Faith In Journalism

There haven't been many articles I've read that have made me excited or passionate about something. I've just found one though. The articles have a distinct lack of bullshit, and are totally honest in their execution. The imagery is mind blowing, and that's saying something considering I've been staring at this game for over five years now. I really didn't think I'd see Mirrors Edge 1 in a new way any more.
It's good to be hearing about someone that was a part of the team, to hear a bit of the backstory, and not just some CEO or marketer who only gives you the nice bits. This way feels a lot more human, like talking to someone who's just done an amazing drawing but still says they hate it because something's a little off and it will never live up to the amazing image that was in their head.

Even the site design is great. It's one of the first I've seen doing the two column text grid. Weirdly enough it follows a couple of the trends I was experimenting with on my final design project at uni, Moxy. Two columns with wide images splitting the sections so the columns don't get overly long. Drop caps at the beginning of a new section so people don't get confused about where to start or how things are layed out. None of this lame "Go to Page 2" nonsense.

I had just assumed that the web design trend was going to stay on track with the overly large body copy single column stuff.

Obviously they've taken it to the next level with the 100% width of the article and better text size to take full advantage of any screen though. I'm sure if I was actually an intelligent web designer I might have considered that a better option rather than locking myself into specific widths which will only deprecate with time.

Anyway, Go read the article, go check out the others. Follow this site forever. I know I will be.

Crystal Maiden - DOTA 2

Another big thanks to +Josiah Spackman for doing the groundwork for me. You're a champ.
Also I've been told I should watch the video linked below or we aren't friends anymore. It's an hour long though. I'll have to weigh up our friendship and the likelihood of me playing Ingress again.

Queen of Pain - DOTA2

I interrupted +Josiah Spackmans night suddenly with "Who's DOTA's best female character aaaand GO." "Queen of Pain. Why?" "8Bit."
Thanks for putting up with that man.
I figured I'd dip into the DOTA characters a little. I used to be worried about doing an entire games worth of characters before moving onto the next one, what with the precedent I set with my Tekken Chicks. But after dipping into a couple series and getting bored of the dregs that are usually left over I've started to become more brazen and cut throat with moving on. It doesn't mean I won't come back, don't worry about that.

Anyway, a bunch of my mates love DOTA. Personally I dug the Free to Play documentary, and I love that E-Sports are becoming a thing, it flips a lot of preconceptions about sports on its head, and it's in an accessible place for me. Maybe if someone made a really good Battlefield E-Sport event I'd be more keen. The EU vs USA thing would have been better if it had actual heats etc that would have a ruling team at the end, instead of a bunch of celebrity Youtubers and some guy from Xbox.

Meryl Silverburgh - Metal Gear Solid 4

I got told that my solitary Silent Sniper was the least important Metal Gear character I should do. +Jeff Hunt helped me solidify the lineup list for who I'm going to do in the Metal Gear series, which is good. I missed 3 characters from my initial list. There seems to be a lot of passion around Metal Gear. It's a game that you either love, or have never played before because you owned an Xbox instead.

I've been getting the full town experience recently. A friend Frank from Headspace who's been holed up in Tauranga came up for the weekend. We decided we were going to go to Zinefest. Unfortunatly we were really late in getting there but it didn't stop Becky from sidetracking us into a little nick nack store. I was feeling pretty queasy from lunch and I had a headache so Becky gave me some Panadol. I can't really swallow pills with water, so I just dry swallowed the first one. The second one was a mistake and I didn't too soon. I've never filled my mouth with vomit before but inside this little boutique I did. I stared at the group in horror, then ran out onto K road and emptied my mouth into the bin that was thankfully right outside. Leaning on the brim I looked down at my handiwork. Two little pills sat demurely at the bottom of the bin. What a waste. The store girl didn't look up once.
So we headed off to the arcade where Zinefest was meant to be. Except this year they had moved. Shit. Time was against us. Frank was freaking out because he had to pick people up from the airport soon, and Becky was freaking out because she didn't want to miss Zinefest for the 5th year in a row.
So we strode off towards its new location.
As we approached the crossing, Frank looked aghast at the rainbow flags at Family Bar.
"Is that a Gay bar?" he queried. "Ha ha, you really have never been on K Roa-" I began to respond.
"DID YOU SAY GAY PRIDE?" A man literally jumped into the conversation, his body propelling him between us, looking at us with wild eyes. I wasn't very aware of what the specifics of what he was saying, I don't think he was either.
"I was at family bar the other night and yeld my name and gay pride and everyone yeld it back and now my name is getting world famous all around the world and I'm getting big on the internet." he garbled at us. Frank started to ditch me and Becky is already ahead of us. Scattering like true friends wouldn't.
I nod politely to the guy "That's cool man, have a sticker."
The man looks at my sticker with hungry eyes, laughs manically for a second, thanks me, then crosses through a red light. We watch him go.
"Should we go in the opposite direction?" Frank asks, suddenly by my side again.
So in our rush to get to Zinefest we instead go to Starbucks and sit for half an hour waiting for our coffees that were waiting for us on a bench somewhere else the entire time.
About the only thing we didn't manage to tick off our K-Road bingo chart was a Tranny. I guess you can't have 'em all.

We also had a look at the Old Folks Ass

Nova Terra - Starcraft

I probably should have done Nova at the same time I did Sarah Kerrigan, who still seems to be the most space consuming character I have thus far done.
Nova is a character I've had listed to draw for a while now, but I got all confused about the vaporware Starcraft: Ghosts which never eventuated so I've been holding off till now.
I'm planning on making a page that has the entire cast of 8bit characters I've done. Unfortunatly the thought becomes a little more daunting every time I do a new character, even the list & blog compendium I have so far is pretty annoying to upkeep.

Valkyr - Warframe

So I decided to take a different tact today and avoid doing another fighting game character. I'm not sure what's up with Warframe, but the style is pretty hardout. I'm not even sure there are humans underneath all that framery. You can download the game for free on Steam. I'm guessing they microtransaction the hell out of you to make enough money to make such rad models.

These days I don't have huge amounts of time for gaming, and what little I do I devote to Battlefield 4. The PC version has been running pretty stable for months now, though I've been given reports that PS3 is still getting brutal crashes.

With that said I'm downloading Warframe now and might do a screencapped post about it like I did with The Forest.

Morrigan Aensland - Darkstalkers

Also available as a print! Go get it!

Morrigan is one of those big names who's just a big name because. I'm not sure anyone has actually ever actually played Darkstalkers. Not anyone I know at least.
It was First released in 1994 by Capcom, 7 years after the debut of Street Fighter. At the time SNK was putting out a lot of it's own fighting games that were pretty good, and Capcom needed to freshen itself up from the funk it was getting itself into with Street Fighter II.
So along came the monster people of Darkstalkers. This game introduced lots of new things to the genre, including chain combos that gave the game it's cult following. The release history of the game gets pretty confusing. As it has a different name for Japanese & Western releases. There were also slightly different iterations of the same title with characters flip flopping out of the list due to arcade memory chips not having the memory for all the characters.

Lisa Hamilton - Dead or Alive

Thought I'd get Lisa Hamilton out of the way. Probably one of the more forgotten Dead or Alive characters I reckon. Or at least, I don't see her around much.
Work continues with finding a full body model of Amanda Ripley. I'm not happy with what they did release though, since it doesn't match the other art on the site so far. And it also looks super squished or something.

The quest continues.
In the meantime I leave this sound clip I made with Matt. It's very deep and intense. You may not be able to handle it. You have been warned.

How Many of the Top 10 8Bit Girls Have I done?

I got asked on G+ how many of these girls I had done. I wrote such a long comment that I figured I may as well make it a blog post here, as a quick rundown and "behind the scenes" peek at how I'm doing with my 8Bit Girl Series.

Bayonetta. Done. She's actually one of my favourites that I've drawn.
I've been holding off from doing the Mortal Kombat Girls for now.
Ivy is the only character from Soulcalibur I've done so far. Blugh, I could probably redraw her better now as well.
Kasumi's done. She was the second one I did a Screencast of while I drew her. It probably didn't help. Ha ha. I could probably do a better job.
I haven't done Morrigan yet even though you've already asked. Ha ha
Samus was the very first character I did when I decided to do the series hard out. Although I went with her battlesuit because it's way cool. She's also the character I use to standardise the height of all my other characters. Probably shouldn't be doing that considering how friggin tall she is in the suit.
I haven't done Jade yet, purely because she's boring. But she's on the list.
I haven't done Tifa yet. The only character I have done for Final Fantasy is Lightning. I'm not opening that can of worms for a while.
Chun Li was my First screencast I did.
Laracroft, done. Ha ha, Even did a run cycle of her.

So that's 6/10. Not as good as I would have thought. I'm holding off from doing all the big names right away, just so the end of my series isn't a whole pile of unknowns to everyone.

Ellen Ripley - Alien Isolation

So I was pretty stoked when I read that Alien: Isolation was going to have Preorder DLC with Ellen in it. They did a wicked awesome job at her render. I'm fully pumped for this game. One of my prerequisites for doing these 8Bit Characters is that they must have a strong presence within a game. For a while Ripley hasn't checked that box. Well, she sorta has, but I haven't been counting it.

I noticed that the official site doesn't have any nice high res versions of the concept art and the new Nostromo crew. So for the sake of us all I've gone to the liberty of tracking a couple down and leaving them here. Open in New Tab and then save 'em! Edit Crap, Blogger has condensed them. Oh well, Ripley is Here.

I won't be doing Amanda Ripley till some full body shots come to light. Hopefully They get onto it soon.

Decapre - Street Fighter

Decapre is pretty much reskinned Cammie, although this makes sense considering she's a clone of Cammie. She first became playable in Ultra Street Fighter 4, although she had been lurking around earlier than that as a background character.

Marie Rose & Helena - Dead Or Alive 5 Ultimate

Apparently Helena and Marie Rose are chums, so figured I better do them together. Marie Rose is a brand new character that first appeared in the Japanese DOA5U Arcade version. She comes in as the shortest character, but I kept her the standard height of all my other characters. My bad.
She's part of this new DLC deal that Tekken has bought into as well. I don't know if Street Fighter has gone in the same direction or not but I wouldn't be surprise if the micro-transaction disease has spread that far. It's dark days for Fighters.

Triss Merigold - Witcher 2

I played the first Witcher a while ago. Before I was big into Steam. A fan told me that Witcher was awesome "Oh but the fighting isn't very good, but the story is amazing." "So the actual gameplay sucks?" "I guess.." "So the game sucks?" "... No."
It was way too clunky for me and it just didn't catch me at a good time. So I returned it and never played it again. Matt busted through the ones that are out on Steam and dug them. Apparently Van Helsing Geralt bangs just about every chick in sight.
Turns out Triss even made it onto the polish version of Playboy back in 2011.

Guy Fawkes Vid - EP13

Shot over 2012 & 2013. I think this is the last of my back catalogue of friends mucking around. Quin did all the shots during the fireworks.

The second half is me opening a present from Matt, which is part of an ongoing thing we do where we give each other money in annoying ways. Matt doesn't realise this but I actually entombed his money in a shitty book. Good luck getting your money back out of that one bro.

The last half was part of a day where we filmed Becky for some thing she was doing for Bee & Puppycat. I put in all the bits that never made it into her final cut.