’ Design Awards
There are so many fascinating projects submitted to last year’s A’ Design Awards, like the Kremlin-looking 3D-art by Jerico Santander that actually represents “a transcendental and alternative idea of extraterrestrial life” (see above). As well as a fashion collection based on designer Rong Zhang’s Chinese upbringing and the Victorian-era; stylized tattoos, erotic bracelets, futuristic chairs, and […]
Dark Dream Characters in the Paintings of Bill Mayer
Bill Mayer is a well-known artist currently based in Decatur, Georgia, whose curious creatures have been widely featured on magazines, ads, stamps, posters, and more. Since an early age, Mayer has been attracted to things that are strange; this leaning towards oddity is evident in the selection of gouache paintings shown here, which include anthropomorphic […]
Alone in a Dystopian Landscape: Concept Art by Simon Stalenhag
Working in the field of concept art, Simon Stalenhag has conceived a whole world. Using his homeland of Sweden as a backdrop (and more recently, California), Stalenhag merges reality with fantasy, turning coniferous forests and snow-shrouded fields into the sites of alien encounters, apocalypse scavenging, and bloody cyborgian crimes. He spent a lot of time […]
Atmospherically Charged Fantasy/Sci-Fi Concept Art by Axel Sauerwald
Axel Sauerwald is a freelance illustrator and concept artist based in Soest, Germany. His vast, atmospheric imagery is an impressive blend of fantasy and science fiction, with elements of magic and surrealism instilled seamlessly into historic-looking scenes. Two of his cited influences are Ilya Repin and Ivan Shishkin, Russian realist painters who captured landscapes and […]