Niff Chousen #3

Okay, I finally got a chance to do something for this one. Just a sketch since I'm doing it on the fly here at work.

Anyway, went with the scout, because the idea of a being a girl and beating the crap out of someone with a baseball bat really appeals to me right now.

Chousen #4! GO!

Alright, I'm trying to type this while thawing my poor slender fingers from waiting on this house to heat up but, this week's chousen came to me while I was at work yesterday while I was trying to deal with some knucklehead at my store. I thought about it and realized that I deal with a lot of silly crap throughout the course of my day. Which brings us to the chousen...

Chousen: This week's mission is to do a one page comic about what happens over the course of one day. I mean take bits from a couple days if necessary but I'd basically like the strip to be just a sample of the stuff we go through and deal with on any given day.

Deadline: The deadline is Saturday, November 1st @ midnight.

Choice of Medium: The medium is up to the artist's discretion as is style.

As for me I have to take this opportunity now to try and do my Team Fortress 2 female piece...

-Darrick

DanMonster Chousen #3

Why am I first again!? I demand a recount!!

I ended up being sick most of this week, so I got jack done. Though this Medic turned out nice.

Chousen #3! GO!

Hey everyone, I just want to say that I am really enjoying the chousen. I'm actually putting drawings and ideas into my sketchbook again as opposed to guitar tabs that I came up with or other random junk I needed to write down and my sketchbook was the closest available piece of paper. I'm using my computer for more than Left 4 Dead research, Lord of the Rings Online, and Team Fortress 2.... That's it! I just thought of this weeks Chousen!

Originally I had thought about this week's chousen being to research and design a new colossus from the CLASSIC and sorely underrated PlayStation 2 game, Shadow of the Colossus. However, during my previous paragraph, I happened to type Team Fortress 2 and thought, "Maybe we could design a new class illustration for TF2?". I then remmebered Niff doesn't really play that and it seemed a little unfair. Then the whole gender issue came to me of how female gamers (or gamer girls, grrlz, gurlz, or however the "hip" way to spell it is) who are REAL gamers and take their games they like seriously and they almost seem to be more hardcore at times than guys. I have listened to girls in vc (voice chat) in LotRO and TF2 and they are extremely knowledgeable and they KNOW what they are talking about. They have their shizzy together and I have respect for that as a gamer myself.

Then in the back of my mind I thought about it and wondered, "Are these Female Gamers so deep into it because they feel they won't get the same respect if they were more "casual" about their game of choice? Is it possible that there is a sexist mentality in gamer culture that results in females proving they are hardcore to get guy's respect?"

Honestly, I don't think that is the case as a whole. I have been guilty of admitting that I didn't expect a female to make it to endgame content in LotRO because of the fact that she was more interested in seeing the places of LotRO and didn't know how to maintain a minimum income of money to afford repairs because she's a caster who likes to run into melee where area of effect attacks abound. She plays to collect the hang around her friend in game who hangs in places where enemies are 15 levels above her and she can't get out of there because she dies and respawns back in the same place. But this girl is also like 14.

Is she in need of advice about the game and keeping your self financially sound? Probably. Am I wrong for thinking that a 14 yr. old girl won't make it to endgame content because she enjoys the social aspect of the game more than anything? Possibly. But when you contrast that with the Lv. 50 Minstrel who knows the strategy to take down raid bosses and gives direction that leads to victory, one can't help but realize that maturity is a BIG factor in building respect. Will that 14 yr. old get her shizzy together and start connecting the dots that lead to success? Depends on if she keeps with the game for more than a fancy instant messenger. Only time will tell.

After all of this soap-boxing, (Wake up, Dan!) we finally get to my idea for this weeks chousen...

Chosen: During the current week, your mission is to create a FEMALE counterpart of one of the 9 classes in Team Fortress 2. The stipulation is you have to do your best to emulate the art style of that game. In the details section will be several sites you can check out for visual reference.

Deadline: Saturday, October 25th, 2008 @ Midnight.

Choice of Medium: At the artist's discretion.

Details: Here's some websites for reference. Remember we're trying to put a piece together that looks like it could have been done by the guys at Valve.

• http://www.teamfortress.com/ The official website. They have a hilariuos section of sound-bytes up for the movie "Meet the Sandvich". Across the top you will see from left to right: Medic, Scout, Soldier, Demo-man, Spy, Engineer, Pyro, Sniper, Heavy.
• http://www.wegame.com On this site you can find videos of most of the classes by going here and searching for "Meet the [Class]"

The chousen has been issued... GO!
-Darrick

Chousen #2- Kash

Done with Manga Studio Debut 3.0 and imported into Corel Painter Essentials 3.

It felt good using MSD again. That's what I do my manga with. Sadly the PC version doesn't do color. Only the Mac version supports color. Forget you, Apple! :P

-Darrick

Jen Chousen #2

Done in CorelDRAW

Chousen #2 DanMonster

Well, this was easy, because Portal™ owns.
Also, this place is ugly!

Done in Illustrator and finished in Photoshop.
edit: Added some teeth, for the kids!

Chousen #2! GO!

Alright campers let's gather 'round for the next Chousen. I'd first off like to apologize for how late I posted this one. The climate in my room wasn't the most accommodating tonight. It was hot and dry and gave me a headache that was just bad enough to keep me from wanting to do anything. But while I have this moment of respite where it's eased up on me, I'm going to post our next challenge.

I was torn between two ideas that I'd like to see executed. I wanted something a little rougher but no less thought provoking. This one is inspired by another great game, Portal. You can also check out videos of this game on most any gaming website. For those who aren't aware of it, here's a link to start your research for reference.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wb7aDZeO_MQ

Chousen #2: During the following week, the mission is to create 3 rough one-panel sketches that can be themed "Now you're thinking with Portals." The level of detail and art style is up to the artist. If you want, you can use the 3 panels to show ideas that can be expressed in one shot or you can take the step by step approach where each panel shows the cause and effect. Those are the only guidelines. The question is what could you do if you have the portal gun.

Deadline: Saturday, October 18th, 2008 @ Midnight.

Choice of Medium: At the artist's discretion. Whatever they feel comfortable with.

Details: Art style/level of detail is up to the artist.

The Chousen has been issued. Go!

-Darrick

Clarification

I'm already pleased with the ideas that have come from this so far, and I look forward to seeing where this goes.

For clarity's sake, we will make the day to issue chousen Sunday. If anyone has a chousen to throw out there, feel free to do so. I'll officially announce it Sunday afternoon/evening if someone comes up with one during the previous week. Saturday night shall be the deadline to post our submissions. I will be posting Chousen #2 later this evening unless someone has one before this evening to suggest.

Again, I really like the stuff I've seen. I can't wait to see what's down the line, when we finally get Dave, JB, Chad, and Paul submitting as well.

-Darrick

Chousen #1 DanMonster

Aloha! For this challenge I didn't do a survivor because I couldn't think of anything clever -and- I'm a MAVERICK! Watch out.

This here is my zombie boss of a sorts. It would be a semi-gestalt form...

Zombie Baby Swarm!

They would attack in large packs, moving in and out of attacks and dodging your fire as a school of fish might. Small, fast and a hunger filled ferocity.

Watch out for your ankles...

Chousen #1 - Niff

Alrighty, here it is, my attempt at an "infected".  I thought a pregnant (5-6 months-ish) one was an interesting idea, so went with that.  

Its just a sketch since my digital setup won't be ready for another couple of weeks and I didn't have time to do anything in traditional media.

At any rate for what she does, for the most part she's pretty tough, has a voracious appetite(as in constantly eating or searching for food), her belly is deceptively tough, bullets tend to deflect off of it.   If she is damaged at all, she spews out the infected virus.

I spent a lot of time on youtube and wikipedia on this one.  Zombies aren't my  territory, but this was fun.

Chousen #1- Kash

Challenge #1 was to come up with the concept art for a 5th survivor and/or a boss infected for the upcoming game Left 4 Dead.

My submission is Ingrid here. My intention here was to look at the established survivors and come up with a fifth who looked as different as possible from the others. This would even apply to the outlines of your teammates when they walk behind walls. I wanted the fifth to be different even in that respect.

What really drove me to go with Ingrid here was the potential story behind her and the psychological effect involved. As you may be able to tell, Ingrid is Amish. I was watching a video of L4D footage that involved a farm and I started applying the most extreme stretches to the idea thinking something along the following lines...

• What would an Amish girl who knows about nothing but churning butter and milking cows do if one day infected showed up attacking destroying the peaceful life she knew?
• How would she survive until the main 4 survivors showed up?
• How would she react if while infected are running around 4 people show up blasting everything in sight, found her, and gave her a gun?
• When given this gun, what will her mind go through as she has to shoot potential former neighbors? Will each shot wrack her with emotional and moral torment or will the survival instinct take over?

I originally sketched out the figure in my sketchbook and scanned it. I am still trying to learn how to computer color. I wanted to try a medium that I'm not comfortable in, because it will be a learning exercise for me.

I had to look up what Amish clothing looked like and I saw this kind of rust colored smock of a dress that I though looked neat and tried to replicate it, but in hindsight I realize that this concept kinda reminds me of an Amish female Goku from Dragon Ball Z. @_,@;; Oh well, some are winners, some are not.

I need to probably work with the image at a larger scale in terms of dpi so that I don't have such a hard time getting tiny little details to look decent because I had to zoom in so close. I'm using Corel Painter Essentials 3 and a Wacom tablet.

I hope you all enjoy.
-Kash

CHOUSEN #1! GO!

I have been thinking about what to choose for our inaugural chousen and I wanted it to be something that would be really exciting. This choice could set the tone for the future chousen and I wanted it to be one that was going to really give us something to sink our teeth into.

Couple that with the fact that I've been championing Left 4 Dead by the guys at Valve since I've seen video footage and decided that I will throw money at that game as soon as it is humanly possible. You can check it out at http://www.gametrailers.com and just toss Left 4 Dead in the search bar. There's a ton of videos to check out and get excited about.

So that brings us to our first chousen...

Chousen: Over the course of this week, I challenge everyone to design an original survivor and boss infected for the game Left 4 Dead. Check out the above mentioned website or any others to get research information on character designs and a feel for the game.

Deadline: Saturday, October 11th, 2008 @ midnight (I believe we are all CST). If you aren't able to post the art directly here, email it to me and I'll post it for you.

Choice of medium: At submitters discretion, but feel free to go wild.

Details: After posting, please give an explanation of what the boss infected does and any other things that you'd like to include.

Bonus: Concepts sketches would be an awesome addition just to show the process that you went through to come to your final choice.

The challenge has been issued, Drink it!

-Darrick (Kash)

Working out the kinks...

I had to fiddle around under the hood of this site to figure out exactly how to handle the presentation of the challenges. So in the meantime, I will be tinkering around here and there with settings and so on. This will also give me a chance to make sure everyone is set.

I will announce the first chousen (challenge) topic on Sunday, October 5th, 2008.

Until then, Enjoy!
-Darrick (Kash)