"Pikachu Used Thundershock" 3

After squeezing in free time through several months of work, the third installment of my music playlist "Pikachu Used Thundershock" is FINALLY finished!! For those who haven't seen the first 2 batch of characters, here's one and two.

Most of these characters weren't too difficult to come up with, as their designs are very close to their respective logos/mascots. Shout outs to the people who helped me find more EDM artists for this batch! Here's each character's design process:

Crooked Kitty (derives from Camo & Krooked. Info for this character can be found here.)

Werecat (Monstercat Media)
     - Originally, I was going to stick to just artists and not record labels, but the Monstercat logo was a prime candidate for turning into a character. Further suggestion for the character came from someone who commented on this blog, too (thank you ShiftOne). :)
     - Werecat's design is pretty much straightforward from the original Monstercat design. I just beefed it up and added some spiky fur.

Blackbunny (Blackburner)
     - One of many artists I was introduced to by a fellow deviant on DeviantArt.
     - Again, a very straightforward character design. I mixed the style of Blackburner's bunny logo with the masks and clothing the artists themselves wear when they perform.
     - I wasn't too confident tackling a Blackburner character at first, but after seeing Rise of the Guardians and declaring Bunnymund as my favorite character, drawing Blackbunny became a piece of cake.

SKisMophobic (SKisM)
     - I hadn't heard of SKisM until a friend posted the "Experts" music video on my Facebook wall. It's pretty much the best music video ever.
     - SKisMophobic's design is a mix between the most common pics of SKisM I could find through Google, the wicked spider mech that appears in the "Experts" video, and the double skulls that are on the artist's albums. He was a fun character to draw.
     - (A fun little note: the texture on his hoodie is a picture of a fish I took at the Baltimore Aquarium.)

Epix (Eptic)
     - As simple as Eptic's mascot is, designing this character ironically took the longest and was the most stressful out of all the characters in this batch. I was conflicted whether or not to design Epix as epic or simple but could kick your ass (like ASOT 9001). I changed Epix's design about four times until I finally settled on this one.
     - Epix is a giant, pixel sprite. The orbs on its halo contain Epix's alternate forms: a mech, tank, killer UFO, some Godzilla/killer monster thing, and a mystery form. Whichever form Epix decides to use, the halo disappears and the respective orb expands and sinks into Epix's head, similar to the contained brain on Eptic's mascot.


It may be a while until the next batch of characters, mainly because finishing this one was kinda stressful. Who to pick next... ;)

Style Exploration: My Pokemon Battle Team

I've been busy with multiple freelance jobs lately and I haven't had time to work on anything personal, so I took a day off and decided to let off some steam by drawing Pokemon:

This is my Pokemon Battle Team. Strategy-wise, it's not the best lineup but these six Pokemon are my favorite to use in battle. CLAYDOL, CHANDELURE, BISHARP, and SCOLIPEDE are from my Pokemon White Version team whereas GALLADE and MISMAGIUS are from my Soul Silver Version lineup. The hexagon boxes below the images are the techniques I gave them in their respective games, the red highlighted boxes being the move used in the illustration.

Style-wise, I wanted to take a break from line art because that's the part of my drawing style that takes the longest. Since this was a stress-reliever exercise, I wanted to draw these Pokemon quickly, so after creating a rough sketch of their poses I went straight to colour.

For those curious about the nicknames:

[CLAYDOL] "Pendulum"
     - Named after my favorite band, plus "Pendulum" seemed to fit this Pokemon. I like Claydol's design for some reason - I think it has something to do with the "eyes" all around its head. It's weird, therefore I like it.

[CHANDELURE] "Daniel"
     - Named after the player character in Amnesia: The Dark Descent. This Pokemon is a ghost and a source of light, so I paid homage to the lantern Daniel carries in the scariest game I've ever played.

[GALLADE] "Jak"
     - Named after Jak from the Jak & Daxter games. I wanted to give Gallade a slick name and "Jak" was the only one I could think of at the time. I also gave him a partner: a Buizel nicknamed "Daxter".

[BISHARP] "Mr.Justice"
     - A name I thought of out of ridiculousness because Bisharp looked like a total badass. His design reminded me of Ultraman or some superhero, so I made him a guardian of justice. I made sure to match his techniques with the epicness of his name.
     - Mr.Justice is my favorite battle Pokemon on this team. Imagining him as a superhero makes him extremely fun to play.

[SCOLIPEDE] "Snare"
     - For the longest time, his nickname was "Pendoraa" which is his Japanese name because it sounded so cool and I couldn't think of a better name. So I took my Knife Party-inspired centipede plush's name and shared it with this centipede-inspired Pokemon.
     - Scolipede holds my favorite design out of this whole team.

[MISMAGIUS] "Onryo"
     - "Onryo" are vengeful spirits in Japanese folklore. Honestly, I was kinda bummed that I couldn't catch a female Mismagius, so it was tough nicknaming this male one.
     - Onryo was the first Pokemon in my Soul Silver Version to reach level 100.

EDM Arena: Character Skins

I was going to wait to post this with another batch of characters, but because of moving and work I haven't had the chance to finish the next line up of EDM peeps. :( Plus, as the title of the skins suggests, these were meant for Halloween... and well, it's very late.

The name of each skin is self-explanatory, but for those who don't know here's the breakdown:

- {Blood Sugar} Skin comes from one of Pendulum's songs, dubbed the same name
- {Really Dead} Skin is a play on Deadmau5's name
- {Haunted} Skin is based on the poster designs for Knife Party's Haunted House Tour
- {Reptile} Skin comes from one of Skrillex's songs, dubbed the same name. The design for this one was a little tough: I tried to combine Reptile's costume (from Mortal Kombat, as the song's themed around) with lizards and I didn't want to put clothes on a dinosaur... So the final result ended up being a  Jurassic Park-y t-rex with glasses and hair.

As soon as everything gets settled wherever I move to, hopefully I can get the next line up of characters posted. :)

KP Plushies

FINALLY, after a long wait of finding time between work and Snare feeling extremely bored and lonely, KP plushies have been made!!!

This was a project idea I've had in mind ever since I finished Snare, and surprisingly, both KPs weren't too difficult to make. I wanted to make the Rob and Gareth mods because I wanted to experiment with different fabrics and sewing patterns (i.e. [R]KP's hair and [G]KP's hat). Here's a detailed turnaround for them:

I made the KPs small, relative to Snare's size, so they're both about 8 inches tall (not including [R]'s additional height because of the spiky hair :'D). They're made from black and white ultra cuddle, black and dark gray fleece, white t-shirt material (for the knives going through their heads), and black, thick craft foam (for the buckles on the tourniquets/straps). [R]'s hair is made from some black, furry hem that you're supposed to put on the ends of coat sleeves or something. [G]'s hat is made from black fleece with the thick foam sheet to support the visor part. The idea of giving [G] and [R] their Lazer Cannon and Flamethrower (named "Fire Hive"), respectively, was Gareth, himself's, idea!

So Snare is ecstatic that not just one, but two KPs are keeping him company. [G] and [R] get along very well, too...

Everyone's been after [G]'s hat lately, too...

Aside from learning how to sew a cap and working with furry hem material to make hair, this was also the first sewing project in which I was able to replicate a second plushie without it looking too derpy. :D

iOS Project Art

I've been working on an iOS project lately with a small start up company called Left Coast Games. The game has the appearance of a 2D fighter but plays out like an RPG. Here's the art for one of the stages, (also added to my 2D Portfolio):

The background was designed for a 3D effect (similar to Xenogears) in which the camera slightly toggles around perpendicular planes with textures while the characters on screen are flat, 2D sprites. I broke up the background elements to have a parallax effect when the camera shifts around.

I've also been in charge of all the UI, character art, and animations for this project, too. Here's a sneak peek of one of quite a few sprite animations I had to do: (click for better res)

More posts about the project may come soon! :)

EDM Arena Character Reveal

The first of two challenger reveals:

Crooked Kitty (derives from Camo & Krooked)
     - There needed to be more variety in the character roster and I've been wanting to add more drum n bass artists (because I love drum n bass). Camo & Krooked is one of my favorite groups, but their "logo" was challenging to turn into a character. I used the "O"'s in both names for "eyes" and the "M" in Camo reminded me of cat ears, so then the idea went from there.
     - Listening to their fast-paced music, I was reminded of flying a starship or piloting a mech in some video game, so I wanted the design to reflect that kind of maneuverability. I didn't want to use a ship design (because that may be used for another character) so I went with a mech. When brainstorming agile mechs from video games I've played, I remembered the smooth, almost sliding agility of the four-legged mechs in Armored Core, and that's why this character has four legs.

More characters to come soon!

New EDM Arena Character(S)!!!

A new challenger approaches...

UPDATE: Oh snap and another one...

Process Log 19: Wicked Loot Art Test

About two months ago, I received two art tests from a small game company called Wicked Loot. After waiting and getting permission to post the successful second art test, here it is: the entire development breakdown of designing the parody character "Sonic the Rockstar".

References

Sonic the Rockstar was once an amazing musician, top dog and known to all, but as time passed he started losing his vibe and now he relies on drugs to keep his "high".
As the ref sheet above implies, I searched all the different Sonics I could think of, looking for pose, the style of shoes, and art direction. From the get go, I envisioned the parody of this character to be human - making Sonic the Rockstar a hedgehog would just be the same as Sonic the Hedgehog... - but I included hedgehog refs anyway...

I knew Sonic had to have a mohawk - it fit with the original Sonic's hair, spiky things - therefore the rest of his design would probably be punk based. I also looked up inspiration for a unique and iconic guitar (Zakk Wylde's ring guitars came in mind). Pose was important, too - looking up dynamic, action poses of famous guitarists was fun. :D

Sketch Phase

First step I took in designing the character was costuming and colour. I messed with several ideas, even a classic rock one for the heck of it. I kept the colours true to Sonic the Hedgehog because the important aspect of this art test was to have the original influence shine through the design - people had to look at him and know he was a parody of Sonic the Hedgehog.

Next step was poses. Technically, all I had to submit was one character, but the backstory Wicked Loot provided for this guy was strong, so I felt it would be better to submit two poses: Sonic's high and when he's not on drugs. :D

These were the poses I ended up choosing. This was the cleaned lineart page and then...

Final

... this was the final!

I had so much fun designing this character. The backstory and designing a parody character in general were very amusing. :D

Email Change!!

Hey any and everyone who's been to this blog, I'm switching my contact email from the ringling.edu one to this new one: t3hshrimp@gmail.com. I've had this email for a while, but I felt it'd be better to get used to this one as opposed to my old school one.

Woo Zbrush!

Pikachu Used... EDM Arena!!!

Due to the interest the "Pikachu Used Thundershock" characters received, I felt obligated to create this teaser poster of a would be fighting game called EDM Arena. If you haven't seen the characters, you can find them here.

As for the creation of this poster... it took a while. It's layout is based off the Ultra Music Festival posters. The most challenging parts of creating this piece were designing the game title logo and balancing the colour and contrast of all the characters plus the background.

Maybe there'll be some screenshots of this game later...

Process Log 18: Motherframe ZELDA

I participated in another CGHub challenge and the topic was to re-imagine The Legend of Zelda universe. I like sci-fi, so I went with a sci-fi spin...

I originally thought of Zelda in futuristic garb but then I got this idea of her hair being made of electrical tubes or something. A quick backstory came to mind: in this futuristic age of Hyrule, "ZELDA" is the name of the main computer frame at Hyrule Castle that overlooks the whole kingdom/city. Her hair tubes keep her plugged into the system and this is when she's at her strongest, power-wise, however, she can unplug herself with the expense of weakening her energy. When she goes mysteriously missing (or Ganondorf captures her, whatever) her memory is implanted into a proxy unit called "Sheik". The suit helps maintain her energy, even if she's miles away from Hyrule Castle.

So getting to painting the final image, I initially wanted to paint both Zelda and Sheik at the same time, but this concept was too difficult to execute without confusing the hell out of the viewer. In this first WIP shot, I liked the pose and the holographic lyre attached to her left arm, but the rest of the concept had to change...

...and so this is the final. I simplified the concept by just sticking to Zelda, who had the stronger visual design in the exploratory sketches compared to Sheik. I geeked out a bit on the details on the upper half of her body...

What I learned/experienced:
The tricky part of this character was to balance the recognition of the original character design with the re-imagining. For Zelda, I focused on keeping her key features: pointy ears, colours, hair style, and that long cloth thing that she wears over her dress while redesigning everything else around them.

"Pikachu Used Thundershock" 2

Continuing with the characters of "Pikachu Used Thundershock" electronic music playlist, I made a second batch of peeps based on electronic musicians. For the first batch of characters, go here.

All of these characters were pretty much like Redmau5: already a recognizable mascot that I didn't want to stray too far away from, but at the same time add a bit of my style to them. Here's some info on my thought process in creating their designs:

Stranger (derives from Danger)
     - The toughest part about designing Stranger was choosing his outfit. I looked up several of Danger's outfits (from when he DJs to album covers), so I mixed a bit of everything into this final design.
     - Danger reminded me of Spiderman, or some kind of dark superhero. I went with a dynamic pose to communicate that.

Nom Nom (Feed Me)
     - The little green gremlin (?) is often seen with other creatures or amorphous, colorful things with it, (at least as far as album covers go) so the concept I came up for Nom Nom was that it can shapeshift or create little blob creatures from his body.

Zombleman (Zomboy)
     - This was an easy concept, as the first thing that came to me was changing "boy" in "Zomboy" to "man". To add more flair, I went with a gentleman appearance, because being dapper is awesome.

Giga Rexcision (Excision)
     - When I designed SkriRex (in the previous batch of characters), I forgot that Excision was the designated "dinosaur of electronic music". To make up for that mistake, I had to include him in this second batch.
     - The design for this character is based off of Excision's Shambhala 2011 Dubstep Mix album cover. Originally, Giga Rexcision had the tiny T-rex arms but I got rid of them in exchange for the double cannons on his hips, to emphasize Excision's heavy sound.

ASOT 9001 (ASOT, A State of Trance, Armin van Buuren)
     - After looking at all the characters I'd come up with thus far, trance was missing. I'm not too familiar with many trance artists, and there didn't seem to be any notable features or mascots I could use from the individual artists that I knew. I knew about ASOT, and their little characters were perfect for inspiration.
     - The ASOT characters don't look menacing or harmful, but I wanted to give this one a sense that it could kick your ass if it wanted to (plus make it look like it fits with the rest of the characters in this project). The colorful "wings" on it's side can float around it in many different ways and can also be used as blades. The colors represent this.

I don't listen to some of the artists in this batch of characters often, so I tried to get a good feel of their music by doing some Youtube research. I hope I did them justice...

Now that there are 10 characters to this project, onward to a practice exercise! Hint: It's game based.

KP: Fire Hive

More KP art...

... a little late, but it's for "Fire Hive", the first Knife Party song I listened to and loved.

Process Log 17: Druid's Market

I needed an environment painting for my 2D portfolio, so I took a sketch I did back in Game Design Club at Ringling during one of the first "World Jams", where we took several words from an index card pile and created a world from them.
The words that made up this environment were "Druid", "Medieval", and "Barter Economy".

I don't normally paint just environments - and it's an area that I need to improve - so this was a huge challenge for me. I'm semi-satisfied with how this painting turned out. Regardless, this is the first of many practice environment paintings to come. I also received valuable crit and advice from Kez.

Here's the process I went through in completing this piece:

Sketchstuff Updated

A new page has been added to Sketchstuff. It shows a map of an RPG I had in mind for a couple years in high school called Ayanseila. It was a huge game idea that never saw the light of day and probably never will.

Again, for visiting my site here's some more derpy sketches, this time of my four favorite plushies: Gary the Starcraft II Overlord, Charmander the... Charmander, Gidi the GDCat (that I bought at my first  GDC event, hence the name), and Bunny Fisher the Sam Fisher Raving Rabbid. These are the kinds of things they do together. :'D

Knife Party-Inspired Plushie

If you remember Snare, KP's pet centipede, I made him into a plushie. :D

The thing he's munching on is a pillow I made from Knife Party's logo.
Snare is about 4 feet long, made with black and white ultra cuddle fabric and dark gray felt. I tweaked his design a little bit: he doesn't have a knife going through his head and he doesn't have teeth. I left out those details because he kinda looked cute without them... plus a cousin of mine mentioned that he looked like a "Pandapede", which I thought was pretty adorable.

Here's a turnaround for him:

Snare is a nasty little thing that doesn't really play along with others unless KP's around (which he's not). He likes to harass creatures that are smaller than him, nipping at their heads with his two fangs. Gary, the Starcraft II Overlord plushie I made, is the only one who can suppress him:

Mainly because Gary's just fat and sits on Snare's head. :'D
I hate bugs, especially centipedes, so I don't know why I'm accumulating all these insect-inspired stuffed animals. 0_o

Sketchstuff Page Added

I added another page for some of my sketchbook work. It'll have anything from observational work to whatever random passing ping of inspiration I have, for those who are interested in what ideas go on in my head. 0_o

This isn't in Sketchstuff, but just for visiting my site, here's a page of derpy Pokemon. Enjoy! :D

Lighting Studies

Concert lights have always fascinated me, so I wanted to try painting a few scenarios:

Technically two of these are from concerts. :'D My main focus for these studies was capturing how different lighting scenarios affect a person, especially in coloring, rim lights, and achieving overlaying light rays. I didn't want to spend too much time on portraiture, but this is who they are and what references of lighting scenarios I used them from: (left to right)

Alana Watson


Rob Swire


Chris Cornell


Paul Meany


Lisa Miskovsky

"Pikachu Used Thundershock"

This is the name of my favorite playlist on iTunes. It's always updating, but it currently has 31 songs, all electronic, ranging from drum and bass to dubstep.

I've been wanting to do this for a while:

Here are some of my favorite artists on this playlist, or, at least artists who have mascots or trademarks that can be personified. This is their break down from left to right:

Lord Pendulum (derives from Pendulum. His info can be found here)

KP (Knife Party. His info can be found here)

Redmau5 (Deadmau5)
     - I did the least amount of alterations with this design, mainly because I didn't want his head to be too crazy. I wanted to keep the head simple and easily recognizable.
     - He's an avid gamer with a cat. (same as Meowingtons, Deadmau5's cat)

eS Ce (South Central)
     - South Central is noted for the two guys that make up the group who wear black hoodies. Images of them and their album art are often black and white, so I kept these traits in developing their design.
     - eS Ce (pronounced "es see") is one body with two conjoined torsos. I made this character look like a ball jointed doll because I thought it would be cool for the torsos to switch facing sides by turning the upper body.

SkriRex (Skrillex)
     - For the longest time, I just wanted to redraw the Krillex doodle that was on the Internet because it was so cute, but I thought if there was another creative twist I could put to Skrillex's name. "Rex" came up in my head and then this t-rex skrillex happened. :'D

These guys were so much fun to do, a good break from portfolio work.

Updated 2D Portfolio and Personal Work

Just letting you all know that I've been reworking my 2D Portfolio. Most of my cute, otherwise style exploratory pieces are in my Personal Work, so I've been switching pieces to put into Personal Work and adding new cute stuff to the page that matters.

Here's a new piece that I added:

I've always loved games that involve training and customizing little monsters, (*cough* Pokemon) and I had always drawn concepts for little creatures since I was little. Now I have some proof of that past obsession.

Chibimorpha is a recent game idea comprised of multiple ideas that I've had developing customizable monsters. A little bit about the Aggromorpha and the concepts shown above:

- The Aggromorpha is an aggressive little beastie that doesn't get along with most morphas, but it is among the strongest and hardiest buddies you'll encounter. Although it's a land-based morpha, it's happiest when playing near water.
- There are special items in the game that can potentially change the look of your morpha. The skin and item concepts listed above are only a few that I came up with on the spot.

I hope to post more Chibimorpha concepts on the blog, otherwise I still need to rework my 2D Portfolio. Further updates tba.

MOTH - Teaser Promos

Some more teasers of the characters from my story, MOTH.

Ryan

Tahj

Danna

Vince

Process Log 16: Deep Sea Zombie Fizz

I really like the splash screens for each of the League of Legends characters and their skins. They've inspired me in so many ways: lighting, composition, and skin ideas in general. I wanted to paint a skin for my favorite LoL character: Fizz. (He's my favorite because he's tiny and has an awesome, giant pet shark.)

I documented this one all the way through and it went through some significant changes.

This was the initial final, but I wanted to make sure it fit Fizz's character as well as it's overall effectiveness. I asked for a crit from my friend, Erica, who's also an experienced LoL player.

And this was the final result after Erica's crit. 

Things I learned from painting this:

- Painting transparent skin. Looked up a bunch of deep sea creature references for this. I also had to mess around with different combos of layer styles to achieve the effect, too.