Ivy - SoulCalibur 5

Apparently the creators of SoulCalibur, once they had finished they stood back and had a look at what they had done and thought "Ok yeah, maybe we went overboard with the boobs."
A couple critics have complained about her crazy oversexed dominatrix look. But man, if you put her in with the rest of the SoulCalibur crew she's pretty normal looking. They really went to town with the costumes in that game. The concept artists come from the "Explosion of fantasy armour yard sale" school of thought. I've been putting off this series for just that reason. There's so much going on on those characters it's mental.
Whenever I played that game I played as link, who looks super simple in comparison to the other characters. My strategy was just to spam the bomb button and defeat everyone with explosives. Don't take soul swords to a bomb fight, that's my only advice. That and if you want to impress a girl, go and walk around like voldo.

Christie - Dead Or Alive 5

Christie from DoA5. I wondered if her day job was to be some sort of race car mascot or something. I went pouring through the wiki to find evidence of this but apparently she's just your run of the mill 26 year old cold blooded assassin.
Last night we went out with a telescope and had a perv at the stars. We as in Matt, Becky, & I. Saturns rings and Jupiters moons were particularly exciting. Couple shooting stats as well. We went out to Wenderholm and went around the park fence that was closed off. We trooped down far enough that there was no light pollution getting in the way and set up shop. Occasionally a car would wind down the hills that surrounded us and would pull up to our abandoned vehicle, then take off again. We'd stand frozen in the pitch black and whisper conspiratorially about what they wanted. Drugs? Swingers? Generic Ruffians? Who knew! I tried taking some photos. Generally just ended up blinding everyone. Matt took a selfie with Jupiter.

Ayane - Dead Or Alive 5

I almost went with her more classic outfit, the one with the gigantic bow that no one ever takes advantage of. But I decided her DOA5 ninja outfit was pretty cool, so I decided to keep it current. It could be worse. she could be a Funky DJ.

Kasumi 8Bit - Video & Tutorial

Kasumi's the poster girl of Dead or Alive, so I figured she'd make a good figure to do for my video tutorial that I've whipped up. I've been thinking about doing it for a while now, but a couple nudges have pushed me over the brink. I have to warn you though, there's swearing. I got a whole bunch of swears on special the other day, so I'm trying to use them all before their sell by date goes off.

For everyone who wants a more step by step guide devoid of extrenious frames I've broken the video down below. I'd personally fall into this category. I never watch videos like the one I just made. I'm part of the problem, I know. To set up photoshop you should check out the post I've already done on the subject. Now that we have that out of the way.

I once said you should start with a circle and then make it awesome. That advice still holds true except you start with a skin coloured square instead. This helps me figure out the proportions of the rest of the figure. I have Metroid there to taunt me with how awesome she looks, and also to keep me on track with proportions and stylisation. My canvas at this point is 100x100 pixels.



I have the whole figure drawn out the way she's gonna be, similiar to how you'd see see them set up in one of those useless "How to Draw" books that you always get out but never seem to be imbued with the sort of talent you thought they'd give you.



I then start to paint over the figure with the costume. After this stage she might look a bit fugly so I'll have to muck around with the pose to make the costume work and not turn into a mush of pixels.



Zoom out often to make sure she's looking alright. If she doesn't, nuke 'em.

Getting her bowl cut on. Once I got all the base colour down I go ahead and do shading. I try and keep my girls consistent with the light source coming from the right. I have on occasion taken creative liberties to define limbs from one another, it's one of the little tricks you need to use when you're not working with a black outline.

My final stage is doing some shading. I turn the opacity of my brush down to something like 10% and then just shade in the edges of my pre existing shadows, Some bits need it, some don't. I don't usually shade the face, but legs and things have softer roundy bits so those generally get given a slight gradient.

Now you're done! You're amazing! You win the gym badge! Now you'l definitely be liked by everyone!

Cloudbuilt 8bit Girl & BroForce

Cloudbuilt is an upcoming 3D platformer that looks pretty rad. It's sketchy style and character design feels really unique and worth giving some attention to. Maybe go check it out. I don't know what the chicks name is, and the game isn't really out yet. So I hope I'm not jumping the gun on this one. I have a couple indy/greenlight games on my list lurking in the wings but are holding off till they become more reality than whimsy.
Edit: According to Martin Löwgren the games CEO, her names Demi. That's cool.

A greenlight game that I really had to jump on was Broforce. It's online features and level builder and stuff are currently in Beta, but it's regular campaign is ready to go kick your ass right now.

This game is good old fashioned fun, and has genuinely hilarious unscripted moments. It's a game about bros saving bros and liberating the world by killing terrorists. It uses 80s and 90s goofy action movie heroes to get the job done. I didn't expect it to catch me, but getting different heroes genuinely got me excited. Getting Neo to turn back bullets, Macgyver to lure people into a trap and Bruce Willis as himself to kill people are all sights to behold, and subtly change up your playstyle on the fly.

The boss fights are brutally hard, but restarting the level is super fast and breezy. No faffing about, just a quick screen telling you that dropping gas tanks and half a dozen bomb vested terrorists on yourself wasn't a great idea, then kicking you back out into the wild as Blade to try it again.

The entire environment is destructable, and levels quickly get flattened at an insane pace. Being able to dig your way along the level is also a good way to stealth your way to the end. The game gives you a lot of options, and there are enough moving parts to make it hectic and alive. I can only imagine how mental it is with four players all on the one screen.

You can use your xbox controller or whatever plugged into your PC and it works fine. The game even runs fine on fairly shit laptops as well so it may be worth a look. You can play the online Brototype if you're not feeling in the mood to shell out 15 bucks, but I think it's totally worth supporting this sort of awesome.

Quiet, Silent Sniper - 8Bit

Requested by +Ben Wilson. No idea why. I remember the art for her being leaked a year ago or so. People hit the fan about it. Something about it being impractical and too overtly sexual. Which it is. But I don't see anyone but my parents generation complain about this sort of thing when it comes to other forms of media.
Apparently her look is to bolster figurine sales and cosplays, and as we all know, not no sex sells.
Although as far as sexualisation goes, her face is quite reserved in that department. They haven't gone crazy with her facial features and she looks quite drawn and tired, and i'd go so far as to say she doesn't look as attractive as her real life counterpart, Stefanie Joosten. If she put a jacket on once in a while people would probably put her in the believable column of heroines.

Lightning - Final Fantasy 8Bit

I have a bunch lined up, But I thought I better let Lightning cut in line, because of Lightning Returns. I decided to go with her outfit from Final Fantasy XIII, because so far it feels more iconic than her crazy shoulder armour black leather thing she has going now.

I just got an Nexus 4 as well! Exciting times. I was going to write a post about what it's like to get into smartphones long after everyone else has, but just never got around to it with my iPhone. Lets put it this way, before my iPhone, when I went to the toilet I didn't take very long. It has now been turned into "Hunt for Apps while no one can harm you in this locked room" time.
I've never been a big fan of Apple stuff. I mean, I have an iPad, but it's integral to my job so shoosh. I will however defend iPod shuffles. Those little things were bitching and got me through many an arduous journey to Uni.
I got an iPhone 4 on the cheap though, so I couldn't pass it up. It lags horribly. Even on Flappy Birds. G+ Hangouts also was a butthole, which was unfortunate since I use it quite a bit.
Then came the Nexus 4 two weeks ago or so. Man it felt good. Being able to have files to browse!? Torrenting!? What is this sorcery? I don't need a big clunky iTunes like product to be able to do things on my phone? I can just copy paste anything I want? The freedom! The double widget section and installed apps pages? Well yeah those are a bit odd to be honest but whatever.
Android has shown us that 2014 isn't like 1984, and if you're even a little bit tech savvy you're letting yourself down if you have an iPhone. Give it to your mum. I probably will.

Wii Fit Trainer 8Bit

Wii Fit Trainer, AKA, Smurfette on Crossfit day.
After I posted the running Lara croft a couple people requested her. I guess it's cause they look pretty similiar with the blue tank top. That and they were hoping for some saucy workout animation or something. Might be fun I guess.
I didn't post any 8bit last week. It wasn't because I wasn't drawing or living or anything. I probably did more 8bit stuff last week than I have ever done in a week. Turns out people think I'm cool enough to hire to do concept art stuff. In fact the Lara animation was a proof of my own ability, for both me and them, since I have never animated in this style before. So that's kind of exciting. Hopefully more work comes rolling my way.
I originally started doing this stuff because it was a way of being creative without using up a whole ton of my time. Kind of ironic how things turn out. (Woah, look at him go and using 'ironic' without fear of some dick saying "Hey do you even know what ironic means?")