Pokemon Battle Royale!

The amazing folks over at Light Grey Art Lab decided to put together a show based on the original 151 Pokemon and crazily decided to get an artist for every single one. And they did it. The show opening is on the 20th with the show hanging from April 16th - May 11th. Head over to the Pokemon Battle Royale site for more info on that.

Pokemon personally was a love/hate thing in regards to my 5th grade self. I've openly declared on here before my hate for all things turn-based, but back then I still loved the art and the characters so I collected the cards and toys even though I didn't play the card-game or the video game. I went out and bought it and I tried to force myself to like the game, but it never clicked. But I 100% have a soft spot for those original ones because it definitely influenced what I drew back then, which transformed into how I draw now.

I originally was champing at the bit pretty hard for Hypno and at the time he appeared to be an open choice on the original list, but alas he was taken. Luckily I got golem who I thought was one of the cooler ones. The show filled up with a roster of artists so fast, and that was before Kotaku plugged it.

So here's one more re-imagining to add to the pile. If you are in the Minneapolis area you better get to that show because not only is it going to be an awesome show looking at the other pieces, Light Grey Art Lab deserves it.

http://pokemonbattleroyale.blogspot.com/
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/paperbicycle/light-grey-art-lab

 

and Two Dragons...

For a tiny bit I took part in a weekly theme based drawing club and the week Dragons popped up I just felt like changing the style up a bit. I really liked how these turned out, especially since they were just sketches really. It's such a relief when I switch to a more cartoony style. Mainly because it's much easier and quicker by comparison to more realistic affairs, but also because there's just that "no rules" mentality about it. If I want to bend that line, I will, and it just won't matter. I think the only downside is I don't think I would learn as much in the process.

The entire time I did these I was listening to the "How to Train Your Dragon" OST. So good.

Two More Character Portraits

I did both of these for friends who play Neverwinter Nights. They each gave me a brief description of what sort of weapons they use and some traits and let me just go crazy on it. The only really specific detail was that the wizard looked and behaved pretty much like Benedict Cumberbatch on the BBC Sherlock. So I pretty much just painted his face on there. I didn't get too detail crazy because they were going to be shrunken down to the size they needed.

At this point I'm thinking I need to rename this blog to "character shots" or something along those lines. I just always seem to gravitate to doing some sort of character when I'm just painting independently. I have some normal, non-conceptual, illustrations coming at least pretty soon. I think a lot of that is that I just have never found painting scenes all that enticing. Especially when there aren't people or creatures in them. If I just let myself do whatever I'd probably end up drawing nothing but faces.

So I think it's time to force myself into some more environmental sketches and such.

Edit: Updated version of the woman.

Steampunk Western Sniper

Here is a sketch that got slightly out of hand. After it was done though I was so pleased and just had to throw it up on here. It's probably the first thing in a long, long while that I've painted without any sort of photo-manipulation techniques or any added textures after the fact. I just... well, I just painted. So much fun and a bit refreshing to get away from my normal process.

Dry Bones - SotD 149

This one was definitely highly requested. It seems like Dry Bones has a much higher fan following than I would have ever imagined. Although he was definitely one of my personal favorites as well, even though he was sometimes irritating to deal with. He may hold the spot of the only skeleton based enemy I actually like in video games.

While I was painting this out my buddy chimed in that maybe I should paint him reforming after he's been struck down by the mighty Mario, but I was far too into it to restart. Sort of regret that, but no one would probably be able to tell who it was if I had. I've been sort of putting this one off for the same reasons that I haven't done more of the koopa variants. Jumping around gives me a better variety and with these ones I feel like I have to keep it more consistent. Although while doing this, for the first time, I had the urge to tackle someone like Bowser even though it would go against the spirit of the series.

I hope everyone is having a great holiday. Happy New Years!

Reznor - SotD 149

Reznor was another one that was requested quite a bit, and he's mostly known for being a boss in Super Mario World. Imagine this guy on a platform, attached to some monstrosity of a wooden ferris wheel, and 3 more of the exact type all spitting fire balls at you. Hopefully that strikes up the memory. 

I never really realized just how many dinosaurs there were in Mario. I mean it's rather obvious in retrospect, pretty sure  I even remember a "Dinosaur Land" or something being thrown around as a stage or world. Maybe it wasn't a meteor that wiped out all the dinosaurs. Maybe it was Mario. That crazy jerk ran around cracking necks under his boot like it was his calling in life and he was sworn to adhere to it. 

"But what about Yoshi? They were best buds..."

Were they best buds when he kicked Yoshi away into oblivion to make that extra long jump? I'm pretty sure putting Yoshi to work as a steed immediately after he hatched violates some sort of child labor law. I'm doing Mario enemies here... but I think Mario is the biggest enemy of all...

Nintendo Power

After I was plugged on Kotaku, Nintendo Power contacted me about putting some of the Mario Enemies into a feature. The thing about this project was that it really tapped into my nostaglia about running through Mario World 3 or struggling through Mario World 2. So getting contacted by one of Nintendo's journalists for a small feature in the backspace just made me absolutely giddy. I used to get the magazine back in the SNES days, mostly for walkthroughs and cheats as I used to beg Mom and Dad to take me to Blockbuster so I could peruse the SNES isle and grab whatever I thought had the coolest cover... Nintendo Power got me through quite a few of these games. I had a really bad habit of not writing down level codes and Nintendo Power would come to the rescue. And I feel I've come full circle here somehow. Not sure what that circle is, since my metaphor circle logic is incredibly weak, but I have that feeling anyway. Feels good. There's not a whole lot of ways I ever saw myself getting into that magazine, if ever.

Thanks for the article Nintendo Power.

So go check it out, it's a pretty good issue covering their biggest franchises and most importantly Skyward Sword, and the small article on me and my art is right in the back. I would have plugged it earlier, but I didn't know what exactly they had written about me until today and I was a bit nervous about it. Actually turned out to be a 2 page spread instead of the one I was told it would be. The article was written by Andrew Hayward, so you should check him out too.