Monday, February 28, 2011

Heroes and charactrer design.

Few days ago i stumble uppon the news that my friends from Gameloft are putting up a character design contest.
It was all about designing a videogame hero. Now.. anyway you look at this, the challenge is good enough and the subject quite... debateable.
Willing to put my skills and creativity to the test - i quickly came up with a fake name and roughed up some sketches. As the last Disney hero said: A fake identity is everything a man has :)


This was my first hero - a take on the styled New Yorker.
I figured that the costume, the outfit is mostly what visualy the characters stand for these days - and i haven't seen many "suits" clothing the heroes. I also wanted to apporach this in a graphical style to match.
That same day however i wanted to push the ideea of the costume/character and decided to expand my hero's world with "function suit based characters".
The hero moved to london and shifter to a 2D paltformer - this is what he's up against :)


Since i know that the jury will also look for some good rendering skill in the contestant - i threw in the generic character - bad ass girl - and spiced the sketches with variations in outfits - for fantasy and urban.. etc.
Tell me if you've seen this before :)

here's a close up on the portrait and some stages of the making of.


And that was it.
I wrapped those images up and sent them as Mr. Evil Zeal (for those who played HAWX2 for Wii - YES.. i was advertising :) :) )
However, either my skills and creativity are not strong enough or they did not came out of the images i sent... or maybe it's just my failing mood... the bottom line... i didn't pass the pre-selection.
Not much trouble thought. can't stop the flow :) Since i sent those .. my mind started to wonder and think trough the problematic of an authentic game character.

There are mainly 3 categories - the bad ass (pictured below), the cute character (mario, ratchet, etc) and the japanese hero/antihero (and that is a mix - slightly more feminine features, can turn into comic/cute if needed ..etc - think all the Final Fantasy crowd, Dante, etc)

However, originality is a bitch.


separated at birth as the guy who did the selection said - it's kinda clear that the rest of the unicity comes from the costume and non visual traits (abilities, voice, attitude, setting.. well.. CHARACTER :) )
for the cute one i thought the ones from above classify - however... i wanted to explore... the explorer - since i find it a good .. recipient.
skip this :)


also... talking about costume and japanese/asian typology - i tried a small test - starting from the latest Givenchy couture collection - that to me seems very MMO able :) i wanted to sketch the male part.

go check the colection up if yo uhaven't - it's amazing.
So... here we are.. the explorer - i quickly arrived to this: north american mountain dude - i could already picture the rest of his tools, pickhammer, snowpads, small metallig whiskey bottle, backpack and all.
Also his enemies and the monsters are easy to imagine.

Yet i wanted to throw in a bit more character - so i shifted him to the gipsy side - that allows for more color, bigger moustache :) and a hell of a better speach :)

I had to rush those up since i have a ton of other things to do.
But before i wrap this up.. i'm tossing in some other sketches just to clean the closed.
First sketch of the hero and my new red haircut -

random

Life drawing at NightDrawes Sessions @ Lente









Monday, February 21, 2011

Other realms

Here i go with some quick shots from the realms i've been roamning lately.
More substance to the stories soon.




Don't worry. I'm working on it.

Friday, February 18, 2011

New Post. New camera. Old places.

For a while now, i kept on waiting for people to ask me about my gear. I mean, i keep getting questions about what tools i use when i paint, draw etc but nobody gives a damn about my photos - that's probably because they suck :)
Anyway, since you're not asking, i'm telling ya. :)
I have one camera and one lens:)
Canon EOS 300 - 6 Megapixels with the 18-55 (default) lens. It was 300 usd a few years ago, 2nd hand, form a friend of mine.
I knew my photos are not at the right level but i kept on finding excuses - and most of the time - i was conforting myself with thoughts that my gear is not strong enough.
Well... i got bored to find excuses and after more than one year of savings... i made an investment. Ladies and gens... my new camera:
5D Mk II


Here's a versus shot - both equipped with the cheap 50mm (the lens on the right is broken :) )
And another one to spot some differences :)


Now.. the problem is... the new one feels cheapper while it costed me a fortune.
Also.. the first tests i did... were horrible.
I had 2nd thoughts about taking the new camera with me on my next trip but in the end... i just tossed it in the backpack and took it out on some extreme conditions - just so it learns the environment of the owner :)
Most of these are out of focus and just out of place - but i hope you'll celebrate with me my lack of excuses.
(surely the 50mm it's not for these kind of shots.. but let's not start again :) )










and a pseudo panoramic to give you a hint of the view.

it was a trip trough terrible cold winds of 200-250 km/h.
The shots are taken when we were out of the peaks since we could barelly walk there - taking photos was impossible. the reward however is slightly pictured above.
I know it's not the kind of shots you ussualy see on this blog but i promisse i'll make it back. The rest of the pictures from this trip should do the job. ;)
thx for looking.

From the archive

Here's a small update - unfortunatelly from the past experiences.
It's not that im not doing things.. is that i don't have time to document them all.
These are some shots from a voice recording session in Hollywood. Good times.












Stand by for more.

Tuesday, February 01, 2011

Echoes... from the drunk



Try to spot this one. I know it's a shot out of a serie that i'm doing with my friend up there. Scrolling trough the blog you might be able to sift some of the other pics of the serie.
Here he goes again:


And if you're at it... see if you can spot this serie too - in fact - those two go a long strech in time - and most of the photos aren't posted on the blog - but one day... ONE DAY... i'll gather them all and if you get just 1/1000000000000 of the fun we had - you'll be smilig up to your ears.




Now the real question is: What the hell were we doing in the subway ???
Surely we were drunk but... there was always a greater purpose. We were searching for little gods.. and we found some.
Here is how you shoot strangers and worship them after... just for good times.



here's the whorshiper

and more vibe :)

get this one ?


critical




Also, somehow related (it's difficult to keep on the road when you're under.. influence ;) ) my brother(s) got a new garage.



And still related - this guy... i met him on the offroad rides first and on a fashion workshop later.

Check out his blog.

and one final shot with DeeDee because i miss her and i have to clear the card of pics from December. ;)

January ? What January ?