As good as it gets for now, i need to work on my tones, less saturation.

Air brush time

As good as itll get so far

Ok so bad color base and the painting texture wasnt that good, but thats a start and its overall liked. Yet ill try another approach on the next one.

next step

WIP

boom

Cannon spiking through life

Ok so i passed the training, im at my new job, time to get into gears as well as getting used to the well structured system, i got a bit confused on my first REAL day yet after a night or revising the procedures, im ready for action. Now im enjoying this even if im on the evening shifts so i get to draw in the morning then work at night.

As for the drawing, im brain storming this Cyper Punk brainfart project i might send to Galvo if time allows it. I got till halloween to get 4-5 pages done, ill be posting the quick concepts next post.

The good: I get to explore a new concept
The Bad: Might not have time to experiment more painterly ways.

Either ways, i just want to feel this one out and see where it goes, hopefully it'll be done in time.

Also, time to move out again, my friend Jeff offered a room at his place so its a great chance to tag team the bills. Also, im in a shit area filled with heat seeking hobos and drunkards, just now i went to buy some bread and cheese on credit ( i didnt get paid yet) and this messed up fucker litterally walks up to me asking change for weed. Fuck sake man, what kind of idiot posts himself infront of a grocery store, to ask for money from people who fucking WORK FOR THEIR FOOD.
Enough is enough, theres only so much tolerance one can bare.
So the packing up begins and i hope i can perform my 1 week packing madness i did last year, same month, IRONYYYYYYYYYYYYY lol.

Family Matters

Nah, not the show but i liked that show back then.

I got a few things to spill out on current family BS but before that, artwise, Extra Stage disc 2 is under way, 1 page per week since the time the first pages were posted so im at page 3 of the new book and ill try to keep that schedule up while im working at my new job.

NOW,

For the family BS:

7-8 months ago my cousin borrowed a large amount of cash from me since i felt i needed to help her as someone robbed her credit card and made a large amount of purchase on it. So trying to do a good thing for a family member, so far so good right? Again this was 7-8 months ago, since then, she cut off contact with the rest of the family, having everyone wonder what the hell happened to her. She doesn't answer the phone, rarely stays home with her BF and doesn't answer text messages as well.
This kinda pisses me off to a certain level, i know she may have some kind of personal issue, but no personal issue is too great to cut off from the entire family FOR 7-8 MONTHS with no signs of life, that's just a bit exaggerated.
My only guesses on what could possibly be going is :
1)Unwanted Pregnancy
2) Deep Dark urban city after hour shit ((And thats just taking it to the extreme))

But either way, you can still show signs of life for fuck sakes.
Now its family, so i dont really want to pull off the "track down technique" eventhough i could easily force my way to an answer but burn the bridges to that family branch quite fast.
So sticking to that "family first" type of mentality where you still care about how the family is doing and that would be "the christian thing to do" even if i did turn atheist DUN DUN DUUUUUUUUN after during high school.
So now both my second cousin and own mother are spewing shit about not giving a fuck about theses guys (that branch of the family) and their problems.
Ok, so the good christians are telling me to ignore family matters and that theses guys might be scumbags.

Thats goddamned twisted, its all freaking goddamned twisted.

This whole bullshit is fucking twisted.

FUCKING TWISTED.

So caring about family during hard periods of time is wrong? Eventhough they do stupid shit at times. Shouldnt they be left a few chances? I kinda find this mentality fucked up on many sides.
I wish i had more time to type it out but i might just have to do a Vlog about it

No longer supporting prince of persia

Dont get me wrong, i loved the original game, finished it and liked the ending.

But

The epilogue is a piece of shit.
I have no idea what they were thinking when they started programing theses levels but theyve managed to create the most frustrating prince of persia levels with the cheapest elements a-la Megaman X8: Last level.

I dont know who's brainless idea was to crank up the difficulty level to Devil May cry 3 stage after the moderately difficult game.
And some of the difficulty is added because of buggy jump, over emphasize on glitchy Elika jump spams and often poor camera angle contradicting the player's command causing leap of fates quite often.
Theses causes this anger and hatred that simply gets you to shut down the ps3 or go play a less buggy game.
Im quite dissapointed and i will no longer finance any more DLC for that game nor sequels and such.


Oh and i finished killzone before POP and even that was less frustrating since i had no bug messing around with the last boss fight .

Extra push

i think i want to go further than cell-shading yet, comic wise it'll eat up more time to pull off. As much as i like cell shading, it just doesn't push me to my full extent, it just looks pretty for cartoon characters. Yet unless there is a way to mix it up, it kinda feels boring. Time to splash them markers out and experiment.

Drunk ?!

BBQ yestarday and i did a crazy mix between what i though was cranberry juice and smirnoff, apparently the cranberry juice already had vodka and i added more vodka into it, all that in a big cup. Never again i say, i was off balance from that one, even when we went to the St-Hubert a few hours later, i hadnt fully recovered from that mix of doom. Aside from that, fun times.

also : http://extrastagecomic.blogspot.com/

Comic will be there for now, no cash for those fancy websites and here is chuck norris fighting a zebra.

Enjoying comic making once more

Otakuthon passed, things just went by and now i get to enjoy working on the ExtraStage Comic on my own pace with a 36 page advance. Right now im really enjoying the fact that i can flow with the story as much as i want. No real page limit, no character specific restrictions, no constrained character canon to bare with. Its quite enjoyable, ill still push myself to pop one page per week while having them fully colored and shaded so that Extra Stage Disc 2 gives a better quality than 36 pages on red bulls. But disc 1 was still a fun rush and it was a great relief to pull it out, spread it and at least get my name out there with this con so that i can get more drive to man up and bring more things on the table next year.

ComicCon Montreal is gonna be next month, got a few friends to meet again, Kate Bradley will be there, the Hulk's voice actor will be there and since i want that ComicCon to grow, ill try to spread the word as far as i can. Im sure it'll be bigger than last year and wont bomb like World Con which occured last weekend. The first time is always a dud, too bad this one was an expensive dud.

I dunno if i can participate to adapt this year, unless i tackle a big loan with interests and loosing a week's salary, man, i want to tough, meeting old friends, learning more madness, such a rush. Another spot i gotta advertise. Non official advertisement but not too hardcore since it can go wrong at times.

Anyhow, here are some of the cards i sketch on, i need to buy another pack tomorrow since they are running out while i thumbnail on the next comic pages, 99 cents for a pack of 100 i think, anyhow, they go out fast, i find them better than post its for the color, resistance and size. (I can still sneak em in anywhere and draw).

Ok then back to sleep.

PS: Go Finance games like Blazblue and Yakuza 2, low publicity but great games.

First page

Main objective is gonna be to ink them, photoshop the words in then print.

The master plan revealed?

So i guess you all noticed how much my void stories arent really cared for and all that.
Why, well i simply dont give a damn about the place anymore, its been a rush, interesting at times but it all comes down to realizing how much of a waste of time it really was.
Bad feedback, douchebag infestations; now i kinda see how my friend Wayne was right about that kind of internet BS and well, there is only so much crap you can take for reasons of " Well its training" nah, conceptart.org and even drawingboard.org have a better ambiance than that.
So while this last void story scraps the entire storyline, ive previously decided to break Abrao's original storyline from void and release the "Beyond battles\ In between story segments" As the core timeline outside the site and possibly printed if time allows it.
Ive had my fun with the layer experimentations and digital stuff, didnt get shit for feedback from entervoid, so time to move on.









Below is a slight preview of an episode ill be working on in the future, ill put the sample pages im currently working on, later today.

Another quick experiment

So painting and thickoutlines just doesnt work, one breaks the other. So theses 5 pages werent that bad but the whole digital completion doesnt seem to be my thing.
Ill try to post my latest experiment with theses and you'll notice, im better off doing most of my work traditionally and maybe spam some textures after.
Anyhow its all fun and games.

Old scraps of ink

Woah, forgot i havent updated in ages and didnt post this sooner, this is really, really old and mostly a brush pen rush due to time constraint and a fulltime job.

Tip: Dont ink backgrounds in the metro.

Next level

I want that SNK painting technique, from the comic, the character design and so on, gonna try to work some more on mixing ink and rendering like that.

Good art Critiquing: The new challenge

People nowadays cant seem to critique constructively, at all.

Most of the current "So- called" Critiquing is split into 2 division:

- " Its nice, i like it"
|---- The Appreciation comment

- " What a putrid piece of....ive seen 5 year old.."
|---- The "Simon Cowell" syndrome comment

On this post i want to concentrate a bit more on the second division as its growing trend on the internet nowadays.

Now a lot of internet users are familiar with reviewers such as the Angry Video Game Nerd, Zero Punctuation or even the Nostalgia Critique and as popular as theses people are there is one thing that needs to be set clear:

They ACTING for satirical and comedic purposes

They are not doing constructive reviews, they aren't being entirely serious, they are just doing this for comedy, so they shouldn't be taken as role model when it comes to giving feedback and critiques.
More and more users have been mimicking their "styles" when it came to other type of critiquing and this is becoming a big problem as it ISN'T HELPFUL AT ALL.



Being harsh and brutal while backing it up with useful tips, draw overs and pointers is one thing

Being completely snobbish, offensive and satirical without any useful feedback points is something else.


Start figuring out the damn difference already.

Nobody likes being assaulted with foul language and jokes on work they took time to make. Dont even try to back it up saying " This is honest, brutal feedback". No, Bullshit, go drink toilet water right now and compare its taste to the one left by the bullshit you support: Quite close.


Homework:
-------------------
And good exercise you should try now is repeating your critique pattern on a friend or co-worker and see how long it'll take before their begin frowning and eventually cuss you out.

Thats how critiquing with integrity works: if you cant say it face to face without expecting an a punch to the face or a broken relationship, REPHRASE IT!

This isn't a reality show where the best insults win, people requesting feedback are looking for serious critiques in order to improve. If the only thing they receive is a metaphorically phrased pile of fesses with no helpful content, they have the right to be pissed as they do not grow as artists.

And now i have to tangent on a little episode i had on entervoid.com for a while:


The entervoid episode:
-------------------------------

www.entervoid.com is an original character comic battle site in a nutshell. It attempts to be helpful to its artists by providing tutorials, pointer system and user feedback through forum and main website.

This sounds good so far right, maybe this is going to be as good as conceptart.org while having specific comic book style competition as a fun side project.
Well all this would be fine and dandy if the feedback was actually constructive.

Am i being too harsh here? Am i being a bit vengeful?

Actually i have got jaded with the place after 4-5 short experiences, why?

[]Feedback based on style preferences:

Certain people will base their feedback on the style they are critiquing, hence, since they dont like the style and may not be familiar with the style, certain pointers and critique points are simply "dumb fucked". Im sorry, i cant describe it in better words using a second language. Best example would be: " I would like if it your style was less cartoony"
Purely based on preferences and I KNOW i personally dislike anime but i still try to give feedback based on the drawing fundamentals (refer to loomis and hogarth) in order to explain and point our mistake, yet you wont see me blantantly go "Those "kawaii" eyes are just horrible, could you make them more "real"? " No, thats just dumbfucked.

Thats strike one.

[]Vague and impressive Feedback:

A few people on void attempt to give constructive feedback on comic submissions. This would be a refreshing breath of fresh air if that feedback wasn't as vague as a Duke Nukem forever release date.
Here is a satirical example: " Well there seems to be some problems on a few panels-Done"
No effort for specification.
No pointers to help it out.

This gets really annoying there are absolutely no backup for the critique's points. In the end the post is just a diarrhea of mistakes which remain "somewhere" inside the work and arent remedied as there are no solutions proposed in the end.

-"Simon Cowell" Syndrome:

Do i really need to get more in dept with this one?
Why dont i talk a bit about how this trend has made users quit the site entirely.

Entervoid is a side activity, most of the users have jobs, homework and lives.
Now after tearing yourself in half to meet this fictional deadline, mostly short enough for you to pour in half you creative juice, ending up in a piece of work that is below your usual type of work; The absolute last thing you want to hear as feedback, is none helpful bullshit coming out of someone ass.
Sweat and tears on none priced-FREE work completely smeared with non helpful canine diarrhea typed by someone who doesn't know better than to mimic reality TV for the "LOLZ".
Im not saying people should get pats on the back but they do not have to take idiocies trying to pass as criticism.

General Professional workload:

Penciling : 1-2 pages per FULL DAY
Inking: 1 page per FULL DAY
Coloring:1-2 pages per FULL DAY

Now with entervoid, nooooo tag teaming, so you are a one man army, from scripting to coloring and since you potentially have OTHER prior objectives such as a PAYING JOB or HOMEWORK, you rarely have a full day, maybe a lucky 4-5 hours without screwing over your sleeping schedule.

So in the end, the ideal full page count to have in a 4 week deadline, for a non professional thats just learning the ropes with comics is around 4-5 pages maybe? Ok ideal could be 3 complete pages.
Yet people keep expecting the next Watchmen or Civil War comic and often seem to forget that not everyone can make the deadlines nor can create the next sand man graphic novel and eventually spill shit out of their asses with no shame or self respect.

This has made a couple of people leave the place for good.
Ive seen professional who found more profit doing comics for ACTUAL printing places.
Ive seen teachers offended by the twisted and perverted "helpful" message from void.
And ive seen new people leaving after a verbal shredding when missing the deadline due to personal events.

Of course, the place isn't full of scums as i may seem to indicate, some users are attempting to provide constructive feedback and do succeed. Theses users can be counted on a single hand but at least they are trying to pave a way for a new generation of helpful critiques.

What will i do on my side?

Post
Ignore the comment box
And get better feedback from forums such as Conceptart.org or Sketchtavern forum.

To be continued....

COD 5 frustration and Digital Drawings...

Call of duty 5 World At war: Treyarch production
Single Player: An adrenaline Rush that doesnt let up
Cooperative Multiplayer: Zombie Nazis Mode will keep you coming back for more while Competitive Campain with cheat modifiers are a well added boost to the coop fun.

Multiplayer: Partially fun ; Certain maps are plagged by horrible spawn points.

Analysis of the problem:

Its nice to have close quarter combat maps that are small enough to emphasis skirmish, now the backfire of this is THAT YOU CAN SPAWN NEXT TO A PASSING ENEMY then die.
Now this problem is doubled by the fact that you can land on a mine, get blown by artillery or get eaten by dogs.-Since racking up scores earns you bonus offensive moves and since the enemy is already killing spawning players, traps and ambush can easily be setup.
The game is plagged by 2-3 maps evoking this problem and at this point, i dunno if it can be fixed since the map would have to be enlarged.
Yet this can seriously get on your nerves quite fast and thats an issue which COD modern warfare didnt have.(Most of the maps were medium size).

Constant COD Issue: Cannot mute players in server lobby:

Lets be frank, 80% of the online player population will talk smack, play random songs or talk very loud at mic-vol-5. Now in all iterations of COD, i had no power to mute certain people inside game lobbies.

Why?

Metal Gear Online DOESNT have a lobby, you get thrown straight into the game and voila, option to mute player. But in COD, i get to wait a whole minute for the game to start and most of the time, i take off my bluetooth mic, sit it on the desk and enjoy the silence of my appartement, something i rarely find myself doing in MGO or Soul Calibur 4. Id have send my complains to the COD Modern warefare 2 devs.



Sidework:

Been doing alot of digital work: i dont like it.

I felt great sketching during loading time while playing COD5 and i guess ill have to take more time in the morning to do personal work after finishing the comissions.
To be continued.


The game:

Gotta test the engine with vector drawings ASAP.

Enemies and bosses

Trying to get some Satirical Bad guys, the name's gonna tip you off at what im trying to make fun off. You wont just beat up humans but also some parodies of the typical furry character. Yet i dont want female enemies, i just feels wrong to have Mokuu, 10 years old, beating furiously on multiple womens with fire blazing attacks since the aim of my gameplay will be rage moves. Yet you will get to fight Katarina twice but she has her reasons and she isnt a pushover boss, similar to Jeane in No More Heroes.

Now comes the hard part, interesting level design, i want to stray far away from a game where you fight wave after wave in a repetitive way. Guilty Gear Judgement seriously suffered from that flaw. I gotta find a way to make it fun, surprising and none repetitive.

silhouettes

Thinking more in terms of silhouettes for the 2d side scroller game, ill scan a few tries for Katarina.

Will start spamming shapes for the generic bad guys.

Alternate thinking approach

While working on a current vector program i kinda noticed my mind shifting when i play with a big low opacity brush, im gonna try to pull it off using the side pencil tech.

Current objective:

Clear all commissions before anything else.
-1 digital left, 4 traditional left, 1-2 on standby

Urgh, i so wanted to jump into a 2 week battle but i gotta finish theses first, less work being postponed.