Speed Painting 65: Ghost of Tsushima

This game is looking mighty hot, and I had to spend 3 hr drawing 1 of my 2 favorite moments during the E3 demo. Even the music I chose is from one of the best anime/mangas Rurouni Kenshin, which fits badass motherfucking samurais going at it. I used a silhouette of a sumurai before drawing the background. Anyways, I hope yall enjoy this video. :) :)

Speed Painting 57: Horizon Zero Dawn

Hot new game coming out, which I'm playing after my birthday (because I gotta finish this speed painting first smh).  The concept idea about the game is actually really unique and allows for tons of fun actually drawing it.  They have a ton of unique characters (enemies) on top of a stunningly well thought out looking world. 

I used a similar that I've seen around from Edge's Horizon cover and just made it my own style.  Added one of the bird enemies in the middle of two separate background illustrations.  Also the outline of the entire illustration is of one of the monsters the main character has to take down.  Anyways, this was fun as hell to draw and I hope yall enjoy the video I've created.  

Speed Painting 39: Metal Gear Solid V Phantom Pain

With Metal Gear V coming out, I had to make this month's speed painting about the game.  Kojima's last Konami masterpiece.  I put some of the main characters in this piece and chose at the time the ones from the trailers.  I went on vacation for over two weeks and missed out on this game, but now I'm back and it's time to jump in and experience the greatness. 

Speed Painting 36: Batman Arkham Knight

So something-something related to Batman is coming out, and yes it is another excuse for me to once again to do a Batman-related youtube speed painting.  The final game of the Batman trilogy from Rocksteady Studios will release on June, and that is my next topic.

This illustration is heavily inspired by the wonderful Witcher 3: Wild Hunt concept designs of their artists.  Well done to them.  I used the Batman logo as the background while illustrating the two major villains of the game, Scarecrow and the Arkham Knight.  I also used one the Dark Knight songs from Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard, and the second song from the Arkham City game.  This way, I pay tribute to both the best comic book superhero movie and one of the developer's own games.

I hope you guys (whichever person accidentally stumbles here) enjoy this one, because I believe this to be my best one in exactly three years of (creating) speed paintings.  Can't believe it's been three whole years so far!

Speed Painting 33: Bloodborne

I played Demons Souls on the PS3, and its spiritual successor has finally come out on the PS4.  These games are hard as hell, and you basically get your ass kicked on a regular basis.  However saying that, the gameplay is fantastic and it's incredibly addictive.  The atmosphere and music just adds more to each of these (similar) series.

I used one of the settings from the game and added (one of) the main characters along with one of the enemies you have to fight.  The tone is pretty mellow.

Speed Painting 32: The Order 1886

The Order 1886 seems to be the first really big game coming out on consoles this year.  I love story driven games like Uncharted and The Last of Us, and this game really piqued my interest.  Knights of the Round Table who never age and have been living for centuries to fight Lycans, aka werewolves.

The entire premise for the first game is set in England.  From what I've seen, the story seems incredibly interesting.  The game has the typical 3rd person shooting and what looks to be some exploration/creepy sections in the game, which is what I focused on during the illustration.  I created a scenario where the main character Gallahad is searching in a room and the blood leads the viewers eyes to one of the Lycans.  There's a few little tid bits here and there but I'm not going to tell you.  Where's the fun in that?

Speed Painting 29: LittleBigPlanet 3

LittleBigPlanet 2 was one of my favorite games last generation. With LBP3 coming out, I really wanted to make my next speed painting about this franchise. Considering my last speed painting was quite dark, this is a refreshing change.

I decided to create the typical planet with Sackboy on top of it as we have seen but add my own spin to it. I chose to add Toggle and add Batman with Redhood since they both star in the next Batman game, Arkham Knight. Considering Sony always shows the Batman games on their shows, I picked that as the costume theme. Also, I always look for excuses to draw Batman.

I added a town and some colors with the background robots so the blue light would bring the illustration together. The little Roboto also has some good information there if you look close enough! ;)

Speed Painting 27: Destiny

With the biggest game of the year coming out this month, I thought I'd illustrate Bungie's new franchise series Destiny. It's from the creators of Halo, who have always made games on Microsoft platforms. While I've played the previous games, I've never owned one so this is a big change for the company.

Podcast Beyond

This one of the 3 podcasts that I listen to as I sit in my cubicle, for those that also need something to listen to.  This one is a bit different, it's about games, specifically PlayStation hosted by Greg Miller, Colin Moriarty and a third chair.  If you have any interest in gaming or PlayStation in general, I'd listen to this when you put your headphones in.

 Beyond!

The good thing about this Podcast is obviously that it's enjoyable.  They have charisma and don't always stick to games all the times like heartless, boring robots.  It goes off the rails most of the time, which is always good.  Ok, I can't really sell this anymore to you.  If you sit in a cubicle, you use headphones and want something to listen to while being a gamer or wanting to be one, this one is a solid shout.  It comes out on Tuesdays of every week.

http://feeds.ign.com/ignfeeds/podcasts/beyond/

Speed Painting 24: The Last of Us

With a summer release of the hit PS3 game The Last of Us confirmed to be coming out in the summer of 2014 to the PS4, I decided to illustrate one of my favorite games for June. Since it's E3, and they will announce it what month it will come out, I thought it would be a good time to do it now.

The illustration was pretty basic (but too a while to do) and used 2-3 references to really recreate it. However, I added a few easter eggs for fellow Naughty Dog fans from their previous franchises. Can you find them all?

Speed Painting 21: inFamous Second Son

I've got a PS4 and inFamous Second Son looks to be one of the hottest games of the year (or so I hope). I played the previous two, the new rebooted version looks absolutely kickass and I thought it be fun to illustrate. Since the game itself comes in March 21st, this became my choice for the March speed painting.. obviously.

The general idea is Delsin fighting basic DUP soldiers and creating him in an action shot that's interesting for the viewer. I decided to use both his chain and his hand and gave him a darker look (hint of evil Delsin?) with that shit eating grin that he seems to have. I added some small tidbits trying to trick people that I'm clever, adding 3 small badges from Sucker Punch's previous big franchise, Sly Cooper and another one from an early game that they made called Rocket: Robot on Wheels. However while I was looking for pictures of Delsin as reference when I had already thought of this idea, I saw that those sly bastards Sucker Punch had like me, created one of the badges on his chest with the official Sly logo.

A bit off topic, but the composer for this song is Lazerhawk, and their new album which includes this song is absolutely amazing. Check it out if enjoy the song in the video.

Marketing Special: Sony humiliates Microsoft at E3

You don't have to love gaming to read this article (but seriously.. why don't you love gaming?). In case you didn't know, E3 is the biggest gaming show of the year where the big 3 companies, Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft show their games and hardware. Considering that Microsoft and Sony are launching their new consoles at the end of the year, this was going to be a massive deal this year to see who brings in the fans. Sony however humiliated Microsoft at such a level, that marketing teachers are likely to use this example in their college and university classes. It was that bad.



Microsoft had their conference a few weeks back and received a massive backlash, so they were under massive pressure to perform. They didn't mention policies such DRM, which is to stop used games (or only do it once after their original backlash), you have to connect online once every 24 hours even if you are playing a single player game, and having a Kinect mandatory to be on when you are gaming. In light of PRISM and Microsoft being the first company to go along with selling out their information to the government, you can see how this unnecessary feature of the Kinect always being on is.. suspicious. Now as you can see in the video above, Sony had a decent event until the end, where they specifically stated everything Microsoft did wrong, that they would do the opposite. I have seen a lot of E3 events, and I have never heard a crowd chant one of the console publisher's names, or that high amount of cheering and hysteria. Microsoft made some silly moves to make a console for publishers rather than consumers and tried to hide those facts during E3 by only speaking about their great games instead, however Sony basically reminded everyone at the end of their show.

This was just hit after hit, as afterwards essentially every gaming media and (even non-media) went in Sony's corner and started bashing Microsoft even more than when they first announced those features. There was a whole issue and a twitter campaign to stop Sony from doing DRM called #PS4noDRM which even CNN picked up at some point before E3 when Microsoft first announced their features. Sony execs responded with "very happy to see how passionate our fans are".. so an answer that says nothing, they waited until E3. Sony originally did not specify much and basically Microsoft started talking about all the features. It may have been that Sony wanted to implement some type of DRM feature but they let Microsoft go first, saw a monumental negative backlash and basically used that to completely rip them apart in the biggest gaming conference of the year. With Amazon on facebook for pre-orders showing a 17-1 ratio in PS4's favor over the Xbox One and even general non gamers on my news feed on facebook knowing that Sony humiliated Microsoft at E3, this is showing to be quite a massive deal. Microsoft execs also did a terrible PR jobs in different interviews where they further angered the fans.



This video launched right after E3, Sony basically trashing Microsoft even more and making it that much more humiliating. After two days, the 22 second video already hit over 8 million views.