Storyboarding: Tokyo Street Pirates - Inspiration

In this storyboard of Tokyo Street Pirates, I tried to explore the first level of the game, and some of the personalities of the game.  It's still a rather basic storyboard, though a bit lengthy for a battle scene that only takes place in one room.  In any case, my goal with Tokyo Street Pirates was to create an old classic styled game, with the hopes of inspiring players to want to go and visit Tokyo.  This is perhaps the biggest reason, but also to inspire people to go out on their own adventures.  The plot for the game was to be somewhat set up like Metro City in Final Fight for the SNES.  I thought it would be amazing to have a 2D side scrolling fighter take place in the famous districts in Tokyo like: Shibuya, Akihabara, Shinjuku, etc.  This would also be a good way to introduce the culture of these areas and to reveal landmarks, like Tokyo Tower, or even the Tokyo Big Sight which is famous for many anime conventions.  I wanted a game to bring fans together, and also travelors and natives alike.  The great thing about classical side scrollers is that many of them are multi player, not in the way games are today with online technology, but in the old fashion style of arcades where all players must stand together in front of the machine and enjoy the excitement and adventure together.  I would love to see this game made, but even if it was I would be even more pleased to find it made as an arcade machine where up to 6 players could enjoy the adventure together.  This is something I feel that has been lost from the online gaming experience, real social interaction.  From my experiences games can be tools to help people bond together, or they can also be tools to help alienate human interaction.  If I have any say in the matter, as a designer, I hope to bring people together and inspire them. 

Storyboard: Tokyo Street Pirates - Level 1

The Detective

This was a lot of fun, took some time though.  The mood that hit me was a detective's reaction after hearing some gun shots following a lead in a hotel.  What's going to happen next?  Are gangsters going to spray bullets all over the room with their tommy guns?  Or, is the detective going to barge into the next room only to find another corpse on the floor with the murderer escaped out the fire escape. 

Black and white charcoal on toned paper.

Project Tokyo Street Pirates: Character Designs

I have just started a project, a side scroller beat 'em up action game.  It's just a storyboard conceptual design project.  I already have made some art work, such as the Daisuke character turnaround, which is the main character of the project.  Here are three more character designs: Mina, Lily, and Kenji.  They are the other playable characters for this four player game.  Though, however, I think it would be cool to eventually have this be a six player game, with maybe 8-10 characters to choose from.  Unfortunately, I don't have time to complete such a grand project before Finals are due T_T.  I will be posting new art work, and eventually the storyboard.  Hopefully, you'll see that this should be made into a real game.  And, not just that, but into a classic arcade game for friends to play together at the mall.  (Do they even make Arcades any more?)

Daisuke Character Turnaround

I'm working on a video game concept for a 2D side scroller like Final Fight.  I've always thought the old school world could use a modern make over, at least for a few projects.  Imagine if there was a six player arcade like the arcade classic X-Men, but with hi-def characters in the fashion of Blazblue.  Imagine if it would only cost 50 cents a turn..., maybe 25 cents even *.*.  Those were the days when arcades were fun and affordable.

Storyboarding King of Assyria Boss Battle

The Sea Fairy Kingdom Project 6

 

I had a chance to work on this some more.  I finished roughing out some more color flats.  I'm still working on the color palette and not quite sure where to take it.  I was thinking about keeping it all in the blue family, but I think perhaps adding some highlight colors will do some good.  Then I thought I might want to just make the whole foreground very bright and colorful of all colors like the ocean is and keep the background monochromatic to some degree.  I'll have to look at this and just simply mess around with some different color schemes like perhaps a split analogous color scheme from the blues to purples with yellow being the complementary color.  The green might have to go.

Sketch Book 11: The Eyes

An eye study I did.  Looking at the eye as from different side perspectives.  The eyes are fun to draw, but can cost you if you don't do them right.

Mysterious Rose

This is a some what old illustration I did back for my portfolio when I was job hunting at the 2009 San Diego Comic Con.  Actually, at the time Lady Mirage was just released by one of my favorite artists Kenneth Rocafort.  This illustration looks much like fan art for Lady Mirage, however at the time I illustrated this, I had no idea about Lady Mirage.  You can call it fan art if you like, but it wasn't intended that way.

This is made of marker, ink, and colored pencil.  Colored pencil after it sits for a while does what is called "wax bloom" which is where all the wax rises to the top putting a glossy sheen over the picture.  I pretty much hate wax bloom.  It was hard to take the photo of this because the glare, scanning doesn't work well with the wax bloom as well.  Natural media, always looks better in person.  Scanning and photos can only do so well, but nothing compares to what your eyes can naturally pick up.

The Sea Fairy Kingdom Project 5

Now this is much better.  As this is coming together, the composition is very strong.  I worked with some gradients with the atmospheric perspective.  It's looking very nice.  I also have begun to separate the objects and their color values.  It's going to take a bit of testing to find the colors and their intensity keeping the foreground strong, but yet not too strong.  The foreground needs to be strong and vibrant, but the trick is to keep the foreground, middleground, and background working nicely with each other keeping a form of balance and enhance the story telling of the illustration.  I'm looking forward to finishing this!  But, there are many other things on my plate at the moment too that needs attention - such as school assignments, which means more heads and hands studies and storyboarding :)  Looking forward to it!

The Sea Fairy Kingdom Project 4

This is something that should happen more often, but should happen more on the beginning of the design project.  The composition kept annoying me, and I sat down and looked at the original composition for a while and browsed through other under water illustrations and photographs.  What's very amazing about under water ocean life is the coral reefs, the strange plant life, the countless fish, and the very powerful and fearful large creatures of the deep.  I decided to explore more of the world these fairy-like creatures lived in.  So, I needed to change the perspective to show more of the under water life.  I decided such creatures needed to live in a ravine to keep them safe from predators much like most every other sea creature.  I'm just quickly added some color flats to help show the atmospheric perspective.  Depth is now being used and is easy to perceive.  As I start building the depth and exploring the values and color intensity of the foreground this illustration is going to be very powerful.  This illustration has been a very big learning experience for me.  Especially, since I've never done an illustration like this before.

I really want to explore my style in this composition, and push it to it's limit.  So far it's coming along nicely.

The Sea Fairy Kingdom Project 3

Adding more detail, and working with lighting differences.

Things are coming together, but everything still is a little weak and not very bold.

I started coloring and detailing the characters.  For a beginning stage they are coming along alright.

 The composition seemed a little flat to me, and there is no focal point.  Everything has the same intensity.  So, I started to work on just the background and try to push the feeling of depth more.

I muted (took the color intensity down) of the mountains in the back, which helps the front mountain structure pop out more.