Bioshock:Infinite - Fan Art

Had a shot at doing a bit of fan art conceptual stuff for the upcoming Bioshock: Infinite.

This is my take on a turn of the century "Splicer"

Bioshock

I'm in the process of playing through Bioshock 2 again. Man, i love the Bioshock games.

Great narrative, design and general creative vision.

I've now played through both games twice (which is a big call for me). Its inspired me to put together this piece of fan art...

Crazy Busy...

A couple of months ago when I made the move to cut back my Toy Industry work to part time so that I could focus on growing my freelance business, I kinda thought it'd be a slow transition that involved me twiddling my thumbs a bit till the work came.

Boy was I mistaken. Its been crazy busy, but also exciting. Its exposed me to work involved in both the Animation and Video Game industries and provided me with whole new experiences. Its nice to be learning new skills.

The downside tho, is that I've had no time for anypersonal projects but hey, when the work's there you've gotta take it! This little rat sketch is the first bit of sketching I managed for myself in a little while. Scribbled it up last nite - obviously still seeing the carry over of the Tim Burton influence.

Fan Art: When Naughty Bear meets Gears of War?

Been reading a bit lately about an upcoming console game called Naughty Bear. I've normally been hestitant with this game genre (dark humour/cartoony) but this one gives me some hope. From what I've read so far, the underlying gameplay mechanics sound like they take the gamer seriously whilst still aiming to deliver a humorous story on the surface.

I also read an article recently on the upcoming finale to the Gears of War trilogy, and boy am I excited about this game. Some of my greatest gaming experiences have been playing split screen co-op with the girlfriend through the first two gears of war games. The third instalment sounds like it certainly won't disappoint!

Anyway, the above two games have inspired this piece of hybrid fan art...

New F class Forza Car and Livery

Mucking around in Forza last nite made a surprisingly good tune on a 2003 Focus. It goes to show I have no idea what the relevance of the number ratings for acceleration and speed are, cause this car was heaps lower in that regard to my Eclipse but it races almost a good second faster on some tracks.

I reckon this is the most fun, f-class car i've raced so far.

Forza Hiatus

Surprisingly, with my computer hiatus there has also been a long gap since i was last on xbox live as well. Its been pretty crazy at work of late so I can only put it down to tiredness.

Anyway, after such a long break it was great to fire up the box and take Forza 3 for a spin last nite. Its an understatement to say I felt a little rusty.

I was however stoked to check on my storefront and check out the download popularity of some of my liveries! The Redfrog livery for the Murciellago LP640 was the 11th most downloaded custom, and my 2010 Audi S4 Redfrog livery was the most downloaded livery! Needless to say I was pretty chuffed and just wanted to say a big thankyou to all those who downloaded them. Hope you are enjoying them!

Customising characters/objects in games

One of the great things i love about Forza 3 is the livery editor and being able to customise the look of your car. It gives you a real sense of ownership. Now Army of Two is out (it is truck loads better than the last one) and has a mask and armor editor you can play around with. Its the sort of cool feature that all games should have. It gives you a unique aspect to your game.
Anyway so I had a muck around with th editor and designed these maesks that Salem and Rios are now wearing in my game.

Forza 3 session last nite

Had a fantastic session of Forza3 last nite.

Scotty Canuck (http://www.canuckistan.org/) set up a private party of five of us and we raced a great selection of tracks and classes. The racing was high quality and very clean. There was the occasion racing incident crash but they just added to some hilarious fun - including a four car tangle on resumption of one of our safety car incidents.

Darksiders Fan Art: WIP 03

Here's the lastest update on the darksiders piece. Now i just have to decide whether to push this more, go and play the game for a while, or go and mow the lawn....hmmmm...

Darksiders Fan Art: WIP 01

With only about a week till its release i've been inspired to do some fan art based on the forthcoming Darksiders game. With Joe Mad at the helm and already some good reviews coming out, I'm waiting with baited breath for this one!

This is just an early concept layout rough, that'll give a rough idea of where i'm going with this. Alas, i've also managed to give myself multiple projects at one time (I can thank the short attention span for that one! :) )

Dead Space 2 on the horizon!!!

Picked up the first issue of Game Informer Australia the other day. It featured a cover story on Dead Space 2. Its a great article (in fact its a pretty impressive magazine) and it shed some light onto the thought process of the creative folk at Visceral Games. The article served to further heighten my respect for this studio.
It was so refreshing to hear a studio speak about narrative structure and plot pacing. It mad a nice change from the typical "and we have developed this cool new weapon". It is reassuring to hear that a studio puts that much emphasis on character and plot. After all, video games are often touted as being an interactive and cinematic experience, and therefore you would think that plot and narrative pacing should be crucial elements. Kudos to Visceral for recognising this.
The first Dead Space was amazing. It gave a stiff kick up the pants to the waning survival horror genre. It introduced a game that was genuiinely scary, unrelenting, had good controls and had a story that made me want to play till the end. To hear the direction they are going with the sequel just makes me hungry for the next game even more.

Redfrog Murcielago

Debuted the new Redfrog murcielago livery online last nite and had some pretty good racing. Put down my best A-class time on the Mugello circuit with a 1.56.

Finding now that i can't even bring myself to race the non damage modes, which is a pity because A-class is the only category with an expert mode. Would be cool to see maybe B-class and r3 done in expert as well. C'mon Turn 10, it's xmas! Grant me my wish :)

Dead Space Fan art: WIP 02

sigh...I'm missing the xmas party due to circumstances beyond my control :(

Forza 3 - New DLC

Was excited to download the latest DLC car pack for Forza the other day. Two additions in particular were ones that I was excited about: The R35 GTR Skyline and the 2010 model Audi A4.
Have already converted a really useful class C racer out of the A4 and done a custom livery for it.

Forza 3 Photo Finish!

Racing last nite with fellow Forza 3 friends Scotty Canuck, WoundedWOWfan and a few other cameos from outside of our usual racing fraternity. Had some awesome racing. One race in particular that stood out was a race on the New York Circuit. Both Scotty and myself took S5's with custom liveries. The race was neck and neck fro the duration with Scotty and myself jostling for the lead. In the end it came down to a photo finish (we could only tell the winner from the timing results) but Scotty's V10 powerplant got him across the line a hundreth of a second before me. Sensational racing fun!!!

Forza on the weekend

Raced a bit of R3 class and A class expert in multiplayer on the weekend and I am really now subscribing to the philosophy that if you can avoid the carnage and mayhem then you don't need the fastest car to place well in the race.

I raced and R34 Mine's skyline in R3 and even tho it was totally outclassed in speed by all the ferrari's in the races, i still managed to stay fairly competitive due to avoiding all the crashes that they got involved with. Of course i still occasionally got rammed off the track but for the most part i remained competitive.

This philosphy is even more appropriate when racing A class expert (which for my mind is the best multiplayer racing on the servers) as if you can avoid the carnage then any speed disadvantage you had is quickly removed by simulation damage starting to take its toll on the other cars. This lesson is most appropriate when navigating the Amalfi Coast course. Sometimes its better to hang back out of the turn one shennanigans and then navigate your way through the carnage.

Forza 3 Redfrog Audi TT

Another session on Forza last nite and another car livery design. I'm beginning to think I spend more time with the livery editor than actually racing. Really liking playing around at the moment with black markings around the headlamps on my livery designs. Did up this Audi TT last nite. Definitely have a thing for Audi's at the moment... they just look really cool in their latest generation. Its tragic but i really love the lights bling that you see on the latest model 4s, 5s and R8s. Completely unecessary but it looks so cool - I kinda wish the models in the game had this same bling.

Mines R34 G.O.W livery by Peanut TN

Got some nice comments on my livery designs over the weekend from a few people and even did a custom livery exchange with Peanut TN. He did me up this Jelly Muffin personalised version of his insane Gears of War livery. Looks absolutely amazing.

I highly recommend everyone to go check out his Forza Storefront. He has some wicked designs and vinyls!

Team Redfrog V8 supercar

Designed up the livery last nite for the Team Redfrog FG Falcon V8 Supercar. Even gave it the FPV style racoon style effect under the front lights. Gave the car a test run last night but she was still a bit twitchy, so have been working on the tuning setup to make her a bit more competitive on track.