Abandoned April Fools Stuff

Well, I was going to go all out this year and try spreading some April fools content, but I just didn't have the time to do everything I wanted. So here are the only two images I got close to finished.

I was going to spread some fake screenshots of Silent Hill 2 as a DS game, in the same vein as the Castlevania titles. (vampire pun!)

I didn't get to do the health.ammo hub to the quality I wanted, or the text boxes for dialogue. Both images would have been tweaked to look more legit.
Also planned were images of a boss fight, screens of the hell-world, and an inventory screen.

Oh well. Enjoy. (the images are viewable as a "small" screen, based on a stats for the DS I read somewhere. The second images are the big versions for detail reasons.)

More Inks

I think I'll write an ode to this pen.





Also, I've been playing Madworld. It's nice to see a developer playing to the wii's graphical strengths and going stylized. That last picture is more than a little bit inspired by it.

Sick Day Sketchings

Man, A cold snuck up and kinda knocked me for a loop.

So instead of working, which I really should be, I've been sleeping. When I'm awake though, I've been sketching.

I got this nice brush pen at the book store. I've never used one, but I've seen friends and people in class use it, so I figured I'd give it a shot.


I'm in love with it.





Everything is so loose with it. Even when I draw things like armor with it, it's very flowing and organic. Which I think is kind of cool. Makes me feel like Amano, too, which is even cooler for a nerd.

two crafting posts in a row? Yep. Kobun/Servbot mask.

No, I have not given up on illustration. Right now I just don't have anything to post illustrator-y.

In the meantime, here is another photoset of a craft I did.
Last Halloween, I really wanted to make a cool costume to go to the downtown in, but I didn't want to spend a fortune. So I decided to make a mask and just wear a suit.

This gave me the idea to go as Frank West from Dead Rising. He can wear just about anything, and as long as he has a camera and probably a sword/club/chainsaw, he's still Frank West. So I decided to make the Kobun masks you can find in a toy store in the game.

So here we go.
The mask is made of insulation foam board, glue, acrylic paint, mesh, and a dollarama hat.

First I bought a sheet of insulation board, which cost me about 10 dollars.


I measured it off into sections.


Then traced out the top of the helmet using an embroidery hoop I found.


The sections were cut out.


And Glued to the top, mitered when necessary.


I sanded as I went along.


And cut and sanded out the top cap to make that silver bump the kobuns have on top of their heads.



Once the helmet was fully together, I drew on the face, sanded, filled, and sanded and filled....and sanded and filled. You get the point. This was to make it as rounded as possible.


I glued in the hat for stability.


Finished the paint job and cut out the eyes.


Then I put laundry mesh over the eyes, used paint to secure it to the mask and camouflage it, then sealed the entire mask with string gel.



It was fun to do. Most people thought I was a legoman in a business suit. I think a few nerds picked me out as at least a kobun headed guy though.

Coraline? More like Collaborine.

Well, Yien's birthday was a while back, but we didn't have a party until today.

As a present, Rosemary and I decided to make her a Coraline rag doll. (She said she'd love one after we saw the movie.)

So, here are the results.

First off, we didn't follow the design of the doll in the movie. We liked the Jeans look more than the black skirt and stripey socks that were on the official dolls.


Rose and I kind of batted the doll back and forth when we worked on it. She would sew, I would sculpt. So most of the sculpted work is mine. When we did the face, it got cooked for far too long under way too hot of a setting. It turned black and took about 10 coats of gesso to get it ready for painting.


In particular, I was happy with the boots. I had no idea what I was doing here, but it all seemed to come together in the end.


The coat posed some problems. It wasn't something that we thought we could do totally guide free, but neither of us knew how to make a pattern with a hood. Rose did some tweaking though and made the hood look like it really belonged on there.


The barrette was a bit of trouble. I sculpted it way too thick, and didn't have the sculpey to make a new one. I ended up sawing the original in half with an olfa blade.


Another view of the boots.


And now some extra shots.




For more info, Mosey on over to Rose's super blog

So considering Rose and I had no clue what we were doing, I think we did pretty good.
If we were to do it again, there are things I'd do differently, mostly with the face and head, but all in all, I think it was a success.

Plus, Yien loves it. That was an important factor.

Sketchdump!

So, I looked through my sketchbooks and decided a long post was in order.

so, here we go.

First off, this is a sketch for a future painting. I drew up these characters to make them part of an RPG I'd been thinking about, but I shifted it over into a new direction. These two just kind of got scrapped, now I use them for personal work.


And now, the gentleman octopus. Yep. Was going to submit this as a t-shirt design back in September, but there was apparently too many tentacle based designs, so I didn't finish it.


Another future painting plan. I just need to find the right canvas.


This was another character for the RPG I was thinking of. The very VERY initial stage of a blacksmith guy. I decided later on to make him a scrawny old guy.


The three little pigs. Done for my first semester interp class, where I revised fairy tales into videogames.


And now, some anime.


The rest of these images are from my current semester project. The Victoria project, where I take the usual RPG tropes and place them into a co-operative action game instead.









Gee, I wish I knew how to make a post jump...