I'm the developer of Armor Valley, who Max did the front cover and some UI for the game. Great guy with great attitude, and great work.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Armor-Valley...on/177607733163

The video at the end has the bigger title image

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRczPr2iPgA

Looking forward to work more with you in near future.

hmmmm the 3D game looks nice. Never heard of Armor valley though.......further research shows it was produced by a protege production in Singapore. Nice work. One critic is the intro page at the end with the annoying gun and metal banging sound. A bit long, high pitched and sound like you took it from an old game sound effect but could be just the youtube bad sound quality.

And ya, that intro page do look like hand painted from scratch so I can at least give it a benefit of the doubt.

This post has been edited by LeechFever: Jan 13 2010, 10:04 PM

The third picture from his latest art piece, looks very nice. I can feel the art. Very good indeed. Keep it up!

Regards, Joey

Yup, Protege production is a singapore company, though nothing with engaging a Malaysian artist. I'm Malaysian too.

The video was not the official one. This is, but without the main page.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJqkNnRuw-4

There is no shame in tracing/reference. Basically u can tell by the progress shown in the portfolio and how the understanding as an artist develops. Most portfolio will show this. From there u will know if its consistently original or too heavy on the reference side.

Mind u it takes skills evern with heavy reference. Concept artist do that alot but always come up with something totally different than the reference material. Thats what the industry wants. A creative artist and not just mere copier.

Great work!

@Leech....hows everything...man...gotta give cymon a buzz.

Key thing here is that he didn't trace tho But I think Max's art speaks for itself whether they want to appreciate it or not

Yo. Long time no see your post. Doing ok here.

Anyway, the problem is not really the tracing part, but that the artist claim he did not trace it. A bit unbelievable but if it's true then we have ourselves quite an amazing one here. To tell the truth, I'm still skeptical on the whole matter...but that's just ma individual opinion. If other believe in it, then let it be just that then.

tracing =/= using reference.

tracing is one way of how u use a reference. U can take photo of it, u can cut it and paste it, u can trace part here and part there and put it to become a new picture.

In the end, your final must represent YOU, as an artist and have your own interpretation no matter in its meaning, style or wuteva. U must state ur case for your piece - is it a study of lighiting, composition or stroke practice. If u dont state any of that, ppl will take ur final piece as totally urs and expect a story from the artist of what the piece is saying.

nice... prefer 3rd option

it's not an option la it's just showing how he slowly paint it more and more cause some ppl say they don't believe he do it.

I believed he did it with his hands...no doubt. But I also believed he had reference. If not, he got an excellent sense of anatomy, composition, color, fashion and photographical values.

If no reference, his other works must be consistent with those qualities. Looking at his early portraits thumbs, my opinion is he use referance - Which is totally fine. But to be different, we need to look at things differently. Thousands of other artists can do the same thing he did. But not everybody can be H.R. Giger or Alan Lee.

Of course, I don't think Max is comparing himself with the likes of Alan Lee or HR Giger. He's just a talented artist/painter or however you want to call it.

What other people are saying here is that he traced or it's not even his own work. References are something that are normal and I believe he blends both by looking at pics and their poses and studying them before deciding on what he wants to paint.

I think almost all artists use reference pictures perhaps only the very best and even they would have to start somewhere with reference pics as well before developing the necessary technique to create their own style. Now I'm not Max so I don't know how far he has used reference pictures but I do know that they're not traced and are his own works.

Like for eg, I've asked him to do a portrait of a friend as a Na'vi in a Pandora forest. Now he has to get the face done right and he would have to look at several reference pics of the girl. Is this wrong? I don't think so, it's indeed a necessary thing to do. Then he has to look at reference pictures for the Pandora world and work out the composition of the piece. He's not simply taking a set picture from an existing painting and then just putting the face there. He actually gave me several rough sketches on the environment and the pose of my friend and we were still working out the details of the composition before finalizing on the sketch. Of course he has to see the movie and look at pictures of Pandora but he's actually sketching them and melding them together to make a unique piece.

Is doing a portrait and placing them in a fantasy world, art work? Sure, not something that would sell for millions of dollars but it's something that I would want to buy and that's what I'm trying to tell people here. Max is a great artist capable of realizing your dreams by painting personalized pictures of you in fantasy settings.

And after all aren't most comics based on an existing universe? I wouldn't say those comics are not artwork. They definitely have to reference spiderman, superman and come up with their own interpretation and that's what Max is doing.

At the end of the day, i'm telling people here that Max has the sufficient skills to do these kinds of work and not saying he's some Alan Lee or HR Giger. Please...I don't know how this thread degenerated into this and its really quite sickening especially since you have these bunch of people telling him that he's a fraud or that he's no Alan Lee...well I'll like to see them do better.

This post has been edited by Reuben: Jan 19 2010, 03:10 PM

Dont get me wrong. Im not underestimating him at all. Just saying if he really wanna be distinct and recognised by his style and not expandable in the market, he got to be different. Thats all im saying.