Cats

I am currently watching loads of "Cats" videos on YouTube. Not videos of cats, you understand, but videos of the musical production Cats. Why? Because I'm doing a canvas for my little niece who is obsessed with Cats. I'm trying to get a feel for this Mr. Mistoffelees dude's attitude and mannerisms, work out his signature pose. So far all…

600th post spectacular – Questions galore

Ok, so the numbers say that this will be post number 600. I feel like I want to do something special for it, and after having a little think, I remembered that I’m currently reading a book on my Nexus called “Be creative” by Infinite Ideas – it was free and has so far given me a few decent tips. In one chapter it had a list of questions you should ask of yourself in order to understand yourself, because how often do you actually stop and question things?

So, here we are with the questions and answers. I endeavoured to be as brutally honest as I could be and I gave each question a lot of thought. I ended up spraying my thought process on to the page as I was typing, and I did repeat myself a little, so be warned!

WARNING!!! VERY LONG POST!!!

This post is going to have the most tags ever.

Lewis’s artistic progression

Lewis’s artistic progression

So when we first moved in together back in 2009, he was this good at drawing: Yeah, I used to let him watch me play Halo 3: ODST, so what. He started in year 7 this September. We've been drawing this Zinogre from Monster Hunter for a couple of hours a night for the past few weekends and we finally…
Street Fighter IV: Official Complete Works

Street Fighter IV: Official Complete Works

I recently posted a little review type thing on another Street Fighter art book, Street Fighter: The Complete History, and it featured a very broad range of Capcom’s internal artists. This, on the other hand, is mostly the work of one man. Ikeno.

It was those gorgeous character select screen portraits by Ikeno that made me look more carefully at the art of Street Fighter IV. Those subtle, overlapping brush-strokes, the vibrant and diverse colours which interweave to give the images warmth and life. The masterful way that faces and leading hands are super-detailed, but everything that is not a natural focal point recede into concept art-like quality. Compared to the dodgy character select screen portraits in the original Street Fighter II – it’s not only indicative of the power increase in consoles nowadays, but also the care and attention to detail that is required in AAA videogame titles. An interesting bit of trivia: the aforementioned portraits were created with the in-game 3D models. Sadly, these models lacked the requisite amount of detail, so Ikeno painted over them. You may think this is cheating, but the 3D models are based on Ikeno’s original sketches and designs, and very closely resemble them, so it comes full circle.