Intense Metapod is Intense! GO METAPOD GO!
Ink on paper
Colors in Photoshop CS4
Effects in Manga Studio 4
-RD
Pokemon is ©2010 Nintendo
Original art is © 2010 Randall Drew
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Posts Tagged ‘video game’
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As noted in my last blog post, during the downtime here at RkdiaComics, I’ve begun a classic Final Fantasy Summer Streaming Series over at my Justin.TV page: Flozax’s Citadel. I do webcasting quite often and as of now the plan is to cast art/comic related work during the noon-3:00pm EST hours and then my FF series at nights after work.
Being a fantasy writer/artist, I’ve grown up with and loved nearly every Final Fantasy game ever produced. However I missed out on the earlier generations of the series…having only played FF IV when on SNES (As the US released II) when a friend let me borrow it in high school. With the 3-D generation, FF VII on Sony Playstation, and later, referring back to the 6 games that came before them, I was often in the dark on many inside jokes or throwbacks.
Now, with the power of emulation and the recent surge of remakes and revivals of the classic, sprite-based Final Fantasy games I have the opportunity to experience them all, I-VI for the first time! Coincidentally, the remakes and re-releases are happening on Nintendo’s modern handheld systems (Gameboy Advance, Nintendo DS)…the originals of course were exclusive to Nintendo, until VII when Squaresoft (now Square Enix) decided to gamble on Sony’s Disc-based system. There are also sequels and side-games being introduced and I may attempt them as well as the summer goes on.
So come on by, evenings usually from around 11pm to 2am EST and experience these great fantasy tales with me!
Each Final Fantasy game I play at JTV is going to get a custom banner, featuring a prominent character from that game. Here is the original art for the banner I made above, featuring Yoshitako Amano’s design for the Warrior of Light from the first Final Fantasy. Note that as of this posting I am about to reach the Halfway point in game play of FFI at my Summer Streaming Series.
Tomorrow I’ll have a more-comics related post as I tell you about the work I’m doing on my own Fantasy story, Citadel, and my recent research and writing help techniques.
-RD
My Senior Year, MFA Thesis project is DONE! What a wild ride it’s been the last month and a half! I’m not going to talk about the content very much, as it will soon be coming to RKdia Comics as my very first, official web comic in FULL COLOR! What I will discuss is the final 48ish hours of the project, which included the layout, production and binding of the 2 books I turned in to the thesis committee.
I created 2 books for this project: My single issue, 36 page comic Citadel Chapter 1 (Part 1 Arcadia and Part 2 Daikogen) and a companion, 80-page, Faux-classic Video Game Guide “Citadel the Official Guide.”
The comic book was created as a “flip” comic, with my two 15+ stories, each converging on the middle Forbidden Forest spread I presented earlier. The cover is a full color, two sided cover stock with an original illustration on each side, flipped. The content inside is your standard comic fare; black and white dual-sided printer spreads. For the upcoming webcomic presentation of Citadel, each page will be further edited and then fully colored like the covers.
The whopper 80-page “Official Guide” book was created using a Perfect Binding technique showed to me by CCS Class of 2010 classmate Laura Terry who passed it to me from CCS Class of 2011 classmate Beth Hetland. Thanks SO much to these two wonderful ladies for all their assistance! Perfect binding is of course spreads cut in half and bound directly to the cover by glue without stitching.
The companion book features all the behind-the-scenes work that goes into building the world of Citadel that the reader will never see. That was my goal this entire year, and I feel I’ve succeeded far beyond what I imagined. It features everything from characters, to locations to script drafts and even monster/creature designs. It also covers all the miscelaneous side projects (N-man and other illustration gigs) I took on during the 9 months of study.
I set the bar high for myself this year, really wanting to not only complete a complete package I was proud of, but set up my future goals and leave a window open to move this narrative forward. I haven’t yet decided whether or not to print more copies of Citadel in it’s current state and sell them here and at conventions, but when this chapter is fully colored and has completed it’s run here at RKdia Comics, I will have a full color edition made, hopefully in time for SPX in the fall.
I will also begin drawing the next chapter this summer, so as to keep one step ahead of myself. I hope you’ll all stick around for the ride!
Here’s another Creature Feature: Garuda.
This creature from Hindu and Buddhist mythology is on par with a thunder bird or phoenix as far as mythical birds go. Enormous in size and with the power to transform into a human shape, I wanted it’s bird form to be crooked and viscous looking, a true predator. I may yet design a human shape for it, much like I did for
