Extra Life 2012

I'm pleased to announce that I will be participating in Extra Life this year! For those that haven't heard about it, Extra Life works with children's hospitals around the world to raise money for helping treat kids with any illness regardless of income.

Extra Life is a 24 hour event held once a year in order to raise money. Starting at 8 AM on October 20th, 2012, I'll be attempting a 24 hour video game session, along with the rest of the participants on team Giantbomb. My goal, since this is the first year I will be participating, is a mere 100 dollars. Every little bit counts; last year, they raised 1.2 million dollars.

I am taking suggestions of games to play on my Twitter feed, @zollozstudios, as well as in the comments here and at the Extra Life page. I am also planning on streaming the entire session on Ustream.

So please, help my hospital, the Helen DeVos Children's Hospital of Grand Rapids, Michigan, and donate any amount at this link. Any and all help is appreciated.

Claptrap Figurine Part 2 - Detail Carving

Here are the latest images of the Claptrap carving. Most of the major geometry is done, save for the eye and arms. Some of the details aren't as pronounced as in the game model because of the limitations present while working with a hobby knife as your only tool. The next step is to carve out the rest of the smaller details, carve the arms out of separate pieces of wood, put everything together, and paint.

Resident Evil PS2 Box Cover

I just came across this on my hard drive. It's from an old Photoshop contest held in a gaming forum. The premise was if the (then) recent Resident Evil re-release on the Nintendo Gamecube was also released on the Playstation 2. The prize: absolutely nothing except for pride.

Nerf Gun Mod: The Mass Effect Paint Job

This off-brand Nerf Gun was given to me just in time to paint for a Mass Effect costume.

There were a few things that I wanted out of the gate. I already had a color scheme to follow from the rest of the armor and that I wanted a 'just out of the fray' style of wear and tear. And lastly, I didn't like the moving clip of the gun, mostly because it stopped working correctly and kept falling back to neutral. I started by taking out all of the mechanics of the gun and discarding them since I wasn't going for a functional gun. Then I primed them with a plastic spray primer.

Then I taped off the main body of the gun and sprayed it 'smoke grey.' The spray job isn't the best because it isn't a plastic paint, but the weathering later will cover it up. It actually gave me a good guide to where the weathering should be.

I used normal acrylic black, cobalt, and white paints for the rest of the base color. I don't like buying grey acrylic since I can mix any shade with black and white. There are still spots of primer showing that will be covered in the weathering stage.

To weather this gun, I used a wash of black and a little brown. Dirt and grime isn't just black. For this heavily used theme, just brush the wash on and wipe it off with a rag or paper towel after a few seconds. What is still in the nooks and crannies is your dirt. This is a comparison of a washed half and an unwashed half.

All of the gun is washed at this point.

After the wash, I use silver enamel paint with a dry brush to paint on where the paint has been chipped off in places such as hard edges that will hit the ground, cover, etc.

And the final, assembled gun. The green inside is fine, since I'll just tape black paper inside the hole in the top and bottom.

And there it is. I hope you enjoyed it, and maybe even want to try it yourself. There are tons of resources out there as well as cheap materials (water guns from the dollar store) for you to get started. Until next time.

In Progress Updates

I'm usually the first person to admit that they have way too much work to do, and I've found myself in that exact situation. My personal project list has gotten too long. On top of my day job and all of my commissions, I need to get some of these little things done and out of the way.

So, I've come up with some sort of progress schedule for each of the projects on my plate.

It starts with the Claptrap Figurine. I haven't touched it for a few months and it's time to finish the carving and get on with the painting. I have the major details done, save for the arms and facial lens, so this can be easily finished within the month.

The Watchmen Poster Series has been... retooled into a singular poster in the style of a rough painting/propaganda poster. I have the basic design on paper, which includes Dr. Manhattan, Nite Owl, Rorschach, and the Comedian. On a similar note, the Marvel Steampunk Series is almost out of planning and ready to go. Both of these should be golden in one or two months time.

My most recent obsession with creating my own d20 adaptation for the Firefly (and even more recent Mass Effect) universe has been going along swimmingly, especially with the help from friends (shoutout to Steve) and family. It's in the development stages now, but I am able to work on it anywhere so it shouldn't take much longer to make playable. Then the hard part, playtesting.

Lastly, I'm finally going to make the costume I've always wanted to make: Altair and Ezio from the Assassin's Creed series. The plan is to come up with a modular design for the hidden blades that works with two strings (the only solution without being a mechanical engineer and switchblade expert) so that I can efficiently craft each bracer. After the hidden blades, the costume will slowly come together, once I get leatherworking supplies, fabric for the clothing, and start work on wooden replicas of the swords and knives. And to be convention friendly, all blades will be cast in resin and the only metallic part in the hidden blade will be a singular spring. As a result of all the detail, this project is very long term, and I don't think it will be complete until next year.

There are also some other projects in the planning stages, but I can't talk about them at this point. Stay tuned for more updates as the weeks go on.

Sketchbook: Airplane Edition

Alright, welcome to yet another series I've simply named Sketchbook. As the name may imply, these are just scans straight out of my book once every other month that aren't complete nonsense. These were all done over my holiday break on the plane. This first one was a request from a friend at work for a basic design for a tattoo. She wanted an old-school deep sea diver, but I thought that would be too plain so I suggested a more dynamic scene. Thus, the squid was born. The intent for this was to give her a really good foundation so her tattoo artist could modify it for scale and style.

This next one was an impromptu sketch of the people on the plane. I opened my book with the intention to draw a fairly realistic and detailed scene, but it was dark and I was crazy tired from travelling and visiting family. It eventually turned into a quick sketch that I decided to pound out in two or three minutes and reward myself with a good sleep.

This last one I did during my short connecting flight. I had been playing Skyrim in my spare time before the trip, which led to me thinking about Fallout 3 and the nuclear apocalypse setting and the destruction associated with it. I knew I wanted to have the perspective the way it was, but abandoned the complete devastation of nuclear weapons and settled for a bombed out area.

I hope you enjoyed it and I'll definitely be throwing up some other posts on project updates.

Creativity Boost: Summer Wars

Last night, I finally got around to watching Summer Wars, an anime film released in 2009. I've been keeping my eye on it for a while and finally bought the Blu-ray version.

After watching the film, I had a crazy idea on this new 'column' of sorts. Dubbed Creativity Boost, I want to try and showcase various items such as film, video game, and comic design accompanied with a short review. This will both help myself develop skills as well as sharing some tips I've picked up over the years for concept art.

First off, the plot is both a bit stereotypical of anime in general and unique. I know it's a little contradictory, but just bear with me. Kenji, our protagonist, is both a math nerd and socially awkward. He gets thrown into a bit of a derivative situation when his friend Natsuki asks him to head into the countryside for her granny's birthday party. It's not until he gets there that she shoots him the kicker, that he has to pretend to be her fiance for the weekend. I think that this part of this sub-plot of sorts is real dumb, but necessary to kick off the main plot.

Kenji gets a text in the middle of the night with a complex math problem to solve. Of course, he solves it, but the next day, everything is out of control when OZ is hacked and Kenji is to blame. OZ is an internet service that the world uses for everything from shopping to economy to traffic control. It has billions of users that log in and cyber commute, run government agencies and offices, and regulate public services. Soon a rogue AI starts taking over accounts and does what it wants.

The rest may be a little easy to guess but I'm not spoiling anything here. The art is what I'm after, and Summer Wars doesn't disappoint. The animation is smooth, the action is stylized, and the character design is    some of the best I've seen.

Each of the 30+ (yes, thirty) main characters may be difficult to name due to the intentionally short and hurried introduction, but that doesn't take away from the fact that they are recognizable in the crowd and fully rounded individuals.

It gets better, since the world uses OZ with everything. As a result, each user has an avatar that is fully customizable. From Kenji's personification, King Kazuma (a champion fighter), and some of the family members' job-related avatars, every avatar that is ever visible in the film is completely unique. Even the rogue AI design is great. It starts as a vandalized version of Kenji's original avatar and evolves into a fierce warrior and then a silhouette of that warrior as it hijacks and absorbs avatars. The complete flexibility that Oz gives its users is reflected in all of the various art styles and archetypes seen in OZ.

Environmentally, the film takes place either in OZ or on the enormous Jinnouchi family estate in the Japanese countryside. Still, the film always seems to take place in different locals. The estate is filled with unique rooms and the events of the film bring in different set pieces such as a ship, military radar, and a supercomputer. The 'real world' in Summer Wars is grounded into reality with the inclusion of branding. Usually, I'd take this as a sign of advertising, but here it works beautifully. Mazda coupes, Nintendo DS Lites, various mobile phone brands, the iPhone, Sony and Dell components, and many others work well to make it all believable.

As was the case for the avatars, OZ is equally flexible. It features many different visualizations of computer systems, filled with data to make it seem real. The visualization of traffic, for example, resembles a sliding tile puzzle with road maps. The AI pushes over a single file, which dominoes across the entire network as it absorbs all that information. Touches like that kind of remind me of the Tron films in a way.

Now for the nitty, gritty part: lessons learned from Summer Wars.

I can imagine that all of the work that went into the concept art was long and hard. But that's how it works when you're in that line of work. It starts with an idea and develops, eventually, into a finished design. I think that the hardest part is coming up with that initial idea, especially if you are the only one generating ideas. Without a collaborator, or even someone to pitch ideas to for a half hour, it can get pretty draining considering that one person has to write, edit, design, and eventually produce something. At the very least run everything by someone in your family to see what they think.

The thing with Summer Wars is that the avatars are naturally going to reflect their real world counterparts. Sure this is usually the case in our society, but the fact that OZ is so permeated in theirs that people work, shop, play, and do everything connected to OZ, almost ensures that the avatars are going to match. Natsuki's avatar has the same facial features and hair style. She is also wearing more traditional clothing reflecting her ties and feelings to her family. Kenji's original avatar is a highly stylized version of himself with mouse ears, especially reflective of his personality. As I stated earlier, Mansaku's is a pill, Kunihiko's is a dog dressed as a firefighter, and Katsuhiko's is a robotic fire rescue member with a fire ax (all indicative of their personalities and real world professions).

Naturally, you want characters that people can relate to so that the viewer doesn't have to force interest upon themselves. That's why we all have stereotypes in media, sure it's wrong, but that's how it kind of works. I'm speaking for myself here, but I think that media won't really outgrow stereotypes, but it can work around them. Characters that break stereotypes are especially powerful, but especially hard to design and implement properly. The way I like to get around it is starting with a character that may be a stereotype, or have more than desirable character flaws, like Kenji, and throughout the project, craft a story or circumstances that the character would have to change or be molded into the ideal. Starting Kenji as a math nerd, perfect family, and making him socially savvy would just be boring. I love seeing characters develop, and had Summer Wars started that way, I may not have finished it. By the end of the film, he is definitely not the character that we were introduced to. He learns, he changes. That is the great secret behind character development in media, that as artists and producers of media, we often forget to realize. We can even see it Kenji's posture throughout the film. Subtle things like that do wonders visually that sometimes go unnoticed.

Summer Wars does the same for environments. The Jinnouchi estate is large, full of rooms, corridors, and spaces that give it a sense of character. After the supercomputer is brought in, they need to cool the room with ice because of the lack of air conditioning. Kazuma is holed up in a tiny closet while he escapes the real world and enters OZ. The dining area is large and open, but everyone is crowded around a dinner table. Environmental concept work is easier to do when you have a lot of details to work with. This may mean taking reference photos of random everyday objects and average housing. Photography is our best tool for this stage. Any camera will do, it doesn't need to be a Nikon DSLR, it just has to be good enough for you. If that is a Poloroid camera, then so be it, but make sure it suits the needs of your art generation methods. Personally, I prefer my iPod, since I usually have it with me, it's small but has a good enough resolution so that I can capture what I need. For example, I'll take a photo of a landscape. Taken with an iPod, the details won't come out as clear, but that's perfect. The details I need from the photo are the light angle, general geometry, and proportions. I can make up the details as I go. In another example, I'll take a photo of a building under construction. Again, it won't be as clear to get everything, but I'm looking for atmosphere and ambient effects such as dust, light contrast, and basic details. Since I'm not that familiar with what the inside of a wall looks like, the photo will give me a pretty good idea of what I should include.

Well, I'm certainly impressed. I didn't expect to get this much content, but I hope it gives you something to think about when working on concept development. That's it for Creativity Boost. Oh, and go watch Summer Wars.