Techland Contributors 2

And, finally, here is the Wil Wheaton piece for Time's Techland website.

Again, I think his beard turned out well using a bit of color and subtle shading and then messing a bit with the opacity of the whole thing. It integrates the facial hair into the piece without it being an overwhelming black ink line. I feel like I've talked about and thought about these beards forever. Maybe I've developed some sort of beard obsession. Hopefully it will subside once these pieces are out the door. But, I do like the technique and will probably use it in the future when it's called for.

Since Wil has been known for his blogging lately I decided to head over to his site and pull some of the colors off the page for the background of this piece. I thought it would be more apt than going for some sort of Star Trek type space background. But, my contact at Time thought that might be a little too close to promoting his blog and asked if I could take the pattern off of his header and use that in the background. You can check out his blog and the title piece HERE.

Pulling a small pattern off of a website that already has a gradient to it was a bit difficult. It really had me scratching my head trying to figure out how to pull it off. But, in the end, I got it and I think what I came up with has subtle touches of his blog in there without full-on aping the look of his blog page.

And yes, that is an OilCan Drive t-shirt I have Wil sporting. I figured it was easier and more copyright safe than trying to put any other character on his comic book-type t-shirt.

Unfortunately, once the piece was used on the Techland site it was cropped in such a way that my cartoon band got left on the cutting room floor. Ah well, that's what blogs are for. To show you what could have been and what you may have missed.

You can check out all the new Techland contributor illustrations as well as all the old ones I've done over at the Techland website HERE. Simply scroll down the page and they are on the right hand side. A click of each thumbnail gives you a larger image and information about each contributor.