Concept art

As the creator of the Karousel world Dan knew early on that the best way to convey his vision in the early stages was ‘concept art’. After discovering that professionals in the film and graphic novel industry were charging between $1500 to $3000 per single panel he made a decision in December 2023 he would learn the craft himself.

What follows are just a small sample of the hundreds of concept art panels he has created over the last year with each image representing hours of attention to detail, character development and production design. When Dan hired acclaimed writer Kevin J. Anderson to come on board as a script consultant for the feature film script Reed had penned he knew immediately that his experience writing graphic novels for the Dune and Star Wars franchises made him the perfect writer to tackle the graphic novel, telling the tale of the origin stories of the main characters in the Karousel story entitled ‘Karousel: Survival of the Fittest’.

Although these images represent scenes from that story, the graphic novel has not yet been drawn by comic book artists. That day will soon come, but for now these panels are design ideas to inspire and give an overall view of the feeling and vibe of the dark world this dystopian tale takes place in. Special thanks to musician and creative brother Bob Madsen for your continued support of this project, and for introducing Kevin and Dan, paving the way for this collaboration! 

From Dan – “When I started taking painting on canvas to another level during the lockdowns it seemed like a natural progression to dive into creating digital art, although just over a year ago I knew very little about this art form. With many days spent watching tutorials, learning about light and shadow, color conveying moods, composition and perspective, in time a panel that took 12 to 15 hours to compose I’ve managed to reduce that down to 5 or 6 hours, and I am truly enjoying every minute of the process even if I’m dreaming about pixels most nights! I do find bouncing back and forth between working with paint on canvas and drawing and painting on the computer quite similar. The brushes may be different but striving for some kind of emotion remains the same.”