The human skull is an iconic symbol of horror and can be used to great effect if you’re building a macabre world. I made this distressed cranium on the cheap from a $25 plastic model kit. After assembling it, I filled the seams with Magic-Sculpt and sanded them, then stippled the skull’s surface with MMD Green Putty to give it a crusty texture. Finally, I painted it an orange-brown to…

As a creative professional, one of the biggest challenges I’ve had to face is that of “optimistic misinformation”.  Often, when I work on a project, my colleagues will pump up my hopes, telling me how likely the project is to become huge and how much money I’ll make when it does.  What they are saying is usually not true, of course, but I don’t hold it against them. I’ll give you…

When you’re a kid, playing with dolls and action figures is a great world-building exercise. The toys provide a nice jumping-off point, leaving it up to your imagination to create the characters, story, weather, and terrain. Your living room becomes a massive green screen where amazing vistas can be mentally painted in. When I see clever animations like this featuring toys from my childhood, it strikes something in my creative…

Rod Serling had quite and influence on me as a young fan of science-fiction.  I was eleven when I first discovered his show The Twilight Zone, and became borderline obsessed with it.  I scoured the TV listings looking for Twilight Zone reruns, and even started clipping out the plot synopses so I would know which episodes I had already seen.  I wanted to be Rod Serling; a mysterious, eloquent man in…