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.