Alvin Lee

ImagineFX - Comic Artist Special! Learn how I draw and paint this X-23!

Here's a homage / fan-piece of characters I've known to draw and love. Using the full range of copicmarker cool grays, ballpoint and a red fineliner.
I've posted the process of this on Facebook [link] and Instagram [link] but decided to show you all the full res on Deviantart! 

Hope you all like it, because I had fun doing it!

She-Ra!!! The Princess of Power! 

Here's a piece done for Mattel as promotional art. I've seen this printed huge above their booth at San Diego Comicon this year, and also exclusively in a Gallery show at Toy Tokyo in NYC. Pretty wild!

Digital paints by the ultra talented man they call, Doe!

Been waiting to post this! 

Marvel vs. Capcom Complete Works - Wraparound Cover! Here are my pencils, included in the interior of every book! Sweet touch by the fine folks at UDON. 

50+ Characters, 3 vanishing points, 100 hours.

I captured the entire process in time-lapse video, will post it once it has been edited. 

By far the most challenging cover to date. Hope you dig!

So some of you may know, I have been taking digital painting courses over the past 30 days learning some awesome art fundamentals and photoshop techniques!

I've been getting requests to post some of my homework assignments, so here's one of them. They were showing us painting techniques for leather, so I decided to go with C.Viper! Keep in mind this is still a work in progress but thought I'd show you guys what I have thus far! 

This piece was done entirely in photoshop. (First time, I've done this!)

Hope you likey!

Check it out! I'm in this month’s Imagine FX Magazine #82 – The Ultimate Comic Art Issue! It hit the stands this week internationally! It also includes a FREE DVD that shows a time lapse video of me creating the original artwork for this issue!

Visit: [link] for more info or just cop one for yourself!

Here's two pieces I did for Li-Ning's Basketball campaign. Li-Ning is the current leader in sports apparel in China who also endorses the NBA's Jose Calderon, Baron Davis, Evan Turner, Shaq, & Damon Jones. 

Being that I'm a huge basketball fan this was an offer I couldn't pass up on. Plus...I'm Chinese! 

The two characters pictured here were loosely based on Evan Turner (left) and Baron Davis (right). Believe it or not all of the effects in terms of the strokes were done traditionally by brush on rice paper. Tobias Kwan then added all of the beautiful digital colors and effects to the piece afterwards. The man is one talented mofo!

Lookie what I found? This gem of a cover I did for the Ultimate Hardcover Edish of Street Fighter the Comicbook series in 2006. One of my persoal favs of Akuma I've drawn in my career. The Ryu version of the ultimate edition was drawn in lead up to this - Akuma's front and back was made for this. 

Like a boss! 

As promised here's the DIGITAL COLORS to the second piece of the Hatsune Miku + Corolla Campaign! [link]
Thought I'd post this in light of Hatsune's North American Debut performance at Anime Expo (in LA) this Saturday! 

VIEW PROCESS PICS HERE: [link]

In spite of the mixed reviews for this piece, I'm going to stand by my man Doe! [link] The guy totally blew me away with these colors and more importantly the client was also equally as impressed!

**Note** this image was based from Tony Taka's illustration, I was basically requested to redraw it in a more "mature" style, so consider this as an homage or a remix of the original.

Here's the RAW PENCILS of the second piece for the Hatsune Miku + Corolla Campaign! [link]

I've been getting some very mixed reviews for this piece and I welcome it! Discussion is always good and never bad. It's what free-thinking minds should do, and honestly I learn quite a lot from them! 

The Argument at large here is that it doesn't look quite Anime enough or "OTAKU" for Hatsune Miku and also that I copied Tony Taka's original drawing. 

In my defense the client wanted her to look less Otaku and more "mature" specifically in her eyes, being a little slimmer. Aso the hair was requested to have more individual strands, to cater to a "sexier" American market. (However I will note that the nipple and side boob was strategically removed in the final.)

In terms of the piece looking like Tony Taka's, that was fully intentional. It seemed the client really liked that specific pose and simply had me redraw it. I submitted many variations anyway (which I will post as process pics later) but in the end...Tony Taka's still won the day! what can I say, it's a great pose! Just consider this piece an homage or like a remix of the original. 

I'll admit, some of the digital colors on this piece ended up turning out little more realistic than I originally intended but I must stand by my man DOE, because I was blown away by his work on this piece. More importantly, so was the client!!! 

I will post the digital colors soon, just wanted to give you a little taste and perhaps a little more insight into this piece. 

Also I will note that artist Zain has now done an awesome new version of the print Ad for June, I believe that this is to illustrate to the public that these are just artist interpretations... Miku will always be Miku!

Like it or hate it? You be the judge!

Here's the unedited 1 of 2 pieces done For Hatsune Miku + Toyota Corolla! 

The client had a very specific vision for the piece which is cool because it was really fun to create (and hopefully excel) under specific parameters. She had to be drawn to look a bit older as opposed to Japan in order to cater towards an international market. I tried to find an even middle ground where she would look anime but still digestible to the everyday viewer. 

They did give me some creative freedom in how the pose , wings and hair was drawn but in the end the format had to still fit the intended layout. I did explore some new tricks on the hair though. 

Had a bunch of fun learning about and creating Hatsune Miku, hope you all like it!!! 

[ Press Release from Toyota: Pick up the May issue of Koream, Hyphen or many other magazines for a special collectors edition print of Hatsune Miku. This month, artist Alvin Lee teamed up with Miku and Corolla. ]

Digital Colors provided by the always fire breathing, Man They Call Doe! [link]

TO SEE THE PROCESS FROM START TO FINISH, CHECK OUT MY FB ALBUM HERE: [link]

Here's a piece I did late summer/fall for the release of BLAZBLUE Continuum Shift, my apologies as I finally got around to posting this now! This was used as the box-art of the game for European release, including all of the bleed and trim. The final box-art was severely cropped from this version you see here depending on the platform, so much of the bleed areas had to be painted in as more of an afterthought thanks to DOE! 

The concept was pretty simple, I wanted a vortex/swirl originating from the center point and have all the characters or directional lines to osculate outwards from there. Clockwise from the top is Ragna, Taokaka, Iron Tagar and Tsubaki. 

The center point and characters eventually had to be painstakingly shifted from the original pencils by DOE to accommodate for the logotype, which was really really BIG. So if you'll excuse us, that explains the vast negative space in the middle!

The entire process from thumbnails to the final product has been uploaded to my facebook album HERE: [link] 

Hope you like it! Cheers!

Here's the last and final cover page of all four characters/athletes in a team collage for Febuary's ESPN RISE Magazine! THE ROBOTS MUST DIE!!!

If you would like to see how this turned out in th mag, check out the facebook pictures here: [link]

Once again, much love to Fabian "Monk-man" Schlaga for hookin' me up here, the guy is one talented mofo!

Here's the fourth and final character for this month's ESPN RISE Magazine - Jadeveon Clowney, the consensus number one football recruit from South Carolina. Since he plays defensive end, I realized that he must tackle peeps all the time. So I fashioned his shoulder pads to mimic that of an Armored Tank. Cause well, he is one! 

If you've got this in hand, HIGH FIVE! *four times*

Thank you once again to Fabian "Monk" Schlaga for the crazy digital collab, the man is so MONEY! 

Here's the third character for this month's ESPN RISE Magazine - Daniel Norris! This guy's arm will throw *friggin'* laser beams down any batter's throat! This was hugely inspired by TRON (and Cyclops) as it literally just hit the theaters when I was illustrating this! ESPN was totally cool with the inspiration (as they are affiliates w/ Disney) and encouraged it! My idea was that he would basically aim with his eyepiece and then launch the light-ball with extreme speed and precision. 

If you've got this in hand, HIGH FIVE! *three times*

Thank you once again to Fabian "Monk" Schlaga for the crazy digital collab, the man is SMOKIN'! 

Here's the second character for this month's ESPN RISE Magazine - NICK "Zee Cannon" VENA (MR. ATLAS) 
Apparently this highschool phenom from Morristown has been breaking records in shotput in all freshman, sophomore and senior years. Now he has only himself to compare to! So what did I decide to do? Gave him robotic arms and an ammo belt! Imagine if those shotputs were grenades?? Lol!

If you've got this in hand, HIGH FIVE! *two times*

Thank you once again to Fabian "Monk" Schlaga for the crazy digital collab, the man is SIZZLIN'! 

Here's the cover to this month's ESPN RISE Magazine! Had a lot of fun drawing these series of illustrations as they gave me a whole bunch of creative freedom to do whatever I wanted with these athletes! 

This you see here is Michael Gilchrist, top highschool prospect out of St. Patrick, NJ. I'm a huge fan of Basketball so this was doubly sweet. What kinda cool things to add to him? Pssh, of course extend-able limbs and badass kicks, what else?!  

If you've got this in hand, HIGH FIVE!

Thank you once again to Fabian "Monk" Schlaga for the crazy digital collab, the man is on FIRE! 

Kickin' it OLDSCHOOL! I was going through some old artwork during a Student Critique @ Schoolism and stumbled upon this oldie'! This was done in 2003 almost eight years ago now, I can't believe how quickly time has past! 

Funny thing is I've been asked countless times to post this one as it's one of their favorites apparently. Even to this day! I don't see it though, I look at the pencils that i did and it makes me CRINGE. Luckily, I had the likes of Arnold "Arnistotle" Tsang to back me up on this one!

We shared in a silly conversation once before, that I'm like Ken Masters because of my flashy ways, and Arnold is like Ryu because of his quite nature. Akuma however, that you will have to just figure out for yourselves! LOL! 

Here's another funny cookie, look at what's the first image you see from one of my favorite HipHop tracks of all time by, THE FUGEES! [link]

Here's the MVC3 poster I recently finished for the Capcom booth at NY Comicon and also the Special Edition Steelbook Cover to the game ! I've been getting several requests to post this piece and Udon has kindly forwarded this to me so I'm assuming it's okay to post now...

Fitting all of these characters in this piece was definitely a bit of a challenge, not to mention getting the scale of each one accurate as well. The end result turned out pretty decent I think. 

This was colored by the always talented Saejin Oh!
 

Okay, I figured it's been long enough and time to make this announcement official! 

Been working hand-in-hand with OAKLEY© [link] to create some really cool artwork for the 2010-2011 fall/winter campaign. A new website will be released shortly called LEGIONofOAKLEY.com which will walk you through the whole experience...

This is a first of a series of pieces which was also used as insert posters in this season's FreeSkier Buyer's Guide, as well as giant bus ads, store banners, books and pamphlets for the ad campaign, you name it! Here's a picture from a retail store on my twitter page: [link]

The man you see here is 7 time X-Games champion, TANNER HALL [link] 

Oakley wanted Tanner looking fierce and somewhat inspired by Sabretooth. The most difficult part was getting the gear as accurate as possible to the product. I knew we had to get this part right because in the end - that's what we were selling. Making him look badass while keeping a likeness to Tanner, that was the easy part!

This piece was colored by the uber talented Fabian Monk Schlaga! Our first official collaboration together, and hopefully not the last! 

Here's the second illustration for OAKLEY Featuring Tanner Hall, I will post the four page intro story here on DA eventually, you may just have to wait and see! For the meantime go here:

LEGION OF OAKLEY [link]

For this piece the focus was on the goggles as this was the main product that was being featured. Getting these goggles symmetrical was much more difficult than it looks, had to use a plenty o french curves to get it right! Upon Oakley's request, fur was added by attaching a hoodie / liner to give him more of a "Sabretooth" like inspiration. 

Once again this was a colored by the very talented Fabian Monk Schlaga!

As some of you already know here’s the winner of ALVINLEEART'S DIGITAL COLOR CHALLENGE [link]
done by the very talented, Fabian “Monk” Schlaga of Kassel, Germany!


As the GRAND PRIZE WINNER, Fabian was generously rewarded for his fine work and also had his work reproduced as an large 18×26″ print. The version that you see right here was edited from it’s original submission, Fabian was very open and receptive to my suggestions and turned edits around very quickly. Done like a true professional, we will most definitely work with this gentleman again in the near future! He is very deserving and all the best towards his continued success! 

This limited print will be made available soon on Alvin's webstore and exclusively at convention appearances.

Thank you all for all of your wonderful submissions, needless to say this coloring challenge was a complete success! Congrats to him and all the finalists that participated!

Here's the winner to Capcom's official coloring contest for Final Fight: Double Impact! Congrats to Chad Walker for this great submission which will now be the official box-art. He definitely deserved the win amongst very stiff competition. Now he'll be living it up in New Orleans this spring during Capcom's very exclusive Capcom Captivate event, meanwhile being the envy of all of his friends! 

I want to thank all of you personally for participating in this contest and making it a success, in the end everybody wins! 

Here's a sneak peek to my new Darkstalker's super-wide cover. This actually spans three comic book boards and the backgrounds were actually drawn on three separate boards and pieced behind being that the foreground was so ridiculously complicated! Hope you all like it!

Pencils by Alvin Lee
Colors by Christine Choi

Notice anything familiar on the bottom left hand corner? 

Here was my final Cover to the SFII series! It's really not the most awesome layout ever, but it's definitely cooler seeing this together as one. It was split in the middle, illustrating Ryu's Dark Hadu side of himself and his constant internal struggles with good and evil. 

Pencils and Inks by me
Colors by Espen

Here's a newly solicited cover to Street Fighter: Chun-Li legends. I was a little bit premature with the initial posting before it was featured in Diamond Distributing last time. But here it is permanently now, available for all to see! 

Tried experimenting a little bit with this one in terms of it's finishes. This was penciled roughly then gone straight to ink. 

Keeping in the theme of Darkstalkers, I've got another oldie but goodie in my pocket! I'm sure many of you have seen this on:
Udoncrew  
before but again, I just want to post some of my best work on my own DA profile as well! 

Pencils & Inks by me
Colors by Gary Yeung

In light of the Darkstalkers tribute being released this summer, I thought I would include some pages here in my gallery. These are probably my favorite pages from my run on this title, just because Donovan is so badass...here's page two of this sequence. 

This page was originally released in issue 2 of Darkstalkers the comicbook series. Pencilled and inked by myself, Colors by Gary Yeung.
 

In light of the Darkstalkers tribute being released this summer, I thought I would include some pages here in my gallery. These are probably my favorite pages from my run on this title, just because Donovan is so badass...page two coming soon!

This page was originally released in issue 2 of Darkstalkers the comicbook series. Pencilled and inked by myself, Colors by Gary Yeung. 

Here's another oldie, this piece has now become synonymous with my career these days. This was pencilled on 5 comic book boards by me. The great:
ARNOLD TSANG
RAMIL SUNGA [link]

tag teamed on colors. Everyone tells me now that this exists as a poster on their wall, from all walks of life! 

SO IF YOU GOT IT ON YOUR WALL CAN I GET A, HELL YEAH?!

Again, I know this has already been posted by:


Udoncrew in the past but I wanted to include this in my gallery as well so that all things alvin can be found in one place!

Here's another one from the Ol' History Books! This is a double splash page I did for Marvel's X-men: Age of Apocalypse. This was only a one shot for me but I really loved drawing these characters designed by Joe Mad, they kicked ass!

Here's another oldie but goodie, this is the cover to the RivalSchools comicbook series I pencilled and inked a couple years back. It's a shame this series didn't last because this is still one of my favorite Capcom games of all time! This piece was of course an obvious homage to one of favorite artists, Edayan. 

Here is another oldie but goldie. I completed this several years ago as a cover for the relaunch of the Street Fighter 2 series. Since then it has been repeatedly reproduced as posters being sold nationwide. Probably one of the pieces I am most proud of during my career! 

Hope you (still) like it!

Here's an oldie but goodie. I know i promised nothing but fresh foods but this one still makes me tingle. It's my first ever Street Fighter Cover! It's the Cover to issue 3 of the first story-arc that i did with doe [link] way back in 2002 or something like that. Brings back memories!

Here's the pencils to a cover i completed recently for the new series "Street Fighter 2 Turbo" headed by the always talented CHAMBA  and the rest of the udoncrew  This cover is currently being colored by espen  and I'm eargerly awaiting the results!

The theme for this piece was, " Prepare for Battle" where every character has a routine pre-fight ritual depicted in the collage. 

I've been itching to post this one for a while and now that the remix book has been sold and the cover has been solicited i felt it was time to drop it like it's hot.

Exclusive piece i did for Calgary Comic Expo 2008, colored by the amazingly talented, Doe [link]

Here's a Print I made recently, It's a concept I'm working on which is also being used for my website splash page. The original illustration was colored by the god himself, Arnistotle. 

Here's a sketch i did of Birdie Chillin' on the streets where he belongs. 

Originally this was done as a 'brand new' style test for the fourth volume of the Street Fighter Comic Series. 

(The one in which the great Chamba  is doing now!) 

Doe [link] mastered a cool color style for this, too bad this never came into fruition, maybe perhaps for the future SF4 series??

Here's a sample of that same Birdie image except with a completely different direction in terms of colors by doe [link], It's so dramatically different and cool i thought you all would enjoy seeing this! 

Which one is better, it's all down to personal preference, but this one is definitely moodier.

People have been asking me what I've been doing for Marvel lately so I've decided to show you guys, I did a couple of fill in issues for Clay Mann during the World War Hulk series of Heroes For Hire.

People have been asking me what I've been doing for Marvel, so i rather just show you guys. It's s series based on the Free Comic Book day preview called Marvel Adventures: Super Heroes or M.A.S.H. featuring, Spidey, Hulk and Ironman!

This image was from FCBD pg2

This was my first time drawing spidey, so yes, the webbing is wrong i know! >_<

Hinter Wars video game promo poster for the Nokia Engage i did a while back. Again this was colored by the amazing, Doe! [link]