Finished!

FinalfinalFINAL designs : D

Had a tutorial with Nigel today. Jeebus - the dude knows his stuff. I was in awe : 0

He basically helped me with shading/light on my Abyss Swimmer, which now looks AWTHUM. I really have learnt a lot this term concerning Photoshop and I've had help from my friends as well. Hopefully I will continue to improve after the course is over. Here are my new and improved designs for your perusement -

Eeeeeh......my poor, poor aching joints >.<

I have no idea how it was done, but I've done the back of my neck and left shoulder in royally. Porogress has been slow the past few days, but it's also been steady.


Coloured ye olde Swimmer and F Walker. I'm doing this poster quite systematically, so there is a reason the Swimmer's eyes aren't coloured etc. I'm having a tutorial with Nigel tomorrow so I can get some tips on how to make things look wet etc tongues and skin. I might do some more tonight if my shoulder will allow it.

I've been playing Dragon Warrior/Quest VII as of late on PSP. It's (so far) soooo much better than DQVIII in terms of story and character. The first island you go to (you're a fisherman's son) has probably the saddest monster story ever. Seriously, I had a lump in my throat T_T

Working on final piece

Technically, I have done all my work for the term - I have finished what I stated I would do in my learning agreement. However, in a bad to get better at Photoshop and extra marks, I have opted to do a poster of all three of my creatures. I've already penciled it and lined it today - as well as finishing my artistic statement and CV - so here it is.


It's a little jumbled at the moment but hopefully it will come to fruition once I start colouring it.

Oh my God, most frustrating skeleton EVAR

I didn't think drawing THAT many ribs/vertebrae would be that hard, but it was. Very much so.


It's a little simply annotated, it would seem that that's all a snake skeleton consists of. It's was difficult thinking of a good pose to have her in, so I do apologise for the overlapping ribs. They overlap correctly, but look a little too hard and it's like looking at an optical trick >.<

Now that all my creatures all "done" so to speak, I'm going to try and get tatoos done for each of them (if you remember from my presentation, all the creatures have a little tribal mark resembling their head) and a poster (for extra marks ^_^)

Finished the None Walker! Now I need to draw 109 vertebrae for it's skeleton ^_^

Yay! Finished finally. This was prolly the trickiest one to colour - I had three different layer sets, plus lots of other layers floating about.


Those are my three creatures for I Go From One To Another! Now, onto my last skeleton.

Focusing on the None Walker

Been at my third and final creature these past few days - currently I've been working on this one for two days - one day for lining, one day for generally getting on with the piece. Haven't decided on a scale colour yet, but I'll mess around with that tomorrow. I'm trying to get the None's final and skeleton done by Thursday/Friday morn. I might not be able to do the skeleton, but I should definitely be able to finish the final.

Looking forward to the London Expo this coming weekend ^_^ They give out Monster Hunter T-Shirts, and by God am I getting one.

Woo! Done the skeleton! (Eurovision was AWESOME btw)

Wow. This took hours to do >.< Been at it ALL day, along with my polishings on my two final designs. Skeletons are very hard to draw in PS for me - the amount of long, long lines you have to do is immense. The most complicated skeleton is out of the way though (however, I won't enjoy drawing 109 ribs on my None Walker. Bleedin' snakes) and I really had to research into the names of the various bones of the horse/bat/bird. Overall, a productive days work.

Now, if I can just get me a Lg Ruststone......

Did anyone else think that Estonia's entry was really, really good? I loved it. I'm so downloading it when I get the chance ^_^

Finished the first two.

Here are my finished Abyss and Forest designs. I've already drawn out the Forest's skeleton, so I now kist need to line it and it's done. Worked into my Swimmer a bit as well.

Rave Walker?

Been having a go at PS again - it's definitely getting easier. I've been working on my Forest Walker and am pleased with it's progress so far. I tried to mix day-glo colours/mystic symbols for her tatooes and it's a pretty interesting. What I'm going for is a Walker who looks at home in a deep, mysterious forest - sacred carvings embedded in the bark of the trees, little shrines with offerings from the natives, predatory wolves, mist etc. That has been achieved to some effect, but it also looks like my Walker likes a bit of a rave.


I'm pretty proud of her tail - it looks like actual hair! Hoorah for the Smudge tool, says I. Obviously it needs a bit of tidying up, but I'm uberly pleased with the transition from the black coat to the white tips of her tail as well. The glow effect is pretty difficult to get right, especially on the magenta tatoo on her shoulder. Underneath the black coat are thick veins, then the caot, then the tatoo, then the glow - hopefully it'll look more distinctive once I start work on the veins.

The Walker feeds via her sharpened hooves - please refer to my helpful diagram below.

Zeno Clash

Anyone heard of this game? It's sounds frickin' awesome. It's on the PC (meh) and is some sort of brawl 'em up set in Sigmund Freud's nightmare world. Read said link to grasp the technical aspects of the game (I'll assume you've read it) and there's one thing in this game that immediately grabs me - the character/creature Father-Mother. What an amazing idea for a creature! A ten foot tall half-chicken hermaphrodite with a coat full of babies, who is parent(s) to about twenty children that look nothing like each other.



Other than being really odd, this creature is an original concept - there's nothing else like it that springs to mind in games generally, but it's so steeped in Freudian psudo-psychology (the "loving, caring mother" and "stern father") it disturbs and intrigues at the same time. This is something I need to look at more in creature design.

Yay! Photoshop is becoming bearable!

Indeed, Hell has frozen over - Photoshop is doing what I want it to do! I was able to finish my Abyss Swimmer finals today (I want to do a few more pencil sketches) and I'm not stressed out over it at all. I should be able do my Forest Walker line art pretty soon - I'm quite happy with my pencil sketch. The skeleton is going to be very complex though - I'm gonna have to do draw out the Walker from the side and front, and the wings are definitely going to be a giant pain. Luckily, the Swimmer and None Walker are relatively simple.

Here's the Abyss Swimmer

Here's her skeleton

Blame Persona 4!

Ok, I admit - I have played far too much of this beautiful, beautiful game. But I have been doing work on the side and have come up with one final design for my game idea - the Abyss Swimmer.


This is a colour version of my final design of the Abyss Swimmer. It's not completely finished by any means (I need to make it more translucent and I want the skeleton to be slightly visible) but I'm working towards it. I've also got a final Forest Walker going but I haven't coloured it yet. The Abyss Swimmer is the most "simple" biologically of my creatures but the Forest Walker is a more mystical creatures - it wears various charms and markings which I have got to draw on.

Haven't been on here in a while....

Yeah, since I last posted there have been presentations and dissertations galore. That was the 20th. Since then I've been doing.....not a lot? Been doing some sketches of my creatures and the like, so I will load 'em up in a bit.

'Kay, time to get uploading!



In order from above - Abyss Swimmer, None Walker, Forest Walker. These are the latest sketches I have done for their development. I've got some progressive sketches but I wanted to give a good impression of what I'm going for. I don't really know what to do with the Abyss Swimmer - I want to go for something graceful but crustaceans aren't the most beautiful of underwater creatures. I'm sticking with an elongated/eel-like body for now but I'm looking at crab-like armour and the like (hence the carapace on my Swimmer).

Squids, elbows, skittles and kestrels.

Whilst researching some more (I have to do some photophore research for my Swimmer) I came across this crazy video of a squid with ELBOWS. I shit you not.



Turns out to be a Big-Fin Squid that (oh, guess what!) science knows next to nothing about. To quote Mock the Week:

Scientist 1 - "Hey, do want to find a cure for cancer?"
Scientist 2 - "No, I think I find out how many skittles it takes to choke a kestrel."

Makes my research pretty damn vague to be honest, but I guess it's a lot of freedom as well.

Yay for Action Replays and Devil Summoner!

Oh my God. There's a new Devil Summoner game :3



Oh yes. I am looking forward to this. Shin Megami Tensei spin-off, revolves around the demon summoner (fancy that) Raidou Kuzunoha ridding the world of various nasties. Apparently the game has been improved in every way and you can negotiate with demons again! Basically, if you find yourself either a) too lazy or b) too weak to kill demons for EXP, just chat to them and depending on how much of a twerp you are (i.e. don't give the "evil" answer to a holy demon) you get them in your group. Uber cool.

This relates to my project as Kazuma Kaneko (basically the game artist that got me into the whole thing) is handling the new creature/character designs. Hoorah. Doubt it will come out in time for my project but I am SO buying this.

And yeah - Action Replays rock. Ask my friends ; )

Yay! Finished. And now, Xenogears III...

Ah! Finally got all my work done to the best of my ability. I've tried pretty damn hard this past week to get all my research together in the most creative way I can. I decided to try and make my research document look like an old journal, using black ink-like font and brown-stained pages. It's probably the best portfolio I've done (and one of the only T_T).

I was a bit annoyed because my Powerpoint file was really big (91 mb and 47 pages) and basically the computer would freeze every time it tried to create page 37 as a pdf so I had to split it into two pdfs which I didn't want to do >> MC seemed OK with it. I labelled everything I could and just made it as neat as I could. Oh well, let's see what happens when I get feedback.

I'm a freak, I'm a weirdo.....

Yeah, been listening to Radiohead alot recently, spliced with a bit of hardcore industrial (obviously). Been working my goolies off on the research document and never got my Xmas present : ( No Persona 4 for me. A certain sir close to my heart dragged me out of my depressive abyss however and got me Xenosaga III instead! On deadline week. Soooo, I shall be playing that past the 26th but to work! After researching loads on my dissertation (Do video games reinvigorate mythology from around the world through aesthetic character or creature design?) , I came across the Valkyrie from Too Human. Wow, it's an amazing design! Very original take on the valkyrie from Norse legend. I found this demo of one standing.



I found a load of concept art as well but you get the point from the video. I've got eight pages of diss. so far, but three of those condensed are pictures. I'm not even half way through my research document and I've already got twelve slides in Powerpoint - I must of spent over seven hours working on the damn thing now.

*sigh* Well, back to work and hopefully some noms. Wait for me, KOS-MOS....


Oh yeah, and I got a shiny Mew in Pearl ^^

Feeling gloomy....

Eh, I hate this time of year. Everyone's so miserable and I can't exactly blame them, with the recession and all. Probably means my hopes of getting a part-time job this term are zilch - yay for starvation during deadline time!

Anyways, my main Xmas present still hasn't arrived (damn you United States Postal T_T) and I smashed my head on the card door a few days ago so I have this horrible achey patch on my left temple and forehead. Grah.

However, I was bought two books for Xmas on the unexplained - ghosts, UFOs that sort of thing. There's some nice stuff in there on Cryptozoology, specifically mentioned the Jersey Devil and "giant" creatures no one thought existed but do, such as the giant gorilla and giant squid. I even read up on some jellyfish 40m long that attacked a small boat - scary thing is, said jellyfish actually exists and the longest recorded one was 37ft long. So, yeah.....scary.
I've done some drawings and sort of come up with a Swimmer design I quite like, but I can't scan it in (don't have a scanner here). Talking of monsters, my brother bought me Dragon Quest Monsters Joker for Xmas - it' basically a DQ Pokegame but with Akira Toriyama's designs, giving it a very unique, humourous edge over it's competitors. More like Monster Rancher and Megaten than Pokemon, your monsters can be Synthesized together to create more powerful monsters in an alphabet tier system (lowest to highest: F, E, D, C, B, A, S, X) which gives you a good inidicator of what strength it's going to achieve. I've really been enjoying playing it and the monster designs are really, really good.




These are just some examples of the monsters I've seen in Joker. They're very cartoony, but look so bright and colourful when rendered in 3D, cel-shaded graphics. I just think they have a distinctive look, something I'd like to incorporate into my game. I've been looking at headresses for my None Walker and have been looking into The Endless Forest and Shadow of the Colossus, two games which certainly contain pagan themes in my eyes (masks, gods, nature etc) and have come up with some designs in which the headresses are "alive" as in they are either one with the creature or with their surroundings. I can't post them (yet) but I will continue doodling.