Speed Painting 37: Final Fantasy VII & XV

If you are a gamer and haven't been living under a rock far, far beneath the Earth, you know about Sony's E3 conference.  They announced that Square Enix is remaking the most popular jRPG of all time, Final Fantasy VII.  This time around, Shinji Hashimoto is not trolling us with a PC port as was shown half a year ago, but the real remake.

Now I have been waiting for Final Fantasy XV (known as Versus previously) since 2006, when initially revealed.  It's looking like a 2016 release, and there a chance the FFVII Remake might be a 2017 release coinciding with their 20th year anniversary.  FFVII ironically enough, is the only mainline Final Fantasy that I have not played (other than XI and XIV, but those are MMOs).  Somehow, this game has always alluded me.  I've always wanted this game to be remade rather than my favorite FF which is IX for this reason.  I also created both games in this illustration because I will very likely make them as their speed painting on their months of release.  

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.

Art Exposure: The illustration of The Order 1886

The latest speed painting for February was The Order 1886, a video game on the PS4 created by Ready At Dawn.  Considering I made the topic about a game in a console that I owned, it was obvious that I would buy it.  I did so on the day of release.  The graphics in this game are absolutely incredible, the best I have seen so far.  However what impressed me is the style and feel on top of the wonderful graphics.  In terms of presentation and feeling like this is a world that your mind buys when playing, it's one of the best I've seen.

This blog post is just more about admiring the artstyle with the high graphic fidelity of this game:

Brilliant use of film grain.  Usually it looks tacky, but in this game it adds a lot to the feel of the game.

This is ingame.  In the actual game.  CGI graphics :')

The level of detail here is mind-boggling

For illustrators out there, check this game out if you have a PS4.  Last time I remember constantly stopping to look around and just enjoy the scenery was 6 years ago I believe when Uncharted 2 released.  They wanted to emphasize their cinematic experience, which they succeeded.  You really do feel as you are in this world and the style of the game is incredibly appealing.  You might also have fun playing it.

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! ;)

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 23: The Amazing Spiderman 2

With the new Amazing Spiderman 2 movie coming in a day, I thought I'd give it a shot since he's one of my favorite comic book superheroes. Also the idea of Electro and Spiderman meant that I could go crazy in terms of colors when creating the illustration.

I used part of a scene from the movie and change it around a bit to my choosing. Enjoy it!

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.