inFamously living slightly larger (Part 1)
Ever had one of those days when you’re at work delivering packages on your bike, and some guy calls your mobile to tell you to open up his package for him, and you accidentally end up annihilating part of a city?
No? I haven’t either.
This poor guy did. Only he woke up with awesome electrical superpowers and placing the city in which he lives in a state of national quarantine.
I'm Cole, I blew up half a city a few weeks ago. How do you like me so far?
Cole is the Protagonist in Sucker Punch’s new video game released titled, “inFamous,” on the Playstation 3. I ended up buying this game because of a handful of videos I’d seen a a week or two prior to its release. I’m normally not as impulsive to purchase games like this. Usually it takes a good deal of deliberation beforehand.
Or not.
The game is pretty much in a sandbox-like environment where you travel around the city completing various missions in order to clear your name for ultimately destroying part of Empire City. The game uses a karma system that allows you to make good or evil decisions throughout the game altering the way some of your main offensive abilities work and ultimately affecting the ending of the game. It’s not an innovative game mechanic by any means, but it at least guarantees a second playthrough. Which I figure I’ll be doing in a week or two since I’ve completed it as the obligatory nice guy.
Since this isn’t a game review, I was a bit inspired to try and sketch up some fan art for the game. Cole as a character was made to feel like an every-man, given either the responsibility of saving Empire City or ultimately controlling it.
Jazz hands, baby!
So I tinkered around with some ideas and I came out with this. It feels a bit uninspired, I know, but I created it while I was imbibed, so I was pretty proud of myself. I realized that I’m horrible at creating detail when I’m already drawing small. This image was actually 2.5-3 inches in height on paper. I didn’t start big at all since I’d be working on an infinitely larger scale in Illustrator.
So far, I’ve gotten the piece laid down with some lines in Illustrator. I’m going to tinker around with more line-weights and get things the way I like em.
The real challenge of this project is going to be coloring it. I’m not sure which style I want to take, and if I want to do anything experimental with the lines themselves, or even do away with them altogether. I was planning on adding the obligatory lightning effects around his hands and lower-legs later on in post process in Photoshop. I’m probably not going to keep the lighting-like lines around his forerams at all, since I placed those lines on a separate layer altogether. I’m actually looking forward to completing this, unlike most of the stuff I create.
Next week, I should have this bad boy cleaned up and colored in some form or fashion.
Catch you on the flipside…. Console General, out.
Cool drawing. Was this a pose from the game? If not, what made you decide to put him in that pose?
I dig the original blue sketch for some reason. It’s got a lot of style to it. I’m even imagining some sort of flipbook animation from that. That’d be badass.
The shading done on the first drawing makes it look cooler I think. I also like his mouth more in the first one..he just looks more badass for some reason.
I kind of like the line art part too. It looks almost like a blueprint with the blue underneath it.
Also, on the cover of the game the guy has a shaved head. In your drawing he looks completely bald. Was that a stylistic decision?
@ Dr. Conspicuous: Nah, it wasn’t a pose from the game, but it was one of a number of poses I was thinking about putting Cole in at the time. The actual sketch behind the line art gives the overall piece a great deal of weight even though you aren’t supposed to see it, which is why I began struggling with different ideas for coloring the art or even doing away with the hard illustrator lineart altogether. However, it would still require me redo the pencils since they’re so rough that a lot of detail is either obstructed, creating tangents or just messier than I’d prefer even for sketches. The original size of the image is so small I can’t really scan it in and do much with it as of yet.
@Dr. Novachord: Yeah, the sketch art does give it a lot of, “body.” I personally started liking it more BEFORE I started adding flat lines. I wanted to use that mouth before, but the issue was that as I was looking at it more and more, it started to remind me of the Ninja Turtle figures that had the grimmaces on the sides of their mouths that are pretty much impossible to make on a human head. So adding the contented but concerned look was pretty much an afterthought that I was still planning on changing anyway. I wasn’t planning on making him bald since this project isn’t done, I was going to add his shaved fade in post process via Photoshop. It’s pretty hard to add any sort of moderate stipple effects or dots enough to sort of resemble this particular hairstyle in Illustrator.
I like the style, although it feels a little flat.
Something seems off about his pose. I think his right leg needs to come to the foreground a little more and left leg back.
I’m interested to see what kind of textures you apply to it.
I’d still like to see something of a more personal nature from you. I get the impression Fan Art is like doodling to you. Something to do when you’re bored. Not something that has any value to you.
@Dr. Salvatron: Yeah, the piece does feel flat, which is what has been racking my brain as to what I want to do with what I came up with so far. So texturing and shading should probably expand on the way everything looks. Hopefully once I get down to coloring, it might give it that “oopmh” that seems to be missing.
My art for me isn’t what you feel doodling is. I don’t do it when I’m bored. When I’m bored, I play video games, watch a movie, go outside, or do something else provided I’m not at work. I can only generally draw when I’m truly inspired and normally at home. Which has been like pulling teeth for me lately. (Within the last few years.) I might not convey that sense of profound emotion through text on the internet as you would clearly prefer, but everything I do has meaning to me. If I didn’t feel that it had any level of meaning, I wouldn’t waste my time doing it in the first place. It takes me time to do what I do.