The Art of Jeff Murchie

Amarthiel, Witch Queen of Angmar

2011-05-01T18:31:00.000-07:00

This is my concept from Lord of the Rings Online for Amarthiel, the Witch Queen of Angmarim. She is an elf that has been corrupted by Sauron and rules Angmar, a dark kingdom north of mordor. Her face has been marred and she wears a mask to cover her long lost beauty.

Angmarim Chief

2011-05-01T18:16:00.000-07:00

I just thought I'd start posting some old concepts I painted for Lord of the Rings Online. I had a lot of influence from Celtic, Viking and Roman historical armor for this character. I was constantly flipping through Angus McBride historical illustrations for reference while I worked on Lord of the Rings Online. I wanted this character to feel strong and stout and added layer upon layer of fur, cloth, metal and leather.

For My Niece...

2011-04-08T14:25:00.000-07:00

My wife and I bought a funny stuffed animal of a cat that was patterned with pink and white fur a couple months ago for my niece's birthday. She loved it and of course drew a picture of it for me. She is quite the young artist already! I asked if she wanted me to draw her anything and she said she wanted me to draw a pink cat as well. My niece Camille is very much a princess so I drew a cat that I thought she may appreciate. BY FAR the girliest drawing that has ever come from me but I had a lot of fun:) I hope she likes it... she's quite the critic.

Reepicheep

2011-03-20T20:00:00.000-07:00

Reepicheep. "Welcome, in the Lion's name. Come further up and further in." (The Last Battle, Ch. 16)

One of my favorite characters from the Chronicles of Narnia. My version of Reepicheep includes his sword, classic golden circlet and feather. I added his musketeer costume. I painted this character a few years ago but I went back in and cleaned the image up a bit. I still may clean a few areas up still. It's hard not to put in an extra 15 minutes here or there to polish an image.

Nostrils, nubbins and ear lobes oh my!!

2011-03-20T16:46:00.001-07:00

There is rarely an occurrence as a concept artist where you would actually be asked to design a pink and purple alien, so I decided to paint one on my own time. I don't know what to call this guy....but I love to draw creatures composed of bizarre shapes and colors in my free time. Alien creatures, more than fantasy monsters allow an artist the freedom to go truly crazy with interesting shapes and colors. Fantasy creatures still need design elements that are easily recognizable. Ears and noses are two of the best areas to play with interesting shape dynamics. Hope you like whatever he is:)

Borderlands "Mordecai" Concept

2010-11-07T17:02:00.000-08:00

This is an early concept I painted for Mordecai, one of the main characters from Borderlands, developed by Gearbox. There were a number of designs created for Mordecai with varying details before the final style and concept was finalized.

Dark Numenorean

2007-08-18T12:42:00.001-07:00

Here is one of the Dark Numenorean concepts from Lord of the Rings Online. I had a really fun time with this concept and I learned a lot about complimentary colors and loved painting the drippy, translucent, organic qualities. Man...I need to paint some zombies soon. One of the fun things about working on Lord of the Rings Online was that I got to concept, design and paint so many monsters and creatures with interesting textural qualities. This really helped me learn many painting techniques as well as exploring color.

--Jeff

Bug Bear Concept from Demon Stone for the PS2

2007-08-18T12:09:00.001-07:00

I totally forgot about this concept until just recently. This is one of the concept designs (haaha....one of the only ones I would still want to show) from Forgotten Realms, Demon Stone. I had the priveledge of working as a fulltime freelance concept artist for Stormfront Studios a year after graduation and I had a great experience working with everyone. If you have not played the game you should check it out. Its on the PS2 and should be really cheap to buy since its been out for a couple years.

Fat Orc

2007-08-18T11:34:00.001-07:00

Here is an Orc I concepted for Lord of the Rings Online. The computer model and render that you see here was made by Daniel Williams after seeing my art in the December 2006 issue of Imagine FX. He is an incredible modeler and works for Blue Sky, the makers of Ice Age and Dan is now working on Dr. Seuss' "Horton Hears a Who!" You should check out his awesome work at his blog: http://www.pointpusher.blogspot.com/

An old unfinished concept.....

2007-06-26T12:22:00.001-07:00

This is an old drawing from a year or so ago that I never finished and now I am finally getting around to it. Hopefully I'll get it done soon. If anybody has any suggestions please let me know! Thanks!

--Jeff

New LOTRO concept update

2007-06-23T14:17:00.001-07:00

Here are a couple more concepts from LOTRO that you may have seen on the LOTRO official website but I have not shown them myself just yet.

The first monster is the Rogmul, which literally means "Demon Slave" in the dark tongue. Wow that sounds dorky:) I have attached a screenshot from Lord of the Rings Online with the Rogmul which was modeled in Maya by Mark Lizotte, a very talented production artist. The beautiful environment in the screenshot was conceptualized by my friend Todd Rueping who is an incredibly talented artist.

The second monster is called the Gurturog which is a troll that was bred to be more intelligent.

I hope you like these new additions!

-Murchie

Snowbeast

2007-06-19T10:38:00.001-07:00

Here is my Snowbeast concept for Lord of the Rings Online. I wanted to push the boundaries a bit. We needed characters that were a little more fantastic and everybody likes gorillas/monkeys so this was our compromise. Thanks for looking!

Angmarim Nomad Concepts for Lord of the Rings Online

2007-06-19T10:29:00.001-07:00

Here is my design for one of the Angmarim Nomads. in Lord of the Rings Online. Hope you enjoy:)

-Murchie

One of my armor designs for LOTRO

2007-06-14T17:43:00.002-07:00

Well, thats me working at Turbine in a full suit of Plate Mail armor:) One of the artists, Jeanette Chamberlain, brought her husband's suit in for me to wear for "reference." haha!
Here is the first second age elven armor set I designed for Lord of the Rings Online. I designed dozens of armor sets for the Dwarves, Elves, Breeland Human and Westernesse classes. I decided the best way to concept the armor sets in mass quantity would be to create the paper barbie doll accessory route. I would have literally 100 or more layers in a Photoshop document with each piece or variation of armor that I could swap in or out and combine with armor pieces from other races or classes. I painted all the armor sets from a frontal view so that the production/texture artists could use my concept and painting as a base for the in-game textures.
There are always challenges with each project you work on. Lord of the Rings needs to seem like its high fantasy but also realistic and believable (so I could not design the huge spikey silhouette breaking shoulder pads and helmets that you see in World of Warcraft or Warhammer). Sticking to a more conservative armor silhouette is very difficult and limits your options. Also, we could not design helmets that came down below the nose since one of the races, the Dwarves, all have beards. Since all the helmets need to fit every race we were not able to have full helms unfortunately.
I hope you like my first generic elf armor set and hopefully I will have more up soon!

Witch King Design Featured on PC Gamer Cover!!

2007-06-13T16:48:00.000-07:00

I was very excited to see the my Witch King's design from Lord of the Rings Online of the Cover of PC Gamer!! I also uploaded the orthographies I drew to help the modelers:)

This piece was recently accepted into Spectrum 14 which will be published this November!! It is such a honor to be in the company of so many amazing artists!

Lord of the Rings Online was finally shipped yesterday, April 24, 2007!! So far it has been received very well in the MMO community and I hope it becomes a huge success. I was very blessed to work at Turbine for a little over 2.5 years on Lord of the Rings Online, a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Game(MMORPG). I worked with a number of very talented artists that I hope to work with again in the future. This is my "Witch King of Angmar" design. I went through a few iterations and thumbnail sketches before we settled on this design. We wanted to give the Witch King something more than just a simple crown but we did not want to just plop a helmet over his hood. The movie design was great but Tolkien did want it to be clear that there was a ghost-like void under his hood. We decided in a way to frame the void, almost drawing the viewer into it. Since there is not much color when it comes to the Nazgul I added in as much color as possible through the different types of metal. I was pretty pleased in how this design turned out (which almost never happen:) I was definitely going for a different look and I wanted to try and maintain that ghost-like quality and also give him a design that was very high fantasy but realistic and believable . This character was also modeled for a high res CG Cinematic whose model can be seen on the official Lord of the Rings Online site ( http://www.lotro.com/ ). I think it turned out very nicely. I will post the orthographies I drafted as reference for the production artists/modelers. I hope you like my version of the Witch King!

-Murchie

Uruk Hai concept featured on Computer Games Magazine Cover!!

2007-06-12T18:29:00.000-07:00

Here is the Uruk-Hai concept I conceptualized for Lord of the Rings Online that was featured in the CG cinematic as well as on the November issue of Computer Games Magazine. This was the first design that I had featured on a magazine cover. Also...heh, the hand of Saruman on the armor is actually my handprint scanned in and layered into the texturing for the CG model for the cover:) I hope you enjoy!

--Jeff

A Few Lord of the Rings Online Concepts

2007-04-26T16:38:00.000-07:00