Hinako, Malin, Momoko, Luise - King Of Fighters

I really dig this one, Hinako Max. She's the sumo wrestling chick, and one of the only schoolgirls who doesn't seem to do the who sailor outfit thing. She appeared in 2000.

 From KOF: Maximum Impact. Luise Meyrink. She's based on a butterfly or something, I don't care.

 This is Malin. I had difficulty drawing her since her concept art has her posed in a weird position where her arms cover pretty much every detail. She holds knives and stuff but I left them out. Fortunatly there are still the sprite animations to work off, also a pretty decent cosplay.

Momoko worried me quite a bit. My 8bit girls are kind of subtly sexualised I think, the whole child bearing hips thing. But Momoko is a little kid (Edit: Oh, I've just been informed by Matthew Venuti that she is in fact just a really short High schooler). I didn't know whether I should grow her up to match the rest or to keep her young. I ended up drawing her current look, but I'm not sure about the whole thing. I may go back later and do a grown up version.
Man, I've been really pumping the Soundcloud recently. Tourist has pretty much revolutionized my listening habits. But today I've been listening to a Weeked remix of Electric Guest's song "The Bait". If you like what you hear check out Weeked and totally Google Electric Guest's other song or check out their Youtube channel. "This Head I Hold" is the next song on the list to check out.

Cortana - Halo

We take another short break to go concentrate on what I think is the leading lady of the Xbox. She's been around since the beginning. Cortana represents Xbox better than any other girl on the console. Lara Croft is the poster girl of Playstation I think, as that's her origin.
So I thought it was only fitting that now that the XBONE is out we should celebrate in style. That and Becky was getting shitty about me bitching about a particularly plain character I don't want to draw for the King Of Fighters Series and said I should draw Cortana instead because she's "Actually relevant."
Also I decided to animate her a little bit.

Angel Vice - King of Fighters

Angel

Vice

So it turns out my list of girls from KoF wasn't as extensive as I had thought. So I've actually got a whole pile to get through now. Sigh. I knew it looked to easy.
In other news one of my teeth decided it couldn't handle life anymore and a piece snuck away with some pizza. It's on first molar on the bottom left hand side, just before you get to your canines. an inside chunk is gone. The tooth is mostly made out of filling anyways. I'm pretty sure last time I went not that long ago the dentist pretty much said "It's just a crappy shell, don't get to attached to it because it's not that attached to you."
The tooth itself feels fine, however the sharp bits of filling are scraping away at the side of my tongue and I've had this weird lisp where I don't open my mouth very wide all day as a slight counter measure.
I'm glad I did a tax return recently or I'd probably have to rent out my services as a tooth ruiner to the dentist to create him some new patients. Just running around punching teeth in or offering joggers glass bottles to drink from.

8bit Ramona Flowers

A brief hiatus from the game girls. I'm not including her in the list, but she probably should be, since she's part of a comic which illustrates games and their players so well. She originally held her giant hammer. But I just couldn't make it look good. So I made it look gone instead.

Elisabeth, Hotaru, Kula - King of Fighters XIII

Elisabeth Brantctorche

Hotaru Futaba

Kula Diamond

One more post to go and we'll be all wrapped up with King of Fighters. I got some feedback saying that no one knows these characters so it's not that interesting. That's very true. But I like to think that somewhere out there some big fan that always says that their particular series doesn't get enough love is getting a kick out of this. Also there are a lot of fighter games, and they seriously outweigh any other game in terms of playable females.
I like to also think we're all pixel art fans here, so at least an appreciation of the art can be squeezed out of you.

BF4 Commander Mode

So the Battlefield 4 Commander App for the iPad (& soon for Android, much to their ire. Just because you think you're The Shit doesn't mean you'l be treated with the precedence of The Shit.) came out on the 16th or something ridiculious. It's not meant to come out till the 19th, so I don't know what happened there. Either way it was good for me. I had a busy weekend of birthdays, BBQs, and helping my girlfriend and her new flat mates get moved in. So I had no chance at all to jump online and get my rank up.

Fortunatly though the app came out! So I managed to grind away a rank and a half at the beach and church. Ha ha.

You can't play as the commander until you're rank 10, even so this won't prepare you enough for what you're going to get dropped into. You'l understand the layouts of the maps which help with supply drops but the actual controls of Commander aren't immediately apparent. Full size the guide to give yourself a quick run down.

When you get into playing you can either just hit the "Play Commander" button which will drop you into a game or open the battlelog and hand pick the server you want to join. I found that just hitting "Play Commander" would annoyingly drop me into empty games, which I wasn't down with, so I tend to go through Battlelog, which opens up like so:

Then when you hit "command" it sends you back to the Commander app.



You can pan around and zoom in and out to help you get more control. I found that if I zoomed in I'd get to involved in the little drama of the triangles moving around, and they'd get undue attention from my UAV's when the enemy would be completely destroying on of the other control points.
You can't see it in this screenshot but the top left area is the chat box and the top right is the kill announcement thingy.
The greatest unused feature is the bottom right, where you can VOIP straight to your squads. You can't use the regular chatbox so this is your main way of talking to your troops. I suspect it's main use will be for telling oblivious squad leaders how to accept Commander commands.
If you don't know, hold Q to bring up your com-rose thing, and at the top should be "accept order" you'l get way more points for doing things and your commander won't feel like he's just spectating a game of Geometry Wars.

The endgame menus are exactly what you would expect from the PC version.

My only concerns with the Commander Mode (which is mostly due to lack of experience) is who can hear me when I use VOIP. Is it just the selected Squad Leader? The whole squad? The whole team? I'm sure I have more concerns, but that one will do for now.

Oh also I wanna know if I can be a commander on XBONE servers even though I have a PC account. That'd be nice, I would really dig playing with my less refined friends.

King & Bonne Jenet - King of Fighters

Bonne Jenet is the purple one on top and King is the waiter thing at the bottom. Damn it. I just realised I haven't done the skull on Bonnes dress. I'll have to do it tomorrow.
King originated on Art of Fighting as the only female character. Not only that but she actively hides her ladiness as the original art of her goes to show. Art of Fighting was made for the Neo Geo a console released in 1990 by SNK, the team that also created King of Fighters. The console discontinued in '97.
Crazily enough this was the console that Metal Slug debuted on. If you don't play it and love it, you'd at least recognize it if you've ever been to an arcade at the movies. Apparently the poor Neo Geo couldn't keep up with all the other consoles that were starting to pump out 3D games and so instead started concentrating on creating really nice looking pixely goodness. I'm starting to like SNK the more I learn about them.

Mature & Yuri Sakazaki - King of Fighters XIII

I was going to buy King of Fighters on Steam as part of my research into the characters. But I really couldn't justify 20 bucks on another Fighter. I already dropped money on Skullgirls and I'm never going to play it while Battlefield 4 is something that exists. Although with that said, the crashes are getting a bit lame. I'm hoping that they'l release a client patch along with the PS4 launch. That's this week right? Who cares. It's like getting excited for an overpriced graphics card to be released. Imagine that. If there was the same hype every time AMD released a card. I guess in a weird sort of way we are.
Anyway, Mature is the one at the top. She wears a business suit all the time to show how much like her name she is.
Yuri Sakazaki is the purple tights wearing one. She also rocks the chucks pretty hard. Her blood type is A, as if that's ever mattered in the history of mattering. It's always strange what sort of details they decide to flesh out in these characters. Does anyone know Nathan Drakes blood type? He spends enough time oozing it out.

Leona Heidern - King Of Fighters XIII

Leona Heidern down. Originated in 1996 in King Of Fighters '96. Her fluffy bunch of hair was a real bitch to do.
The list is looking pretty horrific at the moment. League of Legends was almost a page by itself. I'm thinking that even if I don't do everyone, the list in and of itself is pretty impressive. I haven't found anything else quite like it on the net so far.

Athena - King Of Fighters XIII

Originally from the 1986 Commodore 64 game Athena & then Psycho Soldier, Athena has been a mainstay in the King Of Fighters beat 'em up. I Drew her in her King Of Fighters XII regular outfit because it matched quite closely her Psycho Soldier get up. I didn't really get how this sailor moon schoolgirl type thing had so much of a legacy. To be honest, her he-man type sword, shield, bikini and sandals thing made more sense. As an origin point it told me more about her as a character (Since I'm unfamiliar with her story) than the schoolgirl thing did.

If you carry round a sword and wear almost nothing that tells me you're some kind of Amazon barbarian thing. But if you are jumping in midair with crossed eyes it tells me you look like a retard. I like the catch phrase on the box "Who Am I?" "I'm ATHENA - Heroine with miracle power. Come And Join with me for Fantastic Adventure!"
I also completely ignored the art of the western version of Psycho Soldier, since it didn't match up with the in game sprites one bit. It's like they heard a vague description and just extrapolated from there, throwing in their Hair Metal & weird 80s space fantasy sensibilities just because they can.

5000 Dollar Image

So I'm sure if you're in New Zealand and looked at the news at least once this week You'd have heard of the Roast Busters and the frustration of the public over polices inaction. You'd tend to pity the plight the cops have with their lack of evidence to convict. I mean, only four girls have come forward about the Roast Busters to the police. It must be tough having no leads to follow. Apparently having a policemans son as a perpetrator deep cover agent in the Roast Busters must make things awfully confusing as to where allegencies lie.
Mum was telling me last night of one of our far distant relatives being in the police force. Her daughter accidentally ran over an old lady on the footpath but no charges or anything came up, much to the disgust of the rest of the family.
Anyway, some blogger, frustrated by the situation took matters into his own hands and opened up Photoshop and whipped up a fake ad for the police. Unfortunatly he got threatened by the police with a 5000 dollar fine and 6 months in prison, you could kick someones teeth in on a Friday night and get less time than that. The law that they invoked is pretty much the real world version of "You'l get banned for pretending to be an admin or moderator."
While the image is down it has managed to find its way into other image hosting places. Apparently the police haven't heard of the Barbara Streisand effect.
Their case is flimsy at best. I think after looking at the ad you wouldn't say it was done in "a manner likely to lead a person to believe that the activity is endorsed or authorised by the Police or any part of the Police." as the ad itself is so outrageously out there. It's not exactly sly or subtle or anything. You'd have to be brain dead to think it was legitimate.
"without reasonable excuse" I think he has a fairly reasonable excuse, it's not exactly out of the blue or anything. Ha, get it? Out of the blue? Heh... Heh-Ok whatever screw you guys.

Mirror's Edge 8Bit Girls

Carrying on from yesterdays Metroid we have Faith & Celeste. I know I bang on about Mirror's Edge a lot, but I honestly let the people decide who I'd draw next. This paragraph is going for the "Most spammed with Links" award.
How much more can I say about Mirror's Edge really? A female lead that actually makes sense in the context, not just a reskinned man in an attempt to be PC or some bullshit.
I also worry about the Prequel. A lot of people bitched about the story line in the original. People who didn't play it presumed that you just deliver bags. And people who did play it were sometimes removed from the character due to not knowing whether she was a good guy or not, even while acknowledging the 1984 references of the universe. In a world where Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, NSA & Five Eyes exists the Mirror's Edge story becomes more and more relevant. I just hope they don't throw out the baby with the bath water, if you know where I'm coming from.
Once again, drop me a line pretty much anywhere for which character you want to see done next!

8Bit Metroid

You can now get this as a print!

So I'm undertaking a pretty large project. It seemed like a natural progression of what I've been doing anyway. But basically I want to draw an 8bit version of every notable video game heroine out there. I've already done all the Tekken girls, and recently did Hannah from BF4. I feel a little funny about doing pixel versions of characters that are already pixelated, but I figure if I adapt them to my style then it shouldn't feel like I'm covering old ground to much. Also, I'm putting this out there, the original mega man looks super gumby and I'm over all the remixes people are doing of him. Although if they're using it as just a jumping off point that's totally fine. I started out by ripping off Swords and Sworcery after all. Unfortunatly one pixel wide legs just don't do it for me.

I'm now moving on to Metroid! Do you guys remember back in the day when Samus wasn't a fetish toy and just an androgynous robot that can roll up into a ball. I intentionally avoided doing her out of her suit. We have enough scantily clad woman in the future line up, and besides, her suit is super challenging to draw and why pass up a chance like that!

If you have a request on who I should draw next drop a comment!

Battlefield 4 Single Player Campaign

The screenshots I've taken aren't in any particular order, but may contain spoilers for people who are about that sort of thing. If you wanted to play the game and have a couple of surprises for the sorts of locations you'l be visiting then maybe you should skip this post.

I only took screenshots of in game moments, none of the prerendered nonsense. My computer had everything turned up to high, and had a great smooth framerate. I tweaked a couple of the settings up to ultra, but be aware that the game probably looks a hell of a lot better on some other peoples machines.

Near the end of the game my frame rate dropped down horribly and I couldn't figure out what was wrong. I turned the anti aliasing off to try and resuscitate it but to no avail. Later on that night I realised I had accidentally been recording video on Fraps rather than taking screen caps.

One thing they didn't show you on the trailers of the boat splitting in half was the floating crucifix dead guy.

I didn't know what the voice actor of Hannah looked like till I did this post. But they did a good job. They even got Jessika Van's freckles in the same places.

This shot almost looks like a piece of concept art.

I think Irish is a bit of a spaz. He just suddenly has a grudge on Hannah for absolutely no reason other than the fact she didn't bleed her entire life story to him immediately. He consistently disobeys orders then has the nerve to later turn to her and go "Trust is earned!" If he was on my squad he would have lost my trust long ago the way he kept being a sissy.

Irish is totally a hacker. If he wasn't a shitty shot to make up for it I'd say someone should ban him.

I appreciate the game was set in China. Running around a metropolis and lush back country is far better on the eyes than dusty "youknowwho-astan". Shooting Chinese and running away from tanks with modern tech feels a lot more sporting than shooting goat herders in a country I'm not even sure I'm playing the good guys in.
Although even in this one I'm not sure we were the good guys. I'm pretty sure we shot first. Twice.

Floating Crucifix Dead Guy made a return appearance later on in the game. He seems to like floating around near boats.

The game is undoubtedly riddled with easter eggs. I'm damn sure Hank & Jedd do some voice work in there. I haven't had a proper look at the credits to confirm this though. But they play two random grunts who tell you where to go and get some food.
Also at one point Dice references itself when talking about some grappling hooks being really good and made in Sweden.

A character from Battlefield 3 totally makes a return appearance. I played the campaign for BF3 not to long ago and I already had totally forgotten about this guy, but it's cool to know that everything is in the same universe.

Everyone freaking out over the amount of bloom they pour into this game. It really is beautiful though. It gives the series a trademark look. I'm excited to see similar ideas used in Mirror's Edge 2.

Up up and awaaaaay to the multiplayer! I also did a little review of Commander Mode here.