For Halloween Isis wanted to be an Ultramarine’s Space Marine. Because of his Rigid Spine Muscular Dystrophy I was a little concerned about how I was going to maneuver in a huge suit of power armor. His demands pressed on though, and I decided I must encourage his geekiness and build him a really cool suit of armor. It took me about 4 weeks to build this custom cardboard armor. I used some old knee-pads and elbow-pads that I got from Deseret Industries for $4.00. The rest of the armor is made completely out of cardboard. I found some really cheap red paint which was enough to coat the whole thing twice over so I snatched that up. I had some convincing to do to tell Isis that Blood Angle Space Marines are cooler than Ultramarines, but other than that he loved the armor.

I created lots of Icons while working at the Department of Education and Training in Western Australia. One of my all time favorites are my Career icons. These were used as cute little avatars for K-12 students on DET forums. These were created in 2007. I just couldn’t resist showing them here!

Like Father like son. Isis loves Warhammer 40,000. Every time he gets of the computer from playing Dawn of War or Dawn of War II, he spends the next few days drawing nothing but Space marines, death, and dying. Like any good father I have to encourage him, and to say I enjoy it is an understatement. Below is a picture of three Chaos Space Marines Isis drew a year ago. I did the coloring along with him using Berol Prisma Colored Pencils.

I sat down the other night to create a cool superhero costume design. I didn’t want to create a normal straight on pose, which was a mistake, because I spent way too much time creating the poses, that I got sidetracked and forgot that that I really wanted to do a super hero, not a Warhammer drawing!

The drawings ended up looking so much like an Eldar Harlequin that I just had to actually depart from my superhero theme, and create some warrior chics instead.

Enjoy these two quick sketches everyone!

If you know me, or visit www.nickbarfuss.com often, you’ll know I use this area as a place to experiment with site designs, layouts, and interactivity. I always like to change my website completely each year, and since 2010 is coming up very soon I decided to start now. My 2009 website was pretty weak, I know. I have started a business with my brother called BattleCritters, and I like to invest all my time into making sure it looks great, has fun content, and becomes the success that it is destined to be!

So rather than doing something extra creative this year, I just switched to this WordPress blog. It will allow me to easily post cool side projects and artwork that I am working on, as well as categorize all my old stuff. So keep coming back for more, because this site is going to get plastered with cool images, videos, and artwork by your favorite artist. Don’t forget to leave me lots of comments now that is is just so easy!

I thought I would include some screenshots from my old websites. It is pretty funny to see all the terrible work I did.

2009

This was the year I decided to begin work on BattleCritters so my website fell to the wayside. I created a very simple on page site that let me post random things I like to show people. no one ever commented to me about it, so I assume it was a flop.

2008

I really thought I nailed it with my 2007 portfolio. I was happy with the flexibility it offered. But I noticed I was becoming very, very corporate in my design. So I wanted to try something completely different, by showcasing only images, with no text. I found a really easy to use and configure flash component called TiltViewer. It meet all my needs so I decided to use it, so I could focus on doing more illustration, and less programming. After all I like to consider myself and artist more than a developer!

2007

The ipod carousel became a hit this year, so I wanted to see if I could create one in flash. This site was an elegant fusion of flash and asp that allowed me to showcase multimedia projects really easy. I had the ability to include movies, music, slideshows, and more.

2006

This is probably the biggest turning point in my web development career. I finally perfected my administration area, and got a design that was simple, elegant, and easy to update. I was able to show case lots of great artwork, family news, and more. I was basically designing a custom blogging platform, that suited my needs. I will always love this version of my website.

2005

For 2005 I went back to my 2003 iteration, and just worked on the administration area. I was busy with life this year and didn’t have time to make any real website changes.

2004

After conquering ASP programming, I wanted to bring flash to a whole new level. I wanted to experiment with pulling in xml data into flash. At the time this was pretty cutting edge stuff. This iteration of my portfolio had an hand written mp3 player too. The site didn’t last long because It was more of an experiment than anything, but it taught me a lot about real web design.

2003

I decided at this point in my life that if I wanted to make it in the world, I had to be more than just a web designer. I set myself a goal to become a web-developer, and honed my programming skills. I built my first ever personal content management system in classic ASP. The helped to to categorize my work into two distinct categories Corporate, and Anti-Corporate.

2002

in 2002 I wanted to have an all flash website. I wanted cool animation and an intro movie (they were all the rage!) to showcase my skills. I had a really cool, hand-crafted animated menu that, in retrospect was confusing.

2001

This portfolio website was my real first foray into personal website design. The site was simple, and showcased my University work, as I didn’t have much real stuff under my belt. I thought it would be fun to base the website around 4 superheroes that were just different photos-manipulations of myself. The were The Wraith, Quen Shu, Avatar, and The Serpent. Grungy and basic, this website allowed me to learn some basics of flash and html integration.

A long time ago My brother bought convinced me to read “Dragons of Autumn Twilight“. This sparked a long love afair with the entire Dragonlance world. I had already been playing Dungeons and Dragons with my friends, and we had even managed to have a great NPC character named Raistlin follow us on out many quests. At the time I was totally unaware that Raistlin was ripped straight from the pages of The Dragonlance Chronicles. Needless to say after I read about Raistlin and Caramon I was hooked.

20 years, and lots of books later, I like to consider myself a fountain of knowledge when it comes to all things Dragonlance. So of course the artist in me wanted to bring some of my own imagination to these wonderful charachters. These illustrations were done for my own personal use, and I originally posted them on DeviantArt to get some feedback. The amount of comments I got was overwhelming. There seemed to be a real love for them.

Eventually they made thier way onto the DragonlanceNexus, which is even a bigger fountain of Knowledge than me. They appear differently on the DLNexus then they do in this post. Over the years I have made some updates and modifications, especially to the background. I always appreciate peoples comments and thoughts on the subject, and try to incorporate thier ideas into the charachter portraits.

To say Dragonlance and the writings of Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman have influenced my life is an understatement. The Dragonlance world has inspired me more than any other thing on this planet.

Over the course of a 2 years I created 15 illustrations For the Dragonlance Nexus, and others for various people who requested some updates or modifications. My personal favourite will always be Tanis, I dont know if that is because I used a really handsome guy for the model:)

The current list of charachers (in alphabetical order) are as follows: Alhanna Starbreeze, Carmon Majere, Crysania Tarinius, Dalamar the Dark, Flint Fireforge, Goldmoon, Kitiara Uth Matar, Lauralanthalasa Kanan, Raistin Majere (Red and Black Robed), Riverwind, Silvara, Sturm Brightblade, Tanis Half-Elven, Tasselhoff Burrfoot, and Tika Waylan. Below are some close up detail shots.

Tanis Half Elven detail

Dalmar the Dark detail

Tika Waylan detail

Look for some of my other posts coming soon. There has been a lot of disscussion and feedback regarding the process I undertake to create one of these illustrations, so I plan to do a post explaining step-by-step the process I take when creating a Dragonlance Photo-manipulation.

Long overdue images of my cute children, Isis & Phoenix at Christmas time.

Isis is 6 in this picture

Phoenix is 1 1/2 years old.

A friend from work had a paintball birthday party last weekend. We went to paintball skirmish in the Northern Swan Valley of Perth Western Australia. I have been going there for years now after discovering a love for paintball in 2001. I like to think I am becoming pretty good at the game. Even if I am not all that good at least I get to look tough and intimidating in camouflage gear!

What made this game fun was the mixture of people who attended. We had girls as young as 13 playing tougher than the guys. We had dads playing alongside their kids, and out-of-control teenagers dropping like flies in the total chaos! It was a great day.

For anyone who hasn’t yet tried playing paintball, I would recommend you give it a try. It is really fun, and not as scary as everyone makes it out to be!

These images were done as a quick proof of concept for a dark, gladiator role playing game. Since these images never made it into the final book, I felt it was appropriate to post them here for one and all to see. I have always loved doing blood and guts pictures.

I really like the silhouette style of these images, and how simple images can convey a terrible and horrific mood.