Risky Boots

Wayforward has been one of my favorite developers since I was 12 and a very nice man at EB Games suggested I buy Shantae for my Gameboy Color. Recently I have been reminded of just how awesome they are because of a bunch of new releases, two new Shantae games, the Mighty series, and Double Dragon Neon, to name a few. But all these weren't enough for me, so for nostalgia's sake I went to a new local Play N Trade the other day and traded in a bunch of the next gen titles that were collecting dust on my shelf for a few of their old GBC and GBA licensed titles. You can imagine the look I got for trading Fallout 3 for Barbie: the Princess and the Pauper.

You might understand better why I did this if you read this article:Might Switch Force: Inside Wayforward's under the radar Wii U launch game

Anyway I noticed they have a fan art section on their website so I decided to work on a little tribute to send their way.

The character is Risky Boots from Shantae. She's still a work in progress. I hope to be able to pose her once the initial sculpt is done. I'm still getting used to some of the new zbrush features and trying to understand the best way to use dynamesh.

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Decided to work on it a bit more today:

Meet Marina!

Here she is, Ultra-Intergalactic-Cybot G Marina Liteyears! I gave her a skeleton so I may play with her more sometime in the future, do some different poses, animations, stuff like that, but for now I have other projects that I want to work on. I had a lot of fun with this. I'm really enjoying doing lower res stuff right now.

Shake Shake!

I was watching a speedrunner play Mischief Makers last night and it reminded me that I never finished the Marina model I started a while back. I've been working on it ever since.

I still need to clean up her textures and pose her but I'm getting pretty happy with it. Nostalgia win!

If anyone is interested in watching a Mischief Makers speed run the guy who holds the world record (at least I think he still does) does it every once in a while here: twitch.tv/peaches__

A little Belladonna/Velvet piano bar progress

I started sculpting her so I thought I would share what I've got so far. I've mostly been focusing on getting the shapes right at this point.

I wouldn't normally model a character with the face already posed like this but for this particular character she needs to look like she's always singing anyway. Reference:

I'm planning an environment too, which I call the velvet piano bar. I started a block out for it, but I'm more into working on her right now.

My original idea for this was to make a stage that would fit into Persona 4 Arena. One thing I really like about the stages in P4A is that they have a lot of depth and new things are revealed as the players jump and dash around the space.  I made the space wide and tall, with added depth in the balcony and open elevators to allow for that type of thing. So the center bottom section of this diagram would be the starting point and the rest would be revealed as the match progresses. This is not exact but I hope it gets the idea across.

  For the interior design of it all I am trying to combine elements from the different velvet rooms throughout the series. I took the piano and Belladonna from Persona 2, the elevators, doors and large clock from Persona 3, and the bar from Persona 4, which was actually a mini bar in a limo. They all share the blue velvet color and plush furniture which I will also include. Some reference:

Things are going to be hectic for me in the coming months due to moving around a lot, so this probably won't be a quick project, just something fun for me to do in my spare time.

Halloween post!

It isn't Halloween yet but the party I threw this year has come and gone. During the past week in preparation for the party I did a lot of baking and DIY decorating.

These are our pumpkins, Chris did the koffing one on the left, mine is the more traditional jack o'lantern on the right. I roasted their seeds and they were delicious. They unfortunately went a bit soft before the party, but they look nice here.

 This is my costume this year. I made an addition to my old Jack Frost costume in the form of a Pyro Jack puppet. So instead of just one character I went as both Jack Brothers. I'm entering the Atlus O Weenie costume contest with it this year so please vote for me starting Nov. 5!
http://apps.facebook.com/contestshq/contests/297974/voteable_entries/60576010

 I also made charlie an Atlus themed costume, a shadow from Persona!

 These are some flowers that Chris got me. I customized the vase for the season.

 This was the table of treats I presented for our party. The Jack O'lanterns were provided by our friends Jen and Brendan.

 I made my pumpkin pie cupcakes again because they are delicious and seasonal.

 I made pumpkin shaped peanut butter cookies with a sugar glaze and an apple cider spiced rum punch with gummy worm and cinnamon stick garnish.

 And lastly I made poison apple cupcakes. I am pretty proud of these because I came up with the recipe all on my own. They are chocolate cake with caramel filling and special apple cider cinnamon butter cream frosting that I colored green and looks no where near as tasty as it actually is. And of course gummy worms on top.They turned out really rich as you can imagine, but everyone loved them.

 This is a pic of Charlie, our friend Patrick dressed as Bane from Batman and Chris dressed as Q from Street Fighter playing fighting games before the other guests arrived. Mask mode.

 I had been waiting months to light these bleeding candles and they did not disappoint.

 I decorated with retro horror movie posters of course. The rest of my decorations were made with paper and sharpie because I was on a pretty tight budget this year.

Can you tell I love Halloween?

More Cupcakes

It's Canadian Thanksgiving today, so to celebrate the ripped off American holiday I made some cupcakes. I love pumpkin pie so I decided to do my own take on pumpkin pie cupcakes. They are spice cake with pumpkin pie filling, whipped cream on top and little pie crust pumpkins for garnish. Yum!

 

In other news, I had an art test last week, a 3 day challenge from a studio called Telos up here in PEI. I turned it in on Friday so I'm keeping my fingers crossed to hear back after the holiday.  

Belladonna

I got a trial version of Marvelous Designer and I've been trying to teach myself how to use it. It's pretty magical. I really like that it employs actual pattern drafting, and the cloth simulation, while a bit buggy sometimes, is really nice. It is also great that you can export whatever you make into an obj file to edit in your 3D program of choice.

I made a few practice dresses. This one is based on Elizabeth's dress from Persona 3. Another good thing about MD is that you can change the properties of the cloth to be whatever you want, like wool or satin. Getting the collar to stand up like that took a bit of tweaking. I tried adding in the textural details but that isn't the easiest thing to do in this program, If I were going to use this on a game model I'd rather wait until I have UV's to work with.

 

 This one is just a quick little peplum dress because that's in style right now and I've always liked it.

 

 I spent the most time on this one, and I'm going to use it in a personal project I'm starting. This dress is loosely based on the one Belladonna wears in the velvet room in Persona 1 and 2. I know a pattern has been emerging in my inspiration lately...but I like what I like. I've always wanted to learn how to make puff sleeves, too. It's nice to be able to experiment with patterns without wasting fabric.

Imported into maya

Some reference for Belladonna:

The next step is making my own 'avatar' model for the program and fitting my patterns onto that.