Happy May the 4th! Star Wars tile art theme

So, finally got around to doing the Star Wars #tileart theme. We had a few requests come in for this one…

@TileArtGuy Just want to say that i love you work! Any chance you can do a Star Wars tile art for the Lumia 1020?

— Parth (@TheIndianJedi) March 8, 2015

@TileArtGuy cool, but what about Star Wars theme?:)

— Pivazi Zurab (@PZurab) February 19, 2015

@TileArtGuy how come there isnt a star wars/ darth vader art so far….

— Parish Pokharel (@parish_lfc) February 9, 2015

@TileArtGuy nice can I request star wars or star trek start screen design cheers

— RWatt📱➕🚘=❌ (@rolandworf) February 4, 2015

After a lot of thought I decided to go with this Dark side vs Light side (Ying vs Yang) approach to the home screen. It doesn’t use the real-life characters from the films, but I think the comic book art adds a nice effect. I especially love the white theme.

One thing I have to say…is long live the stylus! This is the first time I’ve tried the stylus on my new Surface and it’s been incredible!. First time stylus user, so all those wacom experts please forgive my enthusiasm 🙂

Anyway, here are pics and videos to show the home screens in action. Links to the images at the bottom of the post:

The theme was only possible thanks to the awesome artwork form RebornRock, Kevin Nowlan, Tim Bradstreet, Tony Harris, Joe Quesada and chrono-strife

You can find all the images used to create the two themes here – http://1drv.ms/1ETJpn0

The Joker Lumia 930 Tile Art Theme

Although this home screen does have some Joker artwork from random comics, if you haven’t read Batman:The Killing Joke, I’d highly recommend checking it out. It’s the origin story of the Joker told by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland.

Well, both Bobby and Jez wanted to see the Joker make his Tile Art appearance…

@TileArtGuy A joker theme would be awesome !

— BobbySchaw (@Bobby_Schaw) September 20, 2014

https://twitter.com/MSFTY/status/481181721283796992

So without further ado…

Link to the PNG images and background here.

Sin City Lumia 930 Tile Art Theme

Sin City, one of the best requests I’ve received so far.

The reason I loved it so much is that Frank Miller’s artwork was the reason I got into tile art to begin with. Here’s a pic of the first home screen I ever customized back in 2013.

It also came at the perfect time, having seen Frank Miller’s amazing Dark Knight comic come to life in the “The Dark Knight Returns” animations just last week.

It was a bit tricky to create this transparent theme, given that all of Frank Miller’s Sin City artwork is mainly black & white, but I hope that I managed to do it justice here.

You can find all the images used for this home screen here.

Request: She-Hulk Lumia 930 Tile Art Theme

So, it’s been a while since I last jumped into the tile art…for the last month or so I’ve managed to lose a phone, finish off one of the biggest work projects of my life, attend a wedding in Mexico and fulfill my life long dream of pretending to be a dolphin…

Now that I’m back I’ve jumped straight into finishing off the requests, starting with this one from MoBedeGuti:
https://twitter.com/GutiMob/status/509994559192190977

Obviously I had to do a little digging into She-Hulk and if you’re interested here’s a great video about the Origins of She-Hulk.

Well MoBedeGuti, here you go bud:

As usual, you can find the PNG images used here.

Wolverine Lumia 1520 Home Screen

So, I have a friend who loves comics, Wolverine in particular. You could say he’s partly to blame for my love of all things “comic”. Decided to do something nice for the guy and mock-up a home screen I thought he might appreciate…maybe not as cool as his custom Wolverine Converse, but I’m hoping it’s a close second 🙂 Enjoy bud.

Images and PNG’s used can be found here.

Request: Green Arrow Lumia 1520 Home Screen

Well Mr. Saukerl…seems your request has been fulfilled.

@TileArtGuy Can u make a Green Arrow one? It's my favorite comics 😀

— Punk de galocha (@M_Magnum_) July 31, 2014

To be honest, I never thought much of Green Arrow, but after creating this home screen I’ve found a new respect for the character as well as the artwork.

Anyway, enough talk..here’s the home screen in action:

If you want to check out the PNG images and wallpapers, hit the link.

Request: Gears of War

I didn’t even know there was a Gears of War comic until this guy came along…
https://twitter.com/BazPantz/status/474196487615025152

What I found out is that there is in fact a Gears of War comic, published under DC’s Wildstorm. What I thought was pretty cool is the fact that Henry Flint did some of the inking for the series…this is the same guy responsible for Zombo, an awesome comic and the second home screen I ever created here on Tile Art Guy…not to mention the handsome devil at the top of this page 🙂

Anyway, @BazPants…hope you enjoy your Gears of War home screen my friend! 🙂

Original images can be found here, and the transparent PNG images here.

Rafael Grampá inspired home screen

I stumbled across Rafael Grampá while reading this Best of the week in covers story on iFanboy, where Paul Montgomery beautifully summarizes my feelings towards him as an artist: “One of my New Year’s resolutions for 2013 is to get to write about the devastatingly talented Rafael Grampa far more often.”

Rafael Grampá is a Brazilian comic book artist who’s style I really enjoy. He’s taken a great approach to timeless characters like Wolverine and done a pretty good job of portraying them in a completely new way.

He’s even released a CGI animation called Dark Noir which you can check out below:

Anyway, a lot of the characters which feature on the home screen below are from his comic “Mesmo Delivery“. For this home screen I tried to use a pretty simple background, which you can’t quite see in the Vine due to the quality, but you can test it out yourself by downloading the background here. You’ll notice there’s a subtle graded effect which still allows for a bit of ‘motion’ while you scroll.

Image source can be found here

Hellblazer (John Constantine) home screen on my Lumia 1520

Today I decided to go a little darker than usual…as the satanic-looking, bloody goat in my home screen will attest to.

I had to pay tribute to Hellblazer, not only because it was created by some of the greatest comic book artists of all time like Alan Moore, Steve Bissette and Jamie Delano…

The comic attracted the attention of many well-known artists who helped with covers and artwork like Glenn Fabry, David Lloyd, Greg Lauren and Rafael Grampá

They also weren’t scared to put it all out there…which this article from Bleeding Cool sums up nicely 🙂

It helped raise interest in the whole “occult detective” genre, and even ended up being adapted into a film and now a TV series (not sure how happy many fans are about that one)

And what was truly unique about it was the fact that the character John Constantine aged with the comic in real-time.

I’m fairly new to Hellblazer, but the more I get into it, the more I realise this is one of the most influential comics of its time. So, here’s to you John!

As usual, you can find the original images I used here.

Hellboy home screen using transparent PNG images

There’s a guy on Reddit by the name of Madoxster, who created this transparent rocket ship blasting off into outer space on his Windows Phone, which looked pretty awesome.

So when Madoxster told me that he had just released an Alpha app on Windows Store called PinPNG, I was pretty damn excited 🙂

The app is still in the Alpha stage, so be prepared to do a little photoshopping. You’ll have to pick your image and decide how many tiles you want to use in order to create it (eg. 2 columns and 3 rows). Once you have that you’ll need to paste the picture into the FULL size canvas (ie. #coloumns X #rows) and then you’ll cut the bigger picture into small/medium/large tiles. Here’s a link to where you can find all the tile sizes to make your life a little easier.

Hopefully we’ll see future updates come out with simpler user options and easy customization, but for now, I’m just glad someone decided to stuff around with transparent PNG apps in their spare time 🙂

Anyway, here’s my first attempt at a completely transparent Windows Phone home screen using Hellboy and the newly released PinPNG app for Windows 8.1. In terms of artwork, the clean lines, colour and ability to stack multiple characters and scenes in one image make Mike Mignola my second favourite comic book artist after Todd Mcfarlane.

If you’d like to try it out yourself, I’ve uploaded all the original images here, and all the PNG images here.