Headache

Headache tonight. Have some little practice doodles of some Pokemon I've done in anticipation of this year's Desert Bus.

And a close-up of the Bulbasaur, which has turned out to be my favorite of the doodles.

See you on Thursday or Friday.

Busy. Again.

Bit busy tonight, but:

Another possible pen-and-paper RPG superhero character. Urgh. So many things to fix. But it's a start.

Almost maybe better

Perhaps if I don't mention how my health is doing, it won't try to derail my efforts of recovering from being sick tomorrow. Again.

Have a sketchy Mutants and Masterminds game character for now, this sinus/respiratory thing has had me knocked on my butt all week.

Dishonbored

While I appreciate that there is, in fact, more of a challenge in playing Dishonored while trying to leave as many people alive as possible, I've also been painfully aware of how incredibly dull it is. There are very few options for the non-lethal player, and I have to look at all the lethal options and think, "Wow, that sounds like an awful lot of fun. Too bad I can't use that." Despite the fact that the option that will land you the better ending is more or less shoved in your face every mission and loading screen, it seems as if the developers want you to use the lethal options instead, because they sound interesting. I don't think one play option's fun should be invalidated by its challenge.

Buh.

Early shift tomorrow, so this is going to be as quick a post as I can manage.

Some more progress on this:

 


A scribble 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. 

Yes, I still exist

Wow, so, been a while, huh? Got into a slump and then got depressed and had a little bit of a breakdown before recovering from that, and now I'm feeling more inspired and confident. Now if I can just keep Minecraft from burning through all of my time while I'm not at work, I'll be able to get things done.

So it came up some time ago in a conversation with a friend of mine that I really, really dislike designs in the Gears of War series. I decided, I said, that when I got some time I would sit down and put my money where my mouth was, in a manner of speaking, and do some redesigns. I was also spurred to try this out by the excellent redesigns of the Justice League, Batman, and Legion of Doom by Aaron Diaz. You should really take a look at those if you haven't yet, by the way.

While I won't be going so in-depth as to rewrite character histories, I do want to find a better, more distinct look for a few things in Gears, though. And let's get this out of the way, too: I've only played a portion of the second game. And I did have fun with what I played, even if the writing had about as much subtlety as a house on fire. All that said, I've done a little bit of reading on the wiki to get a better grasp on the Gears creatures, characters, and conflict.

So to kick things off, I thought I'd start with the basic Locust Grunt. Apparently, they're supposed to be reptilian. I never knew this until I read it. I never even guessed. I guess the Locust are threatening by... being large and ugly? but then again so are the main characters, and both groups have the same basic stumpy, burly look to them. The Locust really don't look that inhuman, all told. Especially the Queen. Someone please explain that one to me.

Since they're supposedly reptilian, I thought I'd push that angle a little more:

It's all pretty quick, but there are some basic ideas. All in all maybe 30 minutes to an hour, I really need to remember to keep track of time when I'm drawing. Based mostly in lizards and lastly in pit vipers. I want to get a good idea of a face and skull before I get into how the body's going to look, so these are really just the start of the busts for the Locust.

So, Team Fortress 2...

I've been playing loads of Team Fortress 2 lately with some friends, and one of them doodled a self-portrait of herself as her most-used class. Which of course spurred me to do something similar. So here's a scribbly little self-portrait of me as a Demo(wo)man.

It's quite the addictive game. I find myself ignoring my other games to just play one round. Or maybe two. Three if they were quick... It's fun, the classes are balanced, and the character design is impeccable. But at this point, everyone with internet access knows all that, so if you'll excuse me, I'm off to demolish some sentries.