Last time I posted, I showed some of the pixel art/icons I have created for various video games.  I hadn’t really shared that before.  This week I share some more artwork that I haven’t publicized much.  More about that later.

I met Jeremy Cranford at San Diego Comicon (btw, almost all of my big clients have come from a face to face meeting) and showed him some of the work I had been doing for Magic: the Gathering and was fortunate enough to get some commissions from him.  Jeremy is an excellent art director and was generous with good input and patient as I worked to find the WoW style.

Later on, Ben Thompson Art Directed for the WoW card game and was also great to work with.  Blizzard was a client that I had worked with before (I worked on Starcraft: Broodwars) but not as an illustrator and I was thrilled to do some work for them.  I ended up doing about 50 illustrations for them.

In 2013 the card game was cancelled.  The game had many avid fans who were upset with the cancellation.  I think a lot of people were scratching their heads at what seemed to come out of the blue.  What the world didn’t know though, was that Hearthstone was around the corner.  I don’t know if that played a role in the cancellation or not, but it did mean that a lot of the card game art was repurposed (in addition to many new images) into Hearthstone.

Some of my art as it appears in Hearthstone

I haven’t shared a lot of the art I have done for WoW because I don’t really feel that it is indicative of what I love to paint, or the look and feel of my work, but Blizzard was an amazing client and I loved working with them.  I no longer include my work from WoW in my portfolio, but Muddy Colors is a good place to bring some of this work out and give a little time in light of day. 🙂

I have to admit I haven’t ever played WoW, at least not more than a few minutes.  I had this underlying feeling that if I started playing it would prove to a black hole for my time and once I crossed that event horizon, I might never break free from its pull.  Because of that, some of the characters were totally new to me, like this Boomkin below.  I had a great time painting him.

Thanks for giving this post a read!

Howard Lyon

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