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I made three posts in January of 2013 outlining some targets I had for the coming year, and all of them started well, but fizzled out towards the end. I reckon that if I acknowledge my mistakes, I can learn from them. I’m tackling the videogame targets in this post – You can find the original one here, if you’re interested.
http://www.trueachievements.com/gamergoals.aspx?gamerid=2710
As you can see if you follow that link – I failed my attempt at reaching 100,000 Gamerscore in 2013. I’m not really bothered by this, as I (finally) learned that my time is worth more than some arbitrary number, and I had fun playing some great games in 2013, and that’s what counts. Still, I have made a new target, which roughly works out at 50% of the Achievement score of all the games in my pile of shame, I think. I reckon 50% is about right for any story or Campaign related Achievements in all the games on the list.
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Hi. David got me this book a while back now, and I have been wanting to write about it for ages. While the main focus is art from Street Fighter II, the book starts with Street Fighter and before it ends up at Street Fighter IV it covers Street Fighter Alpha, Final Fight, the X-Men/Marvel vs. Street Fighter/Capcom series, the Capcom vs. SNK games and even goes into the professional EVO fighting tournaments and Chun-Li cosplay. But as I said, it’s main focus is art from Street Fighter II, and that is where this book excels. It surely includes the promo art for every character in every iteration of SFII, tonnes of concept and design pieces, and every single group shot I can ever recall seeing.
It takes in every style: The dorky and awkward original portraits before the fighters personalities had been properly defined. The boldly-lined block colour pictures where all the characters are “attacking” the canvas from Street Fighter II Turbo (you can tell it’s Turbo because everyone is in their alternate colour by default). The younger and wilder anime-style illustrations from the Alpha series. The grittier, more angular style from Street Fighter III. It also very briefly features some of the captivating sumi-e art from Street Fighter IV, with ink flying everywhere. The book also includes a lot of fan-art and art by non-Capcom artists, a neat way of showing the vast ocean of people who love and are inspired by the imaginative characters of the series.
My only problem with the book is that it is a little bit scattershot. I would’ve preferred the artworks to be more organised – via game, artist or character, for example. But to be honest, it is such a small, meaningless complaint, as by browsing through the book, you are encountering art you would not necessarily expect, or be seeking.
Now, enough of the book itself. It finally put names to the artists who drew these amazing pictures of the characters I have loved for twenty years, so it’s time for me to gush like a silly little fanboy and praise them to bits. Here are three of my favourite Street Fighter artists, with a brief description of their art-style.
