Originality - Why me no famous!?

Well it’s time to have a look at another thing that artists ‘supposedly’ need to have, which is originality, the ability to create something that is so unique, that it can instantly be picked out of the crowd and says “This is my work and no way can you confuse it for someone else’s!”

In the art world its considered to be the holy grail, without originality, you can’t get anywhere in art and I’m sure you’ve guessed that from the quote marks that I’m not a big fan of originality. And your right I’m not, originality is pursued by people who want to be rich and famous, sadly it’s really difficult to be unique in this era.

The big problem behind being able to do something truly unique, is that art has been around since caveman times, art has been around for so long that it’s very difficult to do something that other people haven’t explored at some point. Another thing is that fact that art is no longer a closed off subject, practically anyone can do art these days and many people do (not all of it is good, go to Deviant art and you’ll understand), so add up this timeframe and all these people that practice it and you’ll see that its practically impossible to do something truly unique.

But why all this hullabaloo about being original? Personally I think all of this stupid thinking came from the fine art side of art, the reason being is that so few on that side of art hit the big bucks, they get stuck being the starving artist, due to the fact that not much fine art is bought and displayed. That only happens to a very small number of artists and it’s more down to luck than ability, a publisher may see your work and think “Man this is awesome and unique!” after which he’ll take you and your art on a rollercoaster ride to stardom, but when you consider how many people that has happened to, to how many people do the fine art side of things. Then you get the idea of how likely this all is. 

Another problem is how people learn art, the best way to do it is to look at the world around you, plus at other artists work, this will show up in your style of work, so people will say “oh his work looks like whatshisname.” So of course your style looks someone else’s, so it can’t be unique blah blah blah. And you know what that’s fine, not everything needs to be unique, for example I want to be a concept artist, so of course the work I will be doing will half the time look like something else, because that’s what the client wants, not something that they can’t visualise in their head.

So why worry about it all, chill out, relax and do the art you want to, because adding yet more stress on top of what we get normally is not going to help anyone.

Dead Space 2 - Where is my survival horror?

*WARNING: If you have not finished Dead Space and don’t want some plot points spoiled, then don’t read this review*

Just as a heads up since Dead Space and Dead Space 2 are so similar, I won’t go over the same points as I did for Dead Space, as I would only be re-treading ground I’ve previously talked about, instead I’ll talk about other things.

 

Dead Space 2 starts a number of years after Dead Space, Isaac wakes in a mental asylum on the Sprawl, a space station near Titan, Isaac has no knowledge of how we got there, nor how long he has been there, but thankfully a dude is kind enough to try and rescue us, but sadly he is quickly cut down while he tries to get Isaac out of the straight Jacket and is transformed into a necromorph, forcing Isaac to run for his life yet again and figure out what this whole mess is about, all the while being chased by a hallucination of his dead girlfriend thanks to marker he found on the Ishimura.

Now I did say earlier that Dead Space 2 is very similar to its predecessor, but that doesn’t mean that there weren’t any changes at all, one important one is that Isaac finally speaks and you see his face! After being mute for the last game, he finally has the chance to shine; which is great since it gives us the chance to truly bond with the guy and have him pluck our heart strings a bit. This really comes into play when he interacts with others and his hallucinations.

And you know that hallucination stuff is another biggie as you can’t be sure what you see is real, is it a necromorph or a living person? And if you’ve seen the promo materials then yes Isaac does get a new suit, you don’t get till later so don’t get your hopes up, but you do get a jetpack for the zero-g areas so that should get hold you by till you get it, it’s quite fun to zoom about with it and makes the zero-g parts a lot more fun.

Now we all know that I don’t think that the Dead Space series is anything like a survival horror, but what is a good survival horror? Well Dead Space is a good one with a few changes, for starters the enemies need to be more daunting, the necro could look totally disgusting and be several buildings tall, but it won’t frighten you if you can easily chop it to pieces. 

Another thing that could be changed is the store system, at no point should you be able to buy ammunition, the whole idea of a survival horror is that sure, you have bullets, but not a whole lot of bullets and it takes a few to take out the monsters, so it’s best to sneak round and save what ammo you can. This idea is blown out of the water when you can buy ammunition when you run low, survival horror is all about the stress, so when you remove the stress of saving bullets, the horror just isn’t as effective as it could be.

“But what about the new fangled multiplayer!?” I hear you cry? Well I’ve yet to truly try it out properly and what I have was confusing and most certainly not newbie friendly, so we’ll be ignoring that, but if I ever do try out the multiplayer a bit more I’ll be sure to write about it at some point. 

Or we could do some Dark Souls…Yeah Dark Souls sounds a lot better.

Paul Richards - Cartoony Fantasy

Paul Richards in my books is a great concept artist, he’s a guy that realises that while reality is all good, it’s more about the feel that the characters, environments and objects give off than being stuck to be absolutely confined to reality.

And the best place to see his work is from the games that he has worked on, having been at studios like Vigil Games, Raven Software, Blizzard and now 343 Industries, he has had the chance to work on Darksiders, Jedi Academy, Quake 4, Singularity and even the latest Wolfenstein, of which he has brought his varied styles into play.

But what are his styles? For one if you look through his work on both the blog and his portfolio site, you’ll see that he has 2 main styles, a cartoon style, where he exaggerates the proportions of characters and objects, but he also has a clean, digital style that’s similar to the work of draftsman of yore. He mixes and matches his styles depending on what is needed, for example he will over exaggerate some the human elements of a character, but when working on the armour he may make it nice and clean. Described as Pixar but filthy by a friend of mine, looking through the more cartoonish work that there is a similarity to the work by Pixar, although I doubt Pixar would do naked chicks in their films.

Tools wise Paul is more of a sketch and Photoshop kinda guy, he’ll use various pencils and markers to do sketches, which he’ll scan into Photoshop to do a final. But not all work is done from a sketch; he also does a lot of work straight into Photoshop, where he will add highlights and shadows to a mass of a mid-range colour to create shapes and objects.

And while his work includes lots of monsters, robots, guns and swords, he does do a large amount of pinups, of which most you’ll find in another blog called Babe Lab, exceedingly NSFW, it contains various images and tutorials based solely on how to draw the women.

Now for those of you who do a lot of art, or are interested in getting into the games industry then there are a couple of features you will want to look at on the portfolio site, Thumb War and Hints and Hacks.

Please note that both the portfolio and the blog contains NSFW material, the portfolio has less of that, while the blog is practically crammed with the stuff.

http://www.autodestruct.com/

Update Schedule

Hey everyone here's an update on what will be up on the blog for next week.

For the artist I will be looking at Paul Richards a concept artist in the Games Industry, who for me is kind of the opposite to John Howe, yes he isn't as good as rendering something as near to life as possible, but he is damn good at making the work be as expressive and mood inspiring as possible.

The next game to be reviewed will be Dead Space 2, since the 2 games are very similair to each other, rather than go over the same ground as I did for Dead Space, I'll be having a closer look at some of the different areas in the game.

And for the Oddball I'll be talking about originality and why I hate the term as it stands in art today.

Creativity - Green is not a creative colour

Creativity is one of the 2 main things that artists say you must have, to be successful in anything creative which is very true, (the other is originality, which is for next week) you need to be creative if your job is essentially taking ideas out of your head and making them real. Problem is that you can be very creative and not creative as well.

Not creative is usually due to you jumping at the first idea that pops into your head, for example you think of this awesome idea for a pirate, so you jump straight into making a large fully finished piece, but when you look at after all that work, you realise that you should have done it in a different pose, then you think that the beard should be longer, then you think ect ect. 

So instead of jumping straight in and doing something at a final piece quality, take your time to do some concepts, explore the ideas you have, until you feel that you’ve exhausted all avenues, then pick one concept and do a few more concepts, except this time it’s more about the small details than the big ones.

Of course I’m sure you’re wondering “Do we have to do this all the time, for every piece?” Which is no you don’t, if you’re not going to be doing something to a high quality level, then don’t bother, let your pencil wander and see where it takes you.

Now are there any taboos in creativity? Well kinda, there are some topics in art that are considered uncreative, fantasy and science fiction are considered to be 2 of the most uncreative genres in art when designing characters, as the genres seem to be composed of guys in hulking armour, babes wearing practically nothing and monsters composed of claws, teeth and not much else. Not all fantasy and sci-fi art is like this, if you look around hard enough you will find stuff that tends to break the themes, ironically Dungeons & Dragons is a good place to start for good fantasy artwork, while sci-fi is best found on Deviant Art, sadly you will have to wade through the rubbish/porn/sanity destroying horrors that are on there, but there is some great pieces on there if you can find them.

Want some tips to help you be creative, well here’s a list of pointers that I find helpful.

For starters figure out what you want to do and what you don’t want to do, if you can cut down the avenues to explore, you can cut down the time it takes to do concepts, plus you’re more likely to think of ideas that meet the criteria for what you want to make.

Look at other artists work, look at real world examples, different cultures, history, watch films, play games, read books, read comics,  just absorb as much knowledge you can and if possible, keep references that you can easily get at, so you can go back and look at any details you may want to use in your own concept. One thing to keep in mind is not to let your reference completely lead you, so if you have to copy things only take small details not big ones.

Can’t think of anything? Come back at a later date, take a break, play a game for 30mins, watch tv, go for a walk or run, do something that does not involve trying to think of ideas for your project.

Got questions? Comment on this post and I’ll be sure to get back to you at some point.

Dead Space - Terror? What terror?

Dead Space is a 3^rd person Resident evil 5 style shooter, sci-fi survival horror where you play as Isaac Clark, an engineer that is part of a team sent on a rescue mission to the USG Ishimura after receiving a mayday signal, the mission goes awry the moment it starts trapping the team on the ship after their own is destroyed. Worse still are the monsters that roam the metal halls, wearing the flesh of the dead crew, but amongst all of this Isaac searches for his girlfriend Nicole, a medical officer who took a tour upon the Ishimura when all of this happened.

Now before I start reviewing this sucker, let’s have a quick excerpt of how it is to play Dead Space.

“Doot de doot, oh scary music time must be a necro around, ah there he is the strange dead body on the floor, give me a sec whilst I fire up the death ray *SHAZAM*……right lets oooh look the most difficult enemy in the game! *SHAZAM* right let’s get going”

And that is pretty much how your Dead Space experience will be, Dead Space a sci fi Surival Horror game, suffers from 2 things, theres no survival nor horror! Now while it sounds like I hate the game, I actually quite like it, it’s just a shame that it suffers from a few problems, so we’ll get through the bad and then on with the good.

Now for a survival horror game, there is very little survival and very little horror, since you pretty much trip over ammo and health packs that there is very little need to conserve what you pick up, hell most of the money you use to buy upgrades, is gotten from selling the stuff you don’t need and boy is there a lot. The horror isn’t effective either, well during the first 5mins you will crap yourself, but only because you have no weapon and your new to all the tricks that Dead Space uses, after 30mins in however you will be immune to all the shock tactics used, because they are repeated again and again throughout the entire game. Another very big problem is that the weapons are not balanced for a survival horror experience, the first weapon you pick up can easily kill anything, so the stronger weapons makes a complete mockery of the game, with the strongest enemy becoming a complete pushover.

Now for the good, for starters the monsters in Dead Space look fantastic, necromoprhs (not to be confused with Xenomorphs) are essentially amalgamations of dead human bodies transformed due to an alien life form, this has been used to completely change the shape of the human body, with arms being turned into scything blades, ribs and skin into wings and even multiple bodies fused together to form creatures many times the size of Isaac. And because of this they aren’t easily killed with normal weapons and so have to be cut into pieces before they die, this brings up strategy, cut off the head and it can’t see you, cut off the legs and its forced to crawl, of course all of this depends on the monster you face. 

Another thing that’s great is the UI in the game, all of it has been designed so that it will appear on or near the character, but in a way that makes sense for the character using it, health appears as a bar on the spine of Isaac to show others his general health, when aiming a little hologram shows his remaining ammo, a map appears in front of him allowing him to see where he is and when contacted, his wrist display will create a hologram showing the face of the speaker. None of this gets in the way of the game and it makes sense in universe as well.

The audio is exceedingly creepy and by using this special feature called Fear Emitter they can actually have the music can creepier and creepier the closer you get towards the monsters, sadly this is over used and essentially becomes a kind of radar of how close the bad guys are.

This game while it has its flaws, has an excellent story, imaginative bad guys and fantastic UI design, I would certainly recommend playing it, but if you’re looking for scares, this aint the game for you.

John Howe - Fantastical Dragons

(Please note that I will be putting links to the pics on this blog to John Howes website, as you can get a zoomed in version on his site, which you ‘cant’ link to sadly)

 

If I was told that for the rest of my life I would only be allowed to look at the work of one artist, then it would probably be John Howe, who is a big influence on the kind of work I like to do (namely dragons :D). John was born in 1957 Vancouver and grew up in British Columbia, but he and his family moved to France and so he went and studied at Ecoles des arts Decoratifs de Strasbourg, as of right now he is a freelance artist living in Switzerland with his wife and son, now that we have that out of the way let’s get onto the art stuff.

http://www.john-howe.com/portfolio/gallery/details.php?image_id=4468

John is very well known for his fantasy work for a number of big films (most of which you have seen), these include the Lord of the Rings Trilogy (one of 2 concept artists, other was Alan Lee), The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, Pans Labyrinth and the up and coming The Hobbit. But he has also done illustration for books, cards and board games, most notably the books of Robin Hobb and cards for Magic: The Gathering, Wars and the Lord of the Rings card game.

http://www.john-howe.com/portfolio/gallery/details.php?image_id=65

 

 

For John inspiration comes from practically everywhere, myths and legends are of course a big influence due to all the fantasy artwork he does, but a lot of inspiration comes from the real world, weaponry, armour, architecture, calligraphy, plants, animals, just about everything has a place in his work. This is due to him always having his work having a certain amount of reality to prop it up, which gives his work a sense of solidness to it, as though you could reach out and touch it, something I like to call fantasy reality, where while the dragon doesn’t exist in our world, we can give it shape, form and a solidness to it where we could believe it to be laying round the next corner, that is what John Howe is so good at and why I love his artwork. But not all of his painting sticks to reality, if at any point he feels that the atmosphere of a piece will be enhanced, if he changes something so that is not realistic, then he does it as atmosphere is more important than absolute reality.

But what does he work with? While these days a lot of artists will do a lot of work digitally, John doesn’t, preferring to work from a basic sketch and use more traditional mediums like pastel, watercolours and acrylics to work up to the final piece. At the end he will scan his work and do a bit of  colour correction or if need be stitch his work back together again, but for the most part he works solely using traditional medium of which he has gained a mastery over. As such he doesn’t tend to put large amount of detail into the entirety of his work, instead preferring to put the detailing into the parts that truly matter, whilst leaving the rest fairly undefined. Another thing he tends to do is that he will put real world objects into his work, The Gate of Ivory is mostly made up of statues, ruins and bits and pieces that John has seen over the world, Old Man Willow was taken from this row of willow trees not too far from where John live, so as you can see while he is a master painter, he still paints from life, regularly too as he always carries around a sketchbook to do drawings in wherever he is.

http://www.john-howe.com/portfolio/gallery/details.php?image_id=440

All in all, John Howe is a fantastic artist, capable of breathing life into creatures, objects and places of which only exists in our minds and I hope he continues to do this for as long as he can.

If you have any questions, please put them in a comment on this post and I will try to get back to you, if you wish to look at more of John Howes work then look up his website at http://www.john-howe.com

http://www.john-howe.com/portfolio/gallery/details.php?image_id=1040

And so it begins.

Hi and welcome to Digital Brush Stroke, a blog dedicated to art, games and rambling thought processes, here I will look at artists, art styles, video games and various other things that don't fit into the other 2 areas.

First up a little breakdown on when and what I'll be posting about.

On every Monday I will post up about a certain artist or art style.

On Wednesday I will put up a review of a game, or perhaps some game related topic.

Friday is Oddball day, where I will talk about pratically anything, but for the most part I will talk about stuff that relates about art in some way.

And on Sunday I will put up a quick post about what will be up for the following week.

For this first week I'll be talking about these 3 things.

For the art post I'll be talking about John Howe, a extremely talented artist that has worked on a number of high profile movies, of which most of the world has already seen.
 (note this should have been up yesterday, so already a good start for the blog)

On games I'll be reviewing Dead Space, a sci-fi survival horror, that has a few quirks, but is well worth a look at.

And for the Oddball I'll be talking about Creativity, a must have if your going to be doing anything creative.

For the most part I will be talking about stuff of my choosing, but if any of you are interested in me looking at something specific, then please comment on any of the Sunday posts, you never know, I may listen ;)