Sketchtober 2018 Review

Like last year, I decided to participate in Inktober in my own particular way. Meaning I used a pencil rather than a pen, because I need to erase stuff a lot.

I reused the same prompt idea as last year, my favorite games from each of the consoles I've owned. The difference being, rather than trying to do 35 sketches, I settled on 15. It gave me two days to get each sketch done, so my free time wasn't so entirely swallowed up by this as it was last year. 

The goal this year was to revisit the sketches last year that I wanted to turn out better. OK, almost all of them could have turned out better from my perspective, but I focused on the ones where I had some specific idea of what I wanted to do differently. The one exception was I did a picture for Mike Tyson's Punch-Out! this year, because I had an idea I wanted to try.

I consider the majority of this year's pieces an improvement. Not all - Thief: Deadly Shadows didn't come together at all how I hoped - and some of them would only be improvements because last year's piece was so poor.

I'm not gonna post them all, but here's three I was mostly happy with.

Day 1, back to Kirby's Adventure. Last year, I stuck with how the game actual makes you play the Metal Knight Level 6 boss fight, where you have to use the Sword ability. But the idea of Kirby instead unleashing his horrible voice with the Sing ability amused me. Kirby turned out well, the crooked sour notes turned out well, and I like Metal Knight's wide-eyed look. This was a very encouraging start to the whole thing.

Day 9, Super Smash Bros. Melee. Instead of last year's "everybody vs. Giga Bowser", I trimmed it down to Fox vs. Giga Bowser. Although Bowser looks less fierce than last year, I do like how the attempt at showing Fox's movement, from the Fox Illusion move to using the Blaster, turned out.

Day 12, God Hand. Gene looks closer to his game self, ditto Tiger Joe, although I'd change his posture if I did it over. Have him doubled over, a few more of the punches connecting with his face. Should have drawn the impacts of the fists like I did last year. Oh well, progress.

Movement, and how to represent it, ended up being a recurring theme in a lot of pictures. Characters teleporting, or moving fast, or just moving in general. And even when I wasn't necessarily happy with how the overall picture turned out, there were a lot of times I was at least happy with that part (The Dishonored picture for Day 14 comes to mind).

I was reading Greg Hatcher's post at Atomic Junkshop, on how he took part this year to show solidarity with his students, and I was kind of amused that we took almost entirely opposite approaches. Other than each of us using whatever art supplies were at hand, rather than going to find any fancy supplies. He set himself a hard 10-15 minute limit for his pictures. I think the fastest pictures I did took close to an hour.

I guess I don't think of these as practice sketches so much as things I really wanted to try drawing, so I could have them as finished pieces. Ideas in my head that need to look right on the page, or it doesn't do any good. I figured out this year, I'm really just using Inktober as an artificial deadline that I will actually respect. Since the arbitrary deadlines I otherwise give myself for other art projects don't seem to work. See also, I meant to have the Long Weekend in the Woods written and ready to start posting by the end of September, and it took three weeks into October.

Sketchtober Update - Yes, This Is The Last One

Like I said last time, the XBox 360 was the point where I started to get worn out.  It's probably reflected in the drawings. If the PS2 drawings went the best of any console, the 360's were. . . less successful.

Day 31, The Saboteur. This part of the drawing - Sean calmly lighting a cigarette - went very well. There was supposed to be this whole chaotic tableau behind him, or overturned Nazi trucks and watchtowers, stuff burning, dead Nazis. The aftermath of Sean's efforts. But I didn't seem to have the energy to make it turn out well, so eventually I just erased it all and this is what we're left with.

In a re-do, I'd probably have the explosions be happening in the background, and have Sean closer than he should be so I didn't have to draw as much stuff. A few shockwaves, some smoke and flame, part of a truck rising in the air, a section of Nazi being consumed by the explosion. Gotta learn to work smarter.

Day 32, Dishonored. Pretty straightforward idea: Show Corvo using the Blink technique to repeatedly advance towards the viewer, starting from the top of the water tower. Unfortunately, that meant drawing a lot of buildings, and incorporating proper perspective. Not my forte, as you can see in some of the windows. I'm wondering if I should have drawn something to show the little flashes are meant to be connected, Corvo zipping from one spot to the next. I thought that would clutter things up, but as it is, I'm not sure it's clear what I was going for.

Ambition outstripping skill again. Or I just needed more time to plan it out, redesign it. I think it's a cool idea, just didn't carry it off.

Day 33, Tales of Vesperia. I really struggled to come up with an idea for this one, but I remembered Zagi, who encounters Yuri early in the game and becomes obsessed with killing him, to Yuri's annoyance.

I wanted to try and open things up more in my facial expressions. My style as a whole is, "fussy" is the word that comes to mind. A lot of small, light lines, which I think works OK for quiet emotions, peaceful looks, but is lacking when you want someone to be enraged or look kind of crazy. If I could draw in a style similar to Skottie Young's I'd be friggin' ecstatic. But normally when I try to do that, I think it makes the faces look weird. So I tried to go against that with Zagi, at least. I think he certainly looks nuts, if maybe not crazy angry, necessarily. Still, I'm a little encouraged.

Day 35, Alice: Madness Returns. Singularity was Day 34, total disaster, so it gets skipped. Alice has a Dodge move, where she turns into a cloud of butterflies. Like Blink with Dishonored, it's probably my favorite thing in this game. So having her Dodge an attack an move to a position of advantage seemed a natural idea.

Probably should have drawn some scenery, a floor at least, but my energy was pretty low by this point. I was ready to just be done. Trying to get the pommel of her weapon right for that angle took several tries, but yeah, I'm pretty satisfied.

Lack of energy was the biggest issue this last set. Even when I had a good idea, I didn't feel I was bringing my best effort to it. Like, crap, I don't want to draw all these buildings/wreckage/dead Nazis. Anyway, that's that.

Sketchtober Recap - Still Working Through These

Not really an update at this point, since the project was finished a couple weeks ago. Of all the consoles, the Playstation 2's selections went the best overall. All the pictures went well. Combined with the last three days of the XBox selections, it was a good stretch there. Which is funny since about halfway through the PS2 was when I realized I had a week to go still and got briefly demoralized (which may have shown up more in the XBox 360 pictures).

Day 26 was Persona 3, which I'd classify as successful, but kind of basic. Day 27 was Ico, where I am really grateful that most of the enemies are creatures made of shadows. Only having to draw in outlines can be a real time-saver. You don't normally have to protect Yorda while she opens sealed doors, but I wanted her to get to do something in the picture, so that was pretty much the option. Also tried to draw her using the Ditko fingers as part of it, for the hell of it.

Day 28, DragonBall Z Budokai 3. You're goddamn right I drew Krillin standing on a mountain of KO'd jackasses. Having a chance to make those fights go the way I want them to is a big part of the fun of these licensed fighting games. Yes, that's Recoome's big, ugly butt in the middle of the picture. They probably aren't arranged properly to make a good pile, unless you assume there are other characters in the back somewhere. So you should absolutely do that. I guess I should have drawn Cell's entire body instead of just his head, but I was getting tired by that point. And Cell can suck eggs, anyway.

The idea for the picture came from a full-page splash Pete Woods did in Robin #85, Tim standing triumphantly atop all the villains he's overcome. Obviously there have been lots of versions of that idea, but that's the one I specifically had in mind. I'll post that scan one of these days, because I really enjoy it (and it's kind of cool considering the Joker is telling the story).

Day 29, Sky Odyssey. I picked the most frustrating part of the game to draw. The level where your engine catches on fire right as you emerge from a cave and you have to land on the river below and then float your plane to a dock. Died so many times on that level. But the engine bursting into flames just as the river flowing out of the cave drops off a waterfall makes for a heck of an image. And it's the part that sticks out most in my mind, other than giving the planes garish color schemes and designing symbols for them, which don't translate well.

Day 30, God Hand. I wanted to try drawing a character throwing a ton of punches, super-fast. The after-image thing you see in Flash or Spider-Man comics, or a lot of shonen manga. Simple as that. And Tiger Joe has a fairly look to use as a villain, although he should be taller here. His leg is raised because he was about to unleash one of his irritating flurries of kicks, but Gene caught him with a barrage of punches first. Not because he needed a pee break, although you couldn't rule out something like that in this game.

If I did it over, my goal would be "more". More fists, more impacts. Fill the space between them with arms and fists, cover Tiger Joe with impacts. The increase on arms and fists to draw would be offset by less of Tiger Joe to draw, so it's like getting more for nothing!

One last quintet left to cover, and then we're done with this exercise in humiliation. Unless I decide to do it again next year!

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.

Sketchtober Update - Not Quite

So October is over, but Sketchtober staggers on. I'm down to the last few days, the XBox 360 games. Recently, I've noticed I've been liking my concepts initially, but then I run out of steam on them quickly. Part of it comes easily, and then the rest is a struggle, if I even get it all the way there. I might just be getting tired of the amount of free time this is eating up each night in general. I can't really read or play a video game or do anything else while I'm sketching. I could solve that problem by being better at drawing.

This time around, Gamecube stuff, Days 16-20. Not one of the better stretches. A couple of them turned out miserably - in one of those cases, my inability to draw people throwing stuff reared its head again. The other three, we'll look at below.

Day 17, Metroid Prime. There isn't a point during the battle with Ridley where you can scale the ceiling to drops bombs on him. Mostly because you fight him in a big open area with no ceiling. Still, I had other pictures where I thought I was too beholden to the specifics of the game in question - see Kirby's Adventure - so I decided not to let that restrain me here.

All of which sounds better than admitting it was just a lot easier to draw Samus in her Spider Ball form than as a person in a suit of armor (armor falling under the category of mechanical stuff as something I don't draw well). Ridley's missing the connective tissue or energy that forms his wings, because if he could fly, climbing the ceiling wouldn't be as advantageous for Samus, would it?

Overall, not too displeased with this one. Got lazy on drawing the walls of the cave, though, which is typical. I rarely have the patience for that sort of background detail work.

Day 18, TimeSplitters 2. I struggled most of the day with what to draw for this one, before opting to focus on the random nature of its multiplayer. The variety of different characters available to play, the varied locales and weapons. Thus, a monkey firing a rocket launcher at a robot, while a third character ambushes the monkey. It's not a spectacular picture, but it turned out better than I thought it would when I started. The Spanish Mission level is one of my favorite multiplayer settings, along with the abandoned hospital.

There's a guy outlined in the doorway in the upper right corner, with what's meant to be the light reflecting off a scope. One of those times drawing things larger would have been advisable. Originally, he was going to be a dark shadow against a bright opening, but I was drawing all the other doors and windows as being dark, so I decided to go the other direction, have him be a white form standing in a dark doorway. Plus, the character I was thinking of was a gunman who dressed all in white, anyway, so it fit.

Day 19, Super Smash Bros. Melee. One I definitely drew too small, probably because I got too ambitious again. The original idea was just going to be Starfox fighting Giga-Bowser. I was going to draw an immense Giga-Bowser, with Fox darting about raining high-speed punches ineffectually. Think that cover for the "But Bork Can Hurt You!" story from the old Brave & the Bold, since that's what I was picturing. But once I started, I got the idea of a team effort, really sell the threat level. So maybe closer to the Justice League vs. Starro cover? It really needed to be bigger for that, but Giga-Bowser felt like such a daunting thing to draw I reverted to my default, tiny sketch mode. Also, he probably shouldn't be that much larger than all of them. Donkey Kong should at least come up to the knee. Eh, maybe he grabbed a Super Mushroom.

I would love it if that game would just let you fight Giga-Bowser whenever you wanted. Not as part of an event match where you fight him, Ganondorf and Mewtwo. And not at the end of a run through Adventure mode, if you can beat it fast enough on a sufficiently high difficulty level. Just pick him as an opponent the way you can any character, and go at it.

Next time, whenever that is, maybe next Friday, the XBox games. Which I was actually pretty happy with, overall. Even the one that didn't go well, I liked part of.

Sketchtober Update - Almost There

As of yesterday, we're through Day 25. Which means I finished the XBox Top 5, and am moving into the PS2 list. With five systems worth of these behind me, there are certain trends emerging. There is always at least one, usually two, of the five that end up going poorly. The other three go reasonably well, if not perfectly, but there might be one that I'm really, really happy with. Day 5, definitely Day 7. I looked at it again a couple of nights ago and was actually happy with what I saw. Normally when I look at stuff I draw, I only see all the things I screwed up, which is exhausting.

Anyway, the N64. I mentioned last week, the first couple of nights went poorly. Things improved a bit Days 13-15, but nothing spectacular. I'm not showing you the Goldeneye sketch, it was not good.

Day 12, Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time. Like I said, I can't draw horses. I really struggled trying to come up with an idea for this. Because every idea I thought of, I realized I already had a desktop wallpaper of it someone else did that looked way better than what I could manage. Dark Link fight? Got a wallpaper. Spin Attack? Got a wallpaper of that. Finally, I remembered the guy you give the Bunny mask to when you're a kid, who ends up being super-fast when you're an adult. And who does run with his head down like that. You can race him, although you don't see him running. He's waiting for you when you reach the finish, always a second ahead.

Day 13, Starfox 64. It was either the final battle with Andross, or something about the Starwolf fights. Drawing a giant brain and his mobile, laser-shooting eyes seemed less daunting than drawing a whole bunch of spaceships. I'm not good at mechanical stuff. For some reason, I tried doing the after-image effect for the Arwing. Went better than I expected. The real issue was I couldn't figure out how to depict the deflector shield the Arwing produces when you do a barrel roll. After a few trials, I settled on a sort of faint oval around it. It's not great, but it made more sense than any of the others.

Day 14, Super Smash Bros. Looking around online, now I'm not sure you could even fight Crazy Hand in this game. He may not have shown up until Melee. Whoops.  Too late now. The original idea was to do the picture as a split-screen of what you see. Each side was going to be from a perspective just behind one of the brothers shoulders. So, Luigi would be in the extreme foreground, then we'd see Mario's back and beyond the, Master Hand, and then do the same from behind Luigi. But I spent Saturday at Alex', so I had to do this and Day 15 in one day, and opted to simplify the hell out of it. Hmm, looking at it, things might have been starting to go off the rails. It's more than a little rushed, and I'm drawing smaller, which is what I default to when I'm feeling unsteady or rushed (the same's true of my handwriting, it naturally trends towards tiny).

Day 15, Resident Evil 2. Took me most of the day to figure out what to even draw. But that Tyrant was always a pain in the ass. I always remember him smashing through walls to get pursue me, although that only happened once. I think Claire's a little long in the torso, and I probably should angled her more. The Tyrant looks a little too casual, but he was one of those slow, relentless threats. You kill him, he gets back up and keeps coming after you. Not personal, just what he's designed to do. I do like the bullet impacts on him.

By the next time I do one of these, we'll be out of October. Will I be done with all 7 systems, though?

A Midpoint Sketchtober Update

The sketch I did the last time I checked in, did not go as hoped. Remarkable how I can draw a friggin' earthworm in a super-suit, but I can't draw a human throwing a baseball.The difficulty with people reared its head the next night, for Goldeneye, then the day after that, it was trouble with horses. The next couple of nights were decent rebounds.

I'm partway through the Gamecube Top 5 now, and it's going much the same as the others. I'm reasonably happy with the ideas I'm coming up with, the execution is another matter. Anyway, here's a selection from Days 6-10.

Day 6, Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers. I intended this to be like one of those comic covers where Peter Parker and Harry Osborn are fighting at the bottom of the cover, but dominating the rest are spectral forms of Spider-Man and Green Goblin in poses mirroring the civilian i.d.s. Somewhat undercut that by focusing more of the page on the Pink Ranger fighting the Putty Patrol, but to be fair, the idea only hit me halfway through. I was coming off the Mega Man 4 sketch, and I was feeling my oats. "I've got this, I'm going to handle this challenge like a boss!" Silly Calvin of two weeks ago.

Day 7, Sonic the Hedgehog. This is the Scrap Brain Zone, the last Zone before Robotnik's fortress. This was my favorite level, in large part because of the music. It comes after an underwater zone, which are always a pain in the ass in Sonic games. Nothing like being forced to worry about drowning, while also being forced to move really slowly. I didn't want to do a featureless oval for the up-close Sonic, but I probably should have left it at drawing just his face, rather than adding the arms and limbs. Still one of my better Sonics.

Day 8, Earthworm Jim. The Snot a Problem level, where you engage in a battle of bungee jumping with Major Mucus, the loser plummeting to his death in the jaws of the monster below. My favorite level, but also preceded by a pain-in-the-ass underwater level. The angle of Jim's body compared to his head is off, but I like the placement of the monster, and the spinning of Major Mucus. Besides, he's a worm in a super-suit, his movements and the suits can be independent of each other, right? Right.

Day 9, Batman Returns. I thought of drawing the Level 3 fight - Batman vs. a Giant Robot - would seem random. So the final boss fight it is. Batman versus the Penguin and his duck tank! Which I always solved by using all the specials I'd saved up to call the Bat Ski-boat and blast him to pieces. Just hit him with those until he died. Boo-ya! But I sure as hell ain't drawing that. Lucky if I can draw a damn duck tank.

And I'm not showing you Day 10. Majors Pro Baseball nearly broke me.

Sketchtober Update

Made it through Day 10, which gets me through the Game Gear selections. Most of which went pretty well, although there is, as always, something that nags me about each one. An angle that's off, an appendage that isn't conveying what it needs to. The usual shit. Now it's on to the N64, where I have next to no idea what I'm going to do for most of these. Maybe I didn't think I'd make it this far.

The scanner showed up a week ahead of time, and I did say I would post some of the pieces. Day 1, Kirby's Adventure.

The Level 6 boss fight with Metal Knight. In retrospect, I regret two things. First, that I got too enamored of the game animation for Kirby's swing, which is that big crescent thing in the middle of the picture. A narrow arcing would have been better, and allowed for me to extend Metal Knight's sword to better convey the parry. Or, I could have been less hung up on the specifics of the fight and gone with my other idea, which was Kirby using the Mike power against him (basically, Kirby screeching into a microphone). That might have looked cooler. Maybe I'll try it later.

Days 2 and 3 didn't go as I hoped, so we're skipping to Day 4, Paperboy.

OK, that's not nearly enough obstacles for Thursday. It's more like Tuesday, Wednesday at worst. Scale is off, the Grim Reaper must be 20 feet tall compared to the guy with the jackhammer or the breakdancer. The Reaper not casting a shadow is intentional. I don't always remember to finish the shading, but it wasn't the case here. I thought it would emphasize its otherworldly nature. A looming shadow brought to life, not affected by the surrounding environment.

Day 5, Mega Man 4.

I don't know why the boss fight with Skull Man is the one I think of with this game. My success rate on even reaching him was maybe 60%. My winning percentage when I did get that far was considerably less than 60%. All because of that stupid skull force field he could produce. Guaranteed to turn any attack you launched into a harmlessly deflected bright orb. I made Mega Man's boots a little big, but I looked up stuff online and his upper legs are really small in comparison. I needed to finish shading on the legs. Well I need to do more shading on a lot of these. I really like how Skull Man turned out, but relative close-ups on face are one of the few things I can normally draw well.

I don't really have anything else to say, so until tomorrow.