What a hiatus, eh?

I return again from holiday exile to bring to you an update.

Have some Pokemon.

Happy New Year! I should resume normal (even scheduled) updates soon.

Movies

You should go see Wreck-It Ralph as soon as physically possible. It is a great movie whose ads have not (yet) spoiled the plot in the least, which was a very pleasant surprise.

Really, go see it.

Happy belated Halloween! Here's (most of) my Engineer costume.

And now for something completely different

Recently, I've been working on a Team Fortress 2 costume--Engineer, my favored class. After finishing up the kneepads a few days ago, the most involved piece of the costume thus far, I thought I would take a moment to share my process. First off, the finished product:

These pictures were taken quickly and with a phone, so I apologize for any quality issues that may have resulted. Now, onto the process after the cut.

It's Process Sketch Time!

Time to take a moment to make this post I promised. So, here we go, from start to the current state:

First, a quick sketch to get an idea of what I'm doing with the character.

Corrections! Always making an effort to get the best out of a sketch.

(The rest after the jump.)

I Swear I Still Exist

I seem to have gone off and neglected to post for a month or two. That's unfortunate. I should remedy that before I keep doing it some more.

So, unfortunately, I don't have any scans of sketches I did while in California at the moment. I'm not on good terms with the scanner, but it's not the scanner's fault I haven't gone and scanned in my scribbles. More on those at a later time, when I have scans.

For now, some other things. First off, a new Team Fortress 2 fan-scribble:

My favored class changed to Engineer a long time ago, but I never got to drawing something new until recently. The new Mann vs. Machine mode is heaps of fun, too! You should play it. It is a free game, you know.

Next up, a new take on an older character that got as far as flat colors. This may or may not ever be finished; this version was for a roleplaying game that's gone dead. Still, I'm fond of the work I did on the scales.

The next two are some conceptual sketching for an Elder Scrolls: Skyrim comic idea I've been mulling over for a little while now. The (wood) elf has since been toyed with some more since these images, mostly with eye shapes and in fixing issues I had (and even in the more recent workings, still have) with bodily proportions. 

There is one more thing I've been working on, but it has a bunch of progress shots, so I'm going to save that for its own post in a few days. Assuming I don't get too involved in other goings-on and forget. 

Quick Update from California

Hey, been a while since the last post. Unfortunately, no sketches for this update. Been occupied with helping my grandparents downsize to a smaller home, and while I have done a bit of doodling, there's not been much time to get quality images of those sketches to a computer. I'll sit down and pop a few photos over from my phone at some point for some real content. Time's been split between sketching, finishing Return of the King, and raising a Pokemon team on SoulSilver to my liking when I've not been moving things about or cleaning.

Jason, I swear your Gyarados is on the way, it was started over a month ago now and I just haven't had a point where I've been able to sit down and finish it.

Also still have the technique experiment monster on hold, as well as all that Gears of War redesign business. That may sit on the sidelines for a while longer now that another Gears game has been announced.

That's all for now.

Oh man, update, I need to update. Okay, just need to find where I left that last process image... Aha, there we are.

I'd been planning on getting another post up sooner, but things have gotten a little distracting here with a trip planned to happen in a few days, among other things. Excuses, excuses. In any case, here's what progress there was the last time I worked on this guy. Took me a little while to figure out exactly how to progress, but I'm liking where things are going so far. We'll see what happens!

Should have some airport sketches sometime in the future as well, though I can't say when. It may be a month before I have access to a scanner for any work in more traditional medias. Not that I don't have plenty of digital work to catch up on.

Photoshop Crashed

More progress on my monster! Or, there would be more, if Photoshop hadn't frozen up and wasted several hours of my time during which I'd been playing around. OH WELL.

There's at least this, which took somewhere around an hour.

Have to get past my frustration at the program crash. Then I'll have more progress on this guy. Yeah.
Need to get back to that Gears of War redesign, too. Hmm.

Monster Guy

Started scribbling the other night in photoshop after browsing around on conceptart.org looking for new and interesting techniques to try. Let's see how this goes! Hopefully, I'll learn something new, or at least expand my abilities a little.

The first rough sketch. Just getting an idea of the action and taking the monster's previously-established build into consideration.

Much further along, after a few corrections, including several times of re-posing his left leg, and hammering in details. Started to get some linework in, doing so as quickly and tidily as possible.

For anyone interested, this is the tutorial I'm looking at and trying out.

Idle Scribbles

Between wasting time with Mass Effect 3 multiplayer and getting my time wasted being sucked into things around the internet, I've been mulling over creating my own Minecraft texture pack. It seems like a pretty big challenge, from what I've seen, or at the least several hundred hours' worth of work. The toughest bit so far is coming up with a visual direction. I've seen so many different texture packs I'm not sure where to begin with ideas.

So I started by sketching interpretations of Minecraft's most iconic monster, the creeper.

You know, I really need to look into getting a new scanner. A better one.

So far, I'm enamored with the idea of a "window" in the Creeper that would show a pile of gunpowder and a lit fuse. I've always thought of Creepers as these bizarre constructs rather than living things.

After the jump, an unrelated monster!

Storyboard Results Round 3

All right, here we go: the last of the storyboards. Again, Mass Effect 3 has been a major distraction, this time because of the multiplayer mode. I enjoy just about everything about that game except the ending...
You'll notice that the last several pages of storyboards are just flat tones; at the time, due to some rather heavy time constraints, I had to aim for speed at the cost of rendering any shadows and highlights. I'm all right with that. I may yet go back and add those extra details I had to leave out.

As before, the rest of the pages after the jump.

Storyboard Results Round 2

Mass Effect 3 delayed a post again. I'd make a ranting aside about the ending, but that's already been done several thousand times elsewhere. Enough to say that it was bad, and Bioware made some very poor decisions at some point in development that were contrary to what they had said previously.

Now on to the second round of storyboards! As always, there are some I am happier with than others.

The rest after the jump.

Storyboard Results Round 1

Delays, delays. I got Mass Effect 3, it's been taking up incredible amounts of my time. Occasionally I pry myself away to do other things, like eat or sleep or make a blog post. So here's the first chunk of those storyboards I did, now that I'm not completely occupied by the game. Some of these panels I'm happier with than others, but time restraints called for speed at the time. The notes weren't added again for much the same reason.

The rest after the cut.

18-35

Got wrapped up in drawing these for a while and not posting anything, so the rest of the storyboard roughs are after the jump. The finals are done, too, (save for a few that were left as flat tones due to time concerns) but I'll save those for tomorrow.

Even More Storyboards

Rough boards, pages 14-18, after the jump.

More Storyboards

Storyboard pages 8-13 after the jump.

Storyboards!

I've volunteered to do some storyboards for a SCAD friend of mine for a short film, and I've been given the go-ahead to post the work I'm doing here.

R&C: A4O

Anyone who knows me fairly well knows that I love Ratchet and Clank. I started playing the series with the very first game on PS2, and I’ve played very nearly every title since—only the titles that were farmed out to another developer have passed me by. In fact, Insomniac inspired me to strive to work in game development in the first place and heavily influenced my choice when the most recent generation of gaming consoles first came out. When Ratchet and Clank: All 4 One was released, of course I was going to buy it.

That’s not to say I went in blind to the game. I’d known for some time it was going to be a different experience from the usual R&C fare, but that didn’t and still doesn’t bother me.

So how does All 4 One rate?

Locust Test Palettes

Haven't decided on any particular features yet, so the quick sketch here doesn't have any included. Pretty sure all this was done in an hour or less, but I've got a bad habit of not timing myself when I draw.

Testing out different options for colors and patterns here. I think I'm leaning toward the green one, at least for the palette. Then I just need to decide on the facial features and experiment with the thing a little, throw in some body armor, and I'll have myself a finalized Locust redesign. Phew.

Locust Facial Detail

Feeling much better today! So, I worked on putting some of the promised extra features to the Locust redesign head.

Not sure which features I like the most, so I'll put it up to a vote as to which one (or combination) seems best-suited. Next up on the slate: Locust color palettes.

Character Interlude

I've been feeling subtly awful all day, so while my body gets back to normal, have this quick character bust I drew yesterday. Just line and some flat colors.

The Gears Locust redesigns are in fact going somewhere, but I've felt too ill and off-balance today to do any drawing. I've already slapped this on Facebook, so I may as well put it here as well for a preview of things to come.

It's more of a base for further experimentation with features than it is an exact final concept, and I'm not certain on the color scheme yet (another thing I'll be playing with once I'm feeling better). For now, this is the progress.

Update Time

My word, a post? Amazing.

First up, since it's been getting neglected, Gears redesign scribbles:

Went with light-on-dark to trick my recent almost-slump into un-slumping. It seems to have worked. Started off with an almost dinosaur look, but it wasn't quite alien enough. Pushed forward to the six-legged one, which I rather like. Think I'll be sticking with that as a base. Next time on these I'll have some more finished ideas. Less rough.

And here's the next in those Pokemon desktops.

Review #1

All right, so this is a bit out of the usual, but seeing as how Sci-Fi has a new show, I thought I'd take a crack at reviewing it as I'm watching. Be warned, this is going to be scatterbrained, since I'll be writing as I watch. So: Lost Girl. How is it?

Bit of a stereotypical start with "creeper at bar spiking drinks." We've got a girl with supernatural powers, and some interesting detectives. And more stereotypes with "woman using sex as a weapon." It hasn't been the strongest start. But let's keep giving it a chance, we're only a few minutes into the premiere.

So we continue. Another ten minutes in and... Well, to be honest, I'm still not impressed. At least when the two girls are on screen, sadly enough. The younger of the two girls has the potential to be fun and interesting, but her writing starts to grate a bit. You know, on second thought, it's not actually the younger character that's irritating. It's the way that the main character, Bo, has virtually no character at all twenty minutes into the episode. The secondary girl is resourceful and has a personality. The detectives are competent, and they're both interesting.

More possibly interesting characters are introduced, and one of them has a fantastic voice. The younger girl gets more interesting: she speaks Russian! I believe. Aaand then we get a scene with the main character naked. Big reveal time: the supernatural stuff is all Fae. Thankfully, the scene doesn't last long and we're back to some of the more interesting characters. However, one of them appears to have "evil for the sake of evil" writing. We get some exposition dump from the apparently human doctor: the writers have apparently added in the Light/Dark factions of Fae for some conflict, so that's at least nice to see.

The secondary female lead continues to be resourceful. There's that to combat the boring of the main character. The token evil occasionally gets some chuckle-worthy lines, but she's still very... token. Several of the characters are rather bland due to lazy writing so far, and everyone is more interesting than Bo.

This show seems to be more and more about token moments of the main character in sexy situations. She's a succubus, though, so... I'm pretty much exactly right, that's what the show's about when she's involved most of the time. In other news, I continue to like the secondary female lead.

Some of the other fae--very few of which I've heard of in any mythology I've read, but maybe they're saving the good stuff for less temporary characters--are interesting as monsters. The conflict right now is still a tad weak since the main character is rather bland. Truly, Bo is a dull character. A bit of a Mary Sue.

All right, show's over. Time for more collected thoughts. What did I think of Lost Girl?

It seems to have potential, but only if the writing improves. I can see loads of reference to mythology, but the particular choice of the main character being a succubus (and I may be mistaken, but isn't that a demon and not a fae?) is incredibly transparent as being there entirely for sex appeal and almost nothing else. Bo is a dull character without many perceptible flaws, and any humor the character is assigned falls flat. The secondary female lead (Kenzi, apparently) is actually much more interesting simply because she has a personality and little details that come up in her dialogue without being shoved in your face with exposition dump. It feels more like the show should actually be following her, and not Bo. In fact almost all the side characters are much more interesting, with the exception of the villain, who is nearly as blandly written as Bo despite a few decent jokes here and there.

Does it have the possibility to be good? Certainly. Is it probably just going to hinge on sex appeal rather than good writing? Probably. If you want a better Sci-Fi series about paranormal detective work, just watch Warehouse 13. But I'll cut Lost Girl some slack, since this is just the first episode. Even if it isn't truly a new show. I'll check out a few more episodes if I remember.

I swear I'll get back to the GoW redesigns

Hey, remember those Pokemon desktops I said I still had a bunch more of to do? I'll bet you thought I forgot about those!

Well, you'd be right. I did. But then I remembered. So here's the next one from the list.

(I'll get back to the Gears soon, I promise. I just... Skyrim.)