The Art of Tom Box

The concept series is my schizophrenic attempt to shine light on the art that inspires me. I always do some of my best work when working from concept sketches. I find the hard lines and white space conducive to creation as they give you just enough definition to get you going, while still leaving space to do your own thing. Here's hoping you find these sketches as helpful and inspiring as I do.

Though I'll be showing off some Tyranid sketches by Tom Box (aka: Bocks on the Warpshadow boards), I feel a bit wrong calling this lone, meagre post "The Art of Tom Box." You see, I actually know Tom marginally better than some of the other members on the forums, and, were it not for an unexpected attack of MySpineIsTryingToMurderMe-itis (it's a technical term: look it up), I actually would have met the guy back at Games Day Toronto 2009, when Moloch and Hydra came out for the event/the Tryan board. And, from what I've come to know about Tom, I can tell you that if we were to try and encapsulate his Art into one post, we would be needing a far bigger...well--for lack of a less corny word--box.



Tom draws and paints and sculpts. Tom also musics, acts, and creates frighteningly realistic props and special effect cosmetics/prosthetics for the mad movies he and his friends make over at Grape Productions (check the links to other videos beneath the one that loads, but be warned that they are...umm...rather dark/violent...though still hilarious in most cases). As is the case with Hydra, I feel like I haven't got a box big enough to contain Box's creativity, and were I ever to win an obscene amount of money in a lottery, a large portion of that cash would be dedicated to setting up a random studio where I would pay people like Box and Hydra to just sit around and come up with magnificent things of their own imagining.

But I digress. This is supposed to be about bugs.

Bocks (I feel better using his handle) landed at Warpshadow when one of our members came across his kitbashing/scratch-sculpting work on his Hive Mite over at another tyranid board ("You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy." ;) ) and suggested that Bocks also post his work on Warpshadow. We were all absolutely blown away by the ingenious ways that the guy thought to convert standard plastic kits, and it wasn't long before we were all clamouring to see what next, counter-intuitive design he could come up with.

Over the years, he has contributed not one but TWO screamer killer conversions to the Tyran Board project, and he has fallen into the habit of sculpting the occassional model for Troll Forged Miniatures (The Alien Brain and Alien Brain Larval Form are both his, pictured below)

He's also said to be currently working on sculpting something far larger and more brutish for the Troll Forged alien line.  Keep your eyes peeled!

But, wait, wasn't this supposed to be about the concept sketches Bocks has turned out? Going back through my archives, I was sad to find that I didn't have quite that many by him...

...so he was a dear a sketched up something new just for this occasion. It's called a Tyranid Zenith and it incorporates one of my favourite whacky, non-canon, Tyranid concepts: bio-jet propulsion!