Sketchtober Update - Across the Finish Line

The project is complete. The last two were delayed, because I was at my dad's last weekend, so nothing got done. But I caught back up Sunday/Monday. Hooray!

We're still catching up with these posts, as I'm only up to the original XBox games today. A couple of them actually turned out really well, in that I'm genuinely pleased with the results. Some of the others, not so much. Angles and perspective seem to be an issue. Well, lots of things are issues, but those were the ones that reared their heads most this time around.

The weekend I was supposed to start these, I spent that miserable Saturday with Alex at Oktoberfest, so I had to cram Thief: Deadly Shadows and Phantom Dust in on Sunday. Except I couldn't come up with a good idea for Phantom Dust, so it ended up as a generic picture of the main character. It didn't turn out badly, other than I had a little trouble with all the pointless straps on his jacket, but it's kind of dull, so I'm not posting it. I'd rather post the interesting failure like this one.

There's an episode of Samurai Jack where he fights a ninja who blends perfectly into shadows. Jack ultimately wraps himself in white, and they fight in the ruins of this building, moving between shadows and rays of light, only one visible at any given time, the other suggested by the arc of their blade, or the other's reaction. That show was always really good at that stylistic stuff.

I wanted to do something similar, suggest Garrett's presence as a shadow flitting at the edges of the light sources, and show him moving through a house to his goal. I didn't commit to it enough, I think. I needed to draw each picture a lot bigger, zoom in more on the person with the light source, and then draw just a bit of Garrett in the background (his green artificial eye seems like it would be useful, but I'm not sure how to do that with black-and-white art). I still love the concept, but the execution is lacking. Another one of those ideas I need to revisit at some point when I'm not putting myself on an artificial deadline.

Beyond Good & Evil's (Day 23) another pretty basic idea, but it turned out well. Obviously I didn't draw all the stone in the wall around the entryway, but I drew enough to suggest the others, which is something I'm trying to get better at, as a way to counter the fact I hate having to draw stuff like all the bricks in a wall. The critical part of me feels I didn't capture her face properly. Maybe she should look less happy, but I was going for her feeling confident? Still nice feeling to be drawing something and actually feel positively about as I'm going along. Usually it starts well, but then there's a lot of erasing, and "I can't figure out how to draw that, how can I work around it?"

Max Payne (Day 24) took a while to come up with an idea. I didn't want to draw his back as he ran into a hail or gunfire. I also didn't want to do one of him running towards us (and a hail of gunfire), or leaping through the air firing two guns while going "ahhh". You can find all sorts of screenshots of that online; I'd just be drawing the screenshot. I have sketchbooks full of pictures that demonstrate I can draw somebody's else drawing (sometimes). So, a picture of Max downing some painkillers right before he charges into a hail of gunfire.

The perspective on the hallway is probably no good. It feels like the exit door should be smaller. Also, I should have drawn in at least a few stains on the wall, or wallpaper tears, or something. I was picturing this as part of Max's assault on that crappy hotel fairly early in the game.

The Crimson Skies (Day 25) picture drove me batty. OK, see the small plane in the lower left? Originally, that's where I was going to draw the plane now at the top of the page screaming down from above to attack the airship. Except something about the plane being lower on the page, even as it was supposed to be above the airship, was screwing me up. I couldn't figure the angle on the wings relative to the fuselage, while keeping the nose at the proper angle to the airship. I tried looking through some of the war comics from my dad's collection, hoping to pick up some clues from Joe Kubert drawing Enemy Ace, but nothing matched what I was trying to get at.

Even with where I ended up placing that plane, the angles still aren't entirely correct. The nose is aimed out too far, like the plane is diving on the other plane, rather than the airship. Which could work; the plane could be part of the airship's group, trying to protect it but I was picturing the planes as being a team working together. Also, I should have drawn the airship with its tail still partially in the clouds. Or not drawing the cloud vapor trailing off the fins. It looks like it's really booking it, which wasn't the effect I was going for. Still, the airship turned out better than I thought it would when I started.

Those last three were the start of a weeklong stretch where things seemed to be going well. Not spectacularly, but the ideas I had were mostly coming together. I'll get to the Playstation 2 next time.