concept central

Born in Madrid, Spain, in 1979, little Mr. Mieglo studied his ass off learning the fundamental of things and at the age of 17 he began interning at various animation studios in Madrid. He moved to jolly ol' London were now he lives and works as a freelance painter, art director, designer and animator for a bunch of companies we'll hear about because of non-disclosure agreements.



 If I could describe his work, I'd say it is... pure eye candy. I get a rush just looking at them sometimes.


According to an interview entitled "Modern Rebel: Alberto Mielgo & Pinkman.tv" at the Motionographer, he is almost completely self taught. So for all you art academy students, listen up... don't do what he did unless you are dedicated and supremely talented!!

It was an early education at animation and guidance from his peers did he evolve to the artist you see today.


He's created some pretty interesting shorts, including “Pill, Kill Your Stress, 女孩陰毛, and PINKMAN” under the banner of "Pinkman.tv" and the thinking behind that is that he feels 2D has pretty much gotten the short end of the stick in recent decades.


Like most of the people working in the 2D animation field, he feels that the cold, calculated world of 3D has collapsed the 2D animation market in such a big way that people view it as an antiquated medium. Unfortunately, with the success of a number of 3D-only animated and live action projects means this trend will only get worse, and 2D work will be relegated to the a very niche crowd... Damn!



But like any fine connoisseur, he believes that the world of 2D can be graphic, and holds no boundaries to the imagination. In fact, he has become somewhat of a spokesperson for the medium, constantly pushing studios to use it more. This has resulted in one of his pride and joys, the Beatles: Rockband intro, which he did color keys and backgrounds for the first half:


Every piece is traditionally animated, frame by frame. The process is simple: scan, pencil, animation. He describes the fairly painstaking process in his own words: "...  Once the animation is right, I do a very basic color action. For example, pink for body and dark pink for shadows. Then, I paint on top of each drawing. As the shadow layer has also been animated, I don’t loose shapes. As each frame is hand painted, the skin has that moving feeling, something that here, I was looking to see in the animation. So, every frame is a painting."


His tools are the usual Adobe Photoshop and After FX. In the end, he has no interest to enter 3D, and I really can't argue with his current output!

Aside from his animation work, he busies himself with conceptual design for commercials and Cartoon Network, as you can see in the images posted here!

One more thing about this amazing artist...

Yeah, apparently he did some comic work for Image Publishing's Popgun anthology. If you're into that sort of greatness, then order one!

Have a nice day!

Ever heard of Juan Giménez? No? Nobody? Fine.

I could only find bits and pieces of info about this 'modern master' on the net, which is a good thing as it will make this post shorter. Isn't that the trend now? Shorter blog posts? But I digress. Mr. Jimenez is described as "... one of the most renowned artists in the history of comics, excels in a variety of genres, from fantasy to science fiction, and adventure to erotica."


To my knowledge, he pioneered what I call the "Badass Wearing Helmet Staring Down At You". (Unfortunately, it's not the most clever thing I can come up with at the time of this writing)


Good ol' Giménez was born in 1943 in Argentina. He took up industrial design (always a plus for great sci-fi artists) and then he traveled to Barcelona's Academy of Fine Arts (that always does the trick, doesn't it?)


He settled in Europe at the end of the 1970s where his art has been published in Italian, French and Spanish magazines, graphic novels and books. His collaboration with the likes of Carlos Trillo and Ricardo Barreiro gave the guy a lot of cred.


If you're old enough to remember his published work on the French mag Metal Hurlant, more power to you.


He is probably most well-known for his work in "La Caste des Méta-Barons", published by Les Humanoïdes, where he collaborated with some Chilean writer named Alejandro Jodorowsky. This epic series covered the origins of the powerful clan of the Meta-barons and a lot of other events I don't seem to remember.


Metabarons was the series that introduced me to the all that awesome European comic stuff that nobody seems to really appreciate.


It was brought in the States by Humanoid Publishing in collaboration with some other major publishers in the early 2000's (or noughties or whatever you want to call that decade) but from what I heard it didn't pan out so well.

In any case, Juan Giménez is an awesome artist and I'll leave it at that.

He's  French, he likes the hip-hop culture, and his art kind of objectifies women. His day job at Steambot Studios has him working on the most interesting franchises out there. He's Joel Dos Reis Viegas.

He studied at prestigious Les Gobelins, an experience he describes as "...something unique for anyone who wants to be an talented artist". He said it's known as one of the best animation schools in the world.



Well, guess what happens when someone who has a background in animation enters the concept art world. Yep. His drawings are full of beautiful gestures and powerful emotions!!!!


He uses all kinds of apps, like Artrage for color blending, Painter for those large, painterly strokes, and Photoshop for everything else. He also has above average 3D skills (which greatly complement his work), thanks to the wonderfully intuitive Mudbox. What a guy.

Of course, he wouldn't be where he is if he didn't develop discipline. It's said he worked as in-between animator and storyboarder for an Animation studio in Paris called Alphanim. Very interesting!


According to an interview at CG Channel, one of the most important skills an artist can learn is to control one's creativity, as a flow, and to be productive even when inspiration goes up and down. That's discipline for ya'!

"I have a fascination for explosive and controversial characters and I love to paint these. It could be a punk, monster, warrior or serial killer; I‘ll try to paint with the most appealing rendering possible" The guy never runs out of inspiration. Deform reality, observe, and all that jazz.




"...Hip hop is my culture, I grew up listening to rap music and looking at graffiti. It still influences my art. Sci-fi is everywhere, all the concept artists I know already painted sci-fi in the past, so I thought mixing both universes could make something interesting." That quote, my dear readers, was directly lifted from CG Channel.



His advice to all you wannabes and amateurs. A little something he learned from all those conferences and setting up his own lil' studio with a couple of concept art heavyweights: "Teamwork is the key when you start a structure with your friends. Its important to be able to see their skills and to learn from them."



"The other advice is be respectful with your friends, don’t think because you are friends you can be less organized or use less clear communication. You should treat each other like colleagues to keep good working relations. This is the key to succeed in creating together."

Interested? You might be. So go rummage through the archive through his blog (doesn't get updated often), or better yet, his deviantART.

Oh, and just so you're aware of what other graduates of this "Les Gobelin" churns out, why don't you watch some of these animated shorts?

Voodoo. Exquisite animation. It is what it is!


The classic Pyrats, which I featured already once in this blog. I didn't know it was animated by grads from this school. Took seven months, and was shown on an animation festival in 2006. Still awesome.


Traintamarre. Great mood. You may have not noticed, but I love 2D animation.

Nobody knows how long this bubble will last. In the meantime, I'm loving every minute of it. Here's another artist doing the same!!

It's Matthew M. Laskowski, ladies and gentlemen! Lovely, slick style. Gotta hand it to him. He's at his best when he delivers clean, crisp illustration like the one I used for the title.

He's got that larger than life perspective thing going on, which I love. Colors are vibrant, but I wouldn't expect any less in this post-Mirror's Edge world.

The guy loves photography, and for some reason, that always translates well for illustrators like good ol' Matthew.

He's got this original character names named "Maia" from his original graphic novel "Sythesis". Sorta like Artgerm's infamous Pepper. I like quirky stuff like that.

Let's revisit an infamous artist known saucy women with barely-there outfits, twisted anatomy – The one, the classic Hyung Tae-Kim.

Hyung-Tae Kim (born February, 1978, Seoul) is a Korean manhwa artist. He has designed characters for video games such as the Magna Carta series, and the later installments of War of Genesis series. He also's worked on OXIDE series of artbooks.





As a manhwa artist, he specializes in a weird deformation technique where the artist disregards anatomical accuracy to achieve a specific feel to the character. This is an interesting point because this is what makes manhwa, well… manhwa. Honestly, despite my being new to the wide world of anime and manga in general, I have yet to see another artist with the style this guy has.


Hyung has also made some stuff for Udon Studios. Notably for the Street Fighter, "Robot" and the "Apple" artbooks. Pretty slick stuff.




According to a fansite, “Hyung-tae Kim designs his characters with perfect structures, including stylish and dazzling outfits.” The exemplary use of colors helps flesh out his characters well beyond most conventional anime-style artists. Hmm... I did see one of Mr. Kim's art pieces where there was a fat guy...



Kim's body of work has achieve such worldwide acclaim that he was even hired for various art commissions in Japan! Can you imagine that?? An artist so good even the Japanese would take notice!



He’s also done some work in a Ragnarok Online art book. For those unaware what I'm talking about, Ragnarok Online is a game that kick-started the Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game culture in my home country. I actually haven't seen Mr. Kim's art for this game or the book, but despite his familiar style not being in the game per se, the manhwa art-style is still prevalent, from character designs and to the items, etc. I forget to mention the 'muted' color palette that manhwa artists seem to love so much.


Okay, fine. Let it be known. I've never played any of the Magna Carta games, but that’s just because I've never owned a single console gaming system since ever. But that doesn’t matter, because I've seen some of the stuff from the game, and to tell you the truth, the 3D models and the game worlds themselves don't seem to do justice to Mr. Tae-Kim's beautiful work.



Yeah, maybe his art isn’t for everyone. Maybe some of you cynical artists want an artist prefer more... anatomically possible characters, or they just hate the "anime" style. (a term of derision among many artists) I don’t know, whenever I see this guy’s art, I get all inspired. There’s something to this guy’s style that is just surpasses most other anime artists I’ve seen in the past. Seriously!




Anyway, It's time for me to end this post, with a video that might actually be relevant this time! My dear, Void, I leave you with the promo video for Blade and Soul. See for yourself if Mr. Kim's designs were translated well to 3D. Go on! Watch if you have nothing else better to do!