I like it even better when I compare it to Mario vs. The Heavy. I still love that piece but it seems almost crude in comparison and the improvement is quite palpable.
But anyway, it’s Mario and The Pyro from the amazing Team Fortress 2 (officially my most played game ever) fighting in cp_coldfront which, as far as stages go, seemed the most appropriate. Still going with the Fire Suit/RED vs. BLU motif here and I’ll continue to use it for all TF2 characters (because I WILL get to all of them eventually). I’m not to crazy about how I keep repeating the “Mario in foreground, other character in background” layout but I’m definitely starting to think more about composition instead of just putting two floating characters in a void.
I’ve been wanting to do this piece for a while and, in spite of my better judgement because I have so much other stuff I need to do, it’s finally done and I’m glad to have gotten it out of my system. It’s a fairly ambitious piece relative to what I usually do and I’m rather satisfied with the results.
I worked in grayscale and added color later and it’s a process that I feel less and less inclined to continue using. You just lose so much flexibility color-wise and I feel that’s one of my weakest spots right now.
For added fun, flip the canvas upside down and see how weird the girls look. Ugh…
I’ve been getting hits from many blogs because of my Mario Versus Series so I thought I’d make it easier for everybody by putting all those pieces into their own gallery so, lo and behold, it’s the Mario Versus Series page. I also have a long gestating project that might just turn into a (finite) webcomic which I’d start posting here in a weekly manner. There’s still more planning to be done as far as that’s concerned.
Oh, the image above? That’s just a tease for Mario vs. The Pyro.
I’ve been kinda busy so I hope to have it done before 2053.
New year, new sketchbook and it came with a lovely message from my girlfriend.
This one is going at a decent pace so far but time seems like such a commodity these days that I’m not sure if I’ll have it done by year’s end. I’m using turquoise for my underdrawings this time which, as you can imagine, means I’m running out of decent colors to base my sketchbooks on. I might have to go for a repeat in a couple years.
I’m also trying to build my lines a little more when using graphite instead of just throwing a hard line and calling it a day. I didn’t start doing that in this first batch of scans but it should be more noticeable in the second one.
Or it may not make a discernible difference at all, who knows?
The newly created Turquoise page can be found under Sketchbooks or just click here.
Without getting too much into it, I think that the Starfire controversy last year was partly due to a failure in the writer and artist to properly convey the nature of the character and not so much in the skimpiness of it all. Koriand’r shouldn’t be covered up like a nun, she’s an alien princess and she should be more Dejah Thoris than Lilandra, which is what I tried to capture in my redesign.
I tried to elevate the “princess” aspect of the character, making her a bit more regal looking and I braided her hair because I thought it looked ridiculous otherwise. Hopefully, this version of the character can convey a sense of strength, presence and confidence in spite of the skin that’s showing which, in my eyes, keeps the Tamaranean true to the character that George Perez and Marv Wolfman created.
The announcement of the oft-rumored Watchmen prequels, officially titled “Before Watchmen,” has taken the comic book world by storm in an understandably polarizing fashion. Alan Moore, unsurprisingly, has been quick to make a stand against the prequels saying that it’s “completely shameless” and “I want this not to happen.”
I’ve been sitting back, taking all this information in, reading some of the interviews and I think I’m ready to make an educated view on where I stand here.
Having Tetris blocks about to crush Mario was the obvious thing to do here because, well, what else would they do? A little more difficult was coming up with a way to make them threatening so I crushed Mario’s hand to make the stakes a little more clearer.
Also, after my previous Mario fights, it was nice to do something that a little color to it.
I started this sketchbook way back in October of 2010 and, about a month ago, I finally completed its final page. I was filling pages at a good pace and was aiming to have it completed by early fall ’11 but, as it inevitably seems to happen, I was forced to slow down towards the end of the year and I finished it much later than I had originally anticipated.
My newest sketchbook is well underway and I will, of course, be posting scans for it sometime over the next few weeks.
But before that, let’s wave my Orange sketchbook goodbye.
The full set of scans for this sketchbook can be found here.
Apologies for the lack of updates but the Holiday season was a busy time for me. I’m starting to get back into my routine and catching up with some of my commissions so, hopefully, the updates will be a little more frequent from now on.
This particular piece started out as something completely different but I just wasn’t happy with where it was going. Then I watched REDLINE (which I recommend for the beautiful animation alone) and it kinda guided the direction I ultimately took this piece in.
The Avengers has the perfect mix of ingredients, The Hobbit has the pedigree and Dark Knight Rises has the edge of the unknown and the unexpected.
Ridley Scott’s Prometheus has all of the above.
Its trailer is easily my favorite out of all of the above films and after many months of vagueness regarding the film’s ties to Alien, I think it’s safe to say now that there are definitely a connection to that franchise. The throwback to the Alien title sequence as well as the quick shot of the Space Jockey and the general aesthetic of H.R. Giger’s work clearly points towards that direction. Ridley Scott’s film career has been fairly ho-hum outside of Alien and Blade Runner but this trailer has gotten me pretty pumped up about the film and it’s gonna be interesting to see what Scott can do with a science fiction story using modern special effects instead of rubber suits.
I’m extremely hopeful but a small part of me fears it could be another case of the Star Wars prequels.
