Blobby: Feels Like Living

It's been a long long time since we've visited the blobby world, but we're back now. It's nice to see the style slowly getting refined and polished. I'm hoping to have twenty of these done so I can bundle them up into a little book and help bolster a table of little comics by my girlfriend. You can read more about that business here.
I've gone the rare course of actually planning out most of these comics for a change, which will hopefully guarantee a higher quality output. My early ones were normally done on the fly, and usually not fully figured out till the drawing was finished.
Writing the content has been particularly difficult, since I have a very specific idea of the tone that I want to create with the Blobby World. Normally it requires the sort of emotions that are tied to loneliness or newly discovered love. So not exactly the sort of thing you can shit on command. As such I've taken to asking people I know in these situations "Hey if you have any potent personal thoughts that I could broadcast to the world, totally tell me ok?"

Spanky Concept Art 2

I mentioned this time last month that I had done some concept art, well here's some more. I'm not totally happy with the brightness of the bottom one. Although I think her hair ponytail is rad, so it does have redeeming features.

It was the first piece I did for the commission so I don't think it was ever going to turn out as well as all the others.

It was fun drawing this sort of stuff though and being able to go crazy with the armour.

Sheik | Zero Suit Samus - Super Smash Bros

 There was a slight hiccup in the process of drawing Sheik where I was being informed that she might actually be a he, even though she's actually Zelda in disguise. I think the main muddle is whether or not it's a magical transformation and grows a doodle or not, since she gets all masculine and stuff. In the end I went with how the wiki describes her, and not with the fan hypothesis. And besides, I see no buldge. This isn't the first time I've had to make a call on a characters sex. Speaking of which I still need to do Leo Kliesen.
I went back on my word about drawing Zero Suit Samus. It had to be done. I really feel like Nintendo was scraping the barrel for decent female characters for the game. I mean, these two are technically double ups, and Rosalina is just dumb. I dunno, are we counting Jigglypuff as a girl? Or is that as unfair as counting all Ladybugs as girls.
Interesting thing I found out about Samus, in the original games, if you were super awesome at it you'd get rewarded by this at the end. Which is more of a carrot than the rocket ship on Tetris I guess.

Palutena | Rosalina | Lucina - Super Smash Bros

To celebrate Super Smash Bros coming out this Friday on Wii U I decided to do all the girls whose name end with "na". Fun fact, the Hyperlink on Rosalina's page is rosetta.html which is the japanese name she was given. Super confusing since I wrote the name down on the Google doc as Rosetta, but when I got to the profile it was telling me something different.
Previously I have done Princess Zelda, Princess Peach, Samus & Wii Fit trainer.
It looks like I'm gonna have to go against my stand about doing Zero Suit Samus, sigh. Also tomorrow I'll try and have Sheik done, then that will be everyone in time for the launch.
I heard that the game will have Gamecube controller support if you buy the adapter, that should be cool!

Squigly - Skullgirls

Yup yup, more pixel art, that's not as important as what I'm about to tell you.

So the other day I was at home by myself, drawing more characters. Suddenly there's a knock at the door. I bound down the hallway, could this be my girlfriend at the door? This is unexpected. To my dismay it's an insurance guy.
He looks up "wow, you seem happy today, most people are all grumpy after work."
He'd caught me off guard, if I had thought it was going to be some random on my doorstep I would have put on a bored and uninterested look before I opened the door. "Oh yeah man, well It's been a good week."
He launches into his spiel, noting that he isn't trying to "sell you anything" and that "I don't normally do this" while also noting that "It's my first day."

I asked to see who he worked for, he whips out a shitty card with his face on it and a little logo. With this motion he also knocks his iPhone out of his pocket. We both watched it bounce down the steps. If I was a quick thinker this diversion would have been a great time to close my door. But I didn't.
So I do the worst thing imaginable. I give him all my details. I write them down even! I don't care about free consultations about whether or not I have the best insurance plan.
He smiled and said I'd receive a call in a couple minutes to confirm all my details, he also asked when would be a good time for one of his people to come over and have a chat. After some deliberation in my mind I decided that 3pm would be a good time, since I work till 6pm.
We shook hands on good terms. Little was he to know, that we would end this evening as bitter enemies.
He left and I set my plan in motion. I turned off my cellphone and all the lights on my house. Adults don't play pretend as much as kids do. But when we do we usually pretend to not be home.

The landline rang and rang and rang. Ignore it Izak, you don't need to know what the people at the other end are going to say. at about 7:30 I had another knock at the door. I laid very still, my eyes swivelling like a lizards. Another louder knock. Nope, not going out there. Finally at 8:30 I had one final knock applied to my door. I knew at this point that I could probably get through this. It's not like I wanted to dick him around, it was his first day and I wanted to help him out. We had times together and I coudn't just break up with him.

Later that night when I turned my phone on I got 2 calls from a private number and 4 calls from my girlfriend. Collateral relationship damage, but probably worth it. She also sent a text which read "Why are you so hard to get a hold of, I want you to take something out of the freezer."
I texted back in the morning "You mean the chicken?"
Later on I asked her why she didn't just replace "something" with "chicken", surely that'd be easier than calling someone who had tried to drop off the technological radar. Also she had called the landline.
Later that next day I got another call on my cell from a private number. My blood ran cold and I stared at it, wailing, eventually it stopped and so did I.
On Saturday I got a call on the landline, I had foreseen this coming and had long since stopped using my usual greeting of "Hello, Izak speaking."
He asked to know if I was home and I told him in a very concerned voice that there was no one here by that name. He said my name in full, supplemented by reciting my darkest secrets. I was determined "Yeah nah sorry man, I think you've got a wrong number." He agreed that it was probably a wrong number somehow and dropped the issue.
And that's the story of how I couldn't say "no I'm not interested" to someone's face.

Double - Skull girls

Double, from Skullgirls, I was having a hard time deciding whether I should go for her transformed self or not, so I decided to keep it simple.

So I'm getting pretty ridiculous with Steam cards at the moment. I got 90% off a game that was already only worth a dollar. The cards it drops are worth 14 cents. What sort of world do we live in? Although apparently the devs get a cut of the transaction anyway, so I guess they'll be nickle and dimeing their way back to that dollar I owe them.

Vector Office Characters

The creative flow has been intense recently. My compatriot and I in the digital department of M2 have been let off the leash, or at least, if we haven't been willingly released we've managed to gnaw our way through it.

We're currently running around in the street chasing cars.

First order of business was to start creating clickbait. Second order of business, try and figure out a way we can do comics on company time. We have a vague concept at the moment, and the aesthetics are nailed down, it's only a matter of experimenting with the form and layout.

Well I say "It's only" but what I really mean is "this thing will instantly get chucked out if it fails to perform well.

I guess at the very least I can give the characters away as a free vector thing if everything doesn't work out. Or we could do it in our spare time for the LOLs. They're fully posable. You can't tell at the moment but they do have joints. Also my boss has been designed into one of these characters. May he live forever.

Valentine - Skullgirls

Valentine! From Skullgirls. She has a saw thing attached to her back but I decided not to include it for aesthetic reasons.
The other day I managed to pick up Enslaved: Odyssey to the West during the Steam Midweek Madness sale for 5 bucks. I've heard many things about this game, and one of the things I heard was that I should play it. It always had a certain allure to me. Unfortunatly, since I don't really "do" consoles (do = own) I never had an opportunity.
But someone was nice enough to create a shoddy PC port of the game. Now when I say shoddy, I mean changing the graphics options ingame literally does nothing. You need to change the .ini file to be able to even begin squeezing the goodness out of this game. Fortunately someone on Steam has a walkthrough.
I had to crank my shadows up a bit more and turn on some other misc settings that looked interesting. I didn't bother doing any screen refresh stuff other than uncapping the FPS. Also I haven't really bothered looking into Anti Aliasing much yet, but I'm sure if I did it'd improve my screenshots immediately.

Kris - Pokemon Crystal

Kris was the very first playable female in the Pokemon series. She also appeared the least, being cut from the rebooted Heart Gold and Soul Silver. Although apparently there are rumours this was a last minute decision, due to unused art assets for the Pokegear including an image of Kris.

The name Kris is only officially used once, on the boxart for Pokemon crystal, and also as the first default when you go to pick the name. I asked Becky while she was brushing her teeth a couple questions.

Were you ever gutted that there weren't girl characters earlier in the series?

"It was dumb it was called Gameboy, but I didn't have a problem with that. I just couldn't ever play as me."

Did you ever give yourself a male version of your name?

"I once called myself Barry, but I was mostly Gold." [Gold was the version she was playing at the time.]

What was your favourite Pokemon game?

"That's a tough question, everyone likes the game they started with. Gold? Although Leaf Green was really good... Are you interviewing me?"

May - Pokemon Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire

Aaaah Pokemon, it was only a matter of time before you would rare your ugly fat head into this project. Since Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire are coming out soon I thought this would be the best time to get May out of  the way. I went with the redesigned version of her rather than the original Ruby/Sapphire version.
Jeeze, these games are coming out so close together now. Although I'm saying that as though a new version hasn't come out every year since '96 (with the exception of '01, '03, '07, & '11).
My first game was Blue. I caught like 5 Pidgey's. Because you know, they were there and someone had to catch them.
This kicked off a childhood of chucking rocks pokeballs at various things to kill catch them. I never had the sort of scratch required to own Pokemon cards so I'd cut up Disney Adventures and turn them into Pokemon cards. I realized that their value wasn't as great as a real life Pokemon cards so I'd trade a ton of them for a single card. This didn't work either, so eventually I just resorted to good old fashion begging. I got the special edition holographic Zapdos when I went to the movies. My life was complete and I have been content with what few positions I own ever since.

Parasoul - Skullgirls

It's Parasoul! I was wondering whether I should draw her with her weapons, but then I decided it's kind of in the name. It's like drawing a character called "Knife Man" without his trademark knife and... Santa hat? Seriously What is up with stock photos sometimes.
It's one of the many small amusements Designers get to enjoy. It's like there's these little nuggets of Monty Python absurdity left on stock sites just for us. Usually it's a matter of wondering what specific purpose these images would ever get used for. Someone had to buy them at some point right?

Ms Fortune - Skullgirls

Ms Fortune from Skullgirls! Kind of reminds me of Viera from Final Fantasy. I guess it's the whole ear and claw thing. Four more to go before I'm done with 'em. I have to admit. The Skullgirls have been one of my favourites to do so far, even more than Tekken. They just exude so much coolness.

Alien Isolation is old news to a lot of you. But I just keep coming back to it. I just finished the DLC Lone Survivor and Crew Expendable missions. They were a bit of fun and represented the original movie well. I think these are the missions you should chuck your friends onto so they get a taste of what the game is like. There's no way their even gonna see the Alien if you get them started on the main campaign. Anyway, here's some screenshots. About the only way that the game isn't accurate to the movie is that Ash isn't dead and nude.

Eliza - Skullgirls

Today we have the DLC Skullgirls character Eliza, I don't know how long she's gonna be a free character for so you should go make sure you go claim her or whatever.

I've started playing Assassins Creed 3. I know I'm a million lightyears behind everyone else. I always have been. But do you know how cheap things are if you leave them 2 years? I picked it up for almost nothing during a Steam sale. I've been slowly plugging my way through the series. I recently finished Brotherhood and Revelations, so that concludes my time with Ezio. He was a great character and it was cool seeing him go from a young playboy to a much more subdued and wiser old man.

I haven't gotten very far with Ass Creed 3 yet. But I'm digging older british Kenway. He's comfortable in his own skin and he knows what he's doing, so much so that he can be sarcastic in the face of people he knows are inferior to him. I'm not looking forward to playing young native american Kenway who I assume is going to have an identity crisis.

Interesting fact, my godfather has native american in him. Not sure what tribe though. I should really ask him that sort of thing. I only found out recently. It explains his nose.

Girls of Overwatch 8Bit Part 2

Well there's the last two announced female protagonists done. I have a sneaky suspicion that this won't be the last time I revisit this game. Game Director Jeff Kaplan sayeth “We kind of see this as an infinitely expandable universe. Now I doubt it will have, like, 800 heroes. But what we’re excited about is that there’s no shortage of ideas or space to explore that would risk homogenizing any of our current characters."

I'm stoked with that as long as they pump out more interesting looking characters.

I made Becky watch the cinematic trailer without announcing what it was all about. She was super excited till she found out at the very end that it was a game. She was rearing to get her movie tickets and everything. I guess we're gonna have to settle for Big Hero 6 instead. With that said hopefully we'll get more sweet trailers, I know that sounds weird. But trailers these days are about as entertaining as the actual games are recently. I don't know if that's because game trailers are getting better or games are getting worse. I'll leave it to the eye of the beholder.

Yeah, these posts have been pretty image intense, but I wasn't gonna let these gifs go to waste.

Girls of Overwatch 8Bit Part 1

So I leave the internet for one weekend to blow shit up during Guy Fawkes and Blizzcon decides to announce a new game adding 5 new characters to my list of chicks to draw.
The character designs are seriously awesome, and the amount of robots in this game is great. This will be right up my alley when it comes out. I'll play it for like, two evenings without getting bored!
I'm a wee bit sad that this game headlined as the first new IP in 17 years. When you haven't created a new world in that sort of timeframe then somethings gotta be wrong. Although I guess Blizzard has been world building and developing their existing IP's while suckling on the everflowing teet of WoW.

But either way, let's not criticize the space that occupies the time in which nothing new was thought of, and instead look towards a brighter future that contains MOBA/FPS hybrids. Or at the very least, Team Fortress 2 homages.

That's another I'd like to address. It may be a cash grab, but when games riff off each other that's not always a bad thing. TF2 has been occupying a space all of it's own for a while now and it's about time something fresh came along and shook things up a bit. I mean, it's not like you were ever going to get a TF3. You know what Valve is like with threes...

Ok, I'm done defending the multimillion dollar company now. I'm sure they'll thank me later.

Robots - 2 Planets Concept Art

Earlier this year I got contacted in regards to doing some concept art. While I've done a few commissions in the past for some instruction booklets and invites and stuff, this was entirely new experience.

First of all I didn't realize that my art style was something that was in demand, let alone monetisable. So here they are, for the first time ever.

So I busted these guys out. I found out I can do 4 quick original concepts in an hour. The one in the very middle is my all time favourite I reckon. But if I was going to use any of them as a lead protagonist I'd probably go for the first one.

The project these are for is currently on hold, but I managed to get permission to post them up anyway.

Over the course of the month I'll put up a couple of the others I did for this project. If you're interested in hiring me to do some art for your game, gimme a yell at izakflashman@gmail.com