Concept art2010.May.9 9:29 pm
Concept art, Publication2009.March.26 1:28 am
Just dug out an old cover work, "semi" finished sort of thing. This baby’s been useful during sales/pitch talk, the admin at the I&DR guild likes it :)
I will post full versions of the guys from Darkstalkers soon. Demitri still needs a little work on his drapery…
Darkstalkers Tribute submissions
So there was this one time I went thinking like, "Hey… that’s probably not a bad idea…" And what could be wrong about having your work see some print and get circulated around — well, the world? I dunno, but North America most definitely.
The Darkstalkers showed up first time somewhere in the middle of 90’s, during which I was at some particular turning point in my life and couldn’t give further crap about how to string together a combo like this or that in a videogame.
To add to it a little bit, it was for some reason that it’s not the most hyped about thing around the community, most probably because of the competition in similar genre coming in from the likes of King of Fighters and the early generation of 3d action titles that becomes so big afterwards — Tekken and Soul Calibur to name a few. But I always think that the franchise is one among those that, despite mediocre popularity, has solid assets. The characters have such appeal to each its own that it doesn’t really break the lineup down into main and supporting casts. Although it’s unavoidable that, as always, some would be fancied more than the others. Fire up some keywords on search engine and you’ll see that ninety percent of the artwork out there is all over Morrigan, Lilith, or Felicia — most often in oversexed versions.
I’m not saying that such were bad designs. I just thought that the rest of the characters deserve more exploration as much as these icons get. Or maybe I just hate competition so I’d go with the ones that most people unlikely do. Is that gonna help winning a spot among 2,072 confirmed entries? God knows. But here’s sneak peek of what I’ve done, will post full size when the book is released.
Of Bloodlust and Aristocracy features the vampire noble Demitri Maximoff. It’s the only antihero among the initial playables.
Encore! Encore! tells a scene about Lord Raptor, or Zabelzarock in Japanese release, a zombie character with nonexistent abdomen. Guy’s supposed to be a rock star hailing from Australia, killed himself during a live performance (which obviously turns out to be his last… what a mess). He’s fun to paint though.
The tribute artbook will be published by Toronto-based studio Udon Entertainment. Kudos to you guys for putting up such a stir among the artist community.
A quick environment visual I did throughout last week, partly on the occasion of beefing up my portfolio in visual development.
I would estimate total time spent be around 6 hours, with many on-and-offs in between my day job. Heavily inspired by an envo specialist’s work who participated in a nextgen title released last year, mixed with this one aerial shot in the movie Hulk 2 based off a rural landscape in Brazil. I used the artist’s work as a benchmark in terms of ‘keying’ in overall value for this piece. As you probably know I am a big fan of desaturated colors for some time now.
How have industry people been handling new IPs during the recent financial crisis?
We heard of layoffs and projects got cancelled here and there, but several are viewed as promising enough so that they don’t have to suffer similar fate as that of the rest. First-person platformer Mirror’s Edge (DICE-EA), of which word had it slated to come off as a trilogy, is one of those few, at least up to now, being critically acclaimed and has set new milestone in terms of art direction for AAA content. The day of gloomy futuristic universe in the tradition of Ghost in the Shell and The Matrix is about to come to an end as visdev artists around the internet have been discussing this game as ‘fresh’ and ‘a daring take’ on scifi / cyberpunk thriller, and of course, inspiring. Quoted is Kris Graft writing for Edge Online.
Retail checks have been coming in that indicate EA’s stylish first-person action game Mirror’s Edge has fallen short at retail. But despite the game’s commercial performance, EA CEO John Riccitiello assured that the company isn’t canning the new series.
“Mirror’s Edge is one that was very strongly reviewed, that one’s going to go forward,” said the exec during a conference call. “We’re probably going to look into some issues around the design to make sure strong IP is married with strong business.”
Reviews were generally favorable, earning a 78 percent average review score at Metacritic, but the new IP had to go up against a tough slate of more recognizable franchises.
EA has made a point to bring more new IP into its product portfolio, balancing out licensed and older series.
“We’re actually very pleased with a lot of our new franchises this year,” said Riccitiello. He added that Spore and MySims have established strong foundations for future installments, and expects Warhammer Online to do well as time goes on.
Riccitiello also categorized the new sci-fi survival horror game Dead Space as a “long-term big winner” for the company.
But if EA knew the economic conditions it was due to face this holiday, perhaps the publisher wouldn’t have relied so heavily on new IP.
“Many times with a new intellectual property, the first edition doesn’t generate the units that subsequent editions could generate,” the exec said. “I would argue that in this particular year, the consumer may have been more reticent to take risks that they may otherwise take because of the very clouded holiday.
“I think we’ve established value for EA and value in our franchises. We can build on that in our future.”
