Juliet Starling - Lollipop Chainsaw

Lollipop Chainsaw came out in 2012. A lot of people responded with "wtf is this?"

This was the character who really kick started Jessica Nigri's cosplay career (Cool Gender-bend Vagita by the way!). When she cosplayed as Julia at PAX East 2012 she got banned for being far to uh.. How do you say it? Non-PG? It kicked off a big debate about what can and can't be worn at gaming conventions. I guess it's about keeping everything child friendly. A game convention isn't a titty bar after all. The game itself got an M (17+) for partial nudity and sexual themes as well as the usual plethora of graphic violence and gore (which aren't really things you can portray the same way with a cosplay.)

The game itself was a collaboration between Goichi Suda & James Gunn, a dude who's less involved with games and more involved with writing movies. You might know him for Super which he wrote and directed. If you haven't seen super you should. It's a bit like if Juno and Kick Ass had a baby. Huh, I just remembered it has Ellen Page in it. Well anyway, if you don't know super, in a couple months you'l have his Guardians of the Galaxy crammed down your throat by every bus stop, commercial break & Pepsi can.

Clara Lille - Watch Dogs 8Bit

Not sure if Clara is awesome enough to go into the pantheon but I've done her anyway. I guess we'll find out in a couple years or so when this series is finished whether or not she was a character worth remembering in the history of games. I haven't played the game yet so all I have to go on is all the White Knight journalism or whatever. Apparently she is female and is involved in tropes. She also wears a Call Of Duty Ghosts Dedsec shirt.

As for the rest of the game it seems it's aight. Apart from Multiplayer. But who really rushed out to get the game for that?

Robo Mech

So while on the G+ Pixel Art Community, about the only place online I find time to haunt, someone chucked out a link to IRKALLA. The test videos made me veritably jizz at how cool the artwork was, so I had to go and do my own mech as a homage. Robots are something I draw a lot. They're my go too doodle when I'm sick of curvy chick drawings. They haven't leaked into my digital art all that much however, purely because of how chaoticely drawn they are. I do super simplistic ones for Snow and that's about it.

Anyway, go google Irkalla and maybe follow them till there is a crystallised dense product for you to enjoy.

P.s. I think the sketch looked better than the end product.

Snow: Episode 45

Previous - First - Next

This weekend has been a mighty productive one. A bunch of pixel girls and finished off an episode of Snow I drew about this time last year. Next week I'll celebrate by not partaking in any sort of productivity!

I got a G510s Logitech Keyboard today. It's pretty fancy, with 18 function keys and an LCD HUD thingy. You can load apps into it which is nifty. I loaded up the Battlefield 4 stat display and stared at it for a bit and then decided that it was in no way helpful and definitely wouldn't give me "the edge in combat". However I imagine these function keys would really come in useful if I ever decided to get into MUDs again.
I started playing an MMO on my Nexus 4 the other day "The Infinite Black". I like the mechanics for moving around, and I reckon that with enough tweaking it's got a system that would really enhance a role playing enforced MUD. I have a feeling I know what I want in an RPG MUD type game, I just don't know the search terms to use. All I ever find is MUD clients, and that's just not it. It's antiquated to use cardinal directions manually typed in to move around, but a fully graphic game throws out the role playing baby with the bath water.
Something like Illarion perhaps. But not clunky.

Trip - Enslaved:Odyssey to the West 8Bit

So I never played this game. I wanted to! It's premise interested me a lot. However I wasn't in a "financial situation" at the time. All finances were non existent. My situation was independent of the concept of what a finance could possibly be. I was broke. Or Gigarich as Telecom would say.

Also the game had a very "Playstation" look about it that wasn't appealing at all, although now I'd be more willing to give it a go.

The game is loosely based off "Journey to the West", a folklore infused story of real events. Trip would represent the monk from the original story "Tripitaka" or "a whole bunch of other names".

Dragonball Z also riffs off the story, Goku being based off the Monkey King.

Pokemon does its own shout out as well in the form of Infernape and Emboar. Also there are about as many Animes referencing it as there are western movies misquoting the bible.

Bayonetta 8bit

Bayonetta was released in late 2009 by Platinum Studios, a bunch of ex-Capcom Clover Studio guys who were behind the critically acclaimed Ōkami. In Japan she was marketed with her butt, while in the rest of the world she was sold on the fact she has guns for high heels. Her entire character was almost reworked to appeal to a western audience but never amounted to anything. The westernised outfits seem very medieval almost? I guess they went and saw that we have a massive stiffy for norse mythology or something.

Snow: Episode 44

Previous - First - Next

We've been doing more research into how we can popularize the comic more and we've struck upon a little TV show that not many people have seen but I think it uses little tricks that we can cash in on in a proper fashion. The show is called "Game of Thrones", and while it hasn't been very popular it has had a book spin off which follows the show quite closely. It also talks about stuff that doesn't happen in the show, but since it really isn't canon I tend to ignore anything that comes out the fanfic.

But one plot thingy they use is killing off the main characters. So I'll be posting a poll and everyone will get to choose their favourite character, Red hair guy (Hero), Purple hair guy (Aaron), the robot, or the token female (Elissa). Also if you could write in with your reasons for why you're so attached to any particular character it will become even more gratifying for us when we kill them off. If you choose either one of the guys I can have 'em dead by the next episode I think. All sorts of things can go wrong with jumping off a building. I'm sure +Matthew Rust won't mind having to write less dialogue for either of 'em.

Also we'll have more nudity and weird sex stuff. Which will be worrying if everyone likes the chick the most, because that just leaves a couple guys and a robot.

Scratch that. We might just go for the Joss Whedon/Firefly ending, and just kill off the coolest character so people go "Man, I wish they'd make more Snow, it only ran for one book, oh wait, they killed ____, it wouldn't be the same, never mind."

Vinyl Goddess from Mars

Vinyl Goddess from Mars started life as Jill of the Jungle 2. Except it stunk out loud. Megagames sold it on to Union Logic, who reskinned it and sold it as an original IP. Megagames went off and did Jazz Jackrabbit. When you play Vinyl you can still see the echoes of Jill in there. The iconic rope climbing and everything is still in there. Although she has a red outfit so I guess that makes her waaay different.
I can only find one other game that had Union Logics name attached to it and that's Teenagent which doesn't seem to have such a bad rap. Unions only other notable achievement is its eventual dissolve in 2000.
Where Vinyl gets really interesting is who modelled for the cover, apparently one Debra Dare, Ms Nude Universe, "Cream Queen" or whatever. All this information comes from what has got to be the most fucked up string of comments I've ever seen on the internet. It's truly a spectacle to behold. Seriously, scroll down that link and read the comments. It's really strange. Note the names as well.
Apparently Debra is really upset that she isn't getting the respect she deserves for such a groundbreaking game.

Jill of the Jungle

I'm gonna say it. The original Jill of the Jungle is a total babe. I challenge you to find sexier animations from that period. Have you seen her climb a vine? Maybe you should.
Jill was produced in '93 by Epic Megagames, who would later go on to create Jazz Jackrabbit in '94, the classiest game ever. I Think I like Jazz because of how much of a derivative of Sonic he was. It would be the closest I'd ever get to playing a sonic game for years. Strangly enough Jill pops up in one of the Jazz Jackrabbit episodes. They made her boots green so I guess she's been foraging for new shoes since her own game.

There's also a cameo by Commander Keen, produced by id Software. Apparently they thought that the mightiness of Jill would crush the likes of Duke & Keen. Protip: She didn't. Although I guess you could say that Epic did sort of win in the end. In 96' they produced the Unreal Engine which has been used in a huge number of games since, including their old Nemesis, Apogee/3D realms for Duke Nukem Forever (which stunk out loud apparently).

The game production world is a small place, and eventually everyone bumps into everyone else. I just wonder where all the little game studios plugging away at their indy titles will be in ten or twenty years from now. Doubtless a few of them will be juggernauts producing the next generation of tools for future generations to build upon.
Unless they all get eaten by EA or something.

Curly Brace - Cave Story

I bet you've always wanted to see a pixel art version of a Cave Story character right! Yeah. Yeah I know. If you haven't heard of Cave Story yet, well, now is about time you did. I mean it's been out since 2004 as a freeware title, and has since garnered a billion ports, and an official remastering on the 3DS and Steam. Although you can just play the original for free on the first link I left.

I couldn't decide if I wanted to do Curly Brace's colour scheme the official art colours (below) used in the 3DS promo art or the original colour scheme (above). So I did both. She almost looks like she belongs in portal or something in the bottom one.

I decided to get onto this one for Matt's sake. Apparently not everyone is a brawler fan. I can't imagine why though. It's so dynamic and different every time you play one.

Red - Transistor 8Bit

A lot of people are excited for Transistor. Everythings starting to really amp up this year in terms of games releases. Although a lot of these cool titles will be fighting for a voice in amongst Watch Dogs. But I guess as far as voices go, Transistor has the best considering the return of Logan Cunningham, the narrator of Bastion.
In other news, Katsuhiro Harada, Game Director of Tekken thinks some of the first pixel art girls I did are awesome. I did them first because they are definitely among the coolest girls in games there are.

Oh it's awesome http://t.co/6LwuUfYncF

— Katsuhiro Harada (@Harada_TEKKEN) May 20, 2014

Cheers for the shout out! You sir, are awesome, and made my day a lot more interesting. It's nice to have a spike of traffic that isn't a crawler.

Child of Light 8Bit

Child of Light is an amazing game. I recommend it. In fact I think this is one of the few games that falls into the "couples" genre, games you can play with your girlfriend where she wont feel alienated, left out & bored. Other games that fall into this genre that I'd include is pretty much anything on the iPad, The Walking Dead, and Rogue Legacy. It may be different depending on what version of girlfriend you have. Yours might not be mine, I hope that's the case at least.
Anyway, I took a backseat on this game, quickly being relegated to Igniculus, the little blue firefly that follows her around. He has a limited number of things he can do. The camera places no importance on him, concentrating on Aurora, making her the driving force. Despite this he's able to make an impact on the exploration sections. I'd often float around and flash annoyingly in a direction I reckon Becky should go in. Or rush around collecting all the boxes before she gets a chance. The boredom that could encroach during combat is nipped in the bud by being able to float around and muck around with peoples turn orders or health without being tied down to the action bar. Which is awesome.
The strange thing I actually feel like I belong in the world, and that I'm guiding a little girl through it. It all becomes very meta, because my knowledge of the world is as limited as Beckys, but playing so many games before gives you a certain confidence in the way that the world is structured. Although with that said I feel like the world is open in a way I haven't felt about platformers before (with maybe the exception of Maple Story).

Anyway, I super recommend this game. Go get it.

Light Gunner

First time adding textures. You can see them really lightly on her helmet and boots. I'm gonna keep working the characters until they're entirely encapsulated in awesome robotic looking armour I think. Probably make that dumb helmet cooler as well.

Lieutenant Green

This one took a lot more effort. All the previous stuff I've been doing I've incorporated, plus this time I've added a second light source to give a warm edge to the left hand side. More effort was put into the hair. And for the first time ever I've coloured my lines. I didn't realise how easy it was to do. Although with that said I don't know how much I really like it. I quite like how my other drawings pop in comparison to this one.
I haven't cleaned up any of the horrible artifacts that were laid bare after doing that however. But I'll leave that for another time. I think All I can do now is keep practicing human form and hair from this point. Oh and eyes. I always suck with those. Click the picture to actually see what's going on in it.

Sergeant Punk 3

Getting back to my roots with some pixel art goodness Based on Sergeant Punk 2. It's fun to be riffing off my own characters for a change instead of doing knock offs of everyone elses. First time in forever since I've drawn eyes on my characters as well. So that's a bit weird.

Science Officer

Becky thinks she looks like that chubby character from that one music video (handily embedded at the bottom there.)
This one was an experiment at hip bones. If you look at my previous attempts you'l note no secondary jut from the waste down to the legs. In this one you can see it pinching in before it gets to her thighs and then flares out again, giving her a more rolly chubby look. But more realistic I think. If I stretched her out it wouldn't look aaaas crazy I reckon. But this is the way she stays.

Wingman to the End Pt.1

On Matts quest for love I'm his solid rock of a wingman that you can totally rely on. Even at his own wedding. I'm not just gonna let him settle with any old person just because he "loves them" or whatever.

Scuba Officer

Continuing my tests. Not as happy with this one as I was with the last one. Ah well. You can't always get it right.
In other news I've decided to take the next step into Soundcloud. I never reshared stuff on my profile till today, but I think it will be neat to have a pile of sounds that people can find. I've bugged people with links and embeds a lot, so I figure I may as well use the full service.
Seriously, Soundcloud can be pretty lame at first if you don't have a place that gives you music you'll probably enjoy. I get introduced to new great artists every day. Which is great. I hit a slump late last year where I wasn't finding many new bands on a regular enough basis.
Myspace just couldn't do it for me. It's a sexy as shit website, but it took to long to navigate around to find music. Then it got ads. Also there was regionalisation issues with the music. The App didn't even have music. So the whole service became useless to me. The app was nothing but a gif generator.
Now Soundclouds app gets me music straight away, no mucking around. It's all ad free and straight up normal free, for all you people that are too cheap to shell out for a Google Play account (Like me).
Anyway, if you're interested this is my profile, and I should have a bunch of good tunes on it soon enough.

Hurricane Lusi

An almost entirely verbatim conversation copy pasted from Google Hangouts.
So I managed to score my very first press pass tickets from work. I was pretty excited. Little did I know the media was bearing down on us with it's tales of an epic cyclone that would wipe us off the very face of the planet, casting us off into the gaping maw of outer space. They hyped and hyped, till they blew my compatriots will down. I ended up being the only keen one to go, and no ones ever going to go drink alone at a beer festival.
The cyclone came and went with little incident here in NZ, leaving only memes in its wake to ever prove it was there. There was a bit of wind one night, that was it. I heard tales that some of the front pages of newspapers were dedicated to headlines like "Ocean Lashes Shore". You have to enjoy their tenacity "We promised the people a storm, and we've dedicated the front page to it already. I'll be damned if we don't find something messed up!"
Also if there is any sort of difference between hurricanes and cyclones I don't care.