What if Joker became the Batman? inspired to do this piece by the Flashpoint version of Batman.
One of the critiques to one of my previous piece was that the background was not exciting enough, so decided to try my hand at doing some background work… a shambled down Gotham with a Bat/Joke signal in the background…
Started a new blog on my travel plans here…
TW and Jo’s Excellent Adventure!
Will still be posting things on games, movies, music, and everything in between here though.
Going through a bit of a dry spell..
I thrashed the last three pieces that I did because they are too horrible to show. Hours down the drain there…
This is the only halfway decent piece that I did recently… it’s also my first ensemble piece… Took hours just to render… then more hours on Photoshop… I really should get a faster comp.. 
Not completely satisfied with Superman, might redo him one day in the distant future..
Still trying to find my “style” so C&C most welcome.
Thanks!
A new piece of mine featuring the Superman and Wonder Woman. (More Wonder Woman than Superman, actually)
I’m trying to recreate the feel of old style bleached treated photography with a bit of overexposure. Another thing I was trying out on this piece was the use of white space. Hence the huge amount of white over the head of WW.
Instead of an all American Wonder Woman, I was going for one with a more sinister feel, contrasting her darkness with the overall brightness of the piece.
Heard about Minecraft?
Well… actually not a lot of people would have.
It’s an indie online game and it’s essentially Lego for adults. According to the official statement “Minecraft is a game about placing blocks to build anything you can imagine. At night monsters come out, make sure to build a shelter before that happens.“
Simple, simple concept. But the creativity of the players make the Minecraft one a truly spectacular one to follow.
The official stats put the number of beta players currently registered as slightly more than 5 million, out of which, close to a third bought the game. That means the game must be doing something right, right?
Well, at the very least, it managed to spawn this pretty innovative piece of work.
Kinda reminds me a bit of the style in the better parts of Scott Pilgrim vs the World.
For those that are interested, Minecraft can be played here. Requires registration though…
I’ve been raving about “Blackest Night” a fair bit on this site, so it’s not a surprise that I am a big fan. What’s not to like? Zombie meta humans smacking each other around.
I particularly like the bit where Hal Jordan’s New Guardians faced off against Black Lantern-ed version of heroes who have died and “cheated death” before. Seeing as how characters are moving through the revolving door of comic book death so fast these days, that is A LOT of Black Lantern powerhouses, including Superman, Wonder woman, Impulse, Green Arrow and one of my personal favorites – Superboy.
Conner Kent started out as a bit of a joke after the (*irony alert*) “Death of Superman” event.
What we initially know was that he was created by Project Cadmus to replace Superman. He was artificially aged to mid-teens and implanted with the necessary knowledge of someone his biological age (in regards to general studies, such as math, reading, etc). When Superboy arrived in Metropolis, he went by “Superman” and had no real name. While glibly asserting he was the original Superman, he quickly rebuked any insinuation he was the original Superman. In fact, he told anyone who’d listen that he was a clone of Superman.
This clone thing went on for quite a while in an age where “cloning” was a considerably dirty word, thanks to the whole Spider Man “Clone Saga”.
It was later on in his life that it was revealed that Conner Kent was a part of Project 13. Project Cadmus did a total of twelve failed experiments. They grafted what they could of Superman’s DNA onto human DNA and that process stabilized the extraterrestrial genes-thus Superboy was born, fifty percent Kryptonian and fifty percent human.
It got more interesting when the fifty percent human DNA was found to belong to one Lex Luthor.
This evolved Conner Kent into an interesting figurehead for storylines about “Nature vs Nurture” dichotomy.
Anyway, I was quite disappointed that Conner didn’t get to lay the smackdown on anyone in the Rainbow Brigade. So here’s my latest render – Black Lantern Superboy!
Check out this awesome image from… wait for it… a car insurance company!
Amazing ambush advertising? Or the inspired creation of a bored employee? I don’t know, and I don’t really care.
Autobots, ROLL OUT!
I think Super Bowl Ads represents the epitome of creativity when it comes to advertising. And why shouldn’t it? The TV spots probably cost enough to buy you your own Third World Country, so the content better be good. Or are they?
The usual heavyweights of Super Bowl Advertisers (Budweiser, Coca Cola, GoDaddy) turned out to be pretty disappointing. The only one which caught my eye was this one by Doritos.
The surprises this year were the advertisements for cars. I normally hate them as they’re mainly visuals of (surprise!) cars running through mountains/deserts/empty roads/random rough terrains with close ups of the slick bodies and moving wheels. It gets kind of repetitive after a while. While there are a few really horrible ones as usual, the following ads from Audi, Chevy and Mini were actually pretty good.
First up is one by Bridgestone (Yes, I know they sell tires, not cars… po-teh-toes, po-ta-toes..
Love the Lassie dig. The CG is not too shabby either.
And because we all love some good sexual innuendoes…
It’s time to “CRAM IT IN THE BOOT”
This Audi ad is hilarious. I especially enjoy the part where a Rival Company’s car is featured with the soundbite “My dad used to own one”. Class act!
Speaking of rivalry ads, this one from Motorola is actually pretty good with its (not so) subtle dig at Apple’s I-zation of … well.. pretty much everybody in the world.
There were even a few relatively “witty” advertisements, such as this one featuring Eminem in an Escher like claymation sequence. Eminem-C Escher? Or is it just me?
There’s also this little piece from (surprise!) Car Max. it’s a simple concept, but for some weird reason, I enjoyed it immensely.
My first full body render of the Green Lantern… The edges are still a bit sharp.. Probably need a bit more of photoshop work on it, but….yay!
A while ago, I showed my render of Poison Ivy.
Over the past few days, I have been trying to pose and post process the Poison Ivy model.
This is a first draft of my first creation.
It’s definitely a work in progress.
Think the title’s pretty self explanatory.
Found this online, and besides the really nice graphics, there are some disturbing stats based on this chart.
Now is probably a good time to say: “I am not part of the 20%”
It’s been a reeaaaaally long time since the last post. What have I been up to?
Well, this and that… mainly getting tied down with a wedding ring.
So, besides transforming the Girlfriend into the Wife, I’ve also started tinkering with some 3d software.
My first creation? Poison Ivy, of course.
It took some time to model Poison Ivy, and a hell lot more to pose and do the rendering work.
So here it goes… my first 3D piece…. “Off with his head!!”
Can’t really capture the sexy dangerousness of Ivy, but I think this is a start.
Will try to upload more pieces as the days go by…
“TRY” being the operative work…
Once upon a time, in a galaxy far far away, the Internet was still new and a 5.6mb song takes almost an hour to download on my 56kbs modem, there was a website called The Ultimate Band List.(or as it is known in the inner circles… ubl.com)
It was the Holy Grail for a teenager trying to show off to his equally impressionable friends by quoting “non commercial” indie bands such as the Flaming Lips, Weezer and Green Jelly (and here I speak from experience, check to make sure it REALLY is the “new Green Day album” before splurging the last of your pocket money on it).I was hooked on the website for quite a while, but eventually it became a phase in life that I outgrew.
I blame evolution.
Evidently, having intimate knowledge of the names and discography of obscure bands does not rank highly in the “Factors that make girls want to make babies with you” list.
Recently, I’ve started developing the classic symptom for quarter-life crisis: I wanted to get myself an electric guitar. I know that I have the musical ear and rhythmic sense of an American Idol contestant (the ones that kicked out in the audition rounds, not those in the finals… meaning my musical talents are comfortably placed somewhere between clinically proven deaf and… N Sync ), but there is this odd feeling that if I could just get my hands on an electric guitar, I’ll be able to make really loud noises.
Anyway, to relive the younger days, I tried going back to ubl.com and realized that this URL has became the domain of some lame commercial artistdirect website. Had to Google “ultimate band list” to come up with the new web domain for ultimate band list which is…
I’m serious, they have not only ran out of good domain names, it seems like there is a webwide famine of domain names… It’s a disgrace that the UBL is reduced to an URL of numbers when the website is still doing good work. It continues featuring artists that have not been signed yet. And like the good old days, if you are willing to spend some time going for an aural exploration safari, it is very likely to come up with some really good gems.
In the midst of re-finding my Ultimate Band List, I came across this pic from Virgin Digital that supposedly has the graphical representation of 74 “obscure” bands in them. I considered it my geekish quest to name them all.
10 minutes later, I was only able to name 23…
Can you do better?
And for fellow cheats… Answers below…
And so it ends.
For a 4 issue event, Siege lasted 3 issues too long.
I mean it is essentially ONE big BRAWL and Marvel managed to drag it out over the main “Siege” books, “Siege Embedded”, “Siege: Random Marvel character”, “the XXX Avengers” among the OTHER countless tie ins. It is paced less like a brawl than a leisurely game of Bridge played at the local old folk’s home.
Siege IS the BIGGEST damn Mess I’ve ever seen.
I speak as someone who is not above sitting through an entire M Night Shayamalam movie just for the payoff at the end. If anything. the ending of Siege was ALMOST as bad as the whole set up and premise. There was no emotional connection to the *surprise* death at the end of it all. The only thing going for the ending was how conveniently (and sneakily) Marvel (or Brian Michael Bendis) managed to tie up some loose ends in their current continuity. In one fell swoop, Marvel found a way to kill off a character that was too awkward to exist in their little multiverse and at the same time found a purpose and place for a newly resurrected one (who conveniently is gonna be starring in a movie real soon). *cough* Steve *cough* Rogers *cough*
Which brings me to the “death”.
We now have the obligatory heroes send off at the end of the mega crossover. The “send off” issue, besides milking fan boys of our remaining pocket money for the month, serves as a recap of the fine things the “hero” has done and a reminder of why people love him.
In that respect, Siege’s hero send off was staler than the sweat of the boy who had just ingested a gallon of Cheezit (trust me, I know about this subject, sadly) because there just isn’t so much to “remember” *insider nudge nudge wink wink* about this particular character!
It’s exceptionally bad when compared to the “sending off” in Marvel’s other event for the moment – The X-Men’s Second Coming (Insert your own lewd joke here)
It is MY Marvel event for now. To be honest, there is not much of a fight here. It is currently pitted against Siege and… *horrors* World War Hulks. I am a HUGE fan of the Hulk. I even semi enjoyed Ang Lee’s vision of a poetic Hulk. But a Hulked out Marvel universe is too much for me to bear. This shall be a gripe for another day…
The pacing for SC has been superb. The death was really shocking. The emotional investment I have in it is immense. Added on the whole new team dynamics of the X-Men since the Utopia storyline. I get the feeling I always get from reading my favourite pulps – That there might not be that bright cheery ending at the end of it all. That we are watching the characters go to hell in a fast car, but it is too damn fine a ride for us to look away.
Simply awesome.
Of course, I must point out this week’s fine reference to sunny lil Singapore.
Fear the prowess of Maxwell Lord!!
Blackest Night is over and here you have it…
For better or worse, the 12 that came back…
Is it me, or does this remind anyone else of the Oceanic Six from Lost?
This was especially after reading Brightest Day #0.
We know now that Boston Brand (Dead Man) is the only one among the six who retained his white ring. We also know that there might be a more specific, and probably sinister reason for these specific 12 being the ones who were brought back.
While I am not as excited about Brightest Day as I was about Blackest Night, I am intrigued by the more mysterious premise. I mean, for the longest time, we know that Blackest Night was going to be about Zombie Heroes and Villains, Brightest Day, for the most part remains a mystery.
It certainly doesn’t hurt that Geoff Johns is the Chief Architect behind Brightest Day as well.
Anyway, the Brightest Day checklist…
Let’s see where this one takes us…
