If you’re curious as to why many of the figures are kneeling, crouching, and overall sort of scrunched up (OR missing part of their legs) it’s because I’m working on a very small sketchpad and trying to fit an entire figure into the ‘frame’. I only bring this up because it’s just occurred to me. ~60 minutes
I meant to go back to this one and more clearly define the chicken/snake creature she’s fighting. The big dark blobs on either side of her is marker bleed-through from the opposite side of the page (you can see the reverse image in the drawing above). I like how the face turned out.
Ugh not a good way to start the week. While I would welcome the opportunity to blame this on one of my pens starting to run dry, really that center face just went to hell quickly and despite my best efforts to invoke a Charlie’s Angel’s thing here, it didn’t save the overall sketch. Stupid Mondays.
A great deal of my enthusiasm for video games can be traced to my overall belief that they have the potential to someday communicate narrative-based experiences better then any other form of popular media. And while multiplayer, co-operative play and the internet at-large have radically changed how people share in the gameplay experience, it’s with an interest in the evolution of storytelling that I continue to study, play and create games. With that focus in mind, this month I’m at long-last jumping into the broad world of Dead Space.
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I’ve tried to get into the survival horror genre, but the gameplay mechanics have always bothered me; my characters feet act as if they’re made of lead while their arms are overly sensitive and I always wind up pointing the gun / knife / chainsaw at the sky instead of at the advancing zombie. What little I played of 2008′s Dead Space Dismemberment Demo allowed me to navigate just fine, but I still couldn’t figure out how to actually kill anything. Choosing to keep my distance from the horrifying creatures that scuttled at me from dark corners I fought back with a handgun, but shooting the body had no apparent effect, head shot’s were difficult thanks to the enemies skillful dodging abilities, and I died frequently. On top of this there had been no introductory text or movie to explain what was happening. Frustrated, confused, and thoroughly creeped out I deleted the demo after two attempts.
Several years on and the world of Dead Space has grown to include comic books, two movies and a planned novelization. When gameplay footage for Dead Space 2 was released late last year I found that people were somehow freezing enemies before strategically hacking off their limbs. This looked like a decent strategy. I asked a friend if this was an option in the first game.
“You mean stasis?” He asked.
“I guess yeah. Freezing the enemies, shooting their limbs off before they jump all over you.” I said.
“Yeah, thats stasis.” he said. “That’s how you play the game.”
So. Apparently I had avoided a game that 1) was firmly embedded in one of my favorite narrative genre’s (space horror), 2) busily expanding it’s storyline beyond games to include comics and novels, and 3) was by all accounts awesome.
This oversight must be remedied. To that effect I’ve made some calls, knocked on a few doors, and finally this week have acquired the following horde of transmedia entertainment;
This weekend I’m jumping in, and will be moving through the narrative in as linear a fashion as possible.
Likes: I think the legs and posterior turned out fine. I like the highlights in the hair as well, though most of them had to be applied with a white pencil after I initially went waaay to dark with the pen.I also like how the shoulder muscle is interacting with the back.
Dislikes: Whoo. Well the arms and back are much too long, the elbows are not good and I only have a vague idea of which muscles in the back would be doing what. Also that hand is a mess, though I wasn’t really focusing on that too much.
Overall I need to get more specific with the musculature.
Not a fan of this one. She was supposed to be running. Instead she kind of looks stumbling drunk.
Still playing with drawing wet hair. I like how this one turned out – the hand on the right was an absolute disaster for a minute there but I think I turned it around.
I get a huge kick out of line art, and for that reason mummies are one of my favorite things to draw. This was completed with a Staedtler pigment liner pen (0.7) for the dark lines / values, a Pigma Micron pen (0.1) for the fine lines, and my ever-present Prismacolor Premier marker (cool gray 30%).
