Inspiring Artist - Joe Madureira

I first discovered Joe Madureira (Mad!) between the ages of 11 and 12 when he did a cover for the popular gaming magazine PSM. His artwork stood out to me and I was really fond of his style. Ever since then I've been following his career collecting his artwork and comics that hes done. Since discovering him hes remained my favourite artist and the one that inspires me above all else.

Battle Chasers Artwork

Mad! was hired by Marvel in 1991 as an intern at the age of 16. His first published work was an eight-page story for the anthology series Marvel Comics Presents, starring Northstar. In the next few years, Madureira completed various assignments for Marvel's X-Men franchise. He became the regular penciller on Uncanny X-Men in 1994 and soon rose to become one of the most popular artists in the industry. He left Uncanny X-Men in 1997 to work on his own series Battle Chasers for Wildstorm Comics. Nine issues of the constantly behind schedule comic were released. The number 10 was announced but was finally never published.

Joe Mads' battle chasers artwork is some of my favourite he's ever produced. I like his style of drawing with exaggerated features like the hands, face and muscles. His drawing style is quite a unique mix of western and eastern drawing and has been replicated by many artists in the comic book industry since. Mad! uses an impressive amount of detail in his artwork with sharp bold lines.

DragonKind artwork

After cancelling Battle Chasers Mad! went onto form a game development company called Tri-Lunar with Tim Donley and Greg Peterson. With Tri-Lunar, he created concept art on a game called Dragonkind which was canceled when Tri-Lunar went out of business. He then went to work for Realm Interactive, another start-up company, on Trade Wars: Dark Millennium. When Realm Interactive was acquired by NCsoft, he continued to contribute to the game as it evolved into Exarch, and was eventually released as Dungeon Runners.


In more recent years Mad! has become more well known for his work as creative director for the video game company Vigil. He has worked on the game DarkSiders which is one of my favourite games of all time. Mad's artistic imprint is very strong on the game and the characters are recognisabley his style. I think its awesome to see just how much of someone's artistic style can be put into a game.

Darksiders artwork

I've recently found interviews with Joe Mad about his artistic history and the work hes' done for Darksiders and thought they were awesome. It's great to be able to hear about the process he uses for doing his artwork when hes been my artistic inspiration for so long. I was really interested to hear that he doesnt like his early artwork, hates it in fact and that his drawing style has changed alot recentely, especially since working in the game industry.

Mad is currently work as the creative director at Vigil, working on the next Darksiders game and a 40K : Dark Mellenium MMO.
He is also working on the new Spiderman comics 'Avenging Spider-Man' for Marvel. I'm really looking forward to the new artwork hes going to produce over the coming years.




Link to his interviews - http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2011/06/24/drawing-darksiders-the-history-and-creative-process-of-joe-mad.aspx