Plaid Creature

Dr. REWind is in.

What’s good kids?  How’s your health?  ….your creative muscles?  They workin’ out good?  I’d hope so.  So here I’ve promised to finish the Heavy Weapons Guy, and I have done so.  It’s not my best, but I am proud considering I did the ENTIRE set of lineart without reference or previous sketches.  Although I’ve realized, I will probably never do it again.  I found it to be waaaaay to inefficient and I ultimately end up screwing up anatomy and great tangents that can pretty much make the image look pretty terrible.  So, lesson learned.  What I was going for with the pose in the image was the Heavy attempting to closeline some poor sap. (preferrably the Scout that stole his “Sandvich.”)

Here are the respective wallpapers at 2048 x 1152 resolution so that you may adorn your beautiful widescreen monitors with my art.  Please?  No?  That’s okay, I understand.  ::sniff::

Once again kids, If you need to shrink the image down, they should fit just fine at any 16×9 aspect ratioed resolution.

The Blu Russian.

..also in venetian!!

Dr. REWind here,

Made it back from Vegas in once piece.  I had a blast.

Busy month so far.  I had another commission to finish up this week for a Cobra racing event that’s supposed to go on this coming weekend.  Aside from that I started on the rough for the next Team Fortress 2 class.  The Heavy Weapons Guy.  The Heavy is what his name implies.  This brick sh*t-house of a Russian is a giant wall of high calibered, rapid firing death in boots.  His role is generally on the frontlines soaking up damage from all sides.  He’s an even greater force to be reckoned with when he’s allied with The Medic.  While the medic provides constant healing, the Heavy can spray death upon his opponents.

So far, I think he’s shaping up alright.   Here’s the upper half of em.  I’ve been stuck trying to figure out the rest of his pose.  I’m swaying between a few…which is completely normal for me since I generally ALWAYS start out with some sort of thumbnail first, but I’m trying to create art completely digitally now, whether it be freehand via my tablet or in Adobe Illustrator.  Anyway, it’s really rough, as you can see a number of issues, which for me at the moment outside of a completely finished pose, are his eyes and eyebrows.  On his actual design he’s pretty beady eyed compared to everybody else who’s eyes you can actually see, so he’s obviously going to undergo some serious changes down the road.  Wish me luck.  Once this is finished, I should be able to work on the double featured item I spoke about a few weeks back.

Ahhh, you don’t care.

The doctor is OUT.

So this past week I’ve been continuing my wallpaper projects from Team Fortress 2.  I’ve been working on the scout for the last week, however I’ve been a bit distracted and have been working on a few personal pieces that I really wanted to work on to convey how I’ve been feeling personally over the last few weeks, which haven’t been too well.  Issues aside, let’s discuss the Scout class that is available in the game.  He’s an interesting class, based upon speedy attacks and quick, hit-a-muthaf*cka-and-fade tactics.  His short range sawed-off shotgun and agility combined make him a force to be reckoned with in the right hands.  His aluminium short bat just makes him awesome.  I honestly should’ve posted a video for the spy last week.  For those that don’t know what I’m talking about, here’s a taste.  (All two of you.)

That’s gotta be one of my class favorites.  The design of the Scout class in the game is amazing.  The voice actor they chose for the game itself is hilarious when he’s speaking in-game during heated firefights.  So far, I’ve had a lot of fun working on the wallpaper for the Scout.  I’m probably going to provide the same set of colored options that I used for the Spy, but I’m digging the way the scout is turning out thus far.  It’s probably a bad thing being an artist and all.

The Scout.

The extra lines that you can see within the image are where the “sketchy” shading is going to appear.  I’m tempted not to do that on this one, but I want some consistency within all of the actual backgrounds I’ve created up to this point.  Next week will be a double feature, giving way to what else I’ve been working on over the last week aside from the Team Fortress 2 wallpapers.  I’ll catch up with you guys before then…but I’m goin’ to Vegas courtesy of the few doctors around here.  I’m goin’ back to cause some damage.

Next week, kids.  Nighty night.  (Aww…you don’t care.)

Last week I was working on the first of the wallpaper series from Team Fortress 2.  I did manage to finish the Spy this time out.

I really liked the way the character himself turned out.  I’m not so entirely thrilled with the background, and found myself not settling on any one background.  I’m only posting one up here.  I don’t feel like uploading like twelve different variants of the same image and I feel that it’s a waste of space, personally.  If you want to take a peek at the other images let me know.

The initial resolution for the image is 2048 x 1152 (16:9).  It’s huge, I know.  I haven’t designed a wallpaper in years, and I figure I might as well get with the times and make it widescreen.  GO BIG OR GO HOME! RAWR!  I’ve also got some 4:3 variants as well, but you’ll have to be assertive and ask me for them since I’m going to host them offsite.  A lot of the variants I have right now are different versions varying in color overlay (representing the two teams in TF2: Red & Blu) and whether or not they are simply cel-shaded or using the sketchy shading style below.  My main concern are my color profiles that I have between the two different monitors I own.  They provide two completely different color qualities since one of my monitors is a 4 year old CRT and the other a 5 month old 23.5 in widescreen.  For some reason Photoshop hates both monitors and completely refuses to allow a matching color profile between the two.

THE BLU SPY. (Yes...it's missing an "E")

What I wanted to do with the shading was simply create something different.  I’m surprised I was able to create a sort of sketched shading with screwing around with the filters in Photoshop to get the effect.

I know, I promised to show the rough lines for the next class, but I honestly have decided which class I wanted to work on yet.  I’m shooting for The Scout.  I’ll talk about him more next week.

I’ve had a super-long day and it has to end, post-haste.

I-said-GOOD NIGHT.

Greetings boys and girls, the Console General here:

I’ve been blessed with a new PC via my employers “PC Fair.”  It’s a beast and has been a blast to build; the specs are as follows:

Intel Core i7 920 (2.66 ghz quad-core)

12 gigs of PC12800 OCZ ram

ASUS P6T Deluxe V2

2 (Yes, two) XFX GTX 285 Black Editions with 1 gig of ram, each running in SLI mode.

Two Western Digital SATA HDD’s, one 150 gig Velociraptor and a regular 640 gig drive.

1000 watt power supply

and a Thermaltake Spedo full-tower case to hold her all together.

I’m currently running Vista Ultimate x64 in order to properly utilize all the ram, but I’m already starting to hate it as I loathe how Vista’s UI works.  I planned on getting my hands on a copy of Windows 7 in the fall when it releases retail so I figure that I’ll just use that to warm up with since the OS’es are essentially the same (with a few tweaks here and there.)  I loved putting this bad boy together, and I look forward to great days gaming and working with it.

Recent field acquistions aside, I’ve been working on a serious project this time around.  I’ve been working on a pack of widescreen wallpapers for your PC, Mac, or whatever sort of computer any of you might be using nowadays.  The pack is going to be themed around a multiplayer game titled Team Fortress 2.  A great sequel that some of us Doctors played for hours upon hours on end back in day.  In the game,  you play a number of different classes in order to complete various game goals such as Capture the Flag, Arena-deathmatch or Point Capture.  The classes in the game are probably some of the funniest, yet greatest designs in any multiplayer game I’ve ever played.  They all explode with personality and style that is very congruent with the art direction of the game.  I love it all.

So, between copying and backing up data between numerous machines and making sure everything stays working, I’ve decided that the first character class from the game that I decided to create this week was the Spy.  Not a class that I’m very good with, but the class itself requires a good deal of skill to play.  A player can cloak from the eyes of enemy team members, disguise himself as other enemy players, and BACKSTAB – Dungeon and Dragons Style.  Yes, the Spy has a handy ability when he gets behind his foe, he can whip out his butterfly knife and stab the enemy in the back, killing them instantly.  It’s like a sweet symphony of death, blood, and deception to see this guy work in the hands of an adept player.

So far this is what I’ve come up with.  I should have it completed by the end of the weekend: (click on the thumbnail)

Meet the Spy...and his baclava.

With the image, I want to color it with a sort of monochrome color scheme, but with textured colors.  I’ll probably try using colors like blue or red as the primary color schemes or I’ll end up using both as different versions, since Red and Blue are the two main colors for each team within the game.  For the spy’s pose, I wanted to capture the style of the game as much as possible, even with the elongated limbs.  I feel that the image is almost in-game looking, and I feel that’s what I was going for.

Once I get this bad boy done, I”ll post it next week and hopefully have the next class rough lined up.  See you kids next week!

Console General, out.

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.