And finally, the second season for MLP FIM is arrived. Well, certainly I was expecting something a less “world’s near end” chapter for the first episode. It was a surprise that they introduce a new villain like Discord.
I can see the series started fine, just one ep was aired and bronies didn’t lost time to begin with fan art and fan… erm… slangs, I don’t know how to name it. The big false diamond of Rarity has already a name and, just like the famous derpy eyes, people are trying to make famous the crumpled mouth that liar Applejack makes every time she lies…
Most of all, I never expected Discordia could be a so hated villain. In fact, I think he’s a funny prankster for a villain… ¿problem? 😀 In this short time I could see how some people hate him a lot XD. That looks like a good job for a bad guy.
In the other hand, as I expected, Lauren faust absence is causing the obvious. There are a few comments about out of character behaviors or events… well, I can’t be sure but this could be just suggestion for the departure of miss Faust of the writing staff, maybe if she hasn’t said anything, keeping in secret her absence, fans really didn’t notice anything wrong =P
Okay, that’s all. I really likes Discord, is bad but charismatic just as Ledger’s Joker… In fact I think his chimera appearance has an aster egg that makes reference to an old villain, which is great. For those who doesn’t know, I’m talking about Grogar from G1. Oh, man, they made too easy to make a crossover between the G1 and G4 generations 😀
Is well said that the old times were better , sometimes I think that’s an absolutist sentence, there are somethings we miss so much but we must to accept that today we have many advantages that we can live without. I think that the sentence refers to those classic things, those for which technological advance are not excuse to forget them. This time in specific I allude to something that I noticed playing the latest portable applications, those of the idevices of Mac.
Those minigames are really fun, is true that there are some silly ones that were made just to catch a casual gamer, which is a fact too extreme to my taste but, at the end, exists some others that deserves the fame they have.
Angry Birds and Cut the rope.
Was then when I found myself wondering things like ¿what could be doing a group of pigs staying in feeble structures watching how birds with a giant slingshot throws themselves in a pure kamikaze style in order to crush the pig’s buildings in a revenge attempt?. All of us know that pigs lives in feeble buildings, right? XD
Or, what the heck is the little candy eater toad from Cut the rope and what the heck has in the head the scientific dude who takes care of him to turn his alimentation into a Pitagora switch every time?
Then I realized that wasn’t the first time I wondered those questions. In fact, those questions comes from the games magic at all. ¿What happened with that magic?, has been along time since I don’t wonder things like that.
I admire the advances and features that new games can have, they’re great but Isn’t the technology gradually making disappear that crazy factor that gives game developers a wide variety of possibilities?
Not going any furter, just watch this image:
Lets see, is a mouthed yellow sphere who moves across a labyrinth where he must to eat all the small pellets in it, while evading being dispatched by multicolor ghosts, don’t forget the power pellets that gives him the possibility to eat the ghost blanket whom must go for a new one at their house… If this sounds very logic for you, you live in a very weird country and if not, I guess you got my point.
Actual games are too awesome, I hadn’t played many of them cause I don’t have the consoles, though , the emulators helps a lot 😀
Now, you can control Siths, half demons with automatics, alien killer armored soldiers and sure that’s great but… ¿why the determination of making only realist games if the magic of the classic videogame is to create a world out of the nonsenseness?
Let’s see this, why Mario Brothers shrinks when hited by an enemy?
Somebody knows what kind of sickness transmits Koopa’s minions?… I don’t think so but, who cares? that’s Mario Brothers reality and sure it has an explanation. The only thing we know is that is a great and funny gag. Now, Mario Brothers stopped shrinking when somebody hits them in many of their games and maybe they has a health bar, would be illogic otherwise :/, more technology, more realism…
The ninja master, Ryu Hayabusa, suffered a drastic and logic change nowadays. The graphics today makes possible better designs and effects, Is great to see Ryu closer but I don’t know is was necessary to change him from a blue ninja who quickly defeated casual opponents and doesn’t show to much worry about stealth to a dark combo based badass ripper ninja
I like the game, it’s good but Ninja Gaiden was more based in how fast you move defeating enemies wisely while interacting a lot with the intricate stages were you climb and jump, dodging enemies who tries to push you off the cliff or in the quicksands showing your joypad hability.
Now all games looks like an astonishing movie and I can’t complain about, I like many of those stories although not all but, were’s the classic games magic? Can you imagine a reboot of pacman game nowadays? That reminds me of a parody that I saw in youtube 😀
The games classic idea was left just for those systems that aren’t able to run a game with the latest technology, I mean, is treated as a plan B . I don’t think technology means take out the “nonsenseness” of the games which, losing this, have less possibilities making them too look alike, the same thing, different character.
I want to see again the things that makes a cliché idea like a platform game to have differences although it is the typic side scrolling adventure, more upside view games, puzzles disguised as adventures and rpgs that could be geat cause its story and surprises.
The realism that technology brings us, is undoubtedly fantastic and for sure it’ll keep surprising us but I think we need to keep in mind that we’re not watching a movie… but playing a game, at least until virtual reality comes… naa, not even then 😀 The technology and the magic should never be rivals, their teamwork is what had made possible all the fantastic games of these decades.
Guess what? We are working with an sculptor friend of us doing this:
It’s a mold’s base for figures of Doodling Around! This one’s Angélica’s “rough sketch”. It was the first try made in polymer clay. He will do another model with a high quality version of the material. The size is like that cause we are thinking in doing pendants for bags and stuff, maybe key holders. Hi’s name’s Aníbal Alvarado. He made a Deviant account that he never uses =P —> Here. We will see how we can convince him to upload some photos, so stay tunned 😎
Here are other views of the figure. Sorry about the quality of the photos, bad illumination and standard camera.
We know it has no color, no polish but liked it so far ;). If you wanna know how could can look the final work, then take a peek at his work:
Finished work:
Work in progress:
And he can work with this level of detail, even with small things:
Looks nice, uh? We’ll be bringing these items to our stand at the Shinanime convention in december :D. I hope we can distribute them outside this “hard to do any stuff” country.
Well, now for the text balloons. I use Photoshop again for this. We start select the ellipse tool with the U hotkey
Dragging this tool you can make an ellipse that will be your text balloon body
With the pen tool you can make the arrow part. Dragging the pen you can see the guides of the bézier curve. You can use those guides with the Direct Selection Tool for giving the shape you want.
With the pen and the alt key pressed, you can break the curves for doing the spiky parts. You don’t need to close the figure, when you fill it you will se it close automatically.
Now, use a new layer. Option “Create Vector Mask” with right click on the canvas
In that same layer, using the tools in the layers panel, select “Solid Color”
White color for the solid fill.
Menu Layer/Layer Style/Stroke
Select a size of 3 pixels and black for the color
That’s all, you have now a nice text ballon that you can arrange as you wish.
For the people that may want to know my process for making a page, I think it will be nice to make a step by step of it, so I’ll try my best. Let’s start!
First of all I use the Autocad’s Sketchbook Pro software for the lines. I like how it works with them but you can use the program that suits you best.
Ok, I start with the sketches of the frames, for see how can it looks and arrange them. This time I will use the style of frames I generally use.
The next step is the rough sketch of the characters and stuff.
Finishing the details in rough mode, comes the lineart. If you work in Photoshop you can use a rounded brush with pressure and opacity at 80%
Now the colors. I use Adobe Photoshop for this. I apply the colors with the brush ‘Smoother rounded Bristle’. In some cases, it looks like traditional media 🙂
In another layer we will add the lines of the frames using the ‘pen’ tool. You can find it in the toolbar or selecting it with the P key.
Make sure that the options showed here are selected.
Then, define the four corners with the pen, only clicking once in each corner of the sketched frame. You make a new node each time you click. You can notice that when you click again in the first node, the figure is automatically closed and becomes a polygon.
You can move the corners of the frame with the ‘Direct selection tool’ (A key).
That way, you can arrange the polygon the way you like. In the same icon included in the toolbar or if you press Shift+A when using this tool, you get the ‘Path selection tool’. This one is for selecting not only each node apart from the others but all the polygon.
With that done and having the layer that you designed for the frames, selected, chose a rounded brush with a diameter of 4 pixels or so and, selecting the frame, right click and select “Stroke Path”
Same process for the rest of the frames. If the figure you are drawing with the pen is not a closed one (like a square without one side), then press ‘esc’ for left it “unfinished” and start with the other. If you don’t do that it will link the two figures.
In a different layer, the colors of the background. This time is one very simple.
After finishing some details, like clothes patterns and that, shadows are applied in another layer with same brush as the color but in 80% and in “Linear burn” mode.
I generally use a 20% gray to apply the shadows but can vary with the situation.
In this page i added the tan lines in a separate layer, just in case 🙂
For the lights, same brush with 30% of opacity for the opaque parts and 70% for those parts more shiny, in another layer, of course. For 30% areas, you can use various brush strokes for more intensity. The more strokes, the more shine. For the 70% I use one stroke only.
Same shadow and light technique for the background, using a new layer for each.
At this time, I added the logo, too.
In this strip, there are some frames in the darkness, so I made it in another layer using a violet blue color (code #0d004c). Then lowered the opacity to 45%
With that done. It’s all for the graphical part :D.
Now all we have to do is add the text balloons. In the next part I do one step by step for that 🙂
Well, well. This title is so appealing for me, since I’m colombian. I just found this trailer on the internet.
I don’t know how many people knows about this movie but I just found it today. It’s a movie called Colombiana starring Zoe Saldaña :O!
First, I thought it was a coincidental name, just like “Columbia Pictures” (that, by the way, I thought when I was a child that it has to do something with my country. A colombian enterprise in Hollywood! :P) but later, I found it wasn’t. The movie, in fact, narrates the history of a girl named Catleya (The other name for orquídea, the colombian flower) who was born at Bogotá city. The only thing I know about the plot is that, after the murder of her parents as a child, she grows up becoming an expert assassin and now she seeks vengeance.
Yes, at first sight is not a very original story and even the protagonist says the character Catleya, could remind some people of Nikita but it’s Zoe Saldaña in a colombian role :D!
The description says that it will be Directed by Olivier Megaton and writed by Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen. Costarring Michael Vartan and Callum Blue.
Yes, I know many people will say it portrays colombian people as violent drug dealers and stuff but that’s a very old issue that makes another good topic, I think.
Ok, let’s see how a ‘paisana’ looks in a Hollywood stuff.
Art is surely super 🙂 Why I started with that? All right, cause I’m remembering now that one of the things we meet at the con, was a group of programmers and developers that were participating in a “reto”; that’s challenge in spanish and it’s like a contest they do there. This one was about make a game in a short time. The people already had the concept programmed but the hero and the other creatures were squares of different sizes 8-). One of the members of the crew who happen to know us, told us about the situation. So we joined forces and begin to work together! It was very nice and fun to work in the develop of a game “scrap”. Multitalented teams, rocks. I think if people knew how to do that more often things will be better and easy everywhere… I’m sounding like a Christmas tale XD, but that’s what I think.
Here is a fragment of video of the early look of the game. I’m not telling you what’s the game about now 😛
I don’t know why I don’t have one vid of any advance… but I think this sample looks very nice. The sprites of the hero were made by bro and I 🙂
Talking about other stuff, things are normalized this week. The week at Bogotá was nice but so will be continuing here, of course. If you noticed, one of the changes in the page are the new icons.
You like? If you do, let us know here and we will give one icon of some chara or even yourself in Doodling Around’s style. What do you think? 😎
The convention comes to an end. It was very good and we’re at home now. As you can se there are small and notorious changes in the page. You can notice some of them easily and others with a bit of observation. One thing I must say is that, when managing some sections I sorta screwed up a little and a couple of comments were erased :s. So, if you can’t see any of your comments it’s not that we delete them for something, just a mistake. If you want, you can comment again :P.
This week will be an update as normal, of course; there’s nothing in the way 8-).
Left Handed Tyrant (green) and Right handed Tyrant (Red).
Yesterday was the first day of the Campus Party Convention and we’re very proud to say that the two conferences we assisted were imparted by colombian art teams.
The first conference was about the animation promoted in the web via blogs and similar tools. The crew was the one in charge of an animation with crictic content called: El Pequeño Tirano (The little Tyrant). The series main characters are “El Tirano Zurdo” (“The Left Handed Tyrant”) and “El Tirano Diestro” (“The Right Handed Tyrant”) two kids who represent two significant political movements but carried to their extreme (The extreme right or extreme capitalism and the extreme left or the extreme comunism) showing many of their worst aspects.
They talk about some important aspect in the conference: The ideal point between quality and content. We need to keep that in mind if we want to offer some quality product. If you spend so much time in the visual aspect, your work will have a slow rithm with big update intervals and your followers can lost interest cause that. They said, the most important thing is the content, yes, but if we, instead, concentrate the efforts too much in the content, we are forgotting that our work is about graphic content primarily.
Crew of El Pequeño Tirano
The second conference was given by the team creator of the feature film Pequeñas Voces (Little Voices). An award-winning film in several film festivals around the world. Yes, we were waiting for that since a while :). An animated film about the point of view of children victims of the violence in the country. Their website: Link
Little Voices screenshot
They talked about the process of making an animated film, in their case, with sorta low budget. The movie was showed in several countries already. It’s ironic we’re still waiting for it’s premiere here in Colombia XD. The tips they give us were, in short, that if we have a project of a nice idea in mind and we want to do it, we must do it with the equipment we have at hand, if possible. Many people is still waiting to have the resources of Marvel or Pixar.
Some of the Little Voices crew
Both groups of lecturers remarked that you need to be concerned in your work and not be focused in the succes of others (and then, begin to ask why you aren’t that famous :P). It’s for the best 🙂
Finally, the most important thing: We’re artists, not journalists, nor engineers.We are here to dream and get others to dream along with us. So, if you have an idea, it doesn’t need to be the sociopolitical marvel but a nice and interesting one. Just like that.
Just letting you now, we are very glad to see how many pics for the fanart section we received lately. Is good to see when your art is well received :).
Tomorrow we’ll go to Bogotá city so, after today’s strip the next update will be in two weeks, don’t think the site it’s dead or something.
In the other hand, we are encouraging the visitors to sign up to the site. It’s nice to have some group of members, here ;).
