A Life More Animated...

Mass Effect 1 and 2 are evil games

2010-10-21T23:37:00.000-07:00

Wow it's been a while since I did something on here. A lot's happened since the last post, but maybe I can try to update a little more regularly from now on.

***

My Shepard in Mass Effect is generally a decent person, but every now and then she gets downright evil... where in the world does she get that from..?

... It's pretty hard to choose between Kaidan and Garrus. Garrus has that cute awkwardness about him, something I feel that would evolve and grow if allowed in ME3. Kaidan, on the other hand, is very stable, and very smoky and a lot more sure of what he wants. :3 All right, so maybe I'm a bit more partial to Kaidan (especially because of his voice), but I know I'm going to have savegames picking both guys for when ME3 comes out. :p

TF2: the Anime, part 1

2009-12-06T20:02:00.000-08:00

There was a great forum thread on a site I visit that experimented with making fake screenshots, as if Team Fortress 2 had been made into a cartoon, or more specifically an anime. I was having a slow weekend, so I thought I'd try one.

Of course, an anime isn't complete without subtitles. It was fun though, so I think I'll mess around with some more relatively soon, hence the "part 1" in the title.

Sky Pirates!

2009-11-03T18:45:00.000-08:00

Well, just because I'm not feeling well today doesn't mean I can't be a little productive, so I gave myself a random topic and went with it...
so I ended up with two extremes, the eager goofy fix-it sky pirate pilot, and the refined sky pirate queen. What the hell does a sky pirate look like? I have no idea (aside from vaguely remembering FFXII and Skies of Arcadia) but I like the topic just because you can really make any combination of clothes and it's not "wrong" since there is no "right." I may end up adding to this later on.

Scout Update, even slower than Valve Time!

2009-03-30T22:47:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since the Scout Update was released for Team Fortress 2, so I figured I'd pull a Valve and make some late sketches of the Scout.

I think the class I'm the worst at is the Scout... even more so than Spy, and I'm pretty bad with Spy. Scout's just so spastic and demands a computer better than mine to move around effectively and without a crapload of lag.
He's such a bizarre character and sometimes I liken him to a ballerina, especially the way his legs flop all over the place... so here's some bendy Scout:

And a couple silly expressions for good measure... I think the naughty smirk is a bit more Spy-like, but oh well. ... oh, and his buck teeth amuse me. :3

Fun with character re-designs

2008-11-20T23:23:00.000-08:00

I love Team Fortress 2 (I'm sure some people are thinking "DUH!"). I also love the Medic, and I was in a drawy mood and was watching Batman: TAS, so I thought I'd try sketching out the Medic with a subtle Bruce Timm taste to it.

Bad Sense of Direction...?

2008-09-30T23:31:00.000-07:00

"Can you help me find Relationship Ridge? I think someone gave me a bum map."

Just a whimsical/silly visual I had randomly gotten in my head during work. Oh, and I HAAAATE COLORING... why is it that it takes at least twice as long to color than to draw. Or am I just slow? Maybe, lol. T___T

Today's episode: "Wow, the Clone Wars era is annoying", or: "Why Lucas, WHY?"

2008-08-10T15:10:00.000-07:00

I just got back from a screening of the upcoming Clone Wars animated movie, and man.... was it a pointless endeavor. It's pretty obvious from the start that the movie was really an afterthought on Lucas's part to try and draw in more money, since the overall quality doesn't really match today's higher standards for animated flicks. I will say one thing that I enjoyed: I love how Clone troopers look. I know they ripped off the stylized versions of the 2D cartoon, but damn I loved those designs. The faces underneath, are another thing, though.

On the negative side, there were several things bugging me throughout the movie:

- First off (and this is a geeky complaint), no text crawl at the beginning?! This is a Star Wars staple, and it is completely omitted, instead utilizing some announcer/narrator that sounds like they came from several decades ago when TV was still black and white. What the hell, I mean really. Didn't work for me at all.

- The animation was very ehhhh. Granted, I know this is supposed to be a TV series, but as a movie I expected a lot more. So many of the walk/run cycles of the characters look so awkward, particularly Anakin's padawan Ahsoka. Her walk/trot almost looked stuttered or something, and they all feel like they're moving on stilts.
In general, a lot of the movements characters do are too abrupt; it'll be a sudden motion and then will stop suddenly. There's way too little follow-through with their motions, and it makes most of the movie look stilted. Plus, all most characters do while they talk is wave a hand in a few variations, which doesn't looks natural at all. I guess Lucas actually succeeded in making his animated characters even more wooden than his live ones. It's too bad too, since you would hope that an animated feature could really exaggerate features and movement; the faces are surprisingly stiff and the mouths barely move much when they talk, except for a sneer or a smirk here or there, but some characters (no matter their mood) seem to be in perpetual frowns. Overall, it reminded me of a really long videogame cutscene.

- Also, whoever had the "bright" idea to make Obi-Wan do this obnoxious pose

several times during the movie should be shot. I'm sure they thought it was very cool looking, but when you see it in action, it just looks fucking ridiculous.
Speaking of Obi-Wan, he's horrifically arrogant in so much of the movie. There's a particular saber battle he has where, if it weren't for the fact that they're wielding blades, you'd think he was bapping the other person on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper and treating them like a spoiled child. This doesn't bode well for how he'll be acting later in the series, I'm sure.

- Ahsoka can easily match the annoy-o-meter rating that Anakin does. It's pretty hard to be sympathetic with her character... the moment she's humbled and I start to think that she's learning from her experiences, then she lets loose a wiseass comment or a little jackass action, and it's back to me hating her again. (Plus, on a geek level, it doesn't make much sense that she tends to fight with her saber in a reverse form, blade going inwards like this:

You'd think it'd be a lot more effort and pretty impractical for a learning padawan.)
She also has a very forced bonding period with Anakin. The way they butt heads with each other over the slightest things doesn't really feel as close as they want you to feel; they seem competitive more than anything, and they bicker in some weird (platonic) Han and Leia way, but unfortunately without the charm, and as if they were both Hans.

The BIGGEST problem for me ultimately, however... Is the ENTIRE POINT OF THE MOVIE/SERIES ITSELF. Why, why are you introducing a spunky young padawan arrogant bitch-kid that you know is supposed to be important in this story? Does anyone else see the pure futility in it all? I mean, it's not like it's a spoiler: there is a jedi purge during Episode 3 onwards, and, surprise surprise, you never hear about Ahsoka later, so obviously she will die. All this bonding with Anakin is pointless, because, c'mon, the dude killed an entire room of defenseless toddlers; he's not going to bat an eye killing her. Well, either that or she gets turned Sith as well (which I could see, seeing how much of a little bitch she already is in the movie), but even then I imagine there's a high chance she'd get whacked that way too. Why should we care about her character, when we know she has no impact on the story as a whole? She certainly doesn't improve Anakin at all, and definitely not in the long run.

I'm not really sure why Lucas has this gigantic hard-on for the prequel / clone wars time period, because honestly there's only so much you can shoehorn into there; it's not exactly a lengthy time period, especially as far as Star Wars sagas go. What would've made more sense to me is if he had made an animated series based off of events that happened right after Return of the Jedi. You want a padawan kid that children can latch onto? Have Luke restart the Jedi Order and do it that way. You want wiseass antics that are actually funny? You've got Han Solo. They didn't use Hayden or Ewan's voices in this one, so they could've easily gotten sound-alikes (plus Mark Hamill) for a post-ROTJ animated series.

I think Lucas really dropped the ball... but then again, he's been steeped in the dark side for a long time now. I remember old interviews with him, hot off the heels of his original trilogy success, when he had told people that it was good, that he had established himself and now that he had accomplished that, he could "really start making the movies he wanted to make." Back then, it sounded like he meant non-Star Wars movies, branching out and trying new things. But leeching the life out of Star Wars, making spinoffs and toys and rereleases, he fell into the greed trap, he took the "quick and easy path." And he made this movie, which will lead to a series that's planned to have "at least 100 episodes." Great, 100 episodes of stories that mean nothing.

I'm really fearful of things that Lucas is excited about these days. Excited about reviving Star Wars? Greedo shoots first. Excited about prequels? Emo kid Vader, and 90% green-screened movies. Excited about Indy 4? CG prarie dogs, surviving nukes in a fridge, and more CG up the yin-yang. ... ugh... I'm actually pretty damn scared about the future of Indiana Jones, but that's a rant for another blog post.

An elegant spy and other scribbles

2008-05-05T19:36:00.001-07:00

Not much to say about this one, just a quick pencil/marker drawing of an elegant spy from the early 1900's...

Also in the same book, a dude freaking out, and a little doodle of what I'd look like if I came from the same era as the Spy:

A birthday sketch

2008-05-01T13:41:00.000-07:00

One of my Team Fortress 2 friends is having a birthday this week, so I thought I'd draw them a picture, y'know since I have free time from being unemployed and all.

First, the (cleaned up) sketch:

He cosplays as a Medic, and yet always seems fascinated with flamethrowing the enemy team, so I figured it would be appropriate.

Then the colors:

Ironically, coloring and digital editing always takes twice (at least) as long as the drawing itself, but I'm hoping the results are worth it!

Happy Birthday, Woss!

A memory from another time...

2008-04-15T00:32:00.000-07:00

I read a touching story recently where one of the characters died. Now this character had never given any hint of his backstory up to this point, but then the protagonist found, tucked deep in the character's bloodied sleeve, an old worn photograph of a family long lost (dead), in a time before the protagonist had met him. One little sliver of a happy memory.

My interest was so piqued by this little reveal in the plot, that I wanted to sketch what I imagined the photo to look like, and it sort of went from there:

I loooove cowboys...

2008-04-11T02:35:00.000-07:00

... although people who know me already know this.

I saw Horton Hears a Who the other week and had this musical track from a climactic part of the movie stuck in my head... which seemed like John Powell's tribute to Ennio Morricone's classic "western" sound (which I adore).

Putting me in a cowboyish mood, I drew a couple things while I looped the music track.

A bit of a stylized cowpoke... I have a thing for ponchos/drapery flapping in the wind.

A little close-up of the random cowboy

... and a pencil sketch of a weird foreshortened shot. The music felt like he was desperately reaching out for someone/something, which is actually just like the scene in the film!

Updating a Storyboard

2008-04-01T22:26:00.000-07:00

A long while back in my storyboarding class, I had done storyboards for a fake anti-drinking PSA. I had fun with the idea and it seemed to be received well, so I recently decided to update it, looks-wise, to use in my portfolio.

Here are the original boards from almost 2 years ago:

I figured the three characters could use a bit of an update as well, so first thing I did was clean up and modify their designs (always the fun part!):

And then, I applied them to aaaaaall the boards. Took a little while, but I hope the results are worth it. Better? Worse? Compare and let me know what you think! :)

Things I think about during animation meetings...

2008-01-23T20:23:00.000-08:00

Pirates, apparently.

Well, not quite the stereotypical pirate, but I didn't mind how this one turned out. I might develop it a bit more and see what happens! A good pirate captain does need a crew...

I love Team Fortress 2

2008-01-21T19:38:00.000-08:00

And even then, that's probably an understatement. I'm not really sure what exactly about the game really makes it for me... whether it's the awesome cartoony character design, or the gameplay itself, or the hilarious voice overs. Or maybe it's all of those things.

I love how each class in the game has its own sets of pros and cons, and specific ways to play them.

I definitely clock a large bulk of hours as the Demoman (leftmost image). As my brother pointed out, I tend to play very defensively, even when in offensive mode, so it makes sense that I play the hell out of one of the most defensive characters. That and the whole self-proclaimed "black scottish cyclops" thing really cracks me up.
The Medic (middle image) is pretty tricky to play. You'd think just running around healing people would be cake, but it actually makes you a priority one target to the other team... and especially to damn Spies (rightmost image).

But I can't hate on spies, since they are so damn cool, especially when you can actually manage to get in a couple successful backstabs on the enemy. It's a pretty crazy rush!

If you're reading this and you haven't experienced Team Fortress 2, do yourself a favor and DO IT NAO.

Yes I still draw!

2007-11-28T14:49:00.000-08:00

I just suck at getting around to updating this blog, that's all! Heh... >__<

I did do a little self portrait earlier today just for the heck of it:

I don't know why I added those random pink shapes in the back; I guess the white background just looked dull to me.

The beginning...

2007-11-05T16:48:00.000-08:00

Ok, well it's not much just yet, but I finally got my butt in gear and added some new sections to my website at www.ejiyared.com so that I at least have an art gallery and my 3D film in case some lucky person wants to hire me... >___>; lol. I'll try to add more as I get time!

R I P, Mike Wieringo

2007-08-13T20:47:00.000-07:00

It's really quite lame how the death of one of my favorite artists is what would make me remember about this blog that I'd accidentally abandoned for quite a while, but I felt it was definitely important to mention it.

From the moment I had seen Wieringo's art for the very first time, I'd loved it. There was something about the feel of the poses he used and how bright and expressive the eyes were that all his characters possessed. When he had recently teamed up with Peter David to work on Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, it was really what got me back into reading the Spidey comics again. I feel ashamed that I had assumed I'd always have a chance in the future to meet him and shake his hand and tell him how much I liked his work. ... I probably should have tried harder to find him this past Comic-Con. But the past is past, and there's no use thinking of could-have's or should-have's.

Rest in peace, Mr. Wieringo. You were an amazing guy.
http://www.mikewieringo.com/
PVP's Scott Kurtz talking about Wieringo

First Post!

2007-05-09T01:41:00.000-07:00

I decided to follow in my animation classmates' footsteps and try out the whole art blog thing. Couldn't hurt, right? The trick is to get myself to draw something! I'm sure I'll get better with updating as time goes by.
As for right now...

IT'S SO FREAKING HOT IN MY APARTMENT!!!