Colors Sketch X 3

Last week I was knee deep in work. This week is looking to be pretty much the same. So while I have a few minutes this morning, here are three Colors sketches that I have been playing with on and off. As I do more art with the DS, I really wished that it can do a higher resolution. Because of the low res, I keep finding myself doing portrait type art. Realistic full figure subjects are not impossible to do but those requires a lot of zooming and panning which really takes away a bit of the fun of pure creativity. In any case, when I have time again I may try to do one just to mix it up a little.

LEGO Mechanic

Do you like LEGOs? I don't even pay much attention to them until my son started getting them as gifts when he was 3 or so. Since then my appreciation for this system of building blocks has steady risen. The thing that grabs me the most is the humor inherent in the mini-figure designs. Most characters are so simple but yet with small modifications they became so expressive. Since the LEGO Star Wars and Batman games came out, my son and I are addicted. We must have play these games on and off for around 2 years now and we are still not sick of them yet. LEGO Indiana Jones is still in the wrapper waiting for its turn!
The little LEGO mechanic above is my humble creation. Kyle got the idea to build him after seeing photos in a magazine of a big LEGO man built for a contest. I scrounged for pieces and I was lucky to be able to find enough to build this smaller guy. A few pieces are not quite what I wanted but I am still happy with the result. My proudest feature of this mechanic is that the wrench is removeable just like the real mini-figures. I had plans to build more accessories for him but I'll have to buy more pieces first. =)

Supreme Commander

While I am digging through old art, I made this Supreme Commander image near the tail end of the project just for kicks. While the final game looked great, making the game in this style would rock!

Blast from the Past: King Arthur and the Knights of Justice

This week I thought I do something different even though I have a Colors! sketch lined up. Here are three scaled up pics of a game that I worked on about 16-17 years ago! The art has to be scaled up 200% because the source resolution was pretty tiny. It was near the beginning of my career. I was 25 years old then and I was working for Manley and Associates in Issaquah, WA which later became EA Seattle. The game was based on a cartoon of the same title about a bunch of football players transported back into the past to fill in for the real King Arthur and his knights. I suppose that show was a minor hit because it spawned 4 issues of comics and an action figure line. Unfortunately I can't say the same for the SNES game that I help made. As far as I know, it sold poorly and it reviewed even worst. Too bad that I can't remember the exact words of this one harsh reviewer... To paraphase, he said playing this game was as much fun as having your eyeball taken out then have spider eggs stuffed into the socket and have the eye hole sewn back shut. Uh...okay. I swear the game was a little better than that.

Anyway, how were these amazing pieces of art made? By mouse! Pixel by pixel painted in using Deluxe Paint that's how. What a difference 16 years made. One of the texture that I recently created using Photoshop and a Cintque was a 2048 x 2048. That one texture was probably bigger than all of the art put together in that little SNES game. And lets not talk about how much better the color depth the texture had. I have the urge to go on and on but I better quit before sounding like some dad grumbling to his son about how many miles he had to walk naked in a blizzard in complete darkness...

BTW, I almost forgot. After years of searching I did find at least one guy that liked - no- LOVED the game! He even made a King Arthur and the Knights of Justice shrine! The shrine is incredible and super indepth. It made me cried a little when I discovered it. Here is the link: http://www.flyingomelette.com/koj/kojindex.html

Take a look for more awesome art and the "Cave of Glass" section is a great read because I am responsible for quite a few items there including: the mystery of "Mr. Cow", the Bates No Tell Motel, the valley of the dead art and so on... Hee hee. =)

Tottemo! Lucky Man

Lucky, cookie, another blog entry! This week's image is a sketch of one of my favorite anime character, Lucky Man. Years ago I happened to catch an episode of this show, Tottemo! Lucky Man on Chinese TV. The show was a hilarious parody of Ultraman and I was hooked. Eventually I picked up the complete series on VCD while visiting Vancouver B.C.. Mostly the set collected dust until recently, I dug it up and watched it together with my son.
The main character is the most unlucky high school student of all of Japan. One day he was crushed by an alien bent on destroying Earth. On his way to the afterlife, his spirit encountered the original Lucky Man who not only brought him to life and passed on his title so that he would become the new Lucky Man. Lucky Man has Ultraman type moves including a death ray weapon but all of them are incredibly weak and slow. His real useful power is that he is very lucky. In every episode, aliens would try to kill him but instead by sheer luck, Lucky Man would defeat them and half the time not knowing what happened. It is too bad that this series was never picked up for the U.S.. It was fresh and funny as hell. In later episodes, more heroes join the cast including: Hardworking Man, Victory Man, Super Star Man, Victory Man and so on. Each has their wacky stories that were very entertaining to watch. I would highly recommend this series to everyone except that it is really hard to find and I am not sure if anyone subbed it in English. If you know Cantonese or Japanese though you may still be able to find either DVDs or VCDs of it somewhere.

Dogfight!

Another week another Colors! sketch. I always liked flying wings so here is one getting shot up by enemy jets.

Play Ferry

I sketched this on the DS while we were at the Alderwood Mall couple weeks ago. In total, I probably spent half-an-hour on it. This is a rare painting for me because most of the time I prefered drawing characters. At the end, I had fun painting it so I'll probably do more down the road.

Nintendo DS Wolverine!

I am still out a working art tablet at home and work has been crazy busy so I was stuck for awhile. Well, finally I have an interim solution...NDS Colors! to the rescue! For over a year, even my DS was out-of-commission but I finally got it back together and bought another flash card so I can run Colors! again. Over the last week, I have been sketching with it and I am liking it a lot. So here is Wolvie and as usual, he is mad as hell. GRRR! Expect more Colors! art to come until I get my Cintque hopefully later in the year.