Inktober 2016 and FIRST Videos!

I decided it was time to finally get involved with Inktober. Unfortunately, I also started a new job this month. Well, not that unfortunate. Now I can afford food and rent. The point is, I squeezed in as much drawing as I can. After rewatching the Game Grumps play Mario Maker and Mario Galaxy, I was inspired to draw the red plumber's enemies in new combinations.

Rocky Wrench and Mini-Airship

Bullet Bill and Lakitu

Hammer Bro and Reznor

I got really into this. I mean, designers working on endless sequels strive for new ideas all the time. But you can also develop old ideas, combine them. 20 years after these enemies first showed up and they're still capable of challenging the player in fun new ways!

I wanted to draw some real stuff too, so I found a few reference poses on deviantart and quickly sketched 'em:

This is a sketchbook I bought to keep me company while I'm working at this new place. Last time I got a job I disappeared for a few months and I don't want that to happen again. In fact, I'm so determined to stay in contact with the world I've dared to start video blog posts.

Do YOU dare to look at my face?

Rayman vs Kirby

This is the 6th installment of my Game vs Game series, Rayman vs Kirby! I drew this a long time ago, only recently made the time to ink and colour it. Back before I even put pencil to paper, I remember wanting to put Rayman up against someone but couldn't think of who. As I've said before, I try to make pairings of similar characters. Megaman fought Bomberman, Spyro the Dragon fought the Bubble Bobble dragons... who could Rayman fight? What even is he? A strange, magical, alien... thing? At some point I recalled Kirby was also a strange magical alien thing, and here we are.

This is the first in the series to be drawn on paper! Back when I started Game vs Game, I was learning how to draw entirely digitally. What I ultimately learned was I prefer paper.

If you want to see the rest of the series, here are some convenient links!

Sonic and Tails vs Banjo-Kazooie
Earthworm Jim vs Fox McCloud
Donkey Kong vs Conkers
Spyro vs Bubble Bobble
Megaman vs Bomberman

Game Grumps vs Mario 64

I've mentioned before that I sometimes watch/listen to the Game Grumps whilst I'm drawing. I really enjoyed their Mario 64 play-through, and decided it was about time I whipped something up featuring the Grumps themselves.

Pokémon Fusion: Krabduck vs Geosey

I was playing around on the Pokémon Fusion website when I found two that I decided were worth illustrating. Krabduck just looked cool (and had a cool name), whilst Geosey made me laugh. It looks so grumpy to exist.

My previous fusion art can be found by clicking here!

Mega-Bomber

Megaman vs Bomberman! A pairing based on their similar machine/man appearence. Is Bomberman a machine? Japan have a way of designing characters and not worry about what they actually are. I envy that. If I was told to design a bomberman, time would have been spent staring at my sketchpad at one point thinking "what kind of nose would he have?"

The first game of the Megaman franchise I played was Megaman X. I remember loving the intensity of guns, robots, vehicles, explosions... I wasn't into that sort of thing usually, you'd never have seen me spend pocket money on Metal Slug for example. But the cartoon blue man brightened things for me.

Super Bomberman 2 was the first I played of that franchise, and what's to say? If you've played any Bomberman you'll know why I loved it. Actually, I can tell you that I liked the music so much I recorded it onto cassette tape and mum got mad 'cos it wasn't "real music". She'd seen me sitting around with headphones and was proud 'cos she thought I was finally appreciating musicians, but it was just beeps, boops and bombs. Ha.

Of course now I can type almost any game and level I want into Youtube and some fan has uploaded the music for it, from 20 years ago. Right now as I type, for the first time in over a decade, I'm listening to that music again. It's fantastic, knowing that I wasn't the only one who loved it. Mum was right about bands and singers of course, but still, we knew. We knew the people who made our game tunes were real musicians too. Generations choose what their own art is.

I originally went with red girders, but this clashed with Bombeman's pink gloves. It was also too reminiscent for me of the original Donkey Kong games, which took place on red girders. I wanted to focus on just these two characters and their history. Then I remembered the very first level of Megaman X where you slid down green ones. Considering I DREW him wall sliding down a girder here that may have been my plan all along but just forgot about it. See, this was actually a little sketch from weeks ago that I finished in one day on an impulse.

When I realised I could just make them green it was revolutionary in my mind. That's the thing about art, isn't it? You're creating a little world. So when you find a solution to a problem in it, you feel like you've solved a global one. Maybe you're making a little note now about this being the most pretentious thing I've ever said. I'm sure I can beat that in the future.

Sketch

Inks

As you can see from the original lines, the whole image was at a straighter angle. I thought the angle was fine, but I wasn't sure about the perspective of the bars on the right. So I zoomed in and tilted everything. It looked much better, with the angle being more dramatic and the heroes with greater focus. It's interesting how mistakes can make things better. Story of my birth, really.

Told ya I could beat it.

Donkers

Donkey Kong and Conkers. Donkey Konkers. Donkers. See how I got there?

We're back to Rare! Okay, I know DK is actually Nintendo's character. But Rare made him the guy we love: the jungle partying, crocodile-squashing hoarder of giant bananas. I certainly have no affection for that other gorilla throwing a tantrum on the girders... The DK platformers on the N64 were my obsession. Well, one of many it seems. I think I borrowed and rented the first two games but I saved all the pennies I could from my paper route to buy Donkey Kong Country 3.

Conkers, well, I gotta confess I never played his game.  I remember at the time reading about a new Rare game featuring a swearing squirrel and thought it'd be cool to play, but I never quite got round to buying it. I could never quite commit to the £40 for it, even though I had a better job by then. Still, he was worthy enough to include in my crossovers.

I ended up putting a lot of effort into the background for this one, after which I crammed a giant monkey on top of all the work I did. So here's the background by itself. Sketch and inks below it.

Donkers Sketch

Donkers Ink

Donkers Background Ink

So this marks the end of my game series! I like theming my art. I'll probably return to this theme again, but three's enough for now. I like trilogies too...

Star Worm Assault

Last week when I said I was in the mood to draw video game fanart, I should have mentioned that it was a long lasting mood. Here's my second anthropomorphic character crossover piece. There... there may be a third.

I remember the advertisments for the Earthworm Jim cartoon as a kid. A man was holding cards with the bad guys on it. "Professor Monkey-For-A-Head" he said. "Queen Slug-For-A-Butt." And then started laughing. Probably fake laughter now I think about it, but as a kid? Seeing an adult laugh at this cartoon was immensely satisfying. I'm pretty sure I'd decided to watch the show before that, but it confirmed with me that it was gonna be brilliant. It was visuals and humour outside anything I'd ever seen before. Even though it was obviously a kid's show, it felt like adults writing comedy rather than adults writing children's entertainment. And the game, which I actually played after, was likewise a lot of fun.

Starfox, well I never got that excited about the game. I just thought Fox was cool. Looked cool, flew a cool spaceship, had a cool attitude... and when I say cool attitude, I don't mean the producers stuck him in the latest fashions and made him listen to hophip. I mean he was brave, noble and bad-ass. But I still wasn't that interested in playing a fly-and-shoot game. Was happy he showed up in Smash Bros though. Why isn't Earthworm Jim in Smash Bros.? Earthworm Jim should be in Smash Bros.

A Rare Sonic Team

I was recently introduced to the show Game Grumps, and one of the first episodes I watched were of the game Banjo-Kazooie. Though I never owned the game, as a kid I was obsessed with it. My next door neighbour had it, and watching those episodes reminded me of being at his house playing it all the time. I probably wanted to play the game more than hang out with him. But don't worry about judging me, we had a 'if you die it's my turn' rule, and I spent most of my time watching him play... Still, we were best buds, that game enthralled me.

See, I loved those iconic game characters. Mario representing Nintendo, Sonic representing Sega... they're just mascots really, but I saw them as heroes with big stories. Their games were built up over time, slowly building up the depth and scale of their world. And when Banjo Kazooie came out? Damn, they nailed icon status for me right away. They didn't start off in a little pixel world with a tiny story, straight away their world was vast, gorgeous and packed with ideas and humour. I never wanted for anything. Of course, the company Rare had a history of gaming and technology advances to build off, but you still need to build something great and I fell in love immediately.

After watching the Banjo-Kazooie episodes and then the epic horror Sonic '06 (you'd have to watch the episodes to know why it's so bad) I got pining to draw some fan-art and here it is.